Jesus, looking at [the rich man], loved him and said, "You lack one thing; go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me." Mark 10:21

This Gospel passage this morning is one that appears in Matthew, Mark and Luke – each with a few small differences in details – but all with the same exacting demands of following Jesus and with the over-the-top illustration of a camel attempting to go through the eye of a needle. I said last week that Jesus often makes challenging statements, things that are really hard; if you ever thought Christian discipleship and following Jesus was a comfy-arm-chair sort of faith, you would be sadly mistaken. There is comfort, yes, and peace and joy and healing – but there is also challenge, and the need for strength and courage and spiritual fitness.

So here is Jesus, speaking to a rich man who has many possessions, whose place in the community is assured and whose status of  being blessed by God is taken for granted by others because of his wealth. The attitude of the day was that riches were a sign of God’s favor and blessing. What Jesus says to the man knocks the wind out of his sails, rocks the disciples who are witnessing the conversation; Jesus up-ends the conventional spiritual wisdom and piety of his day.

And here we are in the season where we focus on our stewardship in a concentrated way. There is much that could be said about this passage – far more than any single sermon could encompass. So rather than make a single, sustained analysis or argument, I’d like to touch briefly on three things: possessions, talent and money.

First off, possessions.

My siblings and I own a wonderfully cranky two-hundred year-old house in a beautiful part of Connecticut; it came to us when our parents died nearly five years ago. Besides having been our parents’ home for the last twenty years of their life, it is also full of family possessions – furniture, books, paintings, photos, dishes (both antique china and everyday crockery), all kinds of memorabilia that stretch back (in some cases) nearly six generations. Some of it may have financial value; nearly all of it has emotional value.

What do we do with all this stuff? How do we divide it up? What do we do with the huge painting of our great-great grandmother that’s really not very good? What do we do with the things that have surrounded us for our whole lives, these possessions?

There are certainly practical questions here, and emotional, and relational, but fundamentally these are spiritual questions – about God, and home, and family and stewardship.

Next, I want to say something about talent.

When we talk about stewardship we so often mention the “holy trinity” of time, talent and treasure – and for good reason – but so often think of them    only in the context of what we will give explicitly to the Church. Today we have an opportunity to experience talent (backed up by time and treasure) in our Community Art Show. It’s being held in the Parish Hall; we have 16 artists – children and adults, parishioners and community members – who have offered their artistic talents to share with all of us, and with the public. And there are additional people who have worked hard and spent some funds to make the show come together - and why?

Because by pursuing their God-given talent, by honing it through practice and time and hard work and commitment, by being willing to share it with the rest of us, they are honoring God.

Each artist is opening a door into another way of seeing, and inviting us to come along, to look in the same direction they are looking, to have a glimpse of what reality looks like from their perspective. They are making themselves vulnerable so that we may have a wider picture of truth and beauty and the way God is in the world.

I hope that you will take time this afternoon to come and experience this show; I know I am profoundly grateful for the talent that has been shared – a giving away to others of God’s gifts.

Finally, I’d like to ask each one of you to do something right now.

Please reach into your pocket or wallet and take out a coin or a bill – it doesn’t matter which. Look at one side or the other until you find the motto: “In God we trust.” Those words have been on some of our coins since the Civil War, and on all of our currency since 1956. Like the Gospel reading, there’s a much longer story involved  – some of it having to do with northern states that wanted to proclaim their sense of God being on their side during the Civil War, and other chapters that had to do with our nation’s response to the fear of atheism engendered by Communism.

But think about those words on our money – “In God We Trust;” is that true? Do we trust God with our money? And if we do, then how does that trust guide the decisions we make about how we spend, how we save, who we share it with, what we give away, what we keep?

If we trust God, if we have a life-giving relationship of love and reliance on God, then the way we use our money will be less anxious, less constrained, less under our control than it would be if we did not trust in God. God knows each of our hearts, God also knows each of our needs and what will bring us joy and inner freedom.

Perhaps the next time you take out a coin or a bill – and by extension, a check or a credit card – you can think about the way God wants you to use the treasure he has given you. I don’t know what the answer to that is, but God does, and he would love to have a conversation with you about it; just ask him – he’ll get back to you with answer in one way or another.

So – possessions, talent and money; they all come from God, God has given them to us for our use, for the benefit of others and for God’s glory. Thanks be to God.  Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost
October 14, 2012

[Jesus] blessed and broke the loaves, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and he divided the two fish among them all. And all ate and were filled; and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.
                                                                                                                                                                                                       Mark 6:41-43

This is quite a set of readings we have this morning – the Gospel and the Hebrew Scriptures in particular.  Each one of those reading (Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:2-22 and Mark 9:38-50) would require quite a bit of unpacking if we were to be considering them this morning. But instead, we are going to set them aside for something different.

Last night and tonight are the harvest moon – the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox, the moon by which farmers in earlier times would gather their crops, because the moonrise at this time is not far behind sunset – providing longer light to work by out in the fields. This means that fall is here, the season for final harvest, for making provision for winter, for savoring the brilliance of leaves and the crispness of air.

