Guilty like me

Joel 2:23-32
Psalm 65
2 Timothy 4:6-8,16-18
Luke 18:9-14

A few weeks ago, the church Stewardship Committee drafted a cover letter for the forms we pass around every year at this time, so that people who wish to can go on record about how much they hope to give to the church in the coming year, in time, and talent, and money.  And every year, because this letter goes out in the name, not only of the Stewardship Committee, but also of the vestry (which board of directors), a draft goes to the vestry for review.  In the past, the vestry has typically given the letter a quick once-over, and said, in essence, “looks fine to us—where do we sign?”  But this year was different.   Maybe it was because the letter talked about making changes to the Stewardship program in order to deepen the conversation, but in any case, this year your vestry took a hard look at it.  They made editorial suggestions to clarify its message, but more than that they raised substantive concerns about its contents, and questioned some of its basic assumptions.

The vestry’s comments were mainly concentrated on those parts of the letter that talked about giving money to the church in proportion to one’s income, and in particular the traditional norm of the tithe, that is, of giving one-tenth of it.  Now tithing is a biblical standard, with a solid weight of church behind it, so I was a little surprised at first when the vestry called it into question.  After all, the Stewardship Committee’s language in the letter about these things had been simply carried forward from last year’s letter, and last year’s from the year before, and no one raised an eyebrow about it then.  But, of course, maybe that’s just because no one was paying attention.  

However, one of the things that I value most about this congregation is that its’ members do notice, sooner or later, when we are doing things that don’t sit exactly right with them, even things that are “traditional,” and they aren’t afraid to question them.  And the truth is, we haven’t really taken the time before now in the vestry, or even in the stewardship committee, let alone the wider congregation, to look at why and whether tithing really is an expectation we have of ourselves and one another.   So I took the discussion about it in the vestry meeting as a sign that the Stewardship Committee is on the right track in saying it is time for us to open this topic up for a deeper conversation, and as a promising start in that direction.

The most telling moment in the discussion, for me personally, came when someone said, and I’m paraphrasing here, “I don’t tithe, so how can I tell the congregation that this is something they should be doing?”  Which would have been the perfect opportunity for me to lead by example, and to take a stand for the traditional norm, by saying, “well, I do.”  Except the truth is that I don’t.  Most of the time I feel guilty about this, like it makes me, on one level, a fraud, who is shirking his ordination vow to “pattern your life and that of your household in accordance with the teachings of Christ, so that you may be a wholesome example to your people.”  Somehow, though, when that vestry member spoke out in such a forthright way, I felt relieved.  I was even thankful that I have, as yet, failed to meet the standard of the tithe, because if I hadn’t I would have been sorely tempted in that moment to say so.  And there would have no way to do that without putting others in their place.  As it was, I had no leg of moral superiority to stand on.

I do know people, even some in this congregation, who can speak quite movingly about how committing to the tithe has helped them to grow spiritually.  But none of them talks about their satisfaction in setting a good example for others.  Nor do they mention a feeling of relief at having rid themselves of the guilt of not tithing.  They are more likely to talk about discovering a freedom and joy in giving that makes them want to do more.  And when you think about it, there is something arbitrary about the tithe--if the idea is to honor God and acknowledge our dependence on God’s providential goodness, why stop at ten percent?  It’s a norm that comes from the Jewish law, and without negating it, Jesus sets quite a different standard.  You can find it in the 18^th Chapter of the Gospel of Luke, a few verses after today’s reading: “One thing you still lack.  Sell all that you have and distribute to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.” 

There’s nothing in the Gospels to suggest that Jesus was against tithing, but teachings like the story of the Pharisee and the tax collector warn against thinking that tithing or not tithing makes a difference to God.  Jesus seems to assume that most of his audience don’t, or why else would the Pharisee imagine that his tithing sets him apart from other people?  Of course the tax collector thinks of himself as set apart also, for a different reason.  People despised tax collectors as treacherous and wicked because they collaborated with the pagan and idolatrous Roman overlords.  And for a person with a sensitive conscience that must have been a heavy burden to bear.  No doubt that is why this man is beating his breast and crying out “Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.”  But Jesus seems to think that this is an appropriate way of relating to God, not just for tax collectors, who were generally landless people, just doing what they had to do to survive, but for all of us—“Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.”    

