November 1, 1998
All Saints' Day is always a day of commitment to Our Lord Jesus Christ. As a baptismal festival, it marks especially our common bond with all the saints of God in times past, present, and future. It acknowledges the joy of our support of one another as we seek to serve Christ in our individual callings.
At St. Margaret's, this day also marks the
beginning of our annual focus on the commitment we all make to
return to God a portion of all that he has given us. We make that
commitment in many ways — through our striving to live up
to our
baptismal promises, by our caring for those less fortunate than
ourselves, by our weekly gathering to offer praise to our Creator,
Sustainer, and Redeemer, and by our financial gifts that make
the church's mission possible.
The mission of this wonderful parish has been a blessing to thousands of people, both in and out of the church, for over three decades. The vision of the kingdom of God has been given to the people and clergy who have lived and ministered here; and they have responded generously with the bounty of time, talent, and treasure that has been bestowed upon them. You have built a fantastic place of worship, speaking of the majesty of God and lifted like a beacon on this hill to attract people to it. Obviously, the vision is much larger than this building. The people that the Lord has brought to this place _ young, old, and in-between _ must be given education, pastoral care, and a holy work to do. The only way I know of to successfully fund the work of St. Margaret's Parish is for each of us to respond with a financial gift that adequately represents our deep gratitude to God for the gifts of life.
We come into this building and say it so easily, "All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee." And yet so often our attitude would say that all things come from our own efforts, and what we give to God is something we have earned. That is not what the Scriptures say; and it is not what we say in our worship. Rather, the Lord is the source of everything, and whatever we give is simply returning something that is already his.
We come into this building and say it so easily,
"Praise God from whom all
blessings flow." Maybe some day we can recognize, if we say
it enough, that all of our blessings do indeed come from God and
not from some person, and certainly not from our own efforts.
The words of the Psalmist ring in our ears, "The earth is
the Lord's and the fullness thereof." Everything that we
have, everything that we own, everything there will ever be, belongs
to the Lord.
So what do all these words mean to us in our
lives? What do we really have from the Lord that we acknowledge
to be his? Life and breath? We take it for granted: involuntary
muscles of our body pumping the blood and causing us to breathe.
Yet those are gifts from God. Our parents did not create us, and
we did not create our children. God created all of us, and we
are his. This good earth on which we live, and the raw materials
of it with which we are able to build and create something of
beauty _ all those were created by God in the beginning, continue
to be created by him, and are given to us and to our trusteeship
in order that we might fashion from them
something of beauty and worth in this world. The brain with which
we think, the body with which we work, the talent that God has
given us to do these things, all are gifts. Nothing is ultimately
earned. We are the recipients, the stewards, the trustees, the
managers of God's great gifts to us.
But more than the material, more than the bodily, we are also given the greatest gift of all: the grace that is ours through the two great sacraments. We are given adoption into Christ in the sacrament of birth, Holy Baptism. We are given the grace of the sustaining power of Christ Jesus in the nourishment of Holy Communion. The gift of the sacrament of the table as we come Sunday after Sunday to receive into ourselves the Body and Blood of our Lord Jesus Christ is freely offered and freely taken. In it we receive forgiveness and strength, pardon and renewal. We are given the Holy Communion as a way in which we can have, practically at our beck and call, a tangible contact with the Incarnate Lord.
All of these are gifts: body, resources, the Sacraments. What each of us does with them may vary, and the measure of them does vary tremendously from person to person, but the fact remains that they are still gifts, gifts given to us as trustees, to use them to the best of our ability, and to use them for the good of others. For me, giving is a privilege because it is one way I can return to my Maker some small portion of all that he has given to me.
Through my giving, through what I give, I am to make myself into the kind of person I want to be. I can be a co-creator with God in my own creation, and assist him in forming me into a holy person.
The one subject that Jesus talked about most
in his earthly ministry, over 20%
of his words in the New Testament, has to do with our possessions
and the use of material things. The way in which we use material
things forms us into the kind of person that we are and the kind
of person we will be. It has been said that if you want to know
about a person's religion, do not ask about what he thinks of
Jesus Christ, ask him instead what he thinks of his property.
In other words, "Show me where someone spends money and I
will show you the real person." Those are not phrases dreamed
up by some twentieth century fund-raiser. Those are phrases reflective
of Jesus' own words in the sixth chapter of Matthew when he says,
"Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."
