A God Worth the Wait

A God Worth the Wait

Text:  Matthew 3:1-12

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 12-11-2016)

It is not uncommon for me to run across victims of what I would call, “God abuse.” These victims have listened to pastors, mostly from conservative and fundamentalist pulpits, portray God as a vindictive bully and hateful to all but the select few. The God portrayed by these pastors is mean and petty and insists we be the same. Many good people no longer darken the doors of any church because they anticipate another dose of “God abuse.” I do not blame them. I would stay away as well.

To be fair, though, progressive pulpits advance their own form of “God abuse.” Much too often, progressive pulpits preach a laissez-faire God, who does not commands our awe, demand our attention, or call us to action. This God is removed from our daily affairs and if present at all, is yawning while sipping an espresso, trying to stay awake while listening to our dispassionate prayers. This God is nice and tame and largely a bore.

For me and all my progressive theological kin, it is a good thing that Cousin Matthew is back, has unpacked his large biblical suitcase and is planning to stay with us for a year. The God we meet in Matthew could never be accused of being a “vindictive bully,” but neither is this God an absentee or disinterested parent, distant and aloof, happy for us to do whatever we like, whenever we want to do it. The God we meet in Matthew is not a bore. This God is worth the wait.

No one points to this God with greater passion and precision than John the Baptist. I love the way that esteemed preacher, Tom Long, describes this oddly attired prophet:   “As the door to a new era swings open, John the Baptist is the ideal

hinge. . . His preaching style is vintage Old Israel; his message paves the way for the New Israel. He appears to have wandered out of the some retirement home for old prophets, but he announces the arrival of one who is even greater than the prophets. 

          “Everything is about to change. The old is passing away; the new presses in. The long, long night of hopelessness is coming to an end, and John the Baptist is the rooster who awakens the sleeping world with dawn’s excited cry” (Tom Long, Matthew, Westminster Bible Companion, p. 25).

 And just what is that dawn cry? Standing knee deep in the Jordan, “We all discover  . . . not only that we are cherished for who we are, but that we are responsible for what we do,” writes David Bartlett. “If God loves me enough to welcome me into Christ’s family, then God loves me enough to expect something of me” (Feasting on the Word, Year A, Volume 4, p. 46).

The late Yale preacher and teacher of preachers, William Muehl, points to such a God in this Advent story, “One December afternoon . . . a group of parents stood in the lobby of a nursery school waiting to claim their children after the last pre-Christmas class session. As the youngsters ran from their lockers, each one carried in his hands the ‘surprise’, the brightly wrapped package on which he had been working diligently for weeks. One small boy, trying to run, put on his coat, and wave to his parents, all at the same time, slipped and fell. The ‘surprise’ flew from his grasp, landed on the floor and broke with an obvious ceramic crash.

          “The child . . . began to cry inconsolably. His father, trying to minimize the incident and comfort the boy, patted his head and murmured, ‘Now, that’s all right son. It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t matter at all’.

          “But the child’s mother, somewhat wiser in such situations, swept the boy into her arms and said, ‘Oh, but it does matter. It matters a great deal’. And she wept with her son” (Muehl, Why Preach? Why Listen? P. 82).

          At dawn, John the Baptist cries: “Your relationship with God matters. It matters a great deal.” For those who think of faith as a family heirloom, something to which they are genetically entitled, John says, “Think again. God is able from these stones to raise up children to Abraham.” For those who think of faith as an accessory to wear on special occasions and certain holidays, John says, “Think again. One more powerful than I . . . will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.”

The God we meet in John’s pulpit is no one’s entitlement and will be no one’s accessory. John’s God won’t be squeezed into anyone’s busy schedule. For the dawn cry from the Jordan is that the kingdom of heaven is at hand. That means that time matters and that we use every breath of the day to the glory of God; that justice matters and that we execute justice for all, but especially for the least of these; that righteousness matters and that we live righteous lives as a thankful sign to the world that the kingdom is at hand. The God to whom John points is not vindictive or boring; it is a God, who I, for one, want to know much better.  

