71 days of complete commitment and it’s all history now. 71 days of lonely commitment. 71 days of no days off. That’s commitment, full-hearted commitment. That’s record-breaking Ellen MacArthur last February, 2005.

Was that really commitment? Was she full-hearted in pursuit of sailing solo round the world the quickest ever? Of course she was. She was determined to be the best.

I dare to say that her commitment, her full-hearted drive, has only just been eclipsed with a task that was at least twice as hard, a task that was without doubt a daily struggle against everything that nature could throw at you. 178 days of complete commitment, 178 days of full-hearted effort. 178 days of struggle and determination to be the best. Dee Caffari sailed solo round the world as well, but the wrong way – against the wind and weather.

These two women have shown us extraordinary commitment, full-hearted commitment. Any sense of half-heartedness would have ended their respective odysseys immediately. Only full-hearted commitment could do what they had done.

Such single-minded purpose is a standard to challenge us, inspire us, or perhaps frighten us. Rather than fail, we’d rather not start such challenges. We can be half-hearted at all sort of things and of course we can be half-hearted about our faith and expressing that faith in word and deed, half-hearted in allowing the Spirit to work his way in our lives, half-hearted in letting the word of God change us, even when we know it is the right thing to do.

Paul our writer of this letter was facing the problem of half-heartedness – not entirely half-heartedness in every area. No, the Corinthian Christians were great at all sorts of things – v.7 – and Paul lists their areas of success and full-hearted Christianity, but they were half-hearted about generosity to God’s work.

This is a tricky one. Paul has had a number of run-ins with the Corinthians. As far as we can judge, this is the 4th letter in the series (1 Cor. is the second letter) and the 3rd letter – now missing – was a blistering attack on their errors and failures as young believers.

But he needs to encourage them from half-heartedness to full-heartedness. To show that commitment to the Gospel and to God’s work that involved their whole life and faith.

The situation was that Paul had promised to bring a collection from the Gentile Christians of Greece and Asia Minor to the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem. It was fraught with problems, not least the safe carriage of such a potentially large sum, but also its ‘welcome’ receipt – Jews were slow usually to accept anything from Gentiles.

On the other hand, it was a clear way to show the unity of the Church and a chance for the richer Gentile Christians to help their poorer brothers and sisters in Jerusalem.

He had written in 1 Cor. 16 of the need for the Corinthians to set aside a weekly sum, saving it up, in readiness for the collection when Paul next visited. Clearly they had not done this and Paul needed to encourage them to a full-hearted commitment, from their present half-hearted commitment, seen in that they had not been putting aside money, saving it up weekly.

Paul does not rant at them, but cajoles them to full-hearted commitment to generosity by sharing with them – to their shame – the vision they once had, the vision the Macedonians still had and the vision that Christ always had.

The Corinthians’ own example (v.10-12)
The Corinthians had shown a full-hearted commitment to the cause once upon a time (v.10). They were eager to complete the task, keen to prepare for Paul’s collection, fervent to be first in line.

Somehow, over the preceding months things had changed. They had lost that first desire to give. They had lost that initial enthusiasm to be mature followers of Christ, mature because they were working out their faith fully and completely in every area of their lives.

Paul uses their own example of a year ago to urge them on to complete the task, to inspire them to fully mature Christian activity in their generosity. ‘Finish the work’ – don’t leave it any longer, get the job done. It’s a call to all of us to seek mature discipleship, to get our Christian faith and our walk with Jesus right.

What the Corinthians had begun, let them finish. What we have begun, growing in maturity of faith, let us finish that we might be individually mature followers of Jesus, just as we aim to be as corporately so as a church.

The Macedonians’ example (v.1-5)
Paul didn’t just appeal to their own half-heartedness over the past year and their need to full-hearted completion of mature faith by just looking at the Corinthians. He carefully, though unflatteringly, compares their actions with the Macedonians.

The Macedonians lived in Northern Greece in Thessalonica and Philippi and their surrounding towns. Macedonia was much poorer than Corinth. It was an agricultural backwater really, on the main road from Asia Minor but not the centre of wealth by any means. Corinth however was at a key intersection in Roman sea trade, able to tax and trade cargo across the Mediterranean and so it was very wealthy.

