Long Time No Posting


Dear Friends,


I see that I haven't posted a sermon since June, and it seems a little funny that when I finally get around to posting one it is about money.  
Here's the thing. 


I really haven't been writing sermons down since June.  I was in Longport for the first three weeks of July and I have always just wandered the aisles and talked to those folks.  I left Longport and went to my first residency with the Shalem program in August, where the subject of my next Sunday's sermon sort of came to me while I was running one morning.  That meant I had a sermon a week before I needed it, which most of you know is pretty rare for me.  By the time that Sunday came around, I had decided to wing it, to work without a net, as it were, and I have just been doing that ever since.  I sometimes have some notes written down, but not something together enough to publish here.  This past Sunday I wanted to talk about money, and I was as nervous about the talking as some of you probably were about having to listen.  At 8:30 I stepped into the pulpit and tried to preach from a text which is part of the sermon that follows here.  Walking in at 10:30, my faithful associate, Elizabeth, mentioned that the sermon could use something more.  As the gospel reading wound down, it became apparent that I just needed to trust and talk.  I had enough of this one written that I was able to post it.  


I will work on some way to record and transcribe in the future.  I'm having fun preaching without notes, and I am sometimes surprised at what I hear myself saying.  Thanks for checking out the blog.  JB

A Sermon for Sunday, October 23, 2011

As I begin this sermon, I am thinking about a legend concerning a Virginia priest who enjoyed working youth camps in the summer.  I have always liked youth and church camp, and I know the challenges involved in opening up discussion lines about tabu subjects.  The story on this priest is that he would gather the kids early in the week and take them into the woods where he would proceed to say all kinds of things that he knew they would never say in front of him and that they never expected to hear a priest say, ever.  The idea was to plow down the barriers to real conversation early in their time together.  I was told all this by a camper who fondly remembered the experience some forty years after his time as a camper.

I think about him because I am up against a tabu subject this week and I have been thinking about how to begin the conversation.   I thought about singing you a song.  The subject is so ingrained in our culture that any number of great songs have been written about it.  The Beatles did one almost fifty years ago.  My favorite is Pink Floyd’s offering on the classic Dark Side of the Moon album.  Unfortunately the one that got stuck in head--the one that has been with me all week is one by Lyle Lovett.  And the verse that keeps playing over and over I hope will leave me after this morning.  No finance, no romance.  That’s how she told me goodbye.  First she took my love and then she took my m-o-n-e-y.  Yes, friends.  It’s time to talk about money.

Most years, when this time comes, I try to work some stewardship ideas into a sermon on one of the propers.  This year I decided to just talk as plain as possible about giving to the church.  I haven’t really paid much attention to today’s readings.  I do understand that many people don’t want their preacher talking so plain about money in church, but we’re going to get through this.  I’m going to try to make it easier on you by looking at all those reasons you might not want me to talk about money.  We’ll get through this.   Breathe.

One of the first objections is the idea that You shouldn’t talk about money in church--That somehow, our spiritual lives and our fiscal lives need to be kept apart.  Nothing could be farther from what Jesus taught.  Jesus talked about money all the time.  He talked about treasure and investments and about the concern caused by one lost coin and about the pitfalls of great wealth.  He talked to anyone who would listen about their personal finances, about how they did or did not share their money and the importance they placed on their savings.  Jesus understood with painful clarity the connection between our money and our spiritual growth and he talked about that relationship in ways that made people uncomfortable.  

When Karen agreed to chair the fall stewardship drive, she thought of getting people together to do some reading.  Last year and this year she handed out books and encouraged folks to read, not about giving or about money, but about their spiritual lives.  She’s been at this for a while and she understands what Jesus was talking about when he said where your treasure is, there will your heart be as well.   

Another objection to this talk is I’ll feel bad about my giving.  I can help you with that.  Let me read you a list of what everyone in this parish gave last year.   Just kidding.  Breathe.  I don’t have a list of who gave what.  I do have some numbers though.  Seventy-two families gave some amount between a few dollars and three thousand dollars.  Twenty-two families gave between three and five thousand.  Ten families gave between five and ten thousand, and four families gave ten thousand or more.    Wherever you fit in this line-up, you have company.  You are not alone.   The folks who gave more have mostly just been at this longer.  Their giving has grown over time.  

