To be an instrument of God's peace, to serve and to give to others

We are in the midst of our annual giving season ("stewardship" in church lingo). Gwynn Crichton, who is an amazing human being on so many levels, gave this talk at St. Paul's last Sunday and I share it with you:

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Hi, I’m Gwynn Crichton. I’ve had the great pleasure of serving on the stewardship committee led by Virginia Ritchie and I am honored to be up here today to talk to you about what St. Paul’s means to me and why I pledge and give my money to the church.

I started coming to St. Paul’s about 10 years ago after I first moved to Charlottesville and immediately felt at home. Soon after, I met Janean and she began to attend St. Paul’s with me, and we’ve been here every since. I really began to put roots down in this parish when I got involved in activities outside of just attending the Sunday service. I have enjoyed serving the parish as an usher, Eucharistic Minister, and member of the altar guild. I coordinate the Gay-Straight Concerns Group, am a member or Integrity, have participated and organized events for the Green Team, done CROP walks, helped with PACEM, and now serve on the Stewardship Committee.

Through my involvement at St. Paul’s over the years in activities such as these, the many gifts I have received far outweigh any of the time or energy I have committed. I have been blessed by coming to know and love many of the wonderful, talented, intelligent and kind people who attend St. Paul’s. I find myself part of a warm, vibrant, loving community where Janean and I feel safe, accepted and supported. I am grateful for the diversity of ministries, our able clergy, the educational and outreach programs, Community night, Shrinemont, and for the opportunity to come together in communion to worship with you all each Sunday.

So it is easy to tell you why I give money to St. Paul’s--I give money because I love St. Paul’s mission, ministries, and community and I believe that what we do here is central to our common purpose here on this planet. But it is not just my gratitude for St. Paul’s that motivates my giving. Sharing my abundance and my wealth is one of the princple ways God calls me to express my love and gratitude for all of the blessings of my life and to help others who have so much less than me.
Every week I return here, I am reminded of and humbled by God’s will for me which is to love as lavishly and generously as he loves the world. My purpose is to be an instrument of God’s peace, to serve and to give to others in order to make this world a better place. Giving my resources to St. Paul’s therefore is a key opportunity and discipline essential for my spiritual growth, one I must devoutly heed on my journey in Christ.

About 80% of my charitable giving goes to St. Paul’s because I believe I can make a biggest impact in this way rather than dividing my donations among many causes. Each year I increase my pledge to St Paul’s and try to also give on top of my pledge throughout the year in the Sunday offerings. I make sure to give of my first fruits when I budget rather than what is left over.

But make no mistake, giving is also a spiritual struggle for me--I struggle against the selfish desires to close my fist, to clutch and hold back, fearful I will not have enough or that my needs will not be met should I give too much money away.
However, God has shown me time and time again that I’ve never missed anything I’ve given away. Instead of being hard, in practice giving is remarkably easy. And by giving away even a tiny fraction of what I have, I am transformed and renewed. Giving makes my heart bigger, it frees me from fear and my own self-will. There is always enough.

Does this mean I give away enough? I am ashamed to say no, I doubt I ever will but I ask God to help me with this and pray about it because I know that giving away my money, as hard as it may be sometimes, brings me closer to the generous and loving person God calls me to be. That is why I am here and that is why I give to St. Paul’s “It is right, and a good and joyful thing, always and every-where to give thanks to you, Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth.” Amen.

The One who comes to us as a servant, who is at our doorstep

My sermon today is based on Luke 17:5-10:

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Giving is living

As many of you know, I used to be a newspaper reporter. I spent nearly a quarter-century with pen and notebook in hand, pounding out newspaper stories on daily deadline.

The first newspaper I worked for was in a tough working-class town east of Los Angeles. The paper, the Riverside Press-Enterprise, was the boot camp of newspapers – no nonsense, demanding, get-it-done, do-it-now, and perfect accuracy expected in every story. No excuses.

I bring this up because this gospel story today reminds me of my first managing editor, a drill-sergeant-of-a-guy.

“Do you thank the slave for doing what was commanded?”

And the correct response? “We are worthless slaves; we have done only what we ought to have done!”