          In my conversations with people who have nothing to do with the church or who were once active in the church but are no longer, I hear a common lament. Some are angry about something they have heard or how they have been treated or mistreated. Many speak of times when they were ignored in a moment of need.

The most common lament that I hear from those who are no longer in church is one of profound “apathy.” They feel no compelling reason to change anything that they now do, much less give up a perfectly fine Sunday morning, or any other time during the week, to worship God and commit to a life of Christian service. As they explain to me, the God they have met in too many fundamentalist pulpits is a vindictive bully, while the God they have met in too many progressive pulpits is hardly worth the wait.

I wonder what would happen if they were to encounter the God we meet in John the Baptist’s pulpit. His God loves us enough to burn away all the sorry excuses that keep us as casual spectators rather than fervent disciples. His God is no permissive pushover parent who wants us to do whatever makes us happy; but a doggedly engaged parent who loves us and cares for us enough to expect us to repent. 

In too many progressive pulpits, the meaning of “repent” is diluted to feeling sorry for what you have done or guilty about your past. That does not scratch the surface of what “the Baptist” means when he roars:  “Repent.” To “repent,” for John, is to say goodbye to one way of living in order to embrace the radical, in-breaking vision of God. It is live each day with confidence that “the kingdom of heaven” will not arrive one day in some distant future, but that the “kingdom of heaven is at hand.”

In Matthew’s Gospel, something decisive happened in that Bethlehem manger, in that Palestinian wilderness, on that Jerusalem cross, and on that first Easter morning. By the power of God’s Spirit, the risen Jesus is at work in our lives right now, at work in this broken world right now, and God loves us like the most devoted and demanding parent that you or I have ever met. Issac Watts long ago captured the true dawn cry from John, the only real reason for repentance, “Love so amazing, so divine, Demands my soul, my life, my all.”

Now, unlike the God met in too many fundamentalist and progressive pulpits today, that is a God well worth the wait.

AMEN    

The First Christmas Carol

The First Christmas Carol

Isaiah 11:1-10

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, 12-4-2016)

What was Isaiah thinking? A peaceable kingdom? On this earth? It might make for a lovely children’s book, but it is not a reality you and I are likely to see. Ask endangered species about living in a peaceable kingdom as they are soon to be extinct through a global assault on creation. Ask leaders of the Palestinians and Israelis, of ISIS and North Korea about living in a peaceable kingdom. Ask Republican, Green Party, Democrat, and Libertarians about living in a peaceable kingdom. What was Isaiah thinking?

  Isaiah’s vision of God’s peaceable kingdom is over 2700 years old and it refuses to go away no matter how impossible we judge it. The vision begins not with the image of a healthy tree, but a rotting stump, a metaphor for anyone whose dreams have ever been pronounced dead.

In Isaiah’s vision, all that remains of the tree is a stump that is decaying into mulch. We cannot be sure of the precise time of this vision, but surely, it was a time in Israel’s life when hope for the future had been severed, hope in God’s promise of shalom was rotting like a decaying old stump. 

          So who invited Isaiah into Advent worship anyway? Who needs to hear one more thing about all the decaying stumps around us and inside us? Who needs to hear someone make another promise that you and I know is just not possible? I already hear “it is just not possible” about as much as I can stand. “It is just not possible to believe all this Jesus talk.” “It is just not possible to believe that the church can be something more than a real, old drag.” “It is just not possible to believe that God can do anything with that stump of faith that is rotting inside me.”

To most people today, you and I and churches everywhere are endangered species, if not already extinct. We are the rotting stumps. No wonder the church invites back Isaiah who has been dead for more than 2700 years to walk with us into Advent. At least, Isaiah tells the hard truth about living as a people whose hope for life and peace is like a dead, decaying stump. 

Lutheran pastor, Heidi Neumark began her ministry at the base of a decaying stump called the South Bronx. “The Bronx had international infamy as an urban desert, a landscape of withered hopes, barren of economic vitality, battered by violence, fear, and death,” writes Heidi. “The church’s membership was steadily aging. Most were resigned to the fact that their child-bearing years as a congregation were over.” (Neumark, Breathing Space, p. 11). 

