November 2012 — Andy James

a sermon on 1 Kings 17:8-16 and Mark 12:38-44 for the 32nd Sunday of Ordinary Time
preached on November 11, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There are lots of ways to look at stewardship season. We can talk about things from a purely financial perspective, noting that we need a certain number of dollars to meet our budget and other financial commitments. We can take a biblical perspective and look at texts from the Old Testament that instruct us to give ten percent of everything we have to God. Or we can look wonder how to implement the New Testament’s description of the early Christian community where “those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.” We can focus on our humanity and encourage everyone to give according to their ability—“not equal gifts, but equal sacrifice,” as one church I know once described it. Or we can talk about how all things that we have come from God, and so our giving to the church is an expression of our gratitude for all that we have received. All of these approaches have their merits from practical and biblical standpoints, but our texts today suggest something different.

These two texts from 1 Kings and Mark tell us of two widows who are commended for their faithful stewardship of what God has given them. In biblical times, widows were among the most vulnerable people in society. Women of any sort had few rights, and they generally depended on their husbands and male relatives to care of them. Most widows, then, were left without anyone to stand up for their best interests, and in those days before a governmental safety net in Social Security or Medicare, they were often left to fend for themselves. Yet these two stories show us a dramatic portrait of generosity and hospitality—first of a widow who finds that her small supply of meal and oil is not depleted even when she adds a hungry prophet to her household, then of a woman who offers a gift to God even when it puts her own survival at risk.

These two women are certainly wonderful models for our own lives of generosity. We would be deeply blessed as individuals and as a community if we all took their example seriously and gave so deeply out of what we have. However, I don’t think that these texts are telling us that we are simply supposed to be like them. More importantly, I think they are offering an antidote to a more dangerous and all too common perspective on our world.

These two generous widows stand in stark contrast to seemingly righteous people around them who claim to be faithful but who are unable or unwilling to put their money where their mouth is. The religious leaders of Elijah’s time refused to provide any support to the prophet who was questioning their way of life that had little concern for the poor and powerless. The scribes of Jesus’ time liked to put on a show of their holiness and righteousness, but they could clearly care less about others along the way—instead they themselves bore the full benefit of their good deeds and obedience to the law.

While the specific actions of these religious leaders and scribes aren’t quite as common around us, I have to wonder how often we fall into similar traps. How often do we become so focused on taking care of ourselves that we miss the care and concern that we need to be showing to others? How often do we quiet those voices we don’t like by taking away their support network and dismissing or destroying their humanity? How often do we do the right thing not because we really want to but because we want to be seen and noticed by someone along the way? How often do we convince ourselves that our priorities are in order when the only possible result is one that places our own needs and desires above the good of the community? The kind of good stewardship we consider today, then, is not simply endless generosity but also attention to the needs of the whole of the community and especially the least of these among us.

So then, as we think about our stewardship commitment for the coming year today, we who have so much must think about more than imitating these widows who gave out of their limited resources—we must remember that we are responsible for the well-being of the communities entrusted to us. Good stewardship is not just about meeting the budget of the church or giving some percentage of our income—it is about offering ourselves to meet the needs of the community and caring for those around us

This year, as our stewardship task force looked at the needs of our community of faith and out beyond into the community around us, we saw that money wasn’t so much our problem. With the sale of the manse, our cash flow issues have eased substantially, and we are on target to meet our budgeted income and expense for this year and next as we plan to spend down a reasonable and measured amount from the proceeds of the manse sale. However, even though our finances look pretty good, the broader stewardship of our community is much more troubling. When we look at the various tasks that must be done for us to be church together, we see the same faces doing the same things they have done year after year. We look around on a Sunday morning and see fewer people in the pews, even as we know that we haven’t really lost all that many members lately. People who are asked to help out with projects or to serve in leadership roles often come back with reasonable excuses that nonetheless leave us with great needs for our life together. And even our best moments and most effective programs and projects are in jeopardy because we don’t have anyone to be a backup for the very effective but nonetheless limited leaders that we have. We can’t look beyond our doors to meet these needs. While we always must be living out the gospel of Jesus Christ in such a way that we hope that others will consider joining our community, we cannot depend on people who are not currently connected to us to meet these very practical needs. If we can’t do it ourselves, how can we ask people we don’t know to do it for us?

The stewardship we need in these days is not so much bottomless pockets or new people but a deeper commitment to our life together and to God’s work in the world like that demonstrated by these two widows. They show us both financial generosity and deep commitment, recognizing that they have something however small to offer that others deeply need. They show us that we can give amazing gifts even when our first assessment of our situation might suggest that we have nothing to share. And they help us to see that even the least of these among us can contribute something very meaningful and important to our life together.

So in this stewardship season, as you know, we are looking both for a financial commitment and something more, for a faithful and joyous response to the amazing grace that God has shared with us, showing both financial support and a commitment of time and talent to our life together. We desperately need this renewed and deepened commitment to the life we share in this place, a new recognition that we all must step up to offer something more if our community is going to thrive as it can, a more complete embodiment of our joyous and heartfelt response to the deep grace of God that we see at work in the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

So as we bring our expressions of stewardship commitment today, in the coming weeks, and over the next year, may God’s grace be abundant among us, and may our response be filled with joy and hope for the life of this community and the remaking of our world until all things are made new in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Thanks be to God. Amen.

a sermon on Revelation 21:1-6a and Isaiah 25:6-9 for All Saints’ Sunday
preached on November 4, 2012, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

We’ve spent so much of this past week waiting: waiting for the storm to come, waiting for the winds to die down, waiting for the waters to recede, waiting for the lights to come back on, waiting for the bus and subway to start up again, waiting for heat, waiting for food, waiting for water, waiting for gas, waiting for word from our friends and family, waiting to get word to our friends and family, waiting for some sense of normal to return, waiting and waiting and waiting some more. In the midst of all that we have experienced this week, we’ve all spent some time waiting. To someone immersed in the life of the church like me, this is not the right time to wait—Advent, the season of waiting, is still a month away! But here we have it—Sandy made us wait, and we still have more waiting to do.