We modern liberal Christians are wary of such lavish expressions of guilt and repentance, which we associate with an oppressive religion that is, thankfully, out of date.  And it is true that the church has used guilt to terrible effect, causing untold harm to countless persons.  But that is because its teaching has often implied, whether openly or not, that there are some people who are not guilty, saints or pastors or priests or popes who have made the grade with God and now stand in moral superiority over the rest of us. 

But if you look at the moral standards Jesus sets, they are so high that only God can meet them, and this has the effect of showing that we are all guilty.  Consequently, no one is in a position to condemn.  Any money we have is dirty money, as long as there are people who have none, and the tax-collector in the story is far more ready to admit this than the Pharisee.  Which makes him the kind of person God can work with, a potential member of the new, redeemed community that Christ is bringing to birth.

I think that Jesus has that community in mind when he comments at the end of his story--“for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted."  To me, this is not a description of a system of rewards and punishments, but of what it will realistically take to arrive at a community where there are no longer superiors and inferiors, but where we can all look each other in the eye.  And the allure of that community is enough to exert a draw even on a greedy, bewildered, and cowardly person like me. 

For that reason, I value the tithe as a personal guidepost.  Jesus’ advice to sell all I have and distribute to the poor seems impossibly remote from where I currently stand, sinner that I am.  But giving away ten percent is a goal that is, at least imaginably, within range.  It is close enough to exert a gravitational pull on my generosity, stretching me to give a little more every year, not only to the church, but to other organizations that also do the work of exalting the humble.  I say this as someone who lives in security and comfort, in no danger of going without the necessities of life, at least for now.  What Jesus reminds me is that this is not a condition that I, any more than the poorest person in the world, can claim to deserve.    

Rejoice always and again rejoice

Exodus 32:1-14

Psalm 106:1-6, 19-23

Philippians 4:1-9

Matthew 22:1-14

“Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.”  Rejoicing is the great theme of Paul’s Letter to the Church in Philippi.  But this is not the forced and superficial rejoicing that pretends that everything is sunshiny and rosy all the time.  It’s not the hollow joy of being in denial about what is difficult in life.  This is a letter from a man in prison, a man who does not know whether his captors will permit him to live or condemn him to die.  But in spite of that, Paul rejoices, because of what he calls “the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord.”  

Faith in Christ is that pearl of great price for which Paul declares himself happy to suffer the loss of everything.  But his faith is also a promise, a promise that becoming like Christ—in humility and perseverance, in suffering for the sake of the Gospel, in patient trust in the goodness and the justice of God—even to the point of being like Christ in his death, brings with it the promise of being like Christ in his resurrection.  So Paul rejoices, and while he doesn’t tell the church in Philippi to ignore or avoid the realities of struggle and suffering, he does tell them not to worry about it.

“Rejoice in the Lord always, again I will say rejoice,” writes Paul; “Do not worry about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God.”  Now I’m like a lot of people in that I tend to worry about things.  Most of them I have no control over whatsoever, but still I dwell on them.  Every once in a while I will add something new to the list of things to worry about, and from time to time I will take something off the list, or at least put it away in the file marked “Not actively worrying about for now.”   But mostly they are the same things that I worry about over and over again, day after day, week after week, year after year. 

It’s a habit, and habits are hard to break, but I have been trying to learn a new habit, and it is exactly the one that Paul recommends to his friends in Philippi.  When I find myself worrying about money, or the prospects for the church, or how I’m doing at my job, about my parents, my brothers, or my wife, about my daughter’s future, or the future of the human race and life on Earth, it makes all the difference in the world if I turn that worry into a prayer.  This immediately shifts my focus from the bad thing I’m afraid of to the good thing I hope for.  It changes the context of the issue from my own weakness and anxiety, to the strength and the peace that are in God.

 

The joy of Paul is confidence in that strength and that peace which surpasses all understanding.  It is also a rejoicing in unity.  Today’s passage begins with a plea to a couple of the women in the congregation at Philippi to work out their differences, and to be “of the same mind in the Lord.”   This also is a recurring theme in the letter.   In fact this is the one thing that Paul asks of the Philippians, something that they can do for him so that the joy that he has in them will be complete—to be of “the same mind, having the same love, being in full accord” with one another.  And again, this unity to which he urges them is not just a sharing in happiness and good fortune.  It is also sharing in suffering and struggle.  The challenges they face together, says Paul, are a gift from God, for in this way they share in the struggle and sufferings of Christ himself. 