You do not need to travel to New York to see “a landscape of withered hopes.” Some find it in their own mirrors each morning. It may be because they are too young for the job that they know they can do or too old for the job that they will never be given the chance to do again. It may be because they woke up this morning to an empty bed and to fresh memories of when it wasn’t. It may be because they are not the right color or of the preferred sexual orientation to live in the neighborhood where they want to live.

“It is just not possible” is the rotten refrain of the decaying stump. It is a refrain we know all too well. But before you and I buy into that wretched requiem; take notice that we lit a second candle this morning and with it Isaiah returned and not to the pulpit but to the choir.   

Looking out over a sea of “withered hope,” Isaiah sings, “A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots.”  Isaiah bounds into Advent like some singing fool, stepping around the scattered stumps within us and around us, singing, “Yes, children of God, it is possible.” He sings of a God who has a way of bringing life out of the deadliest locations, the most moribund situations, a God in whom all things are possible.

In the first few months at her church in the Bronx, Heidi spent a lot of time and money painting over graffiti on the church doors. “In walks around the neighborhood,” she writes, “I began asking teenagers and children I met if any of them would like to be part of an art class a friend had offered to help lead. It wasn’t long before a group of enthusiastic young artists came through our doors. Together we read stories from the Bible, which they then illustrated right on the doors.

“At one time, the members would have insisted that the proper place for such artwork was on a bulletin board somewhere inside, but no one could deny that this beat the graffiti. Week after week, the youth painted their hearts out on those doors. It was a joyous, messy process. In spite of all the newspapers taped down, some paint always splattered on the sidewalk, but no matter. It soon faded under the parade of feet that daily passed by, feet of people who stopped to look, to check out what was going on, to offer compliments and suggestions, and to inquire about the church. There has never been another stroke of graffiti on those doors” (Neumark, p. 11).

Isaiah continues his song, singing, “The Spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord. . . . He shall not judge by what his eyes see or decide by what his ears hear.” In the Bronx, others saw only a dying church in a dying borough; Heidi saw the Spirit of God at work. Others told Heidi as Isaiah was told, “It is just not possible. This church cannot survive.” Heidi heard a different song; she heard the crazy carol of Isaiah, that with God “all things are possible.”

In my brief time at Cove, I have learned that this congregation is anything but a dying church. I have watched fresh shoots sprouting, giving witness to what God makes possible out of what once seemed only a stump of dead possibilities. I have watched you leap over personal and political differences to care for each other and for everyone who walks through these doors. I have listened to your passion for the peacemaking power of God at work in Mexico, in Guatemala and in Haiti, in Charlottesville and Covesville. I have been moved by some who have been wounded by churches who have found a pew here and found new hope burning in their souls.

When the Advent candle of peace was lit this morning, I swear I could hear Isaiah singing, “They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.”  Long before Mary would ask, “How is all this possible?” Isaiah would sing a carol of stumps and shoots, of snakes and infants playing safely in the same crib, of peace that lasts long pass an uneasy ceasefire. Long before the star would guide the magi, Isaiah would sing the first Christmas carol about what God makes possible in the world, what God makes possible in us. 

In a world way too familiar with the refrain, “It is just not possible,” and in a church that far too often sings, “It is just not possible,” it is time to pass the microphone back to Isaiah. He has a new refrain for us to sing, a song of God’s peaceable kingdom alive in us and awaiting us all, a song of what God makes possible. Isaiah is back and he invites us to sing this carol smack in the middle of Advent. 

AMEN

Dancing to a Different Tune

Dancing to a Different Tune

Texts: Isaiah 2:1-5; Revelation 22:1-5

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 11-27-2016)

I will never sing, “O Little Town of Bethlehem” the same way. Our Palestine-Israel travel group had just passed through one of the 630 checkpoints in the Occupied Palestinian Territory to enter the little town of Bethlehem. Once we had crossed over to the Palestinian side of the Wall, the bus stopped abruptly. Our guide invited us to stand aside the Separation Wall, three times the height of the Berlin Wall. Covered with graffiti, mostly done at night, the Wall was well guarded by Israeli soldiers in a nearby turret armed with uzzis. “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight” is a chorus from the carol that ran through my mind standing next to that Bethlehem wall and it has haunted me ever since.