Whew, what to do with that?

To compound my joy with the assigned readings, today is supposed to be the annual stewardship sermon.

This lesson comes off as “give us your money but don’t expect to be thanked.”
That might be how to run a newspaper but it doesn’t work well in the church. So I want to begin by thanking each of you for your generosity. I want to thank you for your faithfulness in your home, in the classroom, at work and all the places you go beyond these walls, and especially for your generosity with St. Paul’s.

Here at St. Paul’s, we cannot do anything without you. We exist because you give. A thousand thanks to each and every one of you today.

This morning I want to have a little straight talk about our ministry and mission that we share together, and let’s see if these lessons can lead us somewhere.

In the time that I have been here, we’ve talked a great deal about our role with the University of Virginia, creating a place of encouragement for students, faculty and staff.

We’ve talked about being a beacon of hope in the community through IMPACT, PACEM, Habitat for Humanity and other projects that assist the poorest among us.

We’ve talked about being a spiritual home for families and children, where people of all ages can grow in faith and make connections with each other.

We’ve talked about being a place for healing, where people can bind their wounds and find comfort and solace in their grief or hurt.

We’ve talked about a filling our church with prayers that honor and uphold our Christian and Episcopalian traditions, and we hold worship services not only on Sundays but also on weekdays.

All of this describes how and what we do. They are the means; they are our tools of ministry.

But the tools are not the mission.

Our mission, I believe, is to be partners with God in bringing alive God’s dream of healing and wholeness among us, and in the world around us.

Our mission is to be partners with God in bringing alive God’s abundant grace-filled kingdom, God’s peace, God’s shalom.

The mission never changes even if the tools change from time to time.

Our mission requires that we see ourselves not as consumers of religion, but as partners – true participants – in our faith.

Participation, I believe, means reaching deep inside ourselves for the “better angels of our being.”

We can do that by our giving of our time, our talent, and yes, our money, as each of us has portions of each to give.

St. Paul’s is a wonderfully vibrant parish precisely because so many of you give so very much of yourselves, and in so many ways.

Our giving enables us to welcome everyone who walks in our door so that we can share God’s healing grace with them. Others before us lovingly passed this church onto us. Now it’s our turn to give this church to others through our own giving.

As the late- Archbishop of Canterbury William Temple once said, the Church is the only institution in the world that exists for people who are not its members.

Yet this giving business is deeper than an institution, as important as that is. We are called to live a life of giving so that others may live fully, and with them, that we may live more fully as human beings.

That’s why we give.

If you are a parent, you already give abundantly to your children; they are transformed by your giving, and so are you. Or maybe you share in the community, or in the workplace or in the classroom. All that giving builds up.

I am continually inspired by how many of you go the extra mile in your giving, not because you have to, but because something deep inside compels you.

Recently I’ve been awestruck by stories I’ve heard from some of you who work at the Haven, the new day shelter for homeless people in downtown Charlottesville.
I’ve heard stories about homeless people who seemingly have nothing at all, and how they give things to each other. If someone needs a sandwich, another gives half of theirs. If someone needs a pair of socks, another gives an extra pair.

Do you want to know where God’s grace – God’s shalom – shines into the open for all of us to see? It is in the giving by people with so little to give.

How much more of God’s grace could shine into the world through the giving of those of us who have so much more to give?

But what to make of these lessons today? Where is the grace? Is there a connection with our giving?

After scratching my head this week, I went to the biblical commentaries, and it was noted that this gospel lesson today ties back to the harsh sounding parable last week of the rich man punished in Hades while Lazarus, the poor man with sores, goes to heaven.

The parable is an allegory about Jesus – Jesus is the poor man with sores – and the rich man hadn’t noticed him while he lived.

The rich man’s stinginess got in his way – his selfishness blocked him from seeing who was living on his doorstep.

The lessons tie together because they are invitations from Jesus to look, to see God’s shalom all around us. He’s telling us we can expect to see it but we have to look.

But to see God’s shalom, we need to see not from the selfish vantage point of the stingy man who expect thanks, but from the vantage point of a giving servant who expects no thanks.

