Stewardship Message - October 20, 2019 Darryl Marshall, Stewardship Chair

Stewardship Message – October 20, 2019

Darryl Marshall, Chair Stewardship Ministry

Good morning. My name is Darryl. I am here to talk about stewardship. If you have heard me in past years, you will think that I am very likely to suggest that you pledge for 2020 and that you use a percentage of your income to guide you in the amount. This historical guideline is a tithe, or 10% of adjusted gross income. You would be right. That’s my message. Please hold your applause until the end.

Having said all that, I have a question: Why are you here? My view is that we both want to be here and need to be here, as Christians, members, and communicants. This provides us a way to leave the world better than we found it. And, we need to support “here”.

I enjoy reading The Economist, which is a weekly news magazine published in England. Last week I ran across an article on the subject “Pay to pray.” This is what I learned:

“The governments of ten countries across Europe administer membership fees on behalf of religious organizations. In two of these, Spain and Portugal, believers can opt to pay a portion of their income tax to their religion of choice. Six others run opt-out systems, whereby registered members of certain Christian churches (and, in some cases, other religious groups) are required to pay tax. In most of these, leaving the religion is the only way to get out of paying. Some states in Germany require even more arduous methods of disassociation—in addition to leaving the church, you must also file a notarized de-registration form with the local government, which demands a fee.”

Clearly, this approach would make my job a lot easier. But it would miss a critical issue: this is a faith community. Here is where the Son of Man will find faith when he comes. We have a clear purpose that goes beyond a social club. When you participate in this church you can encounter God in a unique way. And, we give back. You, and this church support many programs helping fill the needs of not only our parishioners, but also our wider community.

And, there is more to the story in Europe: “Icelanders, have found a cunning way to get refunds. Their tithes are distributed to each religious group according to the size of its flock. A surprising number of people have registered as members of the Zuist Church of Iceland, a previously obscure group that preaches ancient Sumerian beliefs. It refunds the contributions of its members, greatly broadening its appeal.”

In the past few months I have done a survey of people who attend Church of Our Saviour, asking them why they are here. When talking to our members the question immediately evolved into “why do I need to be here.” Allow me to read some quotes of the answers I received:

·        I love the clergy here.

·        An opportunity to learn.

·        This is a family.

·        A very human thing, to seek and find our better angels.

·        COOS expresses the full breadth and depth of feelings.

·        A very comfortable experience

.

·        I am valued for what I am, not what I do.

·        It is important to love and be loved. I would love less if I did not come to church.

·        It spans entire lives, birth to death. Very few groups are multi-generational. Very few groups help people die.

·        I love to see young parents relating to kids and kids growing up. Family not close, so it is a treasure watching people go through life.

·        We have a person to person connection, as opposed to social media.

·        It is such an exercise dealing with various people, even with those I don't enjoy.

·        I come to church each Sunday to hit the "reset" button on my life through confession and the Eucharist. I need to get away from the "noise" in the world and give praise to our Lord through prayer with my brothers and sisters in Christ.

I love this one. We worship, sing, and confess together! Once, about three churches ago for Jackie and me, I sat next to someone in choir named Jerry. I noticed that he did not join in the confession during the service. I asked him why not? He said that he had not sinned in the past week, so did not need to confess. I said, “Look Jerry, maybe you didn’t do anything wrong, but you have no idea what I did, so you should join me and the others.”

It is what we do together that is important. We do not say “I confess…”, we say “We confess…”.

Learning is very important to some of us. I saw a survey once that showed that 70% of people in the US think Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife. We can do something about this state of affairs and are working on it. The first group I joined here was the Men’s Bible Study & Breakfast. It is a great experience. 

To me, the most compelling reason to be here and support “here” is this: The common theme in the reasons given is that we need to be here for one-another. God is real and can be experienced. If we pay attention, we can learn how to recognize that experience and participate in it. We are called to love one-another. We share the love here through many programs, our liturgy, and our mutual support.