 I was standing in line at a Stuckey’s, a convenience and eating establishment on the main corridor of the Eastern Shore. I was working for the Virginia Council of Churches in their migrant ministry on summer during college. My job began at sunset when the migrants returned to the camp across the street from Stuckey’s, exhausted from a long day harvesting cucumbers, tomatoes, and squash.

The father and son ahead of me in line at Stuckey’s were looking across the street at the wooden shacks in disrepair that serve as seasonal homes for the migrants. The son asked the father, “What are those?” The father answered without missing a beat, “Tobacco barns.” The migrants were essential to the economy of the Eastern Shore but invisible to most people who lived there. They still are and not just on American farms, but along the U.S.-Mexico border, at the borders of Hungary and Germany, on the Sudan and South Sudan, and wherever children, women, and men are forced to flee from home for safety or for economic survival.

Amid all the recent hardline conversation about refugees, internationally and nationally, I have been reminded at how romantically Christians often observe the birth of Jesus, forgetting that in his birth story, Jesus is himself a refugee. As Matthew tells the story, after the holy family was turned away from the Inn, they were chased from Bethlehem to Egypt; they had no place to call home. In a new hymn by Tom Troeger, we hear the haunting truth of a Savior become Refugee: “The winter wind that storms the barn where Mary holds her child portends the coming brutal harm of Herod’s rage run wild” (from “The Winter Wind that Storms the Barn” by Tom Troeger and music by John R. Kleinheksel).

We live in a nation and a world of immigrants and yet we live in a nation and world running scared not only of immigrants and refugees but of everything and everyone from Palestinians to Planned Parenthood to ISIS to the drug trade to declining churches, even to vaccines. When I am scared, I do not think clearly. I react first and think and pray second. When I am with a group of scared people, I find that our language gets extreme and our positions calcify and if not physical, emotional walls are built.

It was to such a community of scared people that Isaiah wrote and generations later, the refugee, John of Patmos, would write. If any two people had good reason to run scared it was Isaiah writing hundreds of years before the birth of Jesus and John of Patmos writing a couple of generations after the death of Jesus.

The first thirty-nine chapters of Isaiah read like a wild man with multi-colored hair running down the street, holding a huge placard, screaming, “The end of the world is at hand.” No one took him seriously, but he was the only sane one in the crowd. Isaiah announced that a time of destruction and deportation of his people was coming and everyone scoffed. And yet, this same mad town crier inserted an amazing picture of what God would bring to pass after the dark times ahead.

Exiled on the island of Patmos by edict of Rome, John has an amazing vision of the future that God would bring to pass after the dark times at hand. It is hard to read the words of Isaiah and the vision of John and stay scared. It is hard to hear the words of these divine mad men and not want to get up and dance.

In recent years, an aging Roman Catholic South American priest visited the U.S. and called all people of faith to dance to a different tune than the prevailing music of fear and greed and “Black Friday” consumption. Pope Francis is an elegant dancer who daily shows us a different step, such as when he arrived in D.C. and eschewed attending an elegant state dinner, instead, to attend a holy dinner with the homeless poor.

With much talk today of mass deportations and building bigger walls, the Pope dances to a different tune, reminding us all about refugees, “Perhaps you will be challenged by their diversity, but know that they also possess resources meant to be shared. So do not be afraid to welcome them.”

“Do not be afraid” is a chorus that echoes throughout Scripture over the frequent din of fear. “Do not be afraid to welcome them,” says the Pope. Easy for the Pontiff to say. He does not have to navigate all the complexities of immigration policy, nor is he charged with protecting the safety of citizens against those who would do us harm. “Sorry, Pope Francis, we are afraid and for good reason.”

