A Talent of Hope

Matthew 25:14-30, Romans 15:1-13

Several weeks ago you would have heard a sermon on the Parable of the Talents.  I don’t know how Timothy preached it over here, but in the past I would have launched out talking about Stewardship from the perspective of what we do with the Time, Talents, and Money that God has entrusted to us.  Do we invest them, put them to work for Christ Jesus and his kingdom work or do we simply in fear bury them in the ground.  This year, over on the other side, I took a different route saying that it is pointless to talk about stewardship of Time, Talent, and Money, without first talking about what we do with that one small talent of God’s own life, the Holy Spirit, that God has placed in us in Christ. 

The Holy Spirit is our personal bond to Jesus in whom we share in Jesus’ own relationship to God the Father and in turn know ourselves to be beloved children of God.  The Stewardship questions that surround this talent are “are we devoting ourselves to the Lordship of Jesus Christ and letting the Holy Spirit do his transforming work in us while we commit ourselves to being discipled and discipling others?”  It is in the context of a discipling relationship with others that our identity as beloved children of God begins to blossom and we are changed to be more Jesus-like and the abundance of life that God has to give overflows.

Well, that in a nutshell was the sermon series that I preached over on the other side of the Cooperative.  This morning I wish to come back to the text on the talents and address it not from the perspective of us as individuals but rather of us as a community of faith.  God gives his Spirit to us not simply to fill us individuals but also to fill us as congregations.  So, we must ask how are we, together, stewarding the gift of God’s self to this congregation, the Holy Spirit who shapes us to be a unique body of Christ geared for God’s work in this particularly community.  The Living God of hope has called us each to this particular congregation in order to send us together into this particular community to be his living witnesses.

In our reading from Romans Paul gives us a very general parameter for how the Holy Spirit is at work in us, a parameter that’s true for all churches.  Verses 5 and 6 read: “May the God who gives endurance and encouragement give you the same attitude of mind toward each other that Christ Jesus had, so that with one mind and one voice you may glorify the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.”  The Holy Spirit is with us to give this congregation endurance and encouragement to continue running in this difficult race of being the body of Christ in a culture that could either care less about Jesus or can be outright against us.  So, the Holy Spirit, the presence of Jesus, is with us.

So also, the Holy Spirit works in us to give us unity of attitude, the mindedness of Christ Jesus.  He gives us love for one another that is the same love that Jesus has for us.  This love, his love manifests among us when we bear with each other’s failings rather than judging and ostracising; when we seek the good of each other and our neighbours and to build one another up rather than just seeking to please ourselves.  In Jesus love we accept one another as Jesus has accepted us and we help one another become more like him.  This love, his love, is powerful and when we put it into action real hope begins to overflow from us.  Unity in the wonder-working, powerful love of Christ is the basic parameter of the Holy Spirit’s working in our midst.  It is the one small talent God entrusts to every congregation.

Building from there, in our Appreciative Inquiry work we identified more of our particular giftedness for ministry in Christ that the Holy Spirit has been working in us.  Do you remember our “Thrive Statements”?

St. Andrew’s Thrives when…we get involved in the Southampton community…we work in conjunction with other churches…we are being a vital, family-like Christian fellowship…we have quality worship services with inspiring music and message…we conduct special events that reach beyond ourselves…we show compassion…we are welcoming and show hospitality…we serve according to our giftedness…our leadership is strong…we are teaching and living unconditional acceptance…we are being an example in faith to young families…our men are involved.

In the past two years we have been acting accordingly to these “Thrive Statements” and indeed a spirit of thriving, a spirit of hope overflowing is arising here.  St. Andrew’s feels like a different place than it did three years ago.  We have a Men’s Group now and a Friday Café that reach people that otherwise won’t show up on Sunday morning but who greatly benefit from the friendships they have with us.  We’ve enjoyed mixing with our neighbours across the river of the Saugeen First Nation through our concerts and fundraisers with Wesley United.  We’ve a monthly games night.  We sponsored a community skate last January up at the Arena.  Our Lenten organ meditations and Luncheons are much enjoyed by many in the area who are contemplatively and musically inclined.  These are just drops added to our bucket of hope which is beginning to overflow again to the Southampton community as it has in years past.  And you know what?  We’re having fun!