We need to be here, and we need to support "here." Love demands that we support "here" for those depending on us. It is important to you, to me, to your neighbors in the pews, our community and our world.

Just mercy. October 27, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

Luke 18:9-14

A couple of years ago, a writer and leadership coach named Kathy Caprino sent out a survey to people she had known and worked with, and around 700 people replied to it. The survey consisted of a single sentence, and it was this: “If you could say in one word what you want more of in life, what would that be?” Let me pause for a moment so that you can think of how you might answer that question: “If you could say in one word what you want more of in life, what would that be?” . . .  So here are the top five responses she received. Number 5: Joy. People naturally desire to experience emotional delight and gladness. Number 4: Peace. Clearly many long for a sense of wholeness and calm in the midst of life’s many stresses. Number 3: Freedom. Freedom from worry; freedom to do what you want to do; not feeling constrained or limited. Number 2: Money. I guess there’s no escaping it, no matter how wealthy you are. Someone once asked John D. Rockefeller how much money was enough. His classic American reply: “Always just a little bit more than what you have.” And finally, Number 1: Happiness. That state of contentment which seems to elude so many people.

This came to mind not because I was thinking about how I would answer the question, but how Jesus would answer the question. And not for himself: I wouldn’t presume to even speculate on that. But what does Jesus think we need? We have more insight into that, because Jesus teaches people how to live, and shows them the path that leads to fullness of life. So here’s my modified question: “If Jesus could say in one word what we want more of in life, what would that be?” Well, it certainly would not be money; joy, peace, freedom, and happiness are all New Testament words and could all be contenders, but I don’t imagine they would come first. You might think I’m going to say love, but I’m not. Based on my reading of the Gospels and the experience of Christ over the years of my own life, I believe the word that Jesus would choose is mercy.

The Gospels are all about mercy. Jesus is a fount of mercy: it flows out of him continually. He performs many acts of physical mercy, of course, like healing the sick and feeding the hungry. But more amazing is the spiritual mercy he shows. He welcomes sinners into his life and into the community of his followers; he eats with notorious wrongdoers who are hated and shunned by others. He tells parables about merciful fathers, merciful employers, merciful enemies. He teaches us, Blessed are the merciful. Forgiving and being forgiven are the very heart of the prayer he gives us, a prayer we say every time we are about to receive Holy Communion. And he himself constantly forgives people, usually when they don’t even ask for it: the paralytic, the woman who anoints his feet, the woman caught in adultery. They don’t have to recite the correct formula of faith, they don’t have to believe that Jesus is the Messiah, they don’t even have to repent. And he does it right to the end: he offers paradise to the criminal dying next to him and he forgives the people who are executing him. Those soldiers don’t give a damn about being forgiven, but he forgives them anyway. And after his resurrection, the mercy just keeps on flowing. What are the first words he says to the close friend who denied him and to the men who abandoned him? Peace be with you. Mercy is the beginning and the end of the Good News of Jesus Christ. Nothing else reveals so powerfully how radical and how unconditional God’s love for us truly is.

All of this leads me to the Gospel today. I love this passage, and the older I get, the more I love it. The tax collector is a Roman tool and a traitor to his own people. He is despised and socially ostracized. I don’t know if we have any equivalent to that in our own society. But we can all recognize the Pharisee. He is, by many measures, a model citizen. He fasts twice a week! He tithes! He’s not a traitor or a crook or a rule breaker. He obeys all the commandments — except for one, the first and most important one: I am the LORD your God . . . you shall have no other gods before me. As the Bible reminds us over and over again, to have faith is to trust in God. But the Pharisee does not trust in God: the Gospel tells us he trusted in himself and in his own righteousness. The Pharisee has become his own god. The tax collector, on the other hand, is a flagrant sinner who can make no claim to righteousness. All he can do is to put his faith in God and trust in God’s mercy. And Jesus, incredibly, points out that the tax collector, not the Pharisee, goes home justified, in right relationship with God. It doesn’t say he stops being a tax collector. It doesn’t say he has a dramatic change of life. What it says is that he trusts in God’s mercy and he receives God’s mercy. Period.