You can be sure, though, that a Pope from the Latin South is anything but naïve about the real causes for fear out there, just as Isaiah and John were not saying, “You have nothing to fear.” Isaiah, John, Pope Francis know the reality of fear, but despite our fears, they invite us to dance to a different tune, by which our fears are recognized, but they do not cause us blindly to dismiss and discard those who are different from us.  

Listen to these Advent lyrics from Isaiah and see if your feet do not begin to tap and your fear begin to fade:

All nations will stream to the mountain of God, all races, all peoples as one; From the ends of the earth to the farthest of reaches, up to God’s mountain they’ll come. Their weapons of anger will all become plowshares, pruning hooks come from their spears; Out of Zion shall go forth instruction for justice, joy will replace all their tears. O, the love of God flows down from the mountain, where war is no more. All the people, the nations, singing together, sing of God’s peace evermore! Joy flows down; let us go to the mountain of God. Love flows down, down from the Lord. Peace flows down, peace ever more!

What the prophet Isaiah could only dream, the refugee, John of Patmos, surely knew. He knew that no matter how dark the clouds hanging over the world, the church, our lives, no matter how high and oppressive the walls we build, the chorus of the old carol is finally true, “The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.”

Why? Because you and I not only follow the one born in Bethlehem, we follow the Lord of the Dance who left the tomb empty that first Easter morning. That is why we light the Advent candle of hope today. That is why we follow the Lord of the Dance into God’s beloved world, a world still consumed with fear and hatred, evil and intimidation, and even so, by God’s grace, we are invited to enter this holy season of Advent and dance to a different tune. 

AMEN

A letter from Paradise

A Letter from Paradise

Text:  Luke 23:23-33

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 11-20-2016)

Dear Mom and Dad,

I am writing to you from Paradise. You will not locate it on any map for it is a reality not bound by time and space. I hope you will find it soon enough or that it might find you, as it did me.

I have so much to say to you, things that I could never have said before now, but things that must be said. I hurt you more than I can explain and more than I can only hope that you may someday forgive. I can’t imagine the pain you endured watching me nailed to posts of wood and listening to the drunken chants of “Hang ‘em up” coming from a mean and angry crowd.

I wonder if in some ways you did not feel some relief at the end of that miserable day. The pain I put you through, though, started long before as day after day you watched helplessly as I kept company with crooks, with insurrectionists, only soon to become one myself. No child should put parents through such torture and for so long as I did and with little remorse.

Somehow, in Paradise, things are clearer than I could ever manage to see while I was with you. The sky began to clear for me, though, on your side of Paradise. It cleared while I was hanging from the cross and watching the circus of death around me. It is hard not to focus solely on what is happening to you at a the time of an execution, but the focus in that trash heap outside Jerusalem was never on me.

The crowd was not the typical group who never missed a public execution. Yes, there were the usual suspects, families with picnic baskets and bottles of wine, out to celebrate the deaths of crooked criminals, having convinced themselves that one more death would make them feel that much safer. On my own death day, if you noticed, the crowd also included the most powerful religious, political, and military leaders in Jerusalem, people who convict but who rarely spectate at executions.

The Jerusalem leaders came to our field of crosses not so much to make sure I died, but that he died. Of everyone in the crowd, they were the one shouting the loudest. “Save yourself, Messiah!” “If you are the mighty King of the Jews, save us from Mighty Rome.” Even a fellow thief on a nearby cross, used his few breaths to shout, “Save yourself and us, for that matter!”

I thought to myself, “Save us from what?” “Why save us?” was something I also thought. As you are painfully aware, I was guilty. There was no saving me from that hard and ugly truth. Still they shouted:  “Save us!” Most of the shouts were not serious. They were terrible taunts of the one beside me, also bleeding from every pore of his body, a so-called “Savior” who could not manage to even save himself. They shouted their obscenities as if he was getting exactly what he deserved.

I did not join them. I can’t tell you what it was that made me say what I finally said, made me not join in the heated chorus of hate. It wasn’t because I was above their petty, ignorant, chants. I was a criminal. Maybe that was it. Something about a criminal knows another criminal, as if both are wearing an unmistakable badge of dishonor. There was nothing criminal about this man. I even heard him cry out, “Forgive, forgive them, for they have no idea what they are doing.” He prayed for the very ones who were executing him. Trust me, I did not join him.