And Jesus beckons us to take what we see and step out in faith, to become partners with him in transforming the world: “Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.”
That partnership is the meaning of discipleship.

Yet those first disciples ask a question: How much faith do we need to be disciples? Does it take a lot? Because, really, we don’t have much.

Jesus replies, you don’t need much:

“If you had faith the size of a mustard seed, you could say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.”

Then he turns the tables by saying, in effect, there’s a better question you haven’t asked: In whom do you have faith?

My answer:

Faith in the One who finds the lost sheep; the One who invites everyone to the dinner banquet. Faith in the One who will walk with you no matter what happens to you, and goes with you no matter where.

Faith in the One who comes to us as a lowly servant born in a stable, and is sitting on our doorstep even when we don’t notice.

He is the One who expects not even thanks. He is the prince of peace, Christ Jesus, who gives everything to us still. AMEN.

Hummingbirds and sharing

This came across the transom the other day from Barbara Crafton and her Geranium Farm website.

We have two hummingbird feeders at our place, and I know of what she speaks. Of course, she is writing about more than just hummingbirds...

SHORT-SIGHTED
By Barbara Crafton

There are three feeders out here, ladies.

I don't think they heard me. Or, more likely, they did hear me and are just tuning me out. Hummingbirds are territorial -- they'd rather fight about the feeders than drink from them. No, it's NOT enough that she stays away from my feeder. I want her out of my YARD! And so they dive-bomb each other without mercy every time one of them tries to feed, and in the end, nobody eats. Hummingbirds preparing for migration need to eat about 11,000 calories a day. These two had better come to terms soon, or they'll be spending the winter in New Jersey.

In appearance they are so unlike us -- so tiny that they'll sometimes come right up to us unafraid, if we're not moving, because they think we're trees, or maybe smallish continents. They can fly backwards -- we can't even fly forwards. They can put themselves in a state of suspended animation if it gets too cold for them. Many of them are irridescent, and hardly any of us are. They may be able to inherit memory from their parents -- some hummers are believed to have found fruitful feeding grounds which their mothers visited repeatedly but to which they themselves had never been.

But in one regard we are just alike: sharing is hard for the members of both species. Often we are willing to go without something we truly want and need, just for the pleasure of depriving someone else of it.

Something primitive in us fears that someone else's good fortune will come at our expense. It is a ancient thing, I guess, born of an ancient jungle reality that bears little resemblance to the reality we actually inhabit: Grab what you can, no matter whose it is. You don't know for sure that you'll have another chance at it. Such grasping is understandable if you're a Pakistani flood survivor and haven't eaten in a week, but it's less so if you're in Metuchen and could stand to lose twenty pounds. Surrounded by more than enough of everything, we nonetheless remain fearful about our hold on anything, so much so that we are willing to sacrifice everybody's longterm good, including our own, for the sake of short-term profit we can pocket right now.

Nowhere is our moral and practical blindness more visible than in the political realm, where short-term self-interest trumps anything remotely resembling truth so frequently that we have all trained ourselves to laugh at it when we see it. Every day we hear them repackaging themselves, repudiating their own past positions, striving to help us see that they never really said what we heard them say last month -- well, that is, they may have said it, but they didn't mean what we thought they meant. What they really meant was what we want to hear. Then they wonder why people hold them in such low esteem. Such transparent self-serving is in the paper every day, of course, but it is far from new -- among our possessions is an 18th/century engraving called "The Politician," in which the subject sits reading, so intent on his newspaper coverage that he fails to notice that the candle he holds is setting his own hat on fire.

The facts of life about St. Paul's finances and budget

At our annual meeting Sunday, I outlined the facts of life about our finances at St. Paul's and the highlights of our proposed budget for 2010. I am giving you that information here as well today.

Resources

First, by way of background, I have talked with several pastors in our area, and every congregation in Charlottesville is now feeling the impact of the recession, and we are not immune to the downturn.

Our parish has much abundance and many resources. We have raised $655,000 in financial pledges for 2010, thanks to the generosity of many of you.

That said, we are still $25,000 short from what was pledged in 2009, and that is requiring us to make some hard decisions about our budget for 2010. There are several reasons why our pledges are smaller than 2009, including the deaths of a few long-time members and the fact that we have not received pledge cards from a number of people who pledged in 2009.