I love this story because I used to be that Pharisee. And maybe some of you can relate to that as well. I used to put all my trust in my own achievements, be they academic, vocational, or spiritual. What was going to make me right with God and right with the world was my own success, my own ability to get it right. And I believe many people in our society are prone to that terrible temptation. It’s terrible when we fail, because then we feel guilty and inadequate. But it’s even more terrible when we succeed, because then we might actually think that our own achievement, our own goodness, is what makes us secure in God’s love. And that is not true. Perhaps the biggest turning point in my life was realizing in the depths of my soul that I could never in a million years earn self-worth or earn God’s love. And I don’t need to. I depend entirely on God’s mercy, every second of every day. And, frankly, so do you.

This is not just about feeling good: it’s about seeing the truth and acting on the truth. The Pharisee is not only obnoxious, he’s blind. And worse, he’s merciless, pouring contempt on others. He cannot share what he has never experienced. The world is filled with Pharisees and merciless people. And Jesus offers one shocking solution to this: show mercy to everyone, all the time. It is receiving mercy that sets people free to show mercy to others. Sometimes, as in the story of Zacchaeus, another tax collector, the change is immediate and dramatic. Many times, it’s not. But mercy is always the approach Jesus takes. Always. It’s how he goes about changing the world and ushering in the Kingdom of God. We may think his strategy is impractical, inefficient, or just plain unfair, but without putting too fine a point on it, Jesus is Lord and we are not. And our Lord Jesus shows us that mercy is what the Kingdom looks like. And thank God, because we all need mercy. We all need to receive it and we all need to give it. Every blessed one of us.

Connecting with the healer. October 13, 2019 The Rev. Kathleen M. Sturges

Luke 17:11-19

"Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!" cried the band of lepers. But that wasn’t what they were supposed to say. They were supposed to say, “Unclean, unclean!” to warn anyone who might come close. Because leprosy was a fearful and dreaded disease in biblical times. So much was unknown which meant that anyone who presented with any kind of skin condition whether it be a rash, a scaly blemish, or actual leprosy was categorized as a leper. And with that came strict rules of conduct. Forced to live outside of the community, they were to wear shabby rags for clothes, keep their hair unkempt, and shout “unclean” to anyone who drew near. Perhaps the most frightening thing about leprosy was that it didn’t kill you. But with no family, no friends except other lepers, no work, no temple, lepers were the frightful equivalent to the walking dead - alive without any hope.

So, really, what did they have to lose on the day that Jesus passed their way. Instead of, “Unclean!” they shouted, “Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” Exactly what they were asking for is unclear - a piece of bread, some water, a kind word - who knows? But whatever they were seeking I bet Jesus’ response took them by surprise. "Go and show yourselves to the priests." Even if they knew of Jesus’ reputation as a healer, what was he talking about? He hadn’t done anything. Showing yourself to a priest implied healing because the only reason for a leper to visit a Jewish priest was so the priest could verify a healing and allow reentry back into the community. But they weren’t healed. Nothing had changed. They were no better off than they had been before Jesus came on the scene. Still, they headed out and a funny thing happened on the way, “as they went,” the gospel of Luke tells us, “they were made clean.” Their step must have quickened as it happened, anxious to find a priest to verify their health so that they might rush home to wife or husband, to parents or children, joyously shouting, “I’m healed, I’m healed!” They all must have been so excited and yet one of them did something different than the others. Instead of rushing ahead to the next thing, one of them stopped, turned around and went back to give praise and thanks to God. "Were not ten made clean?” asked Jesus, “But the other nine, where are they? Was none of them found to return and give praise to God except this foreigner?" Then he said to him, "Get up and go on your way; your faith has made you well."