 To this day, I do not know why I did not join the chorus. How did I know that there was so much more to this man than could be contained by a cross? What I did know is that I was not going to ask him to save me. Save me for what? Save me from what was coming to me until I found myself up here again a few years later? I did not want him to save me. I wanted so much more. So, I asked him. I asked more of him than I had ever asked of anyone. I asked more than I even knew I was asking. 

I asked him to “remember me.” I don’t know if you were close enough at that moment to hear me utter those words. If you were, I can only imagine you thought that the pain had made me lose my mind. Asking another dying man to “remember” must have sounded like asking a sheep to dance.  

As you know, I had never been much of a believer in God. It seemed like a game for simple fools and I may have been a criminal, but I was no fool. I listened to this man hanging next to me and somehow it finally made sense, all this God talk. Somehow I knew that I did not have to go looking for God, God was hanging next to me on a cross. This God was not the powerful tyrant of my childhood. I had left that God behind years ago. No, this God was far more powerful than any tyrant. This God was willing to love and forgive, even the very ones dealing in death.

So, I asked him to “remember me” and he said something that still brings chills to me. He said, “Today, you will be with me in Paradise.” And, he kept his word. I did join him but I can no more explain Paradise to you now than I could when he first spoke those words to me. The best I can manage is to say that Paradise is being known by God, God finding us even when do not know that we are lost.

Whatever sense you make of your own lives all these years later and whatever grief over me still grips you, I ask you not to remember that horrible day, but to remember the one who was hanging next to me. He spoke words of forgiveness that only made the crowd laugh that much louder. He meant every word, including his promise for me to join him in Paradise.

Mom and Dad, I do not know if you still pray, but if you do, I commend a simple prayer that opened a new reality to me. I prayed that he remember me someday, when he came into his kingdom. He answered me not “someday” but “today.”

I write you today hoping that you will pray the same words I prayed that dreadful day. Pray “remember me.” When you do, you might well find yourself with one foot already in what is my home, in a place called Paradise.  

Human Faces of Stewardship

Human Faces of Stewardship

Texts: I Peter 4:10; Mark 6:35-36; II Samuel 24:21-25

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 11-13-2016)

Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.  I Peter 4:10

          The early church faced so many fears. How to live in faith amid a hostile Roman culture? What should be expected of a member of this new church? How would one church relate to a church in another city? Were there enough gifts in the church to keep it alive and thriving? Into this morass of daunting questions, Peter speaks these challenging words, “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received” (I Peter 4:10).

          For Peter, stewardship is the foundational reality for the church in any age. Some mistake “stewardship” as a dusty, old word for “church fundraising.” I Peter knows otherwise; it knows that stewardship is a timeless theological word, reminding us of the amazing and expansive grace of God. Therefore, the first response of a “good” steward is sheer awe over having been made “stewards of the manifold grace of God,” coupled with profound thanksgiving for God’s bountiful and undeserved grace.

          Over my years in ministry, I have had the privilege of seeing the human faces of stewardship. Let me tell about a birthday-mate of mine, a person who taught me much about stewardship and who died at the age of 104. I will not use her real name, but will call her Franny for this story.  

          Franny and I celebrated our birthdays together until her death a few years back. She was a remarkable woman, a loyal church person, who lived modestly all her life. When she died, people came out of the woodwork telling me how she and her husband had put them through college, always anonymously, always without fanfare, all from a regional orphanage.

          For 104 years, Franny gave abundantly to the benefit of others, a quietly “good steward” of the manifold grace of God.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples are trying to have some down time,

but with little success. Mark writes:

“When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat." Mark 6:35-36

Jesus leads the disciples to a deserted place, ostensibly for some rest and relaxation, but actually for them to undergo their own bout with temptation. Faced with a hungry mob, the disciples say, “Send them away, Jesus. We don’t have nearly enough food to feed this crowd.” Jesus, then, engages them with the key Kingdom stewardship question:  “How much do you have?”