That is the sequence: where we place our treasure, we place our
life. If we place our treasure anywhere other than the Kingdom
of God, our lives will be lived other than in the Kingdom.
If we want to be more faithful, and obviously we do or we would not be here this morning, we would do well to place our treasure in the Kingdom, to make a sacrifice for Christ. We cannot make anything close to the sacrifice he made for us, but we can make a meaningful gift of money, an amount that really feels like a sacrifice, in order that we may grow to be the kind of person he would have us to be.
What we do with what we have is a major measure of the kind of person we are and the kind of person we will be. Jesus tells many stories to make this point. There is the story of the rich farmer who had a bumper crop so large that he pulled down his barns to build bigger ones to store it all and to retire in his good fortune. The angel of God appears to him and says, "You fool! TODAY, your soul is demanded of you!"
There is the story of Dives and Lazarus, in
which the rich man no longer even saw the abject poverty of the
man who sat at his gate. When he died, he finally
understood what he should have done in his life. But it was too
late. We, too, walk past people without ever seeing them as children
of God, and fail to recognize that the Christ in them reaches
out to the Christ in us, to be touched with the healing grace
of Christ which we all bear. What we do with what we have turns
us into the kind of person that we will be.
There is the story of the widow's mite. The woman loses her only coin and searches the house from top to bottom until she finds it. When she finds it she realizes that is not really hers. When it was lost is was out of her possession; and when she found it, it still was not hers. She realized that it was always a gift from God. So she takes it to the Temple and puts it in the alms as a gift of thanksgiving to God.
Now for a modern story. The two characters are a rich man and a carpenter who has been in his employ for many years. The carpenter is one of those employees who never seems to be able to save any money, because he is always tending to his family's needs, their medical care, their groceries, their clothes. The rich man called him in one day and said to him, "Here are some plans for a mansion. I want you to build it. It's to be located on the hill overlooking the city on one side and the country on the other. I want you to use all the best materials in its construction. While it is being built, I will be gone on an extended tour of Europe and Asia. When I return, I want it completed."
The carpenter began the work as soon as his employer left. Seeing an opportunity to make a little extra money away from the scrutiny of his wealthy boss, he began to cut corners and to use second rate materials so he could pocket the extra money. If mistakes were made, he plastered and painted to cover them up. After a year the house was indeed complete and appeared to be perfect. When the employer returned he called in the carpenter and asked to see the house. After a tour of the place, he turned to the carpenter and said, "You have been in my employ for many years. I have watched you faithfully raise your family and have appreciated your loyalty and hard work. Here are the keys. The house is your reward for a lifetime of service."
The house we are building is the house we will
live in for eternity. If we cut corners, if we cheat, we will
forever live in that kind of a place. If we use our best,
if we give our best effort, if we always strive to do cosmic-class
work, then we
construct for ourselves, with the help of God, a mansion in the
Kingdom where
we can live eternally.
Again, giving is a privilege because it is
through what I give for the work of Christ on earth that I am
able to make myself into the kind of person I want to be.
But to be honest, while giving is a privilege, it is not always
comfortable to give a sacrificial amount. It is also not comfortable
to stay physically fit. It is neither the comfort nor the pain
that we seek, it is the result.
Just as Jesus said that man was not made for the sabbath, but the sabbath for man; so also man was not made to tithe, the tithe was made for man, to give us a simple, easy to remember, method to grow in devotion and dedication, to lay up for ourselves treasures in heaven, to build ourselves into generous, joyful disciples of the one who gave not 10% but 100%, who gave his very life for us.
We come into this building and say it so easily, "All things come of thee, O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee." We come into this building and say it so easily, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." The words of the Psalmist ring in our ears, "The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof." Everything that we have, everything that we own, everything there will ever be, belongs to the Lord.
As you consider your financial commitment to
the work of Christ and his church for 1999, consider first his
commitment to you for the whole of your life and eternity. Then,
with an attitude of gratitude, with an abiding sense of the great
privilege you have to be able to give anything at all to the Lord
and his Kingdom, let us with
gladness present the offerings and oblations of our life and labor
to the Lord.
The Rev. Dr. Robert G. Certain
rgcertain@aol.com
01 November 1998