Matthew 6:24-34
I’m grateful for the invitation to come and be part of your worship this morning. It didn’t take me very long to accept the invitation. Ministers don’t get out much, you know, that is away from their home congregation on a Sunday morning, and the opportunity to visit at Rock Spring was appealing for several reasons. Sojourners and Rock Spring are in some obvious ways very different congregations. You are a well-established, large and thriving congregation. We are a young, much more, shall we say, intimate congregation, in many ways still finding our way in the world.
But I feel like we’re connected in lots of ways too. We are both churches, I think it is fair to say, that have a bit of a reputation, in Rock Spring’s case certainly a positive reputation, in Sojourners’ case I like to think what is said about us is also generally positive. We, some of us at Sojourners anyway, are certainly aware of Rock Spring’s generous and faithful support of the denomination, and we know that that kind of support is what made Sojourners possible. So I am glad to have the chance to come and say thank you for that generosity. There are a bunch of people, including myself, whose lives have been changed for the better because there is a Sojourners, and the kind of giving that Rock Spring does makes Sojourners and other places like Sojourners possible. So thank you for that. That’s a first order of business.
I also feel connected to Rock Spring because we share some important values…the need to work and witness for justice and fairness for lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgendered people, for instance. I want you to know that Janet Parker’s prize-winning sermon, The Ties That Bind, is posted on our bulletin board at Sojourners and we know that you have taken a stand as a congregation for marriage equality, as have we. We are aware that in this way and in many others we at Sojourners have soul sisters and brothers at Rock Spring.
I am also aware that those of us in the UCC in Virginia who might have similar attitudes on public issues are divided by being in different associations and even different conferences and it is not always easy to join hands in ways that we might like. Right now I wish it were easier to rally support for federal recognition for the Virginia Indian tribes. That’s just an issue that’s of concern to me at the moment. Of course there are many others, and I do hope to work on finding some ways to bring the UCC churches of Virginia a little bit more together on matters of public policy in the state of Virginia. In the meantime, it’s good to spend a few hours with a church that I wish we were able to be in closer working relationship with on a regular basis.
And then of course there are some personal connections. When I mentioned at Sojourners a few weeks ago that I would be coming here today, one of our more active members sought me out after the service to tell me that she had grown up a block from this church and that it was a great church. She grew up as a Virginia Baptist so she never was a member at Rock Spring, but she has had a positive view of this church all her life of some 60 years. And of course Sara Fitzgerald, being president of the Central Atlantic Conference, is my boss, my mentor is more like it, so it’s good to experience first hand the church that I know is so important to her. There are all sorts of good reasons why coming to Rock Spring this morning appealed to me.
However…there is a however to all this…I have to say that while I accepted the invitation to come here readily I also accepted it somewhat nervously. Chuck made it clear when he first approached me about this that this was part of stewardship season at Rock Spring, that Rock Spring had adopted some ambitious goals and faced some challenges in this area, and that the hope was that I would participate in the stewardship emphasis by bringing an outside perspective to bear on the theme of stewardship, and so even as I was saying yes, that I would like to come, I was also already wondering to myself what I had to say to Rock Spring UCC about stewardship.
I’m guessing that Chuck Wildman offers this church really strong leadership in the area of stewardship. I also know that Rob Peters, while he was working with us on a capital campaign at Sojourners was helping out at Rock Spring, and Rob is one of the resident experts on stewardship matters in the Central Atlantic Conference. I really didn’t think I would be able to say anything in the way of being persuasive about stewardship that many others, not just Chuck and Rob, have not already said.
Chuck and Sara both suggested to me that I might speak of the Sojourners experience, which is certainly something I can do, but which doesn’t make me any more confident about the stewardship message that I might bring to Rock Spring. Viewed from the outside, I think Sojourners does look like a success story from the stewardship angle as well as others. And frankly sometimes when we stand back from ourselves and look at what we have been able to do over the last few years, we are amazed at ourselves. When the opportunity to buy a building presented itself back in the summer of 2004, the fairly small group of people who made up Sojourners at the time raised $80,000 in direct contributions in two weeks to make a down payment on the building, and we followed that up with a capital campaign that raised almost 400,000 in pledges, so that we could qualify for a loan of 870,000 from denominational funds. Whether or not other people were impressed with what we were able to do, and I think some were, we were pretty impressed with ourselves…on the one hand.
On the other hand, on the ground, the everyday reality is pretty scary. We have to pay that money back, and it’s not so clear right now how we’re going to do that.. We are committed as part of the sale of the property to buy an additional property at a locked in price with money we have not yet raised and aren’t sure where it’s going to come from. We would like to do a few things with what money we have besides pay for buildings. For the first time in our history last year we spent more than we took in, and we will do that again this year. We are a somewhat larger, but still relatively small, group of people who are not all by any means people of means.
Insofar as stewardship goes, in spite of the difference in the size of the numbers involved, again there may be some similarity between Rock Spring and Sojourners, both of us churches that have some notable strengths and accomplishments in the area of stewardship but that are currently feeling stretched a bit by some plans and commitments that are not so easily accomplished. Both of us, I gather, are choosing to live beyond our respective comfort zones. I know Sojourners is. So I could come here and say to you something like, “Well, ain’t this fun, what both of our churches are trying to do,” but as for having any secrets of success to impart, not so much.