How often we are willing to settle for less than the fullness of what God desires for us? That’s what’s going on here. Nine out of ten lepers are happy enough with a skin-deep healing. Only one is able to recognize that full healing, a cure that is more than skin deep, involves connecting with the healer himself. For when Jesus declares to the man that, “your faith has made you well,” he’s talking about something bigger, something deeper than just a physical healing. The leper’s faith expressed in gratitude made him healed and whole inside and out. And it’s not that Jesus is offended by the others who don’t return to give thanks. He doesn’t need our thanks. But he knows that we need to give thanks because gratitude is good for the soul. And that’s the deeper healing that God desires for us all.

Just as science now tells us that leprosy is actually very hard to catch and not something to be afraid of, so has science shed light on the fact that gratitude has measurable positive effects on our minds and bodies. Gratitude does, indeed, makes us well. In part it makes us well because it has a way of slowing us down. I’m sympathetic to the nine lepers who didn’t stop and give thanks, but rushed onto the next thing in life. Believe me, I could offer plenty of illustrations from my own life and from many of yours, too, where a prayer was answered - a tumor benign, a job found, a relationship restored, and so on - and yes, for a moment we may pause in gratitude, but all too quickly then rush onto the next concern, the next worry, the next prayer for relief. 

Thomas Merton, the Trappist monk, once said that, “To be grateful is to recognize the Love of God in everything.” That is what Jesus wanted for all of the lepers and wants for us - to recognize in the deepest parts of being God’s love in everything - in creation, in others, in ourselves - for as we do, we are made well by that love. 

That’s not to say that we are to take on Pollyannaish view of the world - a determined, false cheeriness when faced with real life burdens, pains, injustices, and sorrows. It’s no accident that Jesus encounters the ten lepers in a land, we are told, that is somewhere between Galilee and Samaria. Now that may not mean much to us, but to a Jewish listener it would have signaled a type of borderland place - Galilee was good and safe, Samaria, in the Jewish mind, was bad and threatening. This region somewhere between Galilee and Samaria was a place of both/and - where both joy and sorrow, strength and struggle, mercy and injustice existed. Quite similar to the place we find ourselves in most of the time. And it is just such a place that Jesus is willing to go, drawing near to find us, to heal us, and if we are willing, to make us well. Gratitude helps us to see that in the midst of our complex lives the Love of God is in everything. Sometimes, though, like the lepers we are called to take a step in faith, in gratitude, and then in doing so we become healed.

For gratitude is not just a feeling outside of our control that randomly washes over us now and then. It’s more like a radio channel that, with practice, we can choose at any time to tune into. And as we tune in, we connect to God and from that connection flows love and grace and compassion in us and through us.

“Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” That cry never goes ignored. Jesus responds with a divine outpouring. And then he waits, waits for us to notice and to know - to really know how much we are already loved, already forgiven, already being made whole so that we might turn to him full of thanks and praise. Thanks and praise that makes us well.

           

The Spirit within us. October 6, 2019 The Rev. David M. Stoddart

2 Timothy 1:1-14

This is a Tibetan singing bowl. We use it as a gong to begin and end prayer time in our contemplative prayer group. But it’s not a gong: it’s a singing bowl, and it makes a haunting kind of sound. So, there is a fascinating musical composition called Longplayer, composed by Jem Finer. It is made up of six pieces played on 234 singing bowls of different sized and different tones. The six pieces are played simultaneously. They start out in sync, and then different sections of each piece slowly start weaving in and out of the others in many, many different combinations and permutations until, finally, all the pieces come back into sync. But for this composition, it will take one thousand years for that to happen. Longplayer began playing at 12:00am on January 1, 2000 — so its been playing continuously for over 19 years now — and it will finish at midnight on Dec. 31, 2999. A foundation has been started to make sure it keeps playing. There are several listening places around the world, including the Lighthouse in London, and you can also listen to it streamed online. The sound is mesmerizing and sinks into you: the piece conveys the sense of music playing forever, always changing and yet always the same. And after awhile, you can forget you’re listening to it, even though it continues without ever stopping.