Then our texts today, two of the texts appointed in the lectionary for All Saints’ Day, also confront us with the challenge of waiting. All Saints’ Day this year comes at a perfect time—amidst everything that we’ve seen this week, a remembrance of the faithful who have died seems so very appropriate. But these texts don’t point us to a remembrance of the dead—rather, they talk about the things ahead for all of us, about the things we are all really waiting for.

They tell us of a new heaven and a new earth—not the reconstruction of a familiar place to its former glory, not the rebuilding of a flood-torn and fire-touched land, not the rebirth of a water-scarred world—but a new and different way of life and living, a changed world where God’s presence never goes away, where sorrow and pain are changed forever, where God steps in to wipe away all the tears from our eyes, where all things are made new. Our texts today tell us of a world where all people have everything that they need, where a great feast fills every emptiness, where the weariness of death and destruction itself will be destroyed, where all disgrace will be removed and every place will be made new.

But at the core of all these new things is what we have seen so well in our own world of late: waiting. There is no promise here that these things will come immediately, no guarantee that they will emerge on our timetable, no insistence that the pain at dusk today will be eased by dawn tomorrow. Instead, the promise is that the waiting will give God all the more glory!

It will be said on that day,
Lo, this is our God,
we have waited for him, so that he might save us.
This is the Lord for whom we have waited;
let us be glad and rejoice in his salvation.

But on this All Saints’ Sunday, on this Sunday after Superstorm Sandy, we have the right to be ready to be done with our waiting. We’ve waited more than enough this past week, and we shouldn’t have to wait anymore. Those without power shouldn’t have to wait any more to get lights and heat and refrigerators and phone and television and internet. Those who haven’t been able to get to work because the trains weren’t running or work wasn’t open shouldn’t have to wait any more. Those who can’t yet get back home to see the damage and destruction of their neighborhoods shouldn’t have to wait any more. Those who don’t yet know if their friends and family survived the storm shouldn’t have to wait any more.

And yet we must wait. There’s nothing we can do at this point to get our lights on or the trains running or the islands made safe. So much of what must be done in these days is best left to those with the training, skills, and gifts to do it safely and efficiently. But even as we wait, there is something incredible going on. People are stepping up and saying that they want to help. Neighbors are stepping in to care for those in need, carrying water and fuel up many flights of stairs, opening their homes to those who have none, shouldering a bit of the burden in the midst of the storm. Women and men around the world are moved by what they have seen and want to respond—and by doing more than giving money to relief efforts. I suspect that one of the biggest unanticipated challenges for our civic leadership amidst this unprecedented disaster has been what to do with all those who are wanting to step in and help now, and I hope and pray that this spirit isn’t quashed by the necessary professional work of these days or the bureaucracy inherent in dealing with anything on a New York City scale!

But amidst the promises of something new and glorious ahead and the necessary pain and suffering of waiting, what are we to do? I think the waiting of these days calls us to do two things. First, we are called to put our trust in God, who waits with us. Not only is God preparing the new thing that is coming, God is waiting for it with us now. God is waiting with us in the presence of friends and family who listen to our complaints and hear our cries and remind us that we are not alone. God is waiting with us in neighbors who open their homes and clear the debris and share their tools and bear our burdens. God is waiting with us in strangers who show up in unexpected moments to offer us even a brief vision of grace. God is waiting with us in those who are working tirelessly to restore the networks of support that keep our community and our world running. God is waiting with us in the women and men who have gone before us and beside us and still bear witness to the way of life in faith. God is waiting with us in the communities that know us and love us and share the feast of faith with us. And so we have waited for God, with God, so that God might save us.

But also in the midst of our waiting, we are called to step up and act, to be the presence of God for others in the face of crisis, to journey with those who are also waiting, to support those who have the gifts and talents to step in all the more, to contribute to the well-being of all people who wait for the things of these days and more. The necessity of waiting, you see, is no excuse for inaction or complacency, for letting those who struggle every day struggle all the more, for allowing the usual order of things that prefers the powerful to go unquestioned, for suggesting that we can only help those who are able to help themselves.

I am glad to say that we as the church have already done some things to step up in the waiting of these days. Our church building was open this past week during the day for those who did not have power to have a warm place to sit and talk or work, charge their phones, and just get out of the house. But even before the storm, our annual offerings to the One Great Hour of Sharing collection helped pave the way for the very current response of Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, who are on the ground in New York and New Jersey right now assessing the damage and planning their next steps over the long term recovery. And every Sunday this month, we’ll be receiving a special collection to assist with this important work of meeting the needs of those in greatest need and who have the most to wait for.

So in these days of waiting, may we ourselves embody the witness of the saints, trusting that God is waiting with us, giving thanks for the faithful presence of brave and heroic friends, neighbors, family, civic leaders, police officers, firefighters, paramedics, nurses, doctors, transit workers, ConEd line workers, and countless others, even as we ourselves offer the presence of God in the midst of the waiting of this recovery and the hope and promise that all things will be made new, once and for all.

May we know God’s presence in the midst of all our waiting until we share the great feast of heaven and earth with all people everywhere and the day of peace that now shines so dimly shines brightly everywhere forevermore. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

The Widows and Us

Waiting for God

Archives for November 2012