Driving back down from Oregon on Thursday, my family and I passed through the fields of Glenn and Colusa Counties, which were teeming with combines, threshing and harvesting rice.  This is the time of year when the long labors of spring and summer bear fruit, and it is also the season to gather in the spiritual harvest of the year, and of years and of lifetimes.  Over the next couple of months the Sunday gospel lessons are teachings from the final week of Jesus’ life.  They are parables and dialogues that ask us with redoubled urgency to consider what, when all is said and done, is of ultimate value.  And this is a season centered on the great Feast of All the Saints, when we rejoice in and hope for God’s harvest of history, with those men and women who, like Paul, counted themselves fortunate to live and die with Christ, and were transformed by him into lights to the world in their generations.   

 

So it is fitting that this is also the time when we observe our annual Stewardship Season at St. John’s.  Because when we talk about Stewardship in the church we are not turning aside from spiritual matters with a wink and a nudge to address the real financial “bottom line” of our life together.  But before the coming of new year at Advent, before we begin preparing again to celebrate the Incarnation of God in Christ, we set aside a season for rejoicing in the Christ that abides and bears fruit in us.  We take time to consider the harvest of blessings that is our life together and to recommit ourselves to this community of saints. 

And if we treat this as more than a perfunctory exercise, it is not without its suffering and struggle, for there are no areas of our lives more fraught with frustration and anxiety, with our moral dilemmas and mortal limitations, than our time and our money.  But while each of us might wrestle in the privacy of our own families and our own consciences with difficult reckonings of how much we have, and what we can afford to spare, and where our gifts are needed most, still we rejoice.  We rejoice because we are of the same mind, making these hard choices together.  We all pray together for God to supply our needs, and for the faith and discernment to make an offering that says something about the surpassing value of knowing Christ Jesus our Lord.

This year our Stewardship packets contain a new way to rejoice in our life together in the body of Christ.  In addition to the form where you can estimate your 2015 giving of time, talent, and treasure to St. John’s, you will also have the option of completing what I’ve decided to call a Mission Pledge.  This is a confidential card which you can choose to share with me, or to keep entirely between yourself and God.  Its purpose is for you to identify at least one, and as many as four, areas of your life outside of church that you would like to offer on this altar for the coming year, to be consecrated to Christ’s mission in the world.

It can be something public, your job or some civic or social service work that you do.  Or it can be private, a creative discipline or spiritual practice, a significant relationship or family responsibility.  The communion that Christ renews with you when you kneel at this altar—where in your life do you hope it will bear fruit?  Into which of your efforts and struggles will you invite Christ to enter, to make them part his redeeming work?  Which of your worries would you like to turn into prayers and supplications for strength and peace?  Your Mission Pledge is an invitation to ask and answer these questions.  It is your opportunity to take stock of your spiritual challenges and rejoice in them as precious gifts, and then, uniting with your brothers and sisters at St. John’s in a single act of thanksgiving, to make them known to God.

More than a family

Jeremiah 29:1, 4-7
Psalm 66:1-11
2 Timothy 2:8-15
Luke 17:11-19

Last week my daughter and I went to see my parents at their new home on the Eastside of Madison, Wisconsin.  They’d just moved into a smaller house in town from a place in the country west of Madison, and were still unpacking, but they were settled in enough for me to see many of the old pictures and knickknacks and dishes, and books and record albums which I’ve known all my life.  It was comforting to see them, like meeting old friends, but there was also something sad about finding them in an unfamiliar house, quite possibly the last home my parents will ever have. 

This was supposed to be the move when they took their first big step toward “downsizing” their personal possessions.  But their old house sold much quicker than they had expected, and their moving sale had to be canceled because of bad weather.  In the end they ended up just taking it all to the new place where it was piled up in the garage and in a number of basement storage areas.  My brother Ben, who helped them with the move, told me in private about the thought that struck him as he carried box after box of books down the basement stairs—“and in a few years I’ll be carrying them out again.”  Maybe it’s just because I was fresh from the Estate and Stuff Sale here at St. John’s, but these same things that spoke to me of home and family tradition have also begun to ask questions about what meaning they will they have when my parents are gone, and whether anyone will want them.