So you can see the juxtaposition that Paul was creating here. The Macedonians though poor were in fact generous and the Corinthians though rich were not generous. The Macedonians suffered trials (v.2), extreme poverty (v.2), gave beyond their ability (v.3), pleaded to give (v.4). It is quite an extraordinary story.

How was that? It depended on the grace of God – that word (Charis in Greek) occurs in v.1 (grace) and in v.4 (privilege). Grace is one of Paul’s big words – often loaded with meaning. We mostly use it to refer to the undeserved love and power which God showers on people which brings them to faith in the first place.

That is clearly true, but it also has other uses for Paul. Not just to refer to what God wants to do in and for Christians but what God wants to do through Christians. The grace that the Macedonians had was not some wonderful spiritual experience, but an impulse from God himself, which manifested itself in almost reckless generosity.

You see, such was their devotion to God – their maturity of faith and love for God – that they found it in their hearts to give not only according to their means, but way beyond, and that, Paul declares, can only be a work of grace.

Paul teases the Corinthians with this: don’t you want this grace as well? You have plenty of spiritual attainments but what about excelling in the grace of giving. Don’t settle for less than full maturity in Christ and so don’t settle for less than full grace in giving.

I’m reminded of St. John’s Bedford. Noel Cooper, the Rector, wrote of their giving campaign in that little known publication Archdeacons’ News – worthy of the BBC programme, Have I got news for you perhaps? Quote.

Well, it’s not hard for you to work out why I might share that story with you. I would wish to speak the words of Paul to you – v.8. We have pledged ourselves to become mature followers of Christ, who experience and live out God’s love in every part of our lives. Let us finish the work – v.11. But let us look at one more example to spur us on.

Christ’s example (v.9)
Tucked away in the heart of this passage is the heart of the Gospel message itself: the death and resurrection of Jesus. We know these words best through a Christmas hymn:
Thou who wast rich beyond all splendour
All for love’s sake becamest poor.

It’s surprising that such heights and depths of incarnational theology – that is the fact that Jesus, wholly divine and wholly human gave up everything for God’s mission of salvation and rescue of creation and for the people he made and loves with an everlasting love – that such profound God-talk of v.9 isn’t found in a passage that discusses the wonderful detail of the complex question of how Jesus can be both God and man, but is instead found in a passage that basically says, “Shouldn’t you have finished taking up the collection?”

And yet, maybe this is the best place to see the example of Jesus’ generosity in the theology of the incarnation – of God becoming both human and divine, because there is something about the way God took on human life and lived and died as one of us that expresses, not as some abstract theory or well-ordered belief structure, but in a practical and down-to-earth way the messy details of ordinary life, with its arrangements that go wrong, with its plans half-finished and with its initial enthusiasm run out, with its relationships that go sour and need rebuilding.

Paul offers us the supreme example of the one who had all the riches of life in the glorious Godhead of the Trinity and became poor in the sense that he humbled himself to the restrictions of a human life that wasn’t rich, royal or splendid in the world’s terms, but poor and humble. Paul models his entire life on this work of Jesus and he longs for the Corinthians to do so too, and he longs for us to do so too.

Because of Christ – his love shown in what he gave up and in what he took on, even to death on the cross – we are then called to become mature followers of Christ, who experience and live out God’s love in every part of our lives.

This isn’t about coercion or command. This is about love – a love that Paul repeatedly called on the Corinthians to show: 1 Cor 13:1, 14:1, 16:14, 2 Cor 8:8, 8:24, but which he had been able to commend in the Macedonians: 1 Thes 1:3, 3:6, 2 Thes 1:3, Phil 1:9, 2:1.

That’s what Paul is saying to us today: to show our love for God expressed in the real nitty gritty of our lives, expressed in the money we hold onto rather than give up for Christ’s sake and indeed ultimately for our spiritual sakes, expressing our love so that the mission and ministry of God, who calls us to be partners with him, can go forward unhindered by any half-heartedness of Christian love and giving.

Will you today rise to the challenge, will you express your love for God, will you give to his work, ‘gifts acceptable according to what one has’ (v.12)?

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