If you have not pledged for the year, please do so. If you can increase your pledge, please do so. Our ministries can remain strong only with the contributions of our people. Every pledge is significant, and everyone can pledge something because God has given everyone has something to pledge. As Dudley Rochester, our stewardship chair, pointed out at the annual meeting, less than half of our regular members make a financial pledge. If everyone pledged something, we would have a very good cushion against losing pledges.

The budget for 2010

The budget we are proposing to the Vestry totals $843,608, and it is a balanced budget. It does not tap into reserves funds to balance the budget, as we did in the past few years.

As I mentioned, $655,000 comes from pledges, and the rest from endowment interest and rental income from properties that we own. We also are depending on a grant of $18,500 from the Diocese of Virginia for University ministry.

The budget we are proposing fully funds our $55,000 commitment to outreach ministries and organizations in the community. Last year we tapped a restricted reserve fund (the misnamed "Emergency Fund" which is a restricted fund for outreach) to fulfill that commitment. A hardworking task force examined our outreach grants this year, and I am confident we are putting our money where it will have the most impact. This year we will give grants only with operating funds. Any additional funds raised for outreach, for example for Haiti, will be in on top of that $55,000.

We are also meeting our commitment to the ministry of the Diocese of Virginia with a contribution of $71,000. Also, we are making a financial commitment to forming the future leaders of the Episcopal Church by making a total contribution of $6,500 to the seminaries of our church.

The Diocese of Virginia has one of the lowest (probably the lowest) parish apportionments in the Episcopal Church. By way of comparison, the church where I worked in Sacramento had a similar size budget to this one, and the apportionment was more than $200,000 a year to the diocese.

Our St. Paul's parish programs will remain strong through worship, prayer, education, music, and university ministries. All are funded at the same level as the year before. We are also setting aside $24,000 for building repairs, which is significantly less than the previous year but will allow us to maintain the building in safe working order.

That said, I must be candid with you about the condition of our building. We will need to commence a capital campaign to renovate and update our buildings in a year or two. We cannot wait much longer. Others sacrificed to give these buildings to us, and we got them for free; and to us comes the obligation to give them to future generations in better condition than they are now.

Our proposed budget also has significant cuts, and no pay raises except for our hard-working sexton. We will no longer purchase subscriptions for St. Paul’s members to the diocesan newspaper. We will no longer fund the discretionary funds of the clergy (you are welcome to make individual contributions for those funds).

We are also making difficult and deep cuts in our office operation, and that means we need volunteers to answer phones and greet people during weekday business hours. If you are interested, please talk to me soon.

The proposed budget is balanced, focused on serving people, and will keep our ministries vital and vibrant.

Photos by Bonny Bronson.

Giving everything you have

Today's sermon is based on Mark 12:38-44

"Beware of scribes who like to walk around in long robes."

I am not so sure I like the sound of that in the gospel today.

So, I’d like to tell you about a friend of mine. Her name is Caryl, and she celebrated her 90th birthday last night.

Caryl is not poor, but she is certainly not rich. She lives modestly, and she enjoys going to baseball games with her many friends. She has one of the greatest laughs you will ever hear and always has time to talk. She is someone you want to be around.

Caryl is one of the mainstays of the altar guild in hr church. Once or twice a month, she takes fresh baked pies to new members of the church. She also volunteers at a food closet in the community.

My friend Caryl leads a life of giving. Everything about her is about giving.

There are many Caryls here in this parish. They are people who give of themselves freely and fully, working on our altar guild, coaching our acolytes, working in the kitchen or arranging flowers, ushering, serving at communion, visiting people in hospitals, cooking dinner at the Salvation Army for homeless people, or leading discussion groups for university students who are trying to figure out life beyond their studies.

And the list Caryls and Bobs and Jeans and Bills is much, much longer than that.
The story in the gospel today is about one of these people, a woman who gives two copper pennies, and gives everything she has.

I am always struck by how people with so very much react to this story – you mean she gives everything?

Yes, everything.

But how will she survive?

But that is not the question Jesus would have us ask.

