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“Plain Speaking”
This is a sermon of the stewardship of money that begins and ends with faith. We’ll get to the money part in a minute. But in the beginning, there’s the faith.
Up to the point where our lesson begins this morning John writes that Jesus had been speaking to his disciples in figures of speech…like metaphors and similes, sometimes allegory. The kind of figures that other Gospel writers call parables. The kind of figures that crop up more often in poetry or in a riddle or some wise saying than in straight prose.
The Greek word John uses here is paroimia, the word used for Jesus’ parables, but basically it means a saying that is hard to understand, a saying whose meaning is veiled to the casual listener, a saying which demands thought before its meaning becomes clear. Which usually, needless to say, leaves people scratching their heads about the point of the figure of speech.
But here Jesus is saying: “So far I have been giving you hints and indications; I have been giving you the truth with a veil on it; I have been saying things which you had to think your way through; but now I am going to speak the truth plainly, to speak the truth simply, plainly.”
And then he tells his disciples the plain truth: that he came from God and that he is going back to God. “I came from the Father and have come into the world; again, I am leaving the world and am going to the Father.” (John 16. 28) Here is the plain central claim that, for John, not only defines who Jesus is but who the disciples as his followers:
Jesus is none other than the Son of God and that the cross is not for him a criminal’s death, but the way back to God
And the disciples are those who follow in his way through death and resurrection,
through hardship and grief to a joy the Father secures and the world cannot take away.
And then Jesus follows this first plain truth with a second. His disciples can approach God directly because God loves them. Jesus does not need to take their requests to God. The disciples can take their own. Here Jesus is saying: “You can go to God, because God loves you immediately, directly, personally.” Jesus tells his disciples that his work is done. He came from the Father, and now, by way of the cross, he is going back to the Father. And for everyone the way is open to God. Jesus does not need to take our prayers to. We can take our own. The lover of Christ is the beloved of God.
Now, that’s Jesus’ plain speaking to his disciples. So what do these plain truths have to do with us in our time, especially this time? What do these two plain truths of Jesus have to do with our consideration of pledges of money to the church?
A first plain truth is to realize that stewardship in the church is, first and last, a matter of faith. To the extent we believe that God is the landlord of ultimate title—“The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof”—then Jim Lillie and Company are not asking us to handle well our material wealth on behalf of charity but to handle well God’s wealth in behalf of God, to be an agent of God’s joy, God being such a day and night brightener to all her people..
In this light, stewardship is not fund-raising for the budget of a charitable organization so much as it is faith-raising for a community of believers. And, in our case, a community of people who believe the life, teachings, death, resurrection and way of Jesus of Nazareth tells us and shows us what God is like. Like, for instance, a Father who pledges himself to love his children and mark them with his presence…unconditionally, no matter what. Even when his children act, as we regularly do, like prodigals and run off or wander off and get into scrapes, make terrible mistakes, suffer hard knocks and commit awful blunders. Of course, every one of these scrapes and mistakes, hard knocks and blunders hit the father even harder if that’s possible; but it’s the risk God takes, the pledge God makes to love his kids through the world’s—and their own--worst. Which is also to say that God bets that, when his children do come through more or less in one piece, there’s going to be no rejoicing greater than his in all creation.
So, to whatever extent you believe that God is the kind of unconditionally loving Father Jesus says and shows he is, then your pledge and mine to the church is a matter of our faith in this Father and our humility and glory before Him for the love God first gave in Jesus. Or, as one of John’s disciples put it in a later letter: “In this is love, not that we loved God but that he first loved us.” (John 4.10)
We believe each member turns in both personal thought and personal prayer—turns and turns till he or she comes round to the right decision for him or her. As God first gave Himself to us in Jesus, our pledge are our free gifts of ourselves back to God. Following Jesus, we, too, come from God and are on our way home to God. No one else comes down to this decision but you. You don’t need anyone else but God. The best--and all—any preacher or any other Christian can do is to remind you whose you are (from whom you came and to whom you are going) and to return the best of who you are right now to God. For sure, this doesn’t make this decision easy. The way of love was not easy for the Father with his Son Jesus. Nor is it easy for us. But “easy” is not the point. God’s pledge of His presence is. Jesus said to his disciples on the mountain at the end of Matthew’s Gospel: “Lo, I am with you always.”
This is the first plain truth about stewardship in the church; pledging money to the church begins and ends as a matter of faith. About faith in that Father Jesus tells and shows us is simply and plainly loving you from your beginning and before to your end and beyond. And now.
Complementing this first plain truth about pledging to God through the church is a second plain truth. While only God and Mary Evans know what you personally pledge, we all eventually know what we pledge as a community. Your Elders know first, of course because they are charged with making a budget for this community of faith; but come the annual meeting next January, we all will know together.
The operating budget of the church as a community is as much a matter of faith in God’s love in Jesus as is each individual member’s decision. In the chapter immediately following our lesson this morning, Jesus prays to God—not just once but time and again that his disciples may be one. Not two or three, fifteen or 350, but one. Or again, as the disciple of John would write in a later letter, “In this is love, not that we loved God but that (God) first loved us…Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another.”
Of course, this doesn’t mean that each of us pledge the same thing—either as a percent of income or as dollars. We do not. Nor should we. As we approach and make this decision, each of us live with our own complex realities. For some, this is a time of struggling, suffering love in the midst of anxiety about how we’re going to manage some earthquake shaking our lives. For others, this is a time of blessing beyond what we have earned or (truth be told) deserve on our own. But it is precisely in such times that the heart and the faith of this community shines. For what is this church if we are not a community of those who believe the Good News of a Father God
who lifts us up when we fall,
who keeps us going when we would give up,
who literally in-spires/breathes into us the very best we are and can yet be.
So when one member falls, the rest of us stand for him. When one member’s faith fails, the rest of us believe in her even when she can’t believe in herself. As God believes in us, so we believe in each other. As God loves us, so we one another…as a matter of faith both in God and in one another…all together.
Of course, there are financial realities we face together as a community of faith. In the recent past, we’ve balanced operating budgets by raiding the General Liquid Reserve (alias, “rainy day” fund, contingency reserve or whatever you choose to call it). In other words, from generosity of those who came and gave generously before us. But since the General Liquid Reserve is about out of reserve (and WPC has no sugar daddy and has no liquid money stashed in the basement), 2008 will be the year for us to balance the budget on our own. And to do so without, God willing, a fund-raiser of some $60,000 next spring. Because, speaking for myself alone, it is time for us to reclaim a value that has had a long history in this particular congregation: namely, that we ask for undesignated gifts to support in the church in its worship of God and God’s love for the world only once a year. Not twice or more. But just once. Now.
We may—or may not—reclaim the whole of that tradition in a
single year. But we can plainly point the way. You remember, don’t you, the
story of old codgers who went
hunting in a remote part of
As you consider your spiritual decision about what you will pledge to God, consider three plain truths as a matter of faith:
First, believe God is with you, no matter what, as you think and pray and decide
about what pledge to the church represents the best of you in your relationship with God.
Second, believe God will grow this church deeper and move this church on as the
body of Christ to provide for the continuing worship of God in this place, no matter what.
And last, believe that, as the Father provided Jesus all the love he needed to suffer
God’s love for world on his cross, so that same Father will provide you and us all the love we need through whatever hardships may face us or whatever blessings God showers upon us. Believe that, after all is said and done, God is in charge, the Father does provide, and there will be great joy in heaven for the worship of God in this place on earth.