Take my lips and speak through them. Take our minds and think with them. Take our hearts and set them on fire. Amen.
When I sat down to write my sermon this week, I realized I’m pretty lucky.
First, I don’t have to talk to you about money. Doug Ounanian did a nice job of laying out the budget for next year. He asked all of us to make whatever financial commitment to the church that we can to meet our needs.
Second, I don’t have to find words to describe the spiritual fulfillment that comes from making a commitment to God’s church. Isabelle Nickerson recounted her stewardship journey – her faith journey – and the impact it has had on her life here at Christ Church.
Finally, I didn’t have to search high and low for some clever story to jump start my creative juices. Jesus himself steps up to the plate in today’s Gospel when he gives us the Great Commandment.
So the advantage to me is clear. The advantage to you is this: my sermon today will be mercifully brief.
Today’s Gospel is of course the cornerstone of how we live out our Christian faith. It’s the Great Commandment, Charlie Brown:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: you shall love your neighbor as yourself.” Jesus tells us if we keep these commandments, everything else in our life falls into place.
Now, the way I understand it – and remember, a theology degree was not a requirement to run for warden, just a pulse – the Great Commandment has three parts. First, love God. Second, accept God’s love and love yourself; and third, share that love with others.
I know I do, and I think sometimes as a church, we tend to focus on what has become -- for our society as a whole – the safe part of this commandment: love your neighbor as yourself. After all, that’s another iteration of the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have others do unto you. Even if you don’t believe in God, you probably adhere to that rule, or try to at least. Maybe not always: the news is so dire these days, perhaps we could have used a bit more adherence to the Golden Rule in the last few years. But for the most part I’m going to be optimistic and believe that most people want to show compassion for their neighbor and help those in need. A good friend of mine is fond of saying, “I’m not really sure about identifying myself as a Christian, but I do believe that if everybody acted more like Jesus, the world would be a better place.”
And the work we do to love our neighbors in our church community is important. We help feed, shelter and clothe the homeless and the destitute every day. We bring medical care to villagers in Haiti twice a year. Our parish partnership helps educate Haitian children. We care for our own community through Pastoral Care and informally through our own networks we’ve formed over the years. We come together in fellowship in large and small groups. We exchange a smile, a handshake, kind words, maybe share a meal – small gestures that show our love for one another. Yes, we can do more, and there’s so much more to do. I believe we strive every day here at Christ Church to find ways we can do more to love our neighbors as ourselves.Where I think we could focus, if I may be so bold, is the FIRST part of the commandment, the “greatest and first commandment” as Jesus reminds us. That is, to love God with all our hearts, and with all our souls and with all our minds. This is the essence of who we are as believers, as people of God. This is what separates us from the secular Golden Rule followers. As believers, we can witness and experience the deeper, life-changing love that happens between us and God. And I believe it could make all the difference in the life of our congregation if we really focus on loving God, and accepting God’s love in return. It will only strengthen the love we offer to others.
I don’t know about you, but I sometimes find in my social circle outside church, it can be awkward when people realize you’re a Christian. I once had a guy say to me at a dinner party, “I don’t get it – how can you believe in God and be a Christian when you’re so well-educated?” What do you say to that? I’m sure he could accept my struggle to adhere to the Golden Rule. But he was puzzled by my desire to love God and to know God’s love.
It seems that loving one’s neighbor is intellectually acceptable, it’s even empirically reasonable in our concrete world. It’s also trendy – there are many important secular charities out there, thank God. Without the underlying truth of God’s love and loving God, though, “loving your neighbor” can also be subsumed by the crazy demands and routines of one’s daily life. All of our weaknesses and anxieties can get in the way. I can’t help thinking that commitment to helping others is strongest and most sustainable when you buy off on the package deal: love God first, say yes to God’s love and love yourself – and yes, love your neighbor.
Now here’s the stewardship part: when I was home in Arkansas this summer (you knew I’d slip a back-home story in there somewhere), I visited my step-mother Sue’s independent church, a “bible-based church” they call it. Arkansas is full of them. It’s mostly Baptists who have left the main-line churches and started these congregations in their living rooms. Many, like Sue’s, have grown into big campuses with hundreds or even thousands of faithful follwers – this in a town roughly only twice the size of Needham. Sue’s church is what we would label “evangelical”, but it’s pretty humble in its mission. It doesn’t follow the tendency of some of these churches to assume God is a God of absolutes and political agendas. But that is neither here nor there, and not my focus today.
Here is what I want you to consider: how they grew. Despite the same hectic schedules as we all face, and even greater economic pressures, Sue’s church grew into the vibrant and yes, outreach-oriented community that they are today for one reason: they all put God first in everything they do.
Naturally I had my warden hat on while I was there. I was so impressed with all of the churches there, and the good work that they do. So I asked Sue about their annual giving campaign. I figured it had to be full of bells and whistles and clever slogans to get people to give at the level they were obviously giving. That church had a lot going on, and was still growing.
But Sue looked at me with a somewhat puzzled expression. You know what she said? It blew me away. She said, quite simply, “We tithe, or as close to it as we can. I mean, everyone has different circumstances, but we all try to tithe.” My response was probably your response: “Really?? Why??”
“Because that’s what God asks of us, and we trust God.” End of discussion.
Now I believe that loving God, and all that follows from that, is what brings us together as a church community. We come from different parts of the country, different denominations, different faith journeys. We tend to separate our church time along different interests, different passions. We have varying and sometimes even opposing preferences for worship, music, budget priorities, outreach commitments. Sometimes these differences do distract us from what brings us together in the first place.
What keeps us together is our common desire to know God and to love God with all our hearts and with all our souls and with all our minds. If we focus on that common desire, it should be enough to sustain us through whatever challenges we now face and will face in the future -- challenges to our national church, our diocese and our congregation. If we let the love that we have for God and God has for us fill us and begin to come out of us and fill each other, imagine what we can do together, and what it will do for us.
I’ll end today with a vision for the future. Louise Packard is the Executive Director of Trinity Boston Foundation. That’s an umbrella organization for a diverse group of outreach programs started by Trinity Church in Boston. Louise used to be Stewardship Director for Trinity. A couple of years ago, she joined us for the day at a Vestry retreat to talk about stewardship. After a day of soul searching and agonizing over budgets and pledge drives and how to get people to give more to the church and how to get by with less, Louise asked us all to close our eyes. And that’s what I’ll ask you to do now. Close your eyes and imagine if our annual revenues suddenly doubled. If paying the heating bill and salaries and maintaining the building were no longer concerns. What if we had more money and more volunteers than we knew what to do with? What would we do? Where would the love lead us? Amen.
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