Jesus gives us this story for a reason: to show us that someone who outwardly has very little can give abundantly, and it will always be enough.

The poor woman gives knowing that there will be two more copper coins coming her way, and more after that. She trusts that God gives her everything she needs because it is all really God’s anyway.

Like my friend Caryl, and all of the Caryls in this world, her life is richer by her giving. There is freedom in her giving, freedom to stop worrying, to stop being anxious, and freedom to live life fully.

By her giving, she is fully present to everyone and everything around her. By her giving, she is a full participant in God’s miracle of creation, in God’s miracle of life.

This morning, I would like to encourage you to give everything you have to life itself. Everything.

And by doing so, I’d like to encourage you to think about how you can live your life as fully and completely as God would have you live.

What would that look like for you if you really lived fully? What do you have to give, and what do you need to give up, to lead such a life? What holds you back? Maybe you already are living this way – you are a Caryl – so what wisdom do you have for the rest of us? Give us that.

This kind of giving truly needs to start in prayer. Can you find a place this week to sit somewhere quietly and ask God to point you in a direction?

Listen for the answer. It might come loudly, or it might come as the small still voice that is inside you. The answer may take time to unfold, and it may not come immediately. Or it might be so obvious you don’t notice for a time.

But it will come.

And then act by giving everything of yourself to this project of life on earth.

Give abundantly of yourself in all you do, in your home, in the workplace, at school, to everyone you meet, and in everything you do. Be wealthy in your giving.

When you fall short, start over. Be generous to yourself, as you would have others be generous to you. Those who give sometimes have a hard time receiving; be gracious in receiving the gifts that come your way. We are never too poor to give, and never too rich to receive.

And then I’d like to invite you to give generously to the mission of St. Paul’s. Even if you give only 10 percent of yourself to this church, it will be enough.

I don’t think you should give merely because this institution needs to stay open as an institution.

I hope you might give because the mission of this church is important to your life, and this church lifts lives including your own.

I think it important that you know where the money goes, because the money follows the mission of healing, hope and redemption that this faith community serves.

Yet I strongly resist preaching a sermon about the budget, because none of this is really about numbers on a page.

It is about the mission.

The cost of our mission is about $900,000 a year. Seventy-five cents out of every dollar we spend comes directly from you as contributions.

Here are a few facts about how we spend our dollars on our mission: We will give $55,000 this year to organizations that are especially skilled in bringing our ministry beyond our walls to those in the greatest need in our community.

A hard working committee led by Marsha Trimble and Doug Little recently looked in detail at each of these organizations, and they will be speaking about their work after the 10 am service in the chapel.

We are also committed to our ministry with the University of Virginia community, and we will spend at least $50,000 on the costs related to that ministry this year, probably more depending how you add it up.

We are also hugely committed to our children and teenagers, and the cost of that ministry exceeds what we spend on university ministry.

Our participation in the mission and ministry of the wider Episcopal Church costs $67,000, which we give to the Diocese of Virginia, which in turn uses those dollars not just for a staff in Richmond but for work in Sudan and Haiti.

And perhaps largest of all is our commitment to the pastoral care of this congregation. People come here with many needs; they are young, old, rich and poor. Pain and hurt make no distinctions, and neither do we. Without our dedicated clergy and lay staff, the care of this congregation would be greatly diminished if not impossible.

All of these ministries are essential to our mission as the people of God in this time and place; as people called to be the hands and feet of Christ’s healing and hope in the world, and to each other. All of this happens only because there are people named Caryl, and people named Bill and Jean, Buck and Wayne – and people like you. AMEN.

The stewardship of our blessings

Today's sermon is from Mark 10: 17-31

Have you ever asked a question you just knew you shouldn’t ask? And when you did, you discovered you just volunteered for something?

I suspect we have all been there.

In this morning’s gospel lesson, I can almost hear Peter slapping his forehead and groaning, “Oh, now what?”

So let us set our scene: Jesus is out on the road, healing, doing miracles, teaching, attracting crowds of all sorts, in other words, doing what he usually does.

A rich man comes and kneels before Jesus. The man is respectful, reverent toward Jesus, and he asks, “Good Teacher, what must I do to inherit eternal life?”

