stewardship — Andy James

Our Song of Joy

November 15, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 Samuel 1:4-20; 2:1-10
preached on November 15, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

It could have been the middle of the summer, but the days were dark and gloomy in Israel. The governmental structures to lead and guide the people had broken down, the religious institutions had become more focused on self-preservation than anything else, and the threats from the outside were as strong as ever.

It was not a time for singing songs of joy of any sort, especially not for Hannah. Beyond the struggles of the world around her, she bore the great weight of being childless. She had a faithful and loving husband who cared for her quite well, but the world around her demanded that she have a child of her own in order to be fully human. One truly inconsiderate person kept bugging her about it over and over again, and she entered a deep depression. Not even the gentle and loving presence of her husband—or extra gifts from him!—could comfort her.

She finally went up to the temple to pray. “O Lord, look on me! See my misery, and do not forget me. Give me a son, and I will offer him to be your faithful servant even from the first days of his life.” She continued in prayer, her words emerging silently from her heart with such great longing that she could not help but mouth the words. She sought a way out of her predicament, a new possibility for her life in those dark days, a chance to sing a song of joy for herself and for the world.

We know what it is like to be Hannah. Our pain and hurt may not be exactly the same as hers—we may not struggle with the same issues of being barren in a culture where bearing children was central—but we certainly know what it is like to struggle to sing songs of joy. When the world seems to be breaking down around us, when violence and terror strike so often, when friends and family die before their time, when we become paralyzed with fear, we join Hannah in those heartfelt prayers that things will be different, that the darkness will end, that the world will come together, that joy can be our song.

Hannah walked away from her prayer at the temple with uncertainty and confusion. She didn’t really know what to expect in response. Would God grant her petition? Would God give her a son that she would then give back to God as she had promised? Even the priest at the temple had confronted her while she was praying, concerned that her heartfelt prayers were an expression not of her strong spirit but rather some strong wine! When Hannah explained her anxiety and vexation to him, he sent her on her way with his own prayer that God would grant her petition. When Hannah returned home, her mind was more at ease. Something was changing. She and her husband soon conceived a son, and when he was born, she named him Samuel. Hannah could finally make joy her song.

Hannah raised her voice after Samuel’s birth to offer the song of joy and praise that concludes our reading this morning. She began by offering praise to God for the particular gift she has received—“My heart exults in the LORD; my strength is exalted in my God,” she exclaims—but her thanksgiving for the presence of God in her own life was only the beginning. Hannah moved beyond her own life to lift up words of praise for all that God does in the world to make things different and new and to show God’s way of peace, justice, and wholeness to all. “The bows of the mighty are broken… those who were hungry are fat with spoil… the barren has borne seven… the LORD raises up the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap.”

In her song, Hannah praised God for her gifts but made it clear that God was and is doing so much more beyond her, bringing justice for all people and offering a new way of life to the world, with a particular preference for those who are poor or in need. She sang because new life had emerged out of what seemed to be her barren womb—and because God continues to bring new life in all places that seem so barren and empty. Hannah responded with this song of joy because she had been a beneficiary of this incredible love, and her song expressed her deep gratitude for this incredible gift of a son and for God’s amazing power that is making all things new. Because of the blessings she received, because of God’s incredible work in the world, and because of God’s new thing that begins anew each and every day, Hannah made joy her song.

Even with the distance of several millennia, we too have the gift of sharing this song in our world and our lives. Amid the difficulty and challenge of our lives and our world, we can offer our praise to God as we see God’s presence revealed in new and deeper ways. Hannah’s song has been the model for countless others over the ages, most notably Mary’s song of praise as she fully embraced the gift that would come to her in being the mother of Jesus, and it can give us a basis for our praise, too. Just like Hannah, we too have had moments of incredible joy and blessing in our lives. We too have known God’s gracious and merciful response to our prayers. We too have seen God doing incredible things beyond our lives in all the world. And we too can sing a song of praise for God’s new thing beginning anew each and every day.

Our songs of praise in this place are a great place to begin, but they truly are only the beginning, just as this song was for Hannah. She not only sang a beautiful song—she took incredible and faithful action in offering up Samuel to the service of God. Like Hannah, our songs of joy need more than beautiful and catchy melodies—God calls us to sing praise with our heart and soul and voice, with the whole of our being, with all the gifts that give us life and breath, so that all creation might join our praise.

