Stewardship Sunday
Mark 6:47-52; and Leviticus 19:1-2, 9-11
We’ve all had it happen. Friends are invited for dinner, or a group for a party. The table is set, the house cleaned. You got home later from church than you thought you would-the announcements were endless and you-know-who had another long sermon-and now you’re rushing to get the meal cooked. When you start digging in the refrigerator for the food you’ve set aside, you notice that the package seems a little light. What happened to the chicken breasts? you holler to the house at large, but of course, no one answers. No matter, you reason, I’ll just make extra potatoes…. but when you get to the bottom of the vegetable drawer, there are only just enough potatoes to get by. In your mind, you count your coming guests, ration out what you think each one is likely to eat. You’ll be fine, you decide, you have just enough. And you prepare the meal.
And a neighbor shows up, unexpectedly, and your husband invites him to stay because he too is friends with the others who have just arrived. And the whole group is clearly delighted as they assure the neighbor that, of course there will be enough. And so you smile and nod at everyone while your mind shouts at the neighbor no! go home! But the extra place has already been set. FHB, you mutter to your daughter, your wife. Family hold back. Will everyone notice that you have cut the chicken breasts Florentine into thirds? Your face turns red and stays that way. You, at least, have lost your appetite. What was planned as a celebration of friendship, a table of plenty has become an exercise in restraint, an anxious weighing out of too little for too many, and the joy of the meal is ruined.
When you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap right up to the corners of your field, or gather the gleanings from the harvest, or strip your vineyard bare or go back to pick up the fallen grapes. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner. I am the Lord your God.
I spent Friday and Saturday of this week in Louisville, at the Presbyterian Center, where I was meeting with a committee that advises Presbyterian Disaster Assistance about its program, budget, and direction in serving the victims of national and international disasters. The people our program serves-the people you serve through the giving of some of my time to disaster assistance work-are the very ones the book of Leviticus describes as the poor and the sojourner. They are the victims, already poor, of recurring floods in West Virginia, who do not own clear title to their land and cannot move off the flood plain without losing what little they do have. They are Haitian refugees, sojourners on our very shores, interned at Krome Avenue Detention Center, waiting for legal aid, for advocacy, for sponsorship. They are the children of Malawi, who now have a chance of surviving that nation’s dreadful famine because of a program run and funded by our denomination, our gifts to the Easter offering of One Great Hour of Sharing in partnership with the Presbyterian Churches of Central Africa; they are communities in El Salvador, devastated by earthquake, who will one day soon have new homes, a school, and a community center because of the gifts you have given and the work Presbyterian Disaster Assistance is doing. They are the neighbor who showed up unexpected to whom we do not want to say, sorry, I don’t have enough to share.
The committee was interesting. Friday, we spent the whole day dreaming: realizing how much more we could do for them if we just had a more public persona, better name recognition, a more direct and efficient way to ask for the money we know is out there for this work of helping the poor and the sojourner. We dreamed and schemed, and by the time we went for dinner we were so excited by the possibilities we could scarcely stand it. It reminded me of how I felt just two weeks ago at a gathering of session members and others of this congregation, who gave up their weekend to dream and scheme and to ask the same questions: how much more potent a presence in Miami could Riviera Church be if we just had a few more members, a bit more money, a somewhat larger public presence, a greater name recognition for the unique congregation we are? How much better we could do in mission, in service, how much better we will feel in worship with just a little more openness, a little more attention to welcoming friends and newcomers, a little more deliberate interpretation of who we are and what we want to do, a little more money and time. Just imagine…
Back at this weekend’s meeting on Saturday, we talked about strategy. We talked about money, and how to get it. What’s the problem, asked a new guy on the committee, a real-go getter, an early-retired FBI agent and businessman. Just do it. Outsource the donor requests, have the cards made up ahead of time, and when the disaster hits, go out and ask. People will give, they love to give. And the head of disaster assistance said, well, the problem is the sixth floor. Everything in the building has to go through committees. Through processes. Through editing and asking and waiting…. I was sitting next to Stan, my boss on the disaster assistance team. Bean counters, he muttered, or at least I think that’s what he said, and I suddenly had an image of Presbyterians in suits, walking back through the corners of some Kansas wheat field, sweeping up the gleanings; picking their way carefully through the vineyards of central California, dropping individual grapes into buckets, while an accountant makes notes on a calculator. I am the Lord. Do NOT reap your field to its very borders, do not go back and gather the fallen grapes…. you shall leave them for the poor and sojourner.
