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Sermon:
Facing Forward
Text: 2 Corinthians 8:1-12, 9:6-12
Date: November 21, 2004
Rev. Dee Eisenhauer, Eagle Harbor Congregational Church
The last question we addressed at our recent Round Table conversations
was this: "What could we be doing now or in the near future if we
had all the money we needed?" I was intrigued by the answer
of one participant, who said, "If this church had all the money we
needed, we would have a waiting list to join."
I have no idea what was behind that comment, so I can't speculate on what
the speaker might have been thinking. It's caused me to think about
whether that would be true. If we had all the money we needed, would
we have a waiting list? Would people be lined up around the block,
hoping to join? If so, why?
Would people want to join a church that already had all the money it needed
because they would never ever have to come to worship and find a pledge
card stuffed inside the bulletin? Would church-goers find it a relief
to never be asked to share money with the church? Would it be having
a kind of "free ride" with a church that would be so appealing?
Or would the outlandish notion of a church having all the money it needs
imply a church so vibrant that it would be irresistible? Would an
overflow of money signify an overflow of love, passion, and excitement
about the grace of God and the ministry of the church? Would the
church that overflowed in a wealth of generosity be too fascinating for
a generally apathetic public to write off as irrelevant? Would that
be why the church that had all the money it needed would have people lined
up around the block?
How about if we do a little social science experiment and find out?
We'll all pitch in, giving according to our means, and share enough so
that the church will have all the money we need. Then we'll do some
market research on all the new folks drawn into our ministry. What
do you say?
All that remains is to define that phrase, "all the money we need."
Prudent people naturally want to know, need to do what? You have
to have some idea what you want to do before you can evaluate whether
you have as much money as you need. The question in the Round Tables
was posed in order to set imaginations free of our usual fiscally responsible
restraints in order to discover what we might be led to do if lack of
money was not a barrier. Oftentimes in our personal lives as well
as our collective life we allow financial restraints to shut down our
imaginations completely.
Last week I mentioned that one of my colleagues calls the UCC the "church
of the free range chickens" because "it's where people go when
you let them out of the cage." Let me share with you where
your imaginations went when we let them out of the cage as we talked about
potential future ministries of the church. You have some of our
near-term ideas on the flier you received this morning. When we
took money off the table as a limiting factor, most of the ideas were
not thematically different from more "practical" ideas; they
were just more adventuresome versions of what we already value.
Several people thought of ways we could develop our property to meet more
of the needs of the community. We could build affordable housing
where our garden and the Stephens house now stand. We could make
a place for affordable childcare. We could develop an emergency
shelter or hygiene center for the homeless poor who wind up on Bainbridge.
We could buy out the MARC (Madison Avenue Retirement Community) and offer
more affordable housing to seniors. We could develop a day center
for the frail elderly who can't safely be left alone. A few of us
think we should sell this commercially valuable property altogether and
re-group in a more suitable building away from the retail core.
Some of us thought of ways to build on or strengthen current ministries.
Several people thought of building a gymnasium that would benefit both
EHCC youth and the Madrona School
. A church van that could transport
youth and seniors was bandied about-one person suggested something that
would look like the Partridge Family Bus from that old sitcom. A
larger, heated youth room was mentioned numerous times (mainly, but not
exclusively by the 23 youth who participated in Round Tables).
We
could expand our youth and music ministries by affording more staff time
than we can afford now. We could call another clergy person who
would specialize in ministry to our senior members and neighbors.
We could provide a snack program for kids after school, every day.
We could serve breakfast every Sunday morning. We could have two
worship services, perhaps one with a more contemporary flavor. We
could build a balcony into the sanctuary. We could keep our sanctuary
open more hours, a buy a candle altar, to encourage the use of our church
as a place of prayer. We could put more rooms across the hall from our
current classrooms to make room for all the people who will be wanting
to join our Sunday school once we have all the money we need.
