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Nov 16, 2008
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Sermon Proper 28 (33) Year A 2008
Community Church of Wilmette
November 16, 2008
“...and a building”
“Enter into the joy of your master.”
What a radical notion for the world to hear at this moment in history. It’s something that every economist on the planet may need framed and put on their walls. Perhaps cross-stitched on a pillow?
“Enter into the joy of your master.”
Do you think they’d get it? I don’t know. I wonder if any of us really get it. This parable is so familiar. We have heard it preached a hundred different ways. And I am very aware that some of you could stand up right now and preach about this.
So…
Let's be honest about how we may hear this parable today.
We measure everything.
We measure how we measure things.
We live in a measure-happy culture at a time some call The Information Age.
Measure. Measure. Goals. Measure. Measure. Goals.
We cannot help ourselves.
I wonder if some of us hear this parable in this way: “Ah! We must do more with less! The third servant should have invested. Foolish servant!” I know I have.
But what if...what if the parable were not about investment capital?
What if the parable…
(the favorite of stewardship Sundays everywhere)
…were not actually about making stuff happen with the stuff you have been given?
The parable is about Jesus, his nature, and his “coming in glory”
All the parables in this string of parables will culminate in next week's story...as God separates the sheep from the goats...The “Day of the Lord.”
This parable is about God's “superabundance”
The servants are given a piece of God, a piece of Grace...
We are to “enter into the joy of the master”
usury is illegal, immoral, unscriptural...The parable is not to encourage raising interest rates.
What does the third servant fear...he says he fears his master, but perhaps it is something else? Failure? Participating? What others might think? Is he afraid of sharing?
It is about participating in what we have been given, we have been given grace. We have been given God.
It is about participating in the coming Kingdom of God
It is about putting away fear.
It is about having hope.
For those of you who may not have noticed, it’s time to talk about the church budget again. It’s time to talk about the gifts we have and the gifts we are to one another. It’s stewardship season here at the Community Church. It’s stewardship season in a lot of churches around the country.
There’s one church in particular that I have been following. Calvary Baptist in Washington D.C. Their pastor, Rev. Amy Butler, is a colleague of mine and I like to watch what she’s doing in her ministry. We’re roughly the same age and our churches are in similar situations. So, when their stewardship letter arrived in the mailbox at the parsonage, I opened it with some excitement. And I was right to do so.
Calvary Baptist Church has decided to “redefine abundance.”
They have looked at the world around them and realized some things.
The economy is currently in a shambles.
The Church (the mainline protestant church in the U.S.) is dwindling or people are shifting away from us…to someplace or someone else.
What should The Church’s response be to this?
Fear?
Despair?
Panic?
A fancy new sign with chasing neon lights? A gimmick?
No. Calvary Baptist Church has said: “We must ‘redefine abundance.’”
They have declared, “We have all we need!”
Rev. Amy Butler says, “Our God is a God of abundance and possibility, and, if we're being honest, we have much more than what we need.” And this can be expressed in tangible ways
a week at camp with the kids
include the church in your monthly budget
volunteer at the church or elsewhere in the name of the church one day every six weeks
Our abundance is found in “the joy of the master.” God asks for our participation in the gifts we have and to not live in the fear that those gifts might be taken away or lost somehow. Realize what we have been given. These are gifts from God. Now, participate in those gifts. Relish in them. Frolic in them!
Here’s another way of thinking about it.
A church planter's perspective
I’ve started a church. I know a little something about this.
Church of Jesus Christ, Reconciler.
Coming to Community Church I perceived incredible abundance!
People
Abundant resources of talent and treasure
A rich history from which to draw lessons and inspiration
This is what we have:
60 people in love with God.
This is the core of a Christian Community’s identity
Affection for one another is great, but the core of who we are is our shared love of God.
This is worship.
This is why we give in charity.
This is why we study together.
An endowment given by those in love with God.
This is the tricky part…
I cannot tell you how many moments I sat there with others from Reconciler and wondered where the money might come from.
I cannot tell you how many times I said, “The money doesn’t matter…but it’d sure be nice…” Anxiety, anxiety, anxiety…
Again and again I had to learn how to step away from this anxiety, from identification with money (or the lack of it), with the measurable, accidentally burying what we had so generously been given by God.
And a building (in need of a little love) paid for by those in love with God
We worshiped in one another’s homes (diners)
We worshiped in a coffee house. (Easter with no heat)
We worshiped in the side chapel of another church
I know some of you might find this amusing somehow. But coming here…I thought “Thank God!” I have 60 people, an endowment, and a building. The lessons from Reconciler have not lost their value. But this is awful nice.
We’re going to move to a meeting after the worship service. We’re going to talk about money. I hope we can step back from some of our anxiety and find God’s abundance.
What I learned at Reconciler is that focusing on the stuff produces anxiety. Every church has this struggle in common...It has always had faith in God. The rest of the stuff is just stuff.
When a church can step away from a place of anxiety to a place of proclaiming Christ, of being Christ in the world, a community can grow. Things can shift for the better. We are better able to be God's people and not a group of people anxious about space, or bills, or attendance. A church has to dig out and share again and again.
We have been given grace and not the fuel for anxiety. Can we see this?
Does Community Church have the courage to dig out and share?
Can we see the abundance of God in what we have?
It's not about being smarter with what we have.
It's not about asset management or venture capital or making more with less.
The parable is not about money.
The parable is about Jesus.
Our entire perspective has to shift.
It has to shift away from what we fear will happen to us…
to what we are called to love:
We are called to love God.
We are called to “enter into the joy of the master.”
We have to begin see that, like those who were in Matthew's community,
all we have,
all we are,
all we do,
is about Christ.
This is a time when, as strange as it may seem to all of us enlightened folk in the room, we need to proclaim a Word about the Day of the Lord. We need to say God is here.
“Right here. Right now. Watching the world wake up from history.” Our history. Our family history, our congregations’ history. We must proclaim joy and peace, love, hope, charity. In short we must proclaim our faith. We must proclaim it in thought, word, and deed.
How many ways do we already have to say this? We have to redefine abundance for the people of the world…at this moment in history especially… we all need such a Word.
We are a people who are about a present and approaching divine reality. It is not about what we accumulate and horde away, but about the super-abundance that we have been given...what we already have. From this point all we need to do is simply participate in God's grace...
60 people are called to enter into the joy of the master.
We have been given an endowment to proclaim the joy of the master in worship and work
...and a building do it in...
Redefine abundance.
Fear nothing.
Proclaim Christ.
“Enter into the joy of your master.”
Nothing more.
Nothing less. |
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