October 15, 2006 Sermon
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Proper 23 – B (Stewardship Ingathering)
October 15, 2006 Emmanuel, San Angelo
Imagine a life without our things. Where would we be without them? To imagine a world without mortgage, car and credit card payments, school tuition or student loans at first sounds great! But life without a house, a car, clothing, or education? How good is that? One might be able to imagine a life without the boat, the gun case, or the hunting lease, but what about the checking account, the savings, 401K, or Social Security? Without prescription, drug plan, prescription dental plan retirement plan, or insurance? Where would we be, and who would we be without them? Imagine, who we would be without the alphabet soup of American life: VCR, TV, DVD, PC, CD, SUV, BMW (with GPS), RV. Peel away the job, the college degrees, comfort, status, titles, and imagine life without things; then ask yourself: Who would you be without them? What sort of person would be left? Would life even be worth living?
If this sounds like a recipe for a bad dream, as it would be to anyone living in middle-class America, then imagine the blow, straight to the gut, that the man felt when Jesus looked at him and said “You lack one thing, go sell what you own… then come, follow me.” The Baptists sing, “Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine”—this would be called “Blessed disturbance, Jesus is mine.” But this isn’t simply a story about how Jesus made one rich guy feel like crud. This is a story to get us to imagine a complete reordering of our priorities in life, by putting before us the question: “Who am I, in relation to the important things in my life?”
This is Stewardship Sunday. As old Hugh Magers, priest from Sweetwater & Colorado City used to say,
“Stewardship is all about Stuff: What you do with your stuff. What you think about your stuff, and what’s going to become of your stuff when you are no longer around to enjoy it.”
In a few moments we will take all the pledge cards we have received so far and offer them back to God. We will pray God to use them to his glory in the coming year. All along I have been inviting you not to be simply “hit our miss” about your giving, but instead to set your goals high and challenge yourself to make a pledge to support the operating budget of this church. I will share with you that for years it has been my custom to return to the church 10%—a tithe—of the net income paid to me each month. This has been hard at times but I believe that God has blessed my obedience more that I can ever say. The point though is not to be legalistic, rather to see that everything we have has been given to us by our Creator. When we pledge we release this church to be all that God would have it be.
The Rich young man of the story was not a bad man. He was a devout and very pious man. When he walked away from Jesus he was in that instant challenged beyond his limit. He was out of options. He didn’t get that Jesus wanted his heart, not his money. This man had everything…except maybe the imagination to “see outside the box” of life and of culture. Again the question is before us: “What would I do, who would I be, without my things?”
I pray that this day will bring to Emmanuel Church a renewed vitality and dedication for the coming year, to see everything from a larger view as God might see it. That is, what we do with our “stuff”: whether we give it freely or try to keep it for ourselves…will be seen from the point of view of the One who created us, sustains us, who loves us, and who frees us from fear, doubt, and anxiety, to be all that we can be.
To God be the glory!
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Revised: 10/23/06