In these days, as we prepare for a new calendar year and bring a request for your support of the church in the next twelve months, I hope and pray that you will think of this as an opportunity for a joyous response. God is at work in our midst, and we have the gift of offering our response of joy and praise, not just in our words and songs and prayers here on Sundays but also in the gifts of time, talent, and money that support what God is doing in this place. Like Hannah, we begin our response with prayer for those things that so often seem to be missing from this journey of life together. We long for others to join us on this journey. We long for an end to the violence and strife that mark our world and occupy our attention. We long to be freed from worry about the mechanics of our life together. And we long for God’s new way to take more complete root in our midst.

Still, this is only the beginning of our response, for our prayers of deep longing soon turn to joy amid the great gifts that we have been given and are even more privileged to share. As we join in mission and ministry in this community and around our world, our joyful and faithful response empowers the church to bear witness to God’s love in so many times and places that go far beyond our imagination. And as we walk together, we find incredible signs of what God is doing in us and in our world to make all things new—and the astounding possibilities for where God invites us to join in!

The incredible thing about Hannah’s song —and our song of response—is that God uses these words of praise as a beginning for something new and something more. Just as Hannah offered the exultation of her heart, strength, and mouth, God works in and through the incredible gifts of our time, talent, and treasure to make all things new. God takes the little gifts we offer and expands them into something more. God joins our songs of praise in so many varied forms with those of others around us to continue the incredible things that God is doing in the world. In the coming week, you’ll hear a bit more about this story in your mailbox, about how you can join in Hannah’s song of joy and hope in our life together, and you’ll also receive a pledge card asking for you to consider what you can offer as part of a commitment to our song of joy and praise in this place.

As we consider our response to all these gifts and our commitment to our life together in this place over the coming year, may God give us strength to join with Hannah, Mary, and countless others across the ages, lifting our song of joy, thanksgiving, and praise for all that God has done and is doing in us and in our world to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

A Small Gift, A Big Challenge

November 8, 2015 By Andy James

a sermon on Mark 12:38-44
preached on November 8, 2015, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

There are few stories in the Bible that can be immediately recognized through a single phrase, but our reading from Mark this morning is certainly one of them. If someone mentions “the widow’s mite,” this story almost immediately comes to mind. It seems to be such a simple tale, with Jesus commending a poor woman who has given a very small coin at the temple treasury because she has given a far greater sum than anyone could imagine. Her generosity, so seemingly small, has come out of her deep poverty. Jesus proclaims that she is to be emulated, and so we assume that her generosity gives us a model by which we can shape our own lives.

This is a lovely version of this story. I think we like it because it gives us permission to recognize the importance of even very small gifts that all too often affirms an ethic of scarcity over an ethic of generosity. Thinking about the story in this way is especially easy because it shows up in the lectionary every three years about this time, around the time of stewardship Sunday, in that season when the church asks us to consider how much we will give for the coming year, so we can tell ourselves that it will be okay if we can only give a small amount this year, for Jesus so greatly honored this poor widow’s small gift.

But reading the story in this way is an exercise in self-deception. None of this matches up very well with the story of this widow when we put it in its context. Before Jesus pointed out this poor widow giving her penny in the temple, he had been engaging with several scribes, answering their strange questions and addressing their challenges to him and his authority. After he had finished with them, Jesus offered his warning about the scribes that opens our reading for today. He is rightfully frustrated at their self-righteousness, for they manage to set aside real concern for those in need and instead place themselves at the center of everything. In their careful attention to the minute details of the law, they have missed its larger point of bringing care and comfort to the poor and needy. They seek out respect and honor at the expense of others and do everything for the sake of appearance. Ultimately, they use and abuse the gifts of God intended to be shared broadly, even “devouring widows’ houses” rather than glorifying God in their care for others. Only after noting all this does Jesus turn to the widow he sees at the temple treasury. He points her out to his disciples, though he does not commend her. Instead, he simply tells them that they ought to pay attention to her gift, for she “out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

Jesus’ words here say less about the widow and more about the religious elite of his time. When we focus on the widow and her gift, we miss the challenge that he offers to our own ways of being. First of all, Jesus notes that the widow’s gift is the very thing enabling the scribes to continue with their troubling actions. The scribes “devour widows’ houses” just as one widow “puts in everything she had.” The religious establishment that Jesus criticizes here uses the gifts of the poor once intended to support the poor to destroy them all the more. As commentator Rodger Nishioka puts it, “Together, these two sections read as a lament for and an indictment upon any religious system that results in a poor widow giving all she has so that the system’s leaders may continue to live lives of wealth and comfort.” (“Pastoral Perspective on Mark 12:38-44,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, p. 286)