Jesus does not ask: “How much does your neighbor have?” or “How much do you wish you had?” but “how much do you have?” The clear answer in Mark’s story is that followers of Jesus have enough, with God’s help, have enough to address the human need before them.

As we prepare for our “Stewardship Town Hall” in a few minutes, perhaps that is the key question before Cove, “How much do we have?” When most of us are asked that question, we usually begin where the disciples do in this story:  we point out all that is lacking. “Lord, we’ve got tuition to pay and debt to climb out of and taxes due and family obligations to meet.”

Jesus invites us to enter the stewardship conversation through a different door, not from the door of scarcity, from all that we are lacking, but from the Kingdom door of abundance, as we ask ourselves: “How much do we have?” “How much has God given us to tend and to use liberally and graciously?” When we walk through the door of abundance, God opens our eyes both to resources we often ignore and to human need that awaits our compassion and sacrifice.

If this story from Mark says nothing else, it says that by God’s grace, you and I have enough to make a difference in Covesville, in North Garden, in Charlottesville, in the United States, and across God’s beloved world!

          The most abundant steward I ever knew was surely the most unlikely one as the world measures wealth and the capacity to give. He was a retired railroad man in Wilmington, NC. 

I told you a part of his story soon after arrived. Allow me to tell you the rest of the story. He had severe emphysema and lived in a house that needed considerable repair. At the end of each visit, he would go his desk, gather up all the offering envelopes since our last visit, write a check to the church, then put a rubber band around all the envelopes and check. He would hand them to me to give to the church treasurer.

I felt like a thief, taking from someone who had so much need and so few resources. Finally, after several visits, I suggested that he keep the money because the church was doing just fine and he had so many needs to address. Somehow, he found his breath, looked me in the eyes and said, “Young man, never deny someone the privilege to return to the Lord what the Lord has given.” I took the holy bundle of envelopes and checks and said, “Thank you.”

This retired railroad man knew more about the abundance of God than I and taught me a valuable lesson about what it means to be a “good steward” of the manifold grace of God.

          King David had a proclivity for getting in trouble and the text for today finds him in trouble again, needing to make a sacrifice to appease God’s anger. He goes to visit one of his subjects, Arunah, who insists that David use his threshing floor and animals for a sacrifice at no charge.

 II Samuel 24:24

 ²⁴ But the king said to Araunah, "No, but I will buy them from you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing."

  

David, who so often gets it wrong, in this case, gets it right. He refuses to let someone else make an offering to God on his behalf. He realizes that good stewards give from what they have been given. They give generously and sacrificially and personally.

Fast forward to Manhattan a few years ago and meet Danielle.

Danielle was one of the poorest children in Heidi Neumark’s South Bronx parish. Danielle’s mother was a crack addict and her uncle was physically abusive. Heidi writes:  “One hot day when a swimming trip was planned for the afternoon, Danielle was brought to my office in tears. It turned out that she didn’t have a bathing suit. We decided that it would be all right to skip the morning math lesson and go out to get a suit. The trip took us out over lunchtime, and so we stopped at a nearby McDonald’s, where Danielle ordered a Happy Meal. She got up and came back with some extra napkins. Then she began divvying up the small bag of fries into five little piles, each on its own napkin. I asked her what she was doing. ‘My sisters and brothers will feel sad that I got French fries and they didn’t’, she explained. ‘I’m taking them home to share’. Sitting there in McDonald’s with Danielle, I felt rich” (Breathing Space, p. 124). Even at such a young age, Danielle was a “good steward” of the manifold grace of God?

          Who has taught you about living a gracious life, a hospitable life, a forgiving life, a generous life? Who has helped you know that you and I are recipients of the abundant grace of God and stewards of that abundance?

          In a short period of time with you, my list of abundant Cove stewards is already long. I suspect yours is even longer.

So, as we wake each morning and go to bed each night, may we give thanks to God for the remarkable privilege of being entrusted as “good stewards” of the manifold grace of God.

AMEN