These are difficult days to be the church in our culture, a culture that can now no longer be called Christian.  The Church is no longer the predominant undergirding social institution in our society.  This means that people aren’t just going to up and come to church anymore.  North America is now a mission field.  We the church must embrace this reality and go outside our walls into our community overflowing in the joy, peace, and hope that are ours in Christ.  We must wear the love of Christ like a church sign with neon letters.

We will have to make some real infrastructure-like changes. It may mean leaving behind buildings to meet in homes, coffee shops, bars or downtown storefronts.  It is likely to mean changing when we have worship services.  Sunday morning really is no longer a viable time option if we want young families.  How we worship is not likely to make much of a difference as long as we are sincere in our praise and authentic in our fellowship.

These days for generating ideas and experimenting with reaching out in creative ways but ways that are in accordance with who the Holy Spirit has shaped us to be.  There are no bad ideas, but we must be aware that if it is outside of the “comfort zone” we’ve identified in our “Thriving Statements” it may be a difficult row to hoe.  These are the days to start having fun again as church but realizing the fun in Christ isn’t just for us.  We’ve got to bring our neighbours along.  Amen.

Giving That Takes on the Poverty of Others

2 Corinthians 8, Deuteronomy 26:1-15

This morning we’re winding down a three sermon series on Stewardship.  In the first sermon I said that it’s pointless to talk about what we do with the time, talent, and money that God has entrusted to us without first talking about what we are doing with that one small talent of God’s life, the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus and the Father have given to dwell in us.  Have we devoted ourselves to Jesus’ Lordship over our lives and are we letting the Holy Spirit do his transforming work in us to make us more Jesus-like?   Are we faithful disciples who truly believe in and follow Jesus to the extent that we will take the time to be discipled and then to disciple others?  That’s where talk on Stewardship needs to start.

 Last week the topic was sharing in God’s abundance.  The abundant life God has for us, for all of humanity, is like a feast or a potluck.  There’s more than enough for everyone as long as we take on a lifestyle of hospitality and generosity as opposed to the lifestyle of hoarding to which we are accustomed.  

This week we’ll take a quick look at how we give to the church simply because no series on Stewardship would be complete without “The Ask”.  If you remember in the first sermon I noted that recent studies on how much and to what people give their money found that although church-goers give regularly to their church, the majority of church-goers tend to give less to their church than they do to other organizations such as hospitals, universities, disaster relief, and disease research because they see such organizations as more able to make a real difference in the lives of people than what the local church can.  This rings as true for big, one-time gifts as it does regular, patterned giving. 

This lack of confidence in God being able to make a real difference by working through us as the body of Christ is something from which we need to repent because it is killing us as a congregation.  Focusing on our commitment to Jesus and being his disciples is a good place to start and so I did.  Last week, I hoped you caught an imaginative glimpse of what could happen through us if we took up the practices of hospitality and generosity.  This week, we need to talk about getting out and staying out of the financial crunch this congregation is in.

When we talk about giving to the church the first word that comes up is tithing, giving ten percent to the church.  I’m sure you’ve heard it said that if everybody in the church tithed we have so much money we wouldn’t know what to do with it.  Tithing seems to be the ideal, but on the whole it is not practiced.  I suspect this is nothing new.

The tithe in the Old Testament, which was ten percent of one’s harvest or income otherwise, was for all shapes and purposes the national taxation system of the theocracy of ancient Israel in which God was the monarch and the priests were the government.  The tithe was to be from the yield of every third year and was to support the priest, foreigners or refugees, widows and orphans.  We have no idea if it was ever practised on the scale of the whole nation doing it.

When ancient Israel instituted a monarchy I suspect that tithing became even less practiced because the kings started taxing the people for funding armies and building palaces and enforced it.  As far as the societal needs that tithing was meant to remedy, I suspect that in the days of the kings idol worship became the chief source of income for the priests.  As far as how they looked after the poor, if you know anything about ancient warfare, war was a good way to get rid of the poor, sick, and disabled.  They were your first line of defence.