But beyond all this, there was another reason I was nervous about accepting the invitation to bring a stewardship message with me this morning, and here we’re getting down really to more the crux of the matter. Frankly, I don’t like to do stewardship sermons and I avoid them whenever possible. I am one of those people who are understandably criticized by those who are conscientious advocates of responsible stewardship. I know their arguments, the conscientious advocates. I know that it is not un-Biblical to talk about money. I know that Jesus talked about money more than he talked about any other single topic and arguably more than he talked about all other topics combined. This morning’s reading is just one of many examples. I know it is not un-spiritual to talk about money, that our attitudes toward money go to the very core of our ideas and our feelings about faith and that far from avoiding the topic we should be devoting ourselves to finding ways to talk about money that are honest and real and heartfelt and that are not badgering or ridden with guilt or defensiveness. I know those things, and I remain, I admit, someone who tends to avoid talking about stewardship, especially in October and November as part of fund-raising drives, and I even have something to say in my own defense.
Let me say this as plainly as I can. We all probably ought to be uncomfortable and reluctant in asking for money for the church. And not just because most of us find it sort of an unpleasant task, not because it’s sensitive and personal and tricky, but because the church as such, the church as an organization, the church as an institution does not really have a legitimate claim on our money, or our time, or our allegiance.
That is what I believe, and it just doesn’t sound much like a stewardship message, does it? At least not if you assume, as we often do assume, that stewardship is about making a pitch on behalf of the church: why you should feel good about giving money to this organization, the good things the church does, what the needs are, and why therefore we should be stretching ourselves to increase our giving to the church and give as much as we can possibly see our way clear to give. That’s one way of looking at stewardship, and it’s not a wrong way. Let me emphasize that. It’s really not a wrong way. I have spent my whole life vocationally in the church. It has provided me with a living. In a much deeper sense it has given me life in so many ways. I said before that Sojournersspecifically changed my life for the better, and I meant it. I am deeply grateful to the church in general and toSojourners in particular at many levels, and I truly do not believe there is anything wrong with appealing for money for the church…on the one hand.
But there is another way to look at things. It’s a little like the optical illusions where there is some kind of drawing and when you first look at it you see one thing but if you blink real hard or squint in a certain way you see something entirely different. So here is this picture of the church, let’s say Sojourners United Church of Christ, a fine, worthwhile religious organization that is still in the early stages of its life, and it has certain things it wants to do, has bills to pay, and it’s appealing for support. But what if we blink and see a whole different picture?
What if the church in this other picture has no legitimate claim to make on behalf of itself? What if the purpose of the church is not to try to put itself in a good, solid financial position or make itself a healthy, thriving organization? What if the church at every point tried to communicate the notion that we who are in and of the church are not called to make commitments to the church? What if the heart of the church’s message were that the church is not very important, that what’s important are other things.
Jesus said, “Seek first the realm of God.” His vision was not a vision of a church.
The church as such does not really have a claim to make on us. None of us really is claimed by the church. We are, I hope, claimed by something, but it is not the church. It is something else: a still small voice, a certain kind of pull on our lives, a call, a calling. We might say, almost too casually, that we are not claimed by the church but by God. Or, we might not be able so easily to give a name either to our calling or the One who calls. But whatever our calling is, it is not the church This is not a matter of great theological insight and it doesn’t require any original or very deep thinking from us. At their best churches are just vehicles, not ends in themselves. At their worst, they offer themselves as false gods, asking a kind of loyalty they do not deserve. And always, whether it is at its worst or at its best, the church, any church, all churches run the danger of domesticating the spirit of God, trying to put it into a creed, make it into a program, take up a collection, assign it to a committee.
In this other way of seeing things we ought to be uncomfortable and reluctant about stewardship. Stewardship campaigns tend to be about church and church is not what Christians are supposed to be about. Church is not what church is about, if that makes any sense, and I think it does.
This is not so much an optical illusion as it is a paradox. And it does give me a feeling of having a sort of a split personality. How do we, how do I, continue to be committed to the church, to Sojourners, where my heart is, where I do want the church, my church, to succeed, where I believe it is important for a place like Sojourners to succeed, how do I keep my commitment to this church and at the same time know that I am not to be committed to this church, to any church? It is not such an easy thing, but it is important. If we don’t know that the church we are being asked to give money to has no real claim on us but that if we give money to the church it is because something else has claimed us, if we don’t know that, I believe we are not in the right place, spiritually speaking.
I have to say something else about Sojourners. There are quite a few people at Sojourners who are not really church people, who aren’t so sure about the beliefs they associate with the church, who may have been hurt or turned off by the church somewhere along the way, or who just have not been real active in church life for a long time. We specifically want to be a welcoming place for such people, but that does present some challenges in terms of stewardship. There are a lot of us at Sojourners, I include myself in this at least sometimes, who don’t necessarily find it so easy to love the church, who have issues with churches. There are a lot of us who are pretty anti-institutional. There are fewer people than you might find at some other churches who see church giving as part of their life style. The idea of tithing is not in the genes of many people at Sojourners and the suggestion that it is a good thing doesn’t carry a lot of weight with a lot of people. For a lot of reasons, we can be a pretty touch group to work with on stewardship.
But there is an up side to all this as well. When we are at our best, the negative associations that some people may have with “church” have the positive effect of reminding us that it is not our core purpose to build up a church but to seek the reign of God, to patiently, persistently, little by little work away at making a beloved community come into existence. The purpose of our coming together is not to make Sojourners thrive, or Rock Spring to thrive, and if that did ever truly become our purpose, we would have lost our heart and soul. This is my stewardship message this morning, such as it is: that our lives depend, our churchly lives depend, on having this kind of split personality, that we pursue our various goals energetically, as if the church were everything and nothing at the same time. I do wish you success. Pray for us at Sojourners. We will pray for you. Amen.