Such behaviors and practices are not limited to the scribes of Jesus’ time. I think there are plenty of practices in the church today that would make Jesus similarly furious: giant personal expense budgets for overcompensated pastors, ostentatious displays of wealth in the ways we decorate our churches, even some direct misuse of funds. I hope and pray and believe that our own practices do not fall into these categories, but Jesus might still have some concerns about more familiar and common practices that are a little more comfortable for us. What would he say about churches insisting upon owning and maintaining expensive property that only gets used once or twice a week? What would he say about large endowments and savings accounts held for a rainy day when many of our sisters and brothers are getting drenched today? How would he respond to the rising tendency of the church to raising money like other nonprofits, focusing greater attention on large donors and allowing substantial gifts to gain greater access to the life of the community? The very necessary systems of our world that shape our life together promote oppression in unexpected, sometimes even unknowable, ways. We must live in the necessary tension of supporting the financial necessity of our ministry while not exploiting or plundering our society and our creation. Rodger Nishioka again offers us a helpful word:

Many of the scribes whom Jesus condemned also thought they were doing what was honorable, right and good. Perhaps they too were caught up in a system over which they felt they had little control. But Jesus does not condemn only those who are aware of how they benefit from systems of violence and oppression. Jesus condemns any who benefit from such systems, whether they are aware or not. Ignorance is no excuse here. (“Pastoral Perspective on Mark 12:38-44,” Feasting on the Word, Year B, Volume 4, p. 288)

So we are called to examine ourselves and our actions carefully. Where have we abused the poor and powerless, intentionally or unintentionally? How can we allocate our resources of time, talent, and money to promote the common good and especially for the protection of those in greatest need? What changes must we make to be better stewards of the gifts that God has given us so that we can not only avoid the condemnation facing those who misuse these resources but also promote the flourishing of our whole world and all who live in it? I for one am grateful that we will hear one person’s perspective on this after worship today. As we welcome Dan Turk, one of the Presbyterian mission co-workers we support in Madagascar, I pray that our eyes will be opened and our hearts set afire within us to join him and his wife Elizabeth in greater and deeper support of God’s transformation in this corner of our world.

Amid the condemnation Jesus offers these scribes, he offers us all a challenge. Jesus calls us to transform the self-righteousness that so easily infects our institutions and our lives into God’s righteousness. He calls us to listen to the cry of the poor, the oppressed, the marginalized, the hungry, the refugee, the undocumented immigrant, the stranger in our midst. He calls us to recognize the places where we are complicit in oppression and to step in and act where we can to respond. And he calls us to work each and every day for things to be different—and to challenge our world to join us in that work, too.

So may God strengthen us for these challenges ahead—for the difficult examination of our faith and practice that he calls us to do and for the deep giving of our whole selves that we offer in response as we seek to join in God’s transformation of our world through Jesus Christ our Lord even as we wait for him to come to make all things new. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

Looking Back, Looking Forward

November 2, 2014 By Andy James

a sermon on 1 John 3:1-3
preached on November 2, 2014, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

As I’ve grown older, I’ve come to appreciate several different kinds of storytelling. As a child, I tended to enjoy those stories that had a clear beginning, middle, and end, stories that began “once upon a time” and ended “happily ever after.” As satisfying as those sorts of stories can be, as I’ve grown older I’ve started to also enjoy stories that are a little less “finished,” stories that leave a bit more of the beginning and end to the imagination.

These latter kinds of stories can be a bit frustrating. Sometimes you just want to know what really happens to a character that you have come to know and love, but there’s no obvious ending in sight! However, I’ve come to realize that these stories are often the most realistic, as sometimes things aren’t quite that clear in the stories of our world and especially of our lives. As hard as we may try, we may not be able to understand how everything fits together. We may look back and look forward and still not have the whole picture of things. And we may wonder how things will end in a story—or for us, too.

Our scripture reading from 1 John this morning centers around our story with God, and it fits very well into those stories that have a clear beginning, middle, or end, those stories that leave us scratching our heads and wondering how everything will come together in the end. For the writer here, the past, present, and future of our stories will all connect, but not in ways that we will immediately understand.