Jesus tells him to follow the Ten Commandments.

But the rich man is not satisfied with the answer. Anyone could have told him that; he wants to know more.

So Jesus loves him, and gives him an answer: Give all your possessions to the poor and follow me. Do something more with your life than simply amassing riches.

But the rich man, for whatever reason – we aren’t told why – is so bound to his possessions that he goes away grieving. He cannot give away his things.

Then Jesus uses this as a teaching moment to tell his followers they must get rid of their stuff if they want to find the Kingdom of God. And that pushes Peter right over the edge.

“Look,” he says, “we have left everything and followed you.”

What else do you want us to do? We’ve done all that.

Jesus tells Peter: Bring heaven to earth. Bring heaven to earth.

This story appears in the lectionary in the season of harvest, the season when we highlight stewardship, and when churches are trying to raise financial pledges for the new year. And we do need your pledges. I do hope you will provide the financial resources enabling us to carry out our mission in the coming year. We can do nothing without you.

But I’d like to go a little deeper with this story today. Jesus, after all, does not tell the rich man to give everything to the church. He tells him to give his riches to the poor. He tells him to do something with his life, not to buy space in heaven, but to bring heaven to earth.

Jesus tells the rich man to get rid of his earthly possessions that are getting in his way, and in the case of the rich man, it is all of them.

What stuff of yours gets in your way? What possessions block you from seeing the love of God in front of you? Give them away.

Not all possessions are things. Some possessions are the hurts and grievances we carry around with us, or addictions, or relationships that are unhealthy but that we cling to. Have a look at what blocking you, and step out with a little courage to give them away.

But what else would you have us do, Peter asks. We’ve done what you ask, what else should we do? We need to ask that, too.

Bring heaven to earth, Jesus tells Peter. Bring heaven to those places that are lonely and hurting and poor and in pain.

Jesus returns to that theme over and over. In what we call the Lord’s Prayer, Jesus says “thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Bring heaven here. The purpose of life is not amassing possessions, or even earning your way into heaven in the sweet beyond. The purpose of life is bringing heaven here now by bringing healing and hope to a hurting world, and using all of our gifts God gives us to make heaven real now.

The world that hurts is outside. The world that hurts is also right here in the pews next to you. The world is not just out there; the world is in here too.

This does bring us full circle to this church. I can’t imagine going through life’s struggles alone. The word church means “the gathering,” and that is who we are. The word “church” doesn’t mean “organized religion.”

Nor does the word “church” mean “the institution,” though in its history, the church often acts as if the needs of the institution are greater than the people in it.

The word “church” means we gather together to hold each other up, to pray together, to support each other when we need it the most, to laugh together, to share and give, and to discover the work God gives us to make real “thy will be done on earth as it is heaven” with people who are not in this gathering.

How do we do that?

This church, this gathering, is the world’s oldest service organization, but it is a good deal more than that. This gathering is here to bless, to bless each other and bless the world around us.
I would like to suggest that in this time of stewardship, we think of this first and foremost as the stewardship of blessings.

We give our blessings by sharing our wealth, by providing as generously as we can for the poor, and by caring for each other.

In a few minutes, we will bless a young child in baptism. And then we will repeat an ancient Christian ritual of “passing the peace,” with a handshake or a wave of the hand. When you do, you will be passing God’s blessing to the person next you.

Our blessing can be as simple as just knowing each other.

Let me suggest that if you don’t know the name of the person next to you, ask, and introduce yourself.

When you “pass the peace” pass your name, too. In a church this size, it is impossible to know everyone, but it is possible to know the person next to you, or in front of you. To know someone is to bless them.

And then maybe help others know you by wearing your nametag. I know that is hard for some of you, but you accept the blessings of others by letting them know you.

Accepting and sharing blessings is at the heart of a life of faith. We have so many blessings to share here. What are yours?

Our gathering is connected by our blessings, connected by our baptism, and connected by the bread and wine of our Holy Communion. Share, give, gather, bless – that is who we are, that is what makes us church. AMEN

Painting of Jesus and the rich man in the Tao Te Ching by Lao Tzu.