Our possessions can help us feel at home, for a while, but we shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that they are enough.  When the prophet Jeremiah writes to the people of Judah who have been carried off into exile in Babylon, he tells them that God’s will for them is to make a home for themselves there, to marry and have children, and plant gardens, and work and pray for the well-being of the foreign cities where they live.  But that isn’t the same as telling them to forget about Jerusalem.  It isn’t the same as telling them to assimilate into the cultural and religious ways of Babylon and to cease to be Jews.  They are to make the most of a bad situation, and live for the time being as comfortably as they can, but that isn’t the same as forgetting where their true home is, or their real purpose.

When Jesus encounters the ten lepers in today’s Gospel lesson from Luke, he is on the road, in the no-man’s land between Samaria and Galilee.  It is a place that no one would think of as home, the kind of place where you might expect to find people whose disease had made them unwanted in society.  And when Jesus sends them away to show themselves to the priests, and they head off, and find they are healed, only one of them comes back to the borderland to find Jesus.  Only one of them recognizes that it is not enough to be healed on the outside.  Only one understands that he’s been given a greater gift than merely to be made acceptable, and re-admitted to normal society.  Only one of the ten comes back, praising and giving thanks for a reconciled and renewed relationship with God.  And he is the foreigner, the Samaritan, the one who, from the conventional Jewish point of view, will never belong.

The kind of faith that these stories recommend to us is the faith that looks to God to provide for our immediate needs—for health, for nourishment, for a place to call home, and a measure of belonging and contentment.  But it is also a kind of faith that knows that such things are not enough for us.  The abundance of God’s grace and love for the whole world, made manifest in the life and death and resurrection of Jesus, is a light that casts all other, more limited versions of goodness and well-being into shadow. 

That is why the great 20^th century theologian and martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer said about the grace that is really God’s grace—the grace that actually has the power to heal and to save us—that it is “costly grace.”  Not so much because we have to pay for it by giving up the ordinary comforts of home and family, worldly goods and social acceptance—though it is true that all of us have to surrender those things in the end.   It is costly because when we begin to have true faith and lasting hope in what God is really doing in this world, when the glory of new creation shines through the cracks of what is partial and broken, when we perceive within our own hearts the infinite care and patience with which Christ is fitting us for work, work that is ours alone, and at the same time shared with the whole communion of saints and angels; when, in short, we begin to know grace, those other goals and aspirations that we have for our lives just aren’t worth very much to us anymore.

One measure of the extent to which we have faith in God’s grace is our giving to the church.  For one thing, there is no way to calculate whether we’re getting a good return on our investment.  Every other organization, even charitable ones, has some kind of metric they can use to justify to you the impact that your giving is having—so many clients served or cases won or scholarships awarded.  And the church also does the kind of work that can be measured in that way.  But such works, as good and valuable as they are, are not the essence of what the church does.  That is something entirely different.

The essential work of the church, the work that nobody else can do, is to celebrate the Eucharist.  It is the culmination of all the work we do as individual Christians and as a community, which is why the fruits of our worldly work, in the form of an offering of money, are collected together and placed on the table.  And what happens is that all the productive energies of our lives, all the work that is represented in the bread and the wine and the money, our efforts to make good lives and secure and comfortable homes for ourselves and our families and prosperous communities for our neighbors, are all gathered together into a single act of thanksgiving.   The climax of this act, the expression of our highest hope and our deepest gratitude, is our prayer for the grace of the Holy Spirit to consecrate our work, by and to the work and the purposes of Jesus Christ.  And it is Christ who gives himself back to us, as Body and Blood, to consecrate us for the world’s transformation.

Only God’s grace can make this act of consecration happen, and only by grace will it yield its fruits in our lives.  But it does happen, and it does yield fruit, and I had an experience of that this week in Wisconsin.  My visit there wasn’t a homecoming, but then I wasn’t looking for home.   Being reunited with my parents and my three brothers didn’t restore the past, or heal old wounds or resolve old resentments.  But I didn’t need it to.  I will always love them, and they will always be my family, the people who made me who I am.  But as I watched my eldest brother locking horns with my Dad, as they have done so many times before, or stood listening to another long story from my mother about some acquaintance of hers I never met I was also grateful that I belong to something more than a family, something that makes me the person I am becoming. 

Sharing in the Body of Christ, making a regular practice of thanksgiving for the consecration of all human life by Jesus’ self-offering—somehow, without my even knowing how, this has changed me, so that I no longer am only a person in need of love and acceptance and belonging.   But I also and even mostly am a person who knows he has received these things in abundance.   And this means my primary work is giving thanks, and sharing the gifts of God with the people of God.