It is also the time when we think intentionally and more intensively about our stewardship of God’s gifts for the coming calendar year, the harvest of all of God’s bountiful gifts. We know that stewardship is an all-year-round practice of our Christian faith – our continuing response to God’s generosity – we also know that having a season to focus on stewardship in a purposeful way is beneficial to all of us, even if some of these ideas may be new for you, or a bit uncomfortable.

As a focus for our stewardship this year, the Vestry chose the Gospel story of loaves and fishes. You probably know this one, it appears in all four Gospels, though with some different details; for our purposes this fall, we’ll keep in mind the version from Mark. Jesus is teaching a large crowd of people and it’s getting late; the disciples are worried about this and urge Jesus to send the people away to go buy food for dinner.  But Jesus tells the disciples to give the people something to eat.  When they protest that the cost would be prohibitive, to buy food for so many, Jesus doesn’t argue with them; he simply tells them to go and see what food they have: five loaves and two fish, it turns out.

After telling the disciples to invite the crowd to prepare for dinner by sitting down in the field, Jesus takes the bread and the fish and blesses the loaves, perhaps with these traditional words:

Baruch ata Adonoy,
Eloheinu melech ha-olam,
ha-motzi lechem min ha-aretz.

 Blessed are you God, King of the Universe,
Who brings forth bread from the earth.

 Then he gives the bread and fish to the disciples to distribute to the crowd.  By the time everyone has finished and has eaten their fill, there are twelve baskets of leftover scraps to be collected up – at least five thousand people have been fed in the crowd that day.

Now to read this passage and say – “How’d he do that?  There must be some logical explanation!”, or even “What an amazing miracle Jesus was able to do!” is to miss the main point of the story. The main point is God’s generosity and abundance, God bountiful nature.

What seems like meager resources to us – two fish and five loaves of bread for five thousand people – when offered to God for his mission and work and generosity, become more than enough; there is satisfaction, no one goes hungry, everyone gets what they need – in this case, food. Jesus invites us into this same reality, this same worldview, where we can be open to noticing the needs of the world, take stock of our resources – that which God has given us in the first place, offer what we have for God’s use with glad and generous hearts – asking for his blessing, and then let go of control – trusting that what we have to offer will be enough in God’s abundance.

This Gospel passage doesn’t mean that if we just dig a little deeper into our pockets or check books that world hunger will be eliminated, or poverty eradicated, or all forms of debilitating disease will be wiped away. Those are all good things to be working towards, as we respond to the world’s suffering, and seek to make God’s Kingdom a reality in this world; and God may well be calling us to make a greater financial commitment to areas of particular need.

But stewardship is much larger than any one particular need; it’s about living day by day in the reality that God has blessed each one of us in so many ways – with life, with love, with a circle of family and friends, with faith and a life-giving relationship with Christ, with the beauty of nature and art and music, with talents and abilities and money and time…all of these wonderful and precious gifts God has given us. Stewardship calls us to say “thank you” to God by offering our whole selves and our resources, to put what we have received at God’s disposal, for God’s purposes.

And when we begin to live in this way, we will discover yet another benefit: that God calls us into partnership with him in repairing and blessing the world; God has a purpose for all of us, and invites us to take our place in doing things that matter, to become a link in the chain of goodness that binds the world together.

So what does all of this have to do with loaves and fishes, and what does it mean for our annual pledge campaign? On a very basic level, it means that we offer to God some portion of our time and talent and finances, and make a specific commitment as to what that will be (as best as we can) for the coming year 2013. While there is no set dollar amount about what you should give, do consider what percentage of your financial resources you will return to God; the Biblical standard is the tithe – ten percent – and while for the majority of us that is a goal, it is a goal we can move closer toward bit by bit, increasing the percentage that we give. Consider also what commitment of your time and talent you will offer back to God; we all know and feel keenly what a precious resource time is, and offering that for God’s use is a strong expression of our faith.

As we go through this season of stewardship we will be doing several things: you will each receive a letter this week outlining our stewardship plan; each week in the bulletin there will be a take-home insert from The Episcopal Church relating stewardship to the week’s Bible readings; for several weeks we’ll have parishioners offer their own thoughts and witness about faith, the Church and stewardship; later in October we’ll send you a pledge packet with some further details about All Saints’ program and finances and a pledge card that we will ask you to use to make your commitment for 2013; on October 28 we will host a Ministries Fair (as part of the kids’ Trunk or Treat event) outlining the ministries through the parish in which you can be involved; and then on November 4 – All Saints’ Sunday – we’ll ask you to return your pledge card, your promise card, after prayer and reflection and conversation with your family about what your commitment will be.

Throughout this season we’ll be praying together, week by week, the stewardship prayer on the card in your pew racks. And we’ll do all of this knowing that whatever we have to offer to God in faith and trust and gratitude will be accepted with joy and gladness, and combined with everyone else’s offering will be enough to do the work God has called us to do.

We offer what we have, God blesses it, and it is enough – bountifully enough, abundantly enough, with leftover pieces in ways that we could never imagine on our own. What a blessing to know that God has called us into this partnership, into this shared enterprise of faith and stewardship and bounty.   Amen.

Victoria Geer McGrath
All Saints’ Church, Millington, NJ
Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 30, 2012