Quite
a few people thought immediately of missions when having abundant money
was mentioned. We'd like to be able to send both youth and adults
on mission trips with only a minimal contribution needed from the participants.
We'd like to send people on short- and long-term missions both in the
US and abroad-how about sending a team to Africa? There was
one idea about receiving a missionary here, hosting a missionary from
another place so that we could expand our world-view. Lots of people
mentioned a longing to give more money away to the needy through the church,
so that we can be a conduit of hope and healing to more of God's children.
Truly
tithing as a whole church was mentioned as a worthy goal. We'd like
to be able to give scholarships for camps, conferences and spiritual growth
events. Another suggestion that emerged was giving a grant to someone
who would be then free to pursue education or training or hands-on work
in some justice field. One person suggested that if we had as much
as we needed, we'd better give 99% of it away so that we could stay spiritually
healthy.
There were several favorable comments about canceling the Capital Campaign,
if we had all the money we needed now to do repairs and remodeling.
I think the leadership would be amenable that-just toss a few hundred
thousand extra in the plate and we'll bag it!
I've just given you a sampling of the ideas we came up with on the spur
of the moment. There are other ideas on your flier. One of
the amazing things about this exercise is that almost all the things we
thought of were attainable-these weren't just wacko, pie-in-the-sky notions.
We've definitely got some creative thinking going on the spending for
ministry side of the equation. What we need at this point is some
creative thinking on the giving side of the equation.
Yup, creative thinking. We have to let our imaginations out of the
cage on giving as well as on spending. There's a cage our culture
puts us in that we're so used to we can hardly perceive it any more.
That's the idea that there is never "enough." We live
in a time when we are constantly exposed to an endless barrage of marketing,
and the underlying message of marketing is that you don't have enough.
You don't have enough room, luxury, and power in your car; you don't have
enough clothes to look sharp; you don't have enough sex appeal to attract
or hang onto your mate; and so on. Those are the bars of the cage,
and the beams are made out of fear that you don't have enough to send
your kids to a top-notch college so they can get a great job and be happy
and successful; and you don't have enough saved for your retirement to
pay for your healthcare should you be the next person recognized in the
Guiness record book for oldest person alive. A thousand times a
day you are receiving the message that you don't have enough.
How can you possibly give money away when you don't have enough?
We have to be able to bring that cage into focus and recognize its power
over our imaginations. And then listen to an alternative worldview
that comes from this collection of truth-telling we call scripture: "God
is able to provide for you with every blessing in abundance, so that by
always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every
good work." [2 Corinthians 9:8] We are among the fortunate
who have enough to eat, a change of clothes, watertight shelters to live
in, access to doctors, clean air to breathe and clean water to drink.
That's all that three-quarters of the world longs for, and we've got it.
Of course we have enough, and enough to share.
Abundantly.
Paul reminds us in the part of 2 Corinthians we heard this morning that
everyone, absolutely everyone, is able to be generous. That's because
we give according to what we have, not according to what we don't have.
What qualifies as generosity-giving until it inspires within us genuine
joy-varies among people according to what they have. A ten-dollar
gift from one of limited means is more generous than a thousand dollar
gift from someone with buckets of money. We are invited (not compelled)
to give generously so that our sharing can be a source of joy rather than
drudgery or embarrassment. How do we know when we've been generous?
When we give a little more than is easy to give, and when we feel pleased
rather than ashamed of what we have given. Generosity gives us just
a hint of what it is like to be God, abundantly pouring out blessings
on the earth, scattering seed and watching for the harvest of righteousness.
Giving puts us in the grace loop. We receive the blessings of this
sweet life, embracing our loved ones, savoring our food, taking pleasure
in the panorama of natural beauty before our eyes, breathing in and out.
