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A Congregation Of The "Never place a period where God has placed a comma." - Gracie Allen |
From October 15, 2006 A young man acquires an enormous tract of land. Undeveloped, it is fertile and every time he looks out on it, his heart sings. Wild and wonderful, the young man has a particular vision for it. So he slowly begins clearing his land of growth. When he done, he hauls the grandest of the felled trees to the sawmill where they are transformed into fence posts and lumber. Then he returns to his land and proceeds to build a home that looks out over the rolling hills that gleam with promise. Settled in, the man's children play happily along the creek bed while he turns his attention to the property's enormous perimeter. He digs holes and plants posts, and then builds, one slat at a time, a fence that circles his land, one that is as striking as it is sturdy. Then the man sets to tilling the land, planting huge fields of hay and alfalfa which grow lush in the rich soil. At season's end, he harvests his bounty and stores it with care in the great barn at the far end of his property. Then winter comes and land and man both rest. This is the time for fires in the hearth and teaching songs to his children, songs he learned from the land as he worked it. One spring after his planting is done, the man leaves his home and family and goes out into the world. When he returns, with him are four beautiful mares and a handsome stallion. Each morning he stands on his porch and watches them graze in the pastureland. Just wait, he reminds himself. Just wait and soon colts will be frolicking in the fields. The next year, the man does the same. He plants again, he leaves again, and he returns again with a few more mares and another stallion. This rhythm continues for years until the man finally steps back and admires what has come from nothing. Patience and persistence have paid off. His pastures are full of the finest equestrian stock, his barns bulge with more than enough to see his horses through the hardest of winters. Life could not be more perfect. Except for one thing. The man calls his now-grown children to his side. "Daughter," he says throwing his arm around her shoulder. "Son," he says turning to the young man who is his spitting image. "As far as you can see is the pasture land I bought and cleared with my very own hands. The fence I built myself, and these green fields I have planted and tended and harvested since you were tots. These horses I hand-picked and bred. Now they are famous the world around, and number higher than I can count. All this has been my passion and my purpose. And now, because I love you more than life itself, I hand it over to you. All of it. Do with it whatever you desire." And so what do they do, these children? Do they sell? Do they stay? Do they divide the property? Or do they share it? As their father said, they can do whatever they wish. Borne of love and devotion, sweat and time, their gift came with not one single string attached. *************************** Our faith is founded on a story. A sacred story. One we often forget in this world that believes in and praises self-made men and their bootstrap accomplishments. Our faith is founded on a story not unlike the one today, a story from Genesis that tells us that into our hands is placed a good gift we have done nothing to earn or deserve. Our faith begins with this profound proclamation: Our patient God, a kind and caring God, a God whose joy it is to create, this good God creates only to give creation away to us, God's children. God's hope is that we will care for and be careful with what has been given. And yet, the giving is without condition; God has no secret plan to reclaim this gift if we do not use it in pleasing ways. Like the father in our parable, God gives to us trusting the giving, trusting that you and I will recognize not only the value of the gift but the pure love its giver has for us. Because ours is a congregation that has not been in the habit of spending time each fall, as many churches do, thinking together about our response to God's gracious giving, it is essential that we be intentional about beginning at the beginning. We are, Genesis tells us, stewards of all creation. The ones in whose hands God has entrusted all things. To us is given the power to decide the hows, the whys, and the whens to which creation will be put to use. Just using the word stewardship, for a congregation that only rarely does, just to speak of stewardship can cause us to go in seventy different directions if we are not careful about beginning at the beginning. When we are not careful about our use of the word stewardship, one of us may quickly presume we're referring to a bill in the offering plate as if it were the price of admission. Another one of us may associate stewardship with the kind of fundraising that radio stations and charities do. Someone else may associate stewardship with uncomfortable arm-twisting that happened some other place and time. Someone else may hear a reference to stewardship and think of the light bill. Or an awkward call from the Nominating Committee. Not often enough in the church, any church, do God's people hear the word stewardship and immediately think "yippee!" And yet what better response is there? Because by being stewards you and I have very concrete ways to give witness to our deep and joyful awareness that everything we have, everything we are, every breath even, is God's gracious gift. Despite what the world around us might say, our riches--riches of experience, relationship, opportunity, skills and ability and even personal wealth--our riches are not derived from our own accomplishment, our own genius or persistence, our own focused discipline and determined willpower. Our riches, yours and mine, our riches are ever and always the result of God's incomparable, incomprehensible graciousness. Somewhere in my mid-twenties, having graduated with honors twice and having begun a successful career, I began priding myself on my accomplishments and my promise. Who knows how long I pranced about, patting myself on the back for who I was and what I was doing? But it wasn't long before something inside nudged me and I began to follow the threads of the present backwards in time. In my family it had always been understood that I would go to college and become a successful person. How could I take credit for that? How could I congratulate myself for the fact that I had been born into a family that was reasonably bright and not afraid to work hard? How could I praise myself for education gained and opportunities seized when I had been born in a prospering nation committed to public schooling? You see where this is headed, of course. My back-patting was a vain pursuit. Sure, I was making something of myself. But that self was not self-made. I had only chosen to do something with what I was given. And even that, even that, was an inclination placed inside me by God and then nurtured by parents, friends, and teachers throughout the course of my life. "With what shall I come before the Lord," the prophet Micah asks, speaking words each human heart inevitably asks. "With what shall I come before the Lord?" How will I honor the God who has honored me with life and all manner of blessing? This is a question I cannot answer for you. But it is a question I invite you to pray over in the coming weeks. Set aside time each day to sit with God. Experience the presence of the God who made you and blesses you. And from that holy place, that loving space, explore with God the genuine gesture of thanks to which you feel called. As you pray, be suspicious of the quick answer, the reflective reply. Often those come from ourselves and not our conversations with God. As you sit with God, the God who loves you and who gives to you, ask this: when that moment comes in worship next month, that moment when I dedicate my estimate of giving for the coming year, with what shall I come before you, my Lord? With what promises will I come? With what promise of time shared joyfully with this, my church? With what offering of talent for this particular expression of the Body of Christ? With what pledge of financial support? With what shall I come, my Lord? Shall I come with a heart brimming with praise and a spirit welling up with pure and humbled gratitude? Shall I come certain that I am loved, my gift is an expression of my fullest praise, my abiding thanks? A person could, if he or she wished, come with something smaller. A sense of obligation, perhaps. A plan to offer up what represents one's fair share. A gift of time, talent, and treasure determined by glances at the checkbook and calendar rather than the heart and soul. Even without a season of stewardship, you and I ask: with what shall I come before this Lord who has, for no reason other than love, given me God's own best? With what shall I come? Whatever your response, may it give you deep peace and bring you great joy. ©
Rev. Karen Winkel |
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