The famous leaning tower / the golden ceiling of the cathedral next to the tower.
While staying in Florence on our recent trip to Italy, we took a side trip to Pisa.
I had done some reading about it ahead of time. The leaning tower was not an isolated building, but part of a complex made up of a cathedral, baptistery building and bell tower (the leaning tower).
They started building the tower in 1173. They got halfway done and noticed it leaning. Construction stopped. They resumed construction, even with the lean. All in all it took about 200 years to finish it.
Other facts:
- The lean is caused by the softness of the ground.
- Even the cathedral near it leans a little bit, but it is not noticeable because the weight is more broadly distributed.
- In the 1990’s efforts were made to lessen the tower’s lean. They did this by removing ground from one side. The correction worked, the tilt was corrected by 18 inches, back to where it was 200 years ago.
- Pisa is Galileo’s birth city. He used the tower for gravity experiments.
But there is something else about the Pisa trip that had nothing to do with the tower. It had to do with the ceiling of the adjacent cathedral.
The ceiling is beautiful, covered in gold-leaf. It was a replacement for the original, which had been destroyed in a fire.
The new ceiling was paid for by the Medici family. The Medicis are probably the most famous, or infamous, family in Italian history. They were rich; they had a banking system throughout Europe. They were the bank for the Vatican. They were patrons of the arts. Some of them were ruthless. One of them became a pope (a corrupt one).
Just so there was no doubt as to who paid for the ceiling, they put their family crest on it in two places. Our guide gave us the impression that their donation was something other than a sincere gift made from a pure heart.
My mind went immediately to the scripture where Jesus said, “Be careful not to do your ‘acts of righteousness’ before men, to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honored by men. I tell you the truth, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you,” (Matthew 6:1-4).
The Sermon on the Mount, where these words of Jesus come from, is really a discipleship sermon. It is for believers. It is a way to show them how to be followers of Christ, to show them what that really means. And that means being different from usual self-serving ways of this world.
Here we are urged to have pure motives in our giving. People often give to be seen or praised by other people. But Jesus says that if you do that you have no reward from God.
There is such strong temptation to brag about our giving, maybe subtly or not so subtly. But if we do that, is it really giving at all?
Corporations often boast of their charitable giving. For them it is just part of business. Buying goodwill. One extreme example (if I remember correctly)–a big tobacco company, hoping to cancel out a massive amount of bad publicity, gave $100,000,000 to charity…and then spent $110,000,000 to boast about it.
That’s the world’s way–giving for praise, giving for public relations. It’s a transaction.
But giving Jesus’ way has two advantages.
1. It enables us to get our reward from God. We have to wait for it, yes, but it’s better to be rewarded by God than to get the immediate gratification of praise from people. If you give, be quiet about it. God will know, and that’s enough.
2. It frees the church or charity we give to from having the burden of honoring and acknowledging (and being somehow in the debt of) the giver. It removes temptation to favor those that give much over those that give little.
While few today would be so bold as to be like the Medicis and put our family crest on ‘ceilings’, there are other ways of making sure that their gifts get known. I knew of a Christian university that, for a certain big amount, would allow the giver naming rights to a department. And if you gave a bigger amount, naming rights to a college.
I know, maybe I shouldn’t judge. Universities need money, after all. But we do have Jesus’ words to consider. We need to examine our motives. Are we really doing it for God? If so, we should be willing to wait for the reward from Him, willing to give up control of the time and way we will be rewarded.
I was once pastor to an elderly couple who were wealthy, but humble. When they gave a considerable sum to the church for a major remodeling project, they wanted it to be anonymous. That freed the church from having to shower them with praise and honor; something they didn’t care about anyway. They did it right.