Why do I tell you this? Because for me this is a helpful metaphor, a way of understanding something that Paul tries to convey in the reading we heard today from his second letter to Timothy. Now, I’m going to refer to the author as Paul: this may have been written by one of Paul’s associates, but the message is the same either way. Timothy has something, something special, something amazing. But he didn’t give it to himself. His grandmother Lois had it and his mother Eunice had it, and they no doubt passed it on to him. Paul had it, and he also passed it on to him by laying hands on him. More importantly, though, those women and Paul were merely conduits: what is being passed on comes from God and God alone. Timothy’s awesome gift is nothing less than the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of Jesus Christ himself — a spirit, we are told, of power and love and self-discipline.

And Paul tells Timothy to  rekindle the gift of God that is within you. The Holy Spirit, of course, never grows cold. She never gets tired, never goes away, never goes out. So when Paul tells Timothy to rekindle this gift, he cannot mean to make the Spirit present again, because the Spirit never left; he cannot mean to make the Spirit flame up again because the fire of the Spirit is always there. So Paul must be encouraging Timothy to reconnect with the Spirit within him and to feel her warmth anew, to remember that he has this gift at all. For it is the Spirit who enables him to experience the presence and power of the Risen Christ in his life.

Each one of us has this same gift. It comes from God, and there are many ways God can activate it in us: through the witness of faithful people, through the waters of baptism, through the laying on of hands by a priest or bishop, through a simple prayer of faith. And we can imagine or envision the Spirit in many ways: as fire, as wind, as breath, as energy, as power. But I personally love the metaphor of music, which is why I think of Longplayer. There is a song going on in our souls all the time, a deep hum of love which never stops and never fades. It is vibrating within us and among us right now. But we can and do easily forget to listen to it. The din of daily life, the noise of the world, the clamor of our own minds can all drown out the divine music which is always playing.

And it is always playing. I need to emphasize that: we don’t control the Holy Spirit. We don’t make the Spirit happen. The Spirit within us is a gift: the word “grace” is used in this reading multiple times, and grace means God’s gift, unearned and freely given. So we don’t have to believe more, try harder, or exert greater mental and emotional energy to gain the Spirit. The Spirit lives within us as pure gift right now. The fire is always burning, the music is always playing. We simply need to trust in that Presence and allow ourselves to tune into it.

That is one of the primary purposes of our common worship: to remind us of the Spirit within us and, together, to recognize and realize that Spirit at work. But of course we are only here for an hour: most of our time is spent in the world, living our lives. So it’s important we find ways to connect with the Spirit daily. Those ways will vary from person to person, depending on our personalities and circumstances. But I think I can safely say that we can all find ways to listen for the Spirit and ways to act in the Spirit. Listening for the Spirit means praying, however that works best for us. I find sitting in contemplative prayer to be so connecting and life-giving, but that is just one example. Others include meditating on passages from the Bible, reading a devotional book, journaling, praying as you do your daily tasks like getting dressed or doing the dishes. All those are ways of tuning in — and not forgetting.

But beyond just remembering the Spirit, we are also called to tap into the Spirit. For she is a Spirit of power and love and self-discipline. There are ways of living well and loving that are beyond our power to do. People in 12 Step recovery programs know this: they depend on a Power greater than themselves to stay clean and sober. But all of us need this power, this Spirit, if we are to follow Christ into fullness of life. Deliberately invoking the Spirit and trusting in the Spirit’s power to work through us are ways we fully tune into the Spirit. Whether we are trying to love a difficult co-worker or we are taking significant risks for the sake of goodness in the world, Paul reminds us to rekindle the gift of God that is within us and use it.

So I have two questions to leave you with. First, how are you connecting with the Spirit in prayer every day? If you aren’t, I encourage you to do so. Second, how are you intentionally using the power of the Spirit to live and to love? If you aren’t, I encourage you to do so. The bottom line is  that we have this amazing gift within us. It’s a pure gift, freely given, always available to us, no strings attached. The music within us is always playing: we need only open our ears and our hearts to hear it.