ALL SAINTS CHURCH

Did you ever play “What if?”  I remember in seminary a number of professors and students asked the question, “What would you do if Jesus’ bones were conclusively found?”  The question provoked lots of lively and revealing discussion about what we really want in life and the roll Christianity has on our lives.  Of course the discussion ended with the grateful realization that this would not be possible and that we should all get back to the business of learning and proclaiming the gospel.

Recently, I had a discussion with a colleague about advertising a stewardship event. We wondered, if we told people we were going to discuss stewardship on a particular Sunday, would people be more or less likely to attend church. I know if I hear that Public Radio or Television is having a fund raising weekend I am more likely to change stations. It has been a long time since I found the Labor Day Telethon even of passing interest, let alone entertainment.

So, why would we expect people to want to discuss or hear about stewardship in Church. Don’t most people feel their lives are already too demanding?  If I come to church, don’t I just want to hear something like, “Come unto me all ye that labor and are heavy ladened, and I will give you rest?” The one thing I don’t want to hear is, “We need more money.”

Fund-raising says, we have a service from which you and your family benefit and we need your generosity. Stewardship starts with you and your core identity. From the perspective of faith, we speak about nothing less that the foundation of our existence.  We speak about the spiritual, psychic and philosophical underpinnings of the human condition.  If you want simple answers, jingoism or feel-good platitudes the church should feel alien to you. The Church is founded on the sacrificial love of a young man who faced his mortality with courage emanating from the deepest recesses of his soul and its connection to his God.  We are those people who are called to follow in his footsteps, i.e. finding our life in losing it for others.

Stewardship asks, “How deep are we willing to go?  How aware do we want to be of our lives?  To what degree am I serving myself or alternatively, making myself responsive to God?” On the surface, it may look like fund-raising, but it is as different as comparing Shakespeare to a newspaper tabloid.  There may be nothing wrong with the tabloid, but it doesn’t expand your horizons and it doesn’t challenge your views about yourself and your world.

Yes, Virginia, we are going to speak about stewardship, but we are not going to talk about fundraising or church finances (all in due time!). Now it can be told! This Sunday we are planning an adult forum about stewardship.  We are going to talk about our relation to what we possess and what possesses us.  How do we find spiritual freedom in an economy that works by stimulating our consumer appetites and relies on our need for retail therapy to keep the wheels rolling?

We invite you to join us, this Sunday and every Sunday.  It’s always about going deeper, finding meaning, connection, community and ultimately love and salvation.  It’s always about stewardship and discipleship.  It’s always about “working out our (plural) salvation with fear and trembling.”  As the song says, “Who could ask for anything more?”

I remember a professor who once said to me that my mistake was that I thought the Kingdom of God and the Church were synonymous.  (I think he said that to all the seminarians!) His point was that God’s Reign is not limited to the church. Indeed, God’s presence will manifest itself wherever God chooses.  Perhaps this is what Jesus meant when he said if you try to silence these people, even these stones will cry out in adoration.

Every day I run across people who tell me they have outgrown church and religion.  It meant something to them as children, but now as adults, they don’t have time for such stories and distractions.  For many, church is replaced by charities and movies, gardens, crossword puzzles and “Meet the Press”.  “I am a good person” I hear on a regular basis. It is as if culture
has taken the best of religion and cast off the excess.

Certainly we are familiar with people taking yoga classes or meditation classes and having no clue as to the root belief systems that gave rise to them.  We might like certain kinds of music that have a gospel and soul feeling to them and yet have no idea about the role this music played in people’s lives in generations past.  We enjoy paintings and sculpture and architecture as if we were anthropologists visiting a bygone time. 12 step programs offer community and confession and refer to a  higher power, but certainly a non-creedal power and one that is open to each person’s interpretation.  Movies often have themes of supernatural forces that need to be obeyed.  Science fiction entertains with mythical, ageless battles between good and evil.  Ethically, I think, most people would ascribe to the golden rule, i.e. “Do unto others, as you would have them do unto you.”  Psychologically, people have been clued into looking for the unknown forces that guide their lives, including the interpretation of dreams and symbols.  All of these derive from our storehouse of faith, yet maintain little or no memory or connection to our faith.

It seems that organized religion has been “picked over” and assimilated into culture.  Somehow it feels like the keepers of the store have gone on  vacation and allowed a wholesale looting (a recurring biblical theme). Without the “store” the culture would have been poorer indeed. But I believe, with the “store” intact and operational, there is a profoundly
greater good available in the apostolic gathering, than in the disjointed exercise of the individual parts.

Each piece is less than the whole.  Each piece, as beautiful and important as it may be, misses the beauty, the depth and the power of the original vision.  Our  gospel calls for nothing less than the authentic transformation of individuals and society.  Our gospel speaks about the eternal verities of life and death and how to find meaning, love, joy and justice and community in this world.  When faithfully practiced, our religion is a powerful witness to God’s love and compassion for humankind.  We have been entrusted with symbols and teachings that can enliven the imagination, expand the soul, and ennoble the will.

The vision of Jesus and Paul and the Apostles was nothing less than a universal vision; a tearing down of every barrier that divides us from each other, our selves and our God.  This vision is built on the power of the resurrection, which saw God’s will as inviting every person to the same banquet table of grace and love. Their vision and their life was based on the belief that heaven was indeed being made manifest on earth. Their task was to make this process conscious.

Perhaps God has a dialectical way of operating.  Those in power always seem to lose their vision.  Indeed, each generation and each of us from time to  time loses it!  It may look like God has disappeared, but I believe God is always seeking “new wine skins” to inhabit and in so doing calls the rich and the poor, the powerful and the weak to the same joyous banquet of love and justice that is symbolically prefigured in our Eucharist.

I invite each of you to the joyful celebration of the Eucharist, the celebration of the inbreaking of God’s reign here on earth as it is in heaven.