The past where this story begins is almost unimportant for John. Our individual histories and stories are all wrapped up in “the love the Father has given us,” in the love that makes us children of God, but that’s about all he says about them. The present of our stories is fully wrapped up in just that, too, in our status as children of God that is very much ours here and now. And yet amidst all that confidence from the past and present, the future of our stories is a bit unclear, as “what we will be has not yet been revealed.” As much as we might have images like our bulletin cover this morning, with heavenly mansions, streets paved with gold, and reunions with loved ones, these visions are incomplete revelations of what is ahead for us. Not only do they miss the parts of our lives on earth that still lie before us, they ignore John’s reminder here that we simply don’t know what heaven will look like, what exactly will happen when we die, or when or even how our stories will end. Our human minds cannot understand these things that are beyond our knowledge and comprehension. All that is certain, John tells us, is that “when [Christ] is revealed, we will be like him, for we will see him as he is.” In that day, our vision will be clear. Through God’s power, our lives and our world will be made new. And as God guides us to this new life, our story will be complete.

John’s look at the stories of our lives is a wonderful way to start thinking about the multitude of stories that are on our minds today. Today on All Saints’ Sunday we remember the many stories of our sisters and brothers in the faith who have journeyed with us along the way. We especially remember the faithful witness of George Lenz and Jackie Danas, two of our own number who died over the last year after sharing a portion of their stories with us as we journeyed together in the faith, giving us wisdom and hope to walk a little further along the way together. Their two stories are only the beginning of the great cloud of witnesses who have walked before us and beside us—those who have shown us even a little something of what it means to be children of God. I suspect that each of us can point to any number of people who have been a part of the stories of our lives and have guided us to new and deeper understanding of God’s love for us.

But these stories do not stand alone. All these stories—and our own, too—are a part of God’s one big story, part of God’s divine plan not so much for each of our lives but for the life of the world, part of God’s new revelation and new creation that is coming into being through Christ. So today we also begin a time of thinking about our own stories, about the ways in which God has been at work in our lives to show us how we are God’s children now and to give us a glimpse of the things yet to come, about how our individual stories link to the larger ones around us, to the story of this congregation, our broader church, and all creation.

It’s easy to dismiss our stories as unimportant or uninteresting, but we are all God’s children now. We all bear a portion of this story in our lives. We all are a part of what God is up to in our world. Each of us has a part to play in the ongoing revelation of God’s story, and when we listen to one another’s stories, we get a little better glimpse of how we are connected to one another and to God. Over the coming weeks, starting next Sunday, we’ll be hearing the stories of some of our sisters and brothers who walk this journey of faith with us. They will tell us how God has been at work in their lives, both in this congregation and beyond. They will help us understand a bit of how they see God claiming them as God’s children here and now. And they might just give us a little glimpse of the things that are ahead for us in our common stories as we move into the days that God is preparing for us. If you’re interested in telling your story to us as part of this process, come and talk to me, or if you’re not, at least prepare yourself to hear from some others who walk with us a bit of the way as we get a better picture of how God’s story gets lived out in our midst.

As we live out God’s story here, as we embody our status as God’s children now, as we keep our eyes and hearts open to what is ahead, God’s story flows through us on the journey of faith. It is, then, our privilege and our responsibility to respond. So the last part of God’s story among us today comes as we consider our stewardship commitment for 2015. For some people, giving money to the church is like writing a check to any other charity, but I believe that what we give here is an important part of our story with God. Our gifts are our grateful response to the wonderful story that God has placed in each of our lives, and by God’s grace, our gifts too become part of God’s story in our midst. As we begin making our stewardship commitments for 2015 today, I hope and pray that you will think of how these gifts are a part of your story with God. Ultimately, our response to God’s presence in our lives is measured less by the size of our financial gifts and more by the depth and breadth of all the things that we bring to God along the way.

So may our story with this church and our story with God be broadened into this new day. May we look back to all the things that have made our story what it is before today, to all the saints who have shared a bit of it with us along the way. May we look around us now with gratitude for all the ways that we are God’s children here and now. And may we look forward to a day that has not yet been revealed and yet will be a most wonderful revelation when we will see the fullness of God’s new creation in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Amen.

Something’s Coming

November 10, 2013 By Andy James

a sermon on 2 Thessalonians 2:1-5, 13-17 and Haggai 1:15b-2:9
preached on November 10, 2013, at the First Presbyterian Church of Whitestone

Something is coming. That’s the clear message of these days in our world. Just with the coming of a new year, we’ve got a new mayor coming into office in our city, a new way of getting healthcare for many people in our country, and the inevitable parade of all sorts of other new things around us. Depending on who you ask, the degree of this change may vary, but it is clear that a number of things will be different around us on January 1.

