Nothing to offer?

‘I am fully satisfied, now that I have received from Epaphroditus the gifts you sent, a fragrant offering, a sacrifice acceptable and pleasing to God’.
Philippians 4:18

‘When do we bring up the offering?’ the churchwarden asked me anxiously – after all, nobody wants to get it wrong, especially with a visiting minister. The ‘offering’ –more often and more correctly, if more crudely, described as the ‘collection’ –is still an essential part of the ritual in many of our parishes. And in ordinary language that’s just about the only survival of the word, though we do speak in the eucharist of the offering of ourselves to God.

‘Offerings’ were at the heart of the religion of Israel. Indeed, the temple largely existed as a kind of processing plant for a multiplicity of offerings: drink offerings, elevation offerings, freewill offerings, guilt offerings, grain offerings and ‘offerings of well-being’. Some were required by law. Some were sacrifices for sin. But many were simply expressions of gratitude to God: ‘What shall I return to the Lord for all his bounty to me?’ (Psalm 116:12).

We can all understand the offering of gifts as acts of affection or gratitude. In fact, we all do it, at Christmas, birthdays, anniversaries or simply as a spontaneous expression of love or appreciation. The temple offerings were ritual ways for the people of Israel to show their love and gratitude to God (though doubtless often abused, or made in the hope of divine favours). But when the heart is right, so is the offering, as Jesus made clear in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5:23,24). That’s quite a thought as we come to the season of harvest thanksgiving, when like the temple of old our parish churches will be filled with gifts and offerings. The old harvest hymn puts it rather well:

‘No gifts have we to offer for all thy love imparts,
But what thou most desirest, our humble, thankful hearts’.