Dear People of St. John’s,
On October 28th, as part of our worship services, we will be
given an opportunity to again pledge our time, talent, and treasure for the
work of this parish for the year 2008. It is theologically sound that our
commitment to giving, like our giving to the work of the church itself, is
done within the context of worship. Giving to the work of the church should
always be seen as an act of worship. And the tithe is the place our giving
begins. Until that is reached we remain bound by a physical understanding
of the world and do not experience the joy and release that comes from
living on a spiritual plane.
To properly
understand Christian stewardship all we need is to grasp the concept behind
a simple math equation: 9+1=10. Many people think, and therefore operate,
under the mistaken notion that once the 10% is out of the way, the rest is
theirs to do with however they please. They tend to overlook the fact that
God cares deeply about and desires to be involved in the decisions about
using the 90%. After all, that is where we do a significant amount of our
living. That’s where we reveal what we think is important in this world.
It is in the 90%, not in the 10%, that we publicly and conspicuously witness
to what we believe are the priorities and implications of Christian
discipleship. Spending more on our expensive hobbies than we do in giving
to the work of the church says something about us. Giving to the church at
the same level each year, even if our incomes have increased substantially,
says something about us. We enter the world empty-handed but, somewhere
along the line, many become tight-fisted. It does not have to be that way.
It begins with
commitment. Commitment always comes first. Just as genuine love can never
give enough, so genuine commitment can never give enough or do enough.
Genuine commitment keeps no ledger. When our commitment is as honest and
genuine as we can make it, with God’s help, we begin to see Christian
stewardship as something we take on and not as something we are being asked
to give up. Too often we view the giving of our time, talent, and treasure
as giving up something. It is, in fact, taking on the potential for
profound freedom, in the same way our Collect says our service to God “is
perfect freedom.” Giving of our time, talent, and treasure is the beginning
step in unbinding whatever it is that has us chained. A new trust that God
will provide replaces the fear that there may not be enough.
God is not
particularly interested in teaching us fractions. God wants us to know that
the 90% we spend somewhere else and the 10% we commit to the church comes
from the same source. And that source does not originate with us. It is
profoundly true to the mind of Christ to say that one of the questions we
are constantly being asked and the one we will be expected to answer when
the great accounting comes is, “Where are the nine?”
People have accused
me of talking about money too much. You will never hear an apology from me
for doing so. The three subjects Jesus the Christ talked about most were
wealth, hypocrisy, and the Kingdom of God. Three of the Ten Commandments
deal with our relationship to material stuff. Sixteen of the thirty-eight
parables attributed to Jesus the Christ concern money and stewardship. One
out of every six times Jesus the Christ is recorded as saying anything the
subject matter dealt with the relationship of a person to material
possessions.
That subject,
however, has not been the topic of various high-level meetings testing the
strength of Anglican bonds. I wish to God it had been! I firmly believe we
just might find enough glue to hold us together when we move the discussion
out of the bedroom and into the boardroom, bank, and personal portfolio.
There the discussion becomes intensely personal and we cannot hide by
pointing at “them.”
The crucial concern
for Christian people is not, “How much do I give?” but, rather, “How much do
I keep for myself?”
I would suggest
that if you assume the church will be here when you need a marriage
celebrated and blessed or a child baptized or the burial office read for a
loved one, and you assume that having the church here is someone else’s
responsibility, you run a terrible risk. If you wish the church to be here
for those important ministries then this church has some claim on your
support for its continuation. It is really not that complicated.
I saw a cartoon
some time back showing some church members leaving on a Sunday morning,
shaking the minister’s hand. One of them says, “Preacher, I was glad to
hear you say that you didn’t know where the money would come from to replace
the leaking roof. There for a minute I thought you were going to ask us for
it!”
Well, I am. God
surely does.
Peace,
Tom