Our two texts this morning reinforce this message that something new is coming into our world. First came Paul’s letter to the church in Thessalonica, with its words of comfort as they wait for a new thing to come into the world. Like most of the early church, Paul’s listeners were expecting Jesus to return practically any day, and if anything they were getting restless that things were not moving as quickly as they had been promised. If they were already that frustrated after twenty or thirty years, I can only imagine how much more unsettled they would feel if they knew that we would still be waiting nearly two thousand years later!

The Thessalonians knew that something was coming, something that would surprise everyone, something that would put the powers of evil and darkness in their place, something that would change things once and for all, and they were more than ready for it. And so Paul comforted the Thessalonians in their waiting, insisting that the things ahead would build on the things of this time and show something new and greater in the world.

In our other reading from the prophet Haggai, it was clear that something was coming into his world, too. In his day, the people of Judah had returned from exile in Babylon, but there was much that was out of order. The comforts of home that they had known before exile were gone. The temple where they had gathered for worship lay in ruins. All the institutions and structures that had held life together needed to be rebuilt. So God called Haggai to speak a different word to the people, a word that did not ignore the difficulty of their situation but yet recognized that there was a possibility for something greater and new.

God called Haggai to proclaim a message of courage, perseverance, and new life—new life that would transform, even shake, “the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land,” so that all nations would stream to Jerusalem and all people come to know and recognize God at work. And God called Haggai to proclaim a new promise: “The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former… and in this place I will give prosperity.” This was a great message of hope and promise that something new and different and great was coming, something that would establish God’s authority over the nations, that would cement God’s promise to Judah for all time, that would make things even better than they had ever been before.

These messages that something is coming resonate deeply for us today. Beyond the changes we know will come in the new year, we sit with the Thessalonians and the Judeans wondering what new thing God has in store for us. We wonder what God will do in our lives as the things that have become common will quite likely change. We wonder how God will respond to all the troubled moments of our world. And we wonder what God has in store for our congregation as we approach this new year, the first year in quite some time where we will not have a full-time pastor among us.

Over the eight years I have served as your pastor, I have heard many questions that sound like those raised here by Paul: When will the time come for something new to take hold? How much longer do we have to wait? What are we supposed to do in the meantime? And I’ve heard many here wonder much as Haggai did: “Is there anyone still among you who saw this house in its former glory? How does it appear to you now? To you does it not seem as if it were not there?” (Haggai 2:3, Revised English Bible) These are the kinds of questions that we tend to ask along the way, questions that have no easy answers, questions that leave us pining for a different way of life, questions that make us want a different order of things, questions that keep our eyes focused on the past or present and turned away from possibilities and promise of the future.

But on this stewardship Sunday, on this day when we bring our commitments to the life and mission of this congregation for the coming year, now might just be time to focus on something new, on the kind of shakeup that stands at the core of Paul and Haggai’s words, on the kind of transformation and new life that we know are coming and wish would come sooner. This is the time to think about what we really long for in this place. Are we looking for a return to the way things were? Are we looking for new life that can only look like what we’ve seen before? Are we looking simply to rebuild the temple exactly as it was? Or are we looking for a real shakeup, for a new and different way to take hold, for God to shake the heavens and the earth and the sea and the dry land, for the new thing ahead to be greater than what has come before?

The commitment we make today to the life of this place in the coming year must reflect what we really desire. We can keep doing what we’ve always done before, placing our commitments at the same level they’ve always been, letting our traditions become a memorial to the life we once knew but that will soon pass away. Or we can take these words from Paul and Haggai seriously, taking courage for the new things ahead, standing firm and holding fast to our tradition while embracing new ways for a new time, working to make God’s promise real in this time and this place that is different from what we have known before.

Ultimately, this is the stewardship commitment that is before us today—not so much how much we plan to give next year, as important as that is for our life together and even for the sense of commitment that it brings in our journeys of faith. No, what really matters is rather the commitment that we make today to join in God’s work of making all things new, work that has its roots in our life together here and that demands our money and our time our commitment, and our lives in every imaginable way, both within and beyond these walls. It’s not about rebuilding the temple, maintaining the church building, keeping a pastor around, or even just making it through until the something that is coming is realized—it’s about being faithful in these changing times, taking courage amidst all that pulls us away from this calling, and working to live these things out in faith, hope, and love.

And so today as we bring these marks of our commitment to this congregation and most especially to the hope we know in Jesus Christ, may God give us the strength to be faithful, may God help us to take courage, and may God give us a glimpse of the new glory beyond anything we have ever seen before but that is surely to come in Jesus Christ our Lord. Lord, come quickly! Alleluia! Amen.

The Widows and Us

November 11, 2012 By 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.