Looking to the New Testament, there is no evidence that a practice of tithing ever existed in the early church.  In fact, there was no institution called the church with buildings and priests that needed a regular means of support until the later 300’s A.D.  Though Paul does argue that those who regularly preach should be remunerated, ministry tasks were otherwise shared among the congregants who didn’t get paid.  Travelling missionaries, evangelists, and apostles usually elicited the support of wealthy patrons along the way by means of letters of reference.  Yet, Paul himself was a tentmaker and self-supporting. 

I wish to highlight that the church depicted in the New Testament did not have the institutional needs of supporting buildings, ministry programs, or full-time clergy with pensions and benefits that we, the church today, have.  The New Testament churches were small congregations like ours who usually met in homes, usually the home of a wealthier member.  The tasks of ministry were shared among the people.  So, no building, no salaried clergy.

 That being said, when the New Testament and Jesus himself spoke of giving it is for taking care of the needy among them.  As I’ve said many times, the early church nearly eradicated poverty amongst themselves. The New Testament indicates that the first Christians strove to live in the present in the way they would be living when Jesus returned and established his earthly kingdom. 

This means early Christians strove towards enacting the expected reality of the end of times Kingdom of God in which all people will have enough.  And so, they shared their wealth.  This does not mean that it was the practice that wealthy Christians would totally divest themselves of their wealth.  It means that everybody gave to take care of the poor in their midst.  Everybody gave.  They were taught to give generously as Jesus gave – sacrificially, to the extent of his own life.  Jesus was rich, the Son of God, but became poor, human, for our sake.  They were encouraged to give generously according to their means and beyond. 

In our reading from 2 Corinthians Paul notes that the Macedonians, though they were extremely poor, were able to put together a “wealth of generosity” with the gift they sent to the Judean church for famine relief.  Though they themselves were poor they begged Paul earnestly for the privilege of sharing in that ministry of famine relief in Judea.  They took the hardship that the Judean churches were suffering upon themselves by giving sacrificially to the extent of increasing their own hardship.

That kind of giving, giving that takes on or shares in the poverty of others, fits in well with what I said last week about sharing in God’s abundance and undertaking a lifestyle of hospitality and generosity.  I believe this is the way our Lord calls us, his disciples, to live especially in this materialistic, consumeristic culture that hoards wealth. 

But…as far as how and what we give to this church I think that model is unrealistic and so also tithing.  The largest expense this congregation has is paying for the ministers and I don’t want anyone living on less on my account.  We ministers have a Scripture-based right to be paid for the work we do and to be paid a fair wage, but don’t go hungry on my account.

Nevertheless, this church is poor.  It is behind and if it weren’t for money in the bank and a grant from Presbyterians Sharing, the doors would be closed.  To break even and be grant free there needs to be roughly $14,000 ($9,000) more a year coming in.  If there are 20 envelopes a week coming in and we were to share the debt evenly without doing more fundraisers, then each giver needs to give $700 ($450) more a year.  That’s roughly $59 ($38) more a month or $14 ($9) a week.  “The Ask” – can you do that?  Just write your check for that much more a week and you won’t miss it, but the ministry of this church and of the Cooperative will be all the more strengthened for ministry.

Or, are there any of you out there who can do this?  In my church in West Virginia Fred and Lucille Burns used to call the Treasurer at years end and ask what was still needed and they would write a check for anywhere from $5,000-$10,000 and that was on top of their regularly giving.  God bless them.

That’s just talking money.  The ultimate solution to our problem is we need to take discipleship more seriously than we do.  Train ourselves to disciple others.  Every one of us here has people in our lives whom the Lord is calling us to share him with.  That is very difficult to do if we feel like we don’t know what we’re doing.  Regardless, has your life in the Lord been enriched by the wealth of hospitality, friendship, compassion, and joy that is abundant in this Christian fellowship?  If so, consider “the Ask” that I’ve put before you and follow through.  The wealth of God’s abundance is found in generosity.  Let’s not miss that boat.  Amen.