Maybe the squirmy feeling we sometimes get when the talk turns to money has to do with another concern closely tied to feeling uncomfortable about our level of giving.  The preacher will ask for more than I can give.  I won’t.  Giving grows over time.  Where you are is ok.  You are on your way.  For the last ten years or so, Mary and I have given somewhere between ten percent of our gross income and ten percent of our adjusted gross income.  We certainly didn’t start there.  My first pledge was four dollars a week when I was in college.  At least one of those checks bounced.  The first time we tithed, we did so by accident.  We opened a business in 1980 and our income dropped to the point that what we gave the church amounted to more than ten percent.  Later, after I’d been ordained, I heard a priest friend giving a talk in which she said that she gave ten percent off the top.  I asked her later,  “you do?  Really?”  and she answered, “You don’t?”  


My giving has grown over the years, but my reason for giving has not changed.  That first pledge was made as my contribution toward the good work and the life a community.  My mother had died when I was a teen, my father was not well.  One sister was married and the other had gone to live with another family.  That first year in college I was wondering how my life would end up.  Where would I find support, people to walk through life with me, people to help me figure things out.  The congregation was my group.  They were my people and I was a real person in the life of that community. I belonged. I have always given, not out of a sense of any obligation, but out of a sense of participation.  

You will hear church folks talking about that ten percent number as if it is the only one that counts, but it is a goal, one Mary and I  have worked toward for our thirty years together.  Ten percent comes from Hebrew scripture where it was held out as the part of one’s production that should be returned to God as a thanksgiving for all the rest.  It is a number written deep in our tradition and it has been a standard and guide for many of us as we work at deepening our sense that God is at the center of our lives.  

Mary and I recently attended a workshop on retirement planning put on for clergy by the church.  We were sitting there with fifty other priests when the financial planner put a budget for retirement on the screen.  He had written in five percent for giving to the church and as soon as it went up, several people in the room said, hey what’s that.  You’ve got that number wrong.  That planner left having learned something.  Ten percent was our number.  It is a good number that has helped shape a lot of people’s faith over the years, but it is not the place to start.  

The best way to approach growth in giving is to look at your giving in terms of what percentage of your income you give and then trying to increase by say, a percentage point.  Even more important than that ten percent number is the concept that what we give is related directly to what we have received.  Thinking in terms of percentage-giving keeps that important relationship in view. 

I won’t ask you to give more than you can.  I will, however,  challenge you just as I challenge myself to work toward giving more.  

And maybe the last question I want to address ties back to that first one about spirituality and money.  The question is what are we being asked to support?  Should we finance buildings and staff and programs or should we be feeding the poor?  My response to that question could go on a ways, so I’ll try to be brief.  I have come to believe that the money I give to support the parish is leveraged by the way lives are changed in a faith community.  It’s like the old adage about giving someone a fish or teaching them to fish.  The worshipping community is where we are shaped over time into people who do more and more out in the world to serve others in the name of the Christ.  We are fed and strengthened for that service in this community of friends and fellow travelers.  We are called to support the life of this congregation for each other and through each other for the world.  

And one last word, not a question as long as I am plain-talking about money.  A word about pledging.  A pledge, of course, helps the leaders know what they have to work with as they plan for the coming year. Some people are uncomfortable with the idea of making a pledge.  I want to tell you that a pledge is just an estimate of giving--it can be changed if need be--so maybe “pledge” is too strong a word.  But it can also be more than an estimate, it can be a goal as well.  Stretching to meet your “estimate” can be a part of your spiritual deepening process.  Growth always involves stretching and reaching a little beyond what we have done in the past.  If you have given in the past but but not filled out a pledge card, please consider making a pledge, not just to God and this community, but for yourself.  

In the next few weeks you will receive a pledge card and a return envelope in the mail.  When it arrives, I hope you will see it as an opportunity.   JB