Our enthusiasm for our vision only slightly daunted by whatever lurked "on the sixth floor" we finished our planning, resolving to do whatever it took to get the job done, even if it meant passing a resolution or having ANOTHER committee meeting…and we adjourned to catch our planes home.
Stan and I walked toward the elevators. What are you preaching about? he said. Leviticus 19, I replied, the gleanings in the field. I’m calling it intentional leftovers. But that’s not right, he said—you’re supposed to talk about firstfruits, , that’s the stewardship message. I looked around. We were standing on the second floor of the echoing Presbyterian Center. Last year’s layoffs of staff-the result of our shrinking denominational budget-were painfully obvious in the empty cubicles, the chairs and desks stacked in corners, the darkened offices and the general sense of hunkering down that pervades the building. We had just spent two hours strategizing how to get the National church office to free us to do our mission of disaster relief effectively…and we have lots of work still to do. I looked back at Stan. I’m not sure we’re really listening to the message about the firstfruits, are you? I would be happy to get the gleanings.
And I would be: both there at the national church office in Louisville, and here at RPC as well. And I am happy. Happy to say that our congregation has good, strong leadership, dedicated to making this church a stronger, more effective presence for God in our community. And I am happy. Happy to be able to say that we have wonderful ministry partners in the clergy and friends who routinely make this church a part of their life in worship and their work in service…because they believe in what we are about. And I am happy.
Happy to see that, although we have a good ways to go in our follow through and in our numbers of people engaging in hands-on mission, this church is beginning to try to practice a more intentional approach to discerning mission direction and fulfilling it in the work of linking our hearts and hands. And I am happy. Happy to see all of you here, happy to be coming to you on a stewardship Sunday not having to say, we are struggling to survive, we are $20,000 in deficit, we can’t pay the bills or meet our mission commitments…. I am happy to say that, though we are a few thousand behind at this present moment, we are working from a balanced budget, and we have met our mission commitments to this presbytery and this community, and we will end the year having fulfilled those privileged obligations.
And I am happy that your sacrificial giving has kept us steady in a year of hideous financial downturns for just about all of us, and for our nation. And I want to say:
Thank you.
This year’s stewardship theme is 5. Five. Five what? Five how? Five when? It’s a good number, the number five. It’s about what I think the gleanings of a field might turn out to be, five percent of the whole harvest, or maybe, a multiple of five, 10%. If we think in multiples of five, it isn’t really a very large leap from gleanings to first fruits, which are, traditionally, a tithe: Ten percent of all that the Lord has given us.
What could we do with the gleanings of five? If our mission budget could be increased to make a much more significant difference in the well being of the least of our neighbors. If we could increase our membership in this coming year by five percent, or ten: twenty more people could be your neighbors in the pews. Six or seven of those would probably be glad to help you on a committee, sing in the choir, do a service project with you. If YOU invited five percent more people to church, and kept at it, how long would it take before our rows were full? If we could increase our own participation at worship by five Sundays a year, how much louder our voices, how much fuller our praise? What could we do with gleanings of multiples of five? If each of us took five percent of our work week — from 2 to 5 hours for most of us-and set it aside for a volunteer project of the church, a mission of Linking Heart and Hands: what an impact our service efforts would begin to make in this city…. Only 5 percent, just 2 hours a week. If we took 5%, or ten of our frantic, busy work day to sit quietly and think about this one thing: you will be holy, for I the Lord your God am holy. If we just took 40 minutes to ourselves, in a place of peace and quiet, just forty minutes to center yourself in the knowledge that you are holy, that you belong to God…how different would you be, spiritually, this time next year, if only 5% of each one of your frantic days were set apart, quiet in the presence of God? The things we could do with 5.
At my house on Thanksgiving, we never run out of food. It’s a family tradition. The turkey we buy is five pounds more than we think we might need, because I like intentional leftovers: and if I provide even five pounds extra, I can eat chop suey for a month, and send everyone home with leftovers. If I need ten potatoes to feed the crowd, I throw in five more, just to be sure. My first Christmas in South Florida, I tried to mash so many potatoes with my new industrial size mixer that the machine burned out — only ten minutes after I took it out of the box. We never run out of anything at holiday meals: because I plan, I prepare, I rejoice in bodacious amounts of turkey, dressing, gravy, and potatoes, Intentional Leftovers to celebrate how good is the Lord; and how glad I am to be God’s child: with a field of my own, a harvest overflowing, and enough to leave the gleanings in the field.