We receive these blessings, and many besides, and we give thanks, and
we look for ways to share the overflow of grace with others. Sharing
dollars and cents is just one way we have of receiving grace and passing
it on. But to do so in the Christian life is indispensable, because
to give is a regular reminder of having received in the first place, and
our spirits need a way to respond to overflowing grace. You see,
our spirits need not just to fill up with grace but to spill over, to
fill up and spill over. Giving
is a channel that keeps grace moving freshly through heart, mind, and
soul.
I hope these ideas have stimulated your creative thinking about giving.
We're all naturally selfish, selfishness being the human instinct for
self-preservation gone wild. We have to engage in creative thinking,
Creator thinking, in order to keep selfishness at a manageable level.
Selfishness is another cage from which Jesus Christ sets us free, as we
follow Christ into a life that pours itself out, joyfully, cheerfully,
abundantly.
Our conversations together in the last six weeks reveal that we'd like
to be a church that pours itself out, joyfully, cheerfully, and abundantly.
We're drawn to a myriad of ways we might share the grace of God with those
in need in our community. We're drawn to a multitude of ministries
that will take us more deeply into the spiritual life. Our imaginations
have been fired up by what it means to be good stewards of this property
and of the tradition that has been handed down to us by our forbears.
We are poised for a revival of our spirited ministry here at the corner
of Winslow Way and Madison.
I attended a revival while my father was between surgeries in Spokane
last month. It wasn't a Christian revival-it was a performance of
Riverdance. I was quite moved by what was written in the program
about Riverdance, which is revival of traditional Irish dance fused with
contemporary music, instruments, dance forms and technology. The
program talked about how traditional dancing starts out as an expression
of togetherness, conveying a sense of belonging. The moves, rhythms
and patterns are passed down from generation to generation with a quiet
confidence that this community will always exist, that these rituals will
survive.
But of course the communities from which traditions rise don't just survive.
They change. New influences come in. People move out and move
in, and they take their music, their dances, and their stories with them.
And those things no longer say what the used to. They no longer
express a stable, familiar world. The ears have to tune into new
sounds. The feet have to move to new, and at first strange, rhythms.
The stories have to connect with new experiences. All traditional
cultures have faced this challenge, and are led to ask how we are to relate
to the past, and what the culture we inherited from our ancestors means
now that the world that shaped them is slipping away.
People are faced with an unhappy choice. They can try to preserve
their traditional culture by putting up barriers against the outside world
and trying to resist change. Or they can go with the flow, forget
the past and melt into a bland, generic culture where everything is the
same and nothing much has depth. One way leads to isolation and
hostility, the other to a nagging sense of loss.
But there is another possibility. It is to carry what you have from
the past on an open-ended journey, showing it off, throwing it open, making
it into a point of contact rather than a point of honor. You can
preserve a tradition by letting it live, breathe, and change. New
impulses are absorbed into old frameworks and old ideas that seemed to
be buried suddenly re-emerge with a new meaning and new urgency.
The tradition is not wiped out but re-energized. The roots of the
old ways are watered and revived. And such an open-ended journey
becomes part of the best tradition of all-the tradition of making old
things new.
That's what's going on here. We're honoring the legacy
of our ancestors in faith, the pioneers who birthed this church out of
nothing but a field of stumps and the grace of God, through their generosity
and conviction. We're taking stock of our present ministry, its
strengths and weaknesses, and we're facing forward. We share a deep
desire to have the stories of faith that have watered our roots connect
with new generations of Christians, and we long for grace and peace to
touch even those around us who will never be part of our congregation.
We're honoring the tradition of faith by letting it live and breathe and
change among us.
As you prepare to make your commitment today, giving, as Paul says, as
you have made up your mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, hear
this promise Paul made to his companions about to make their gifts: "God
who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply
your seed for sowing and increase the harvest of your righteousness.
You will be enriched in every way for your great generosity, which will
produce thanksgiving to God through us; for the rendering of this ministry
not only supplies the needs of the saints, but also overflows with many
thanksgivings to God." [2 Corinthians 9:10-12]
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