Rev. Paul TellstromIrvine United Congregational Church“If You Don't Raise $250,000, God Will Call Me Home"—a Stewardship Sermon
November 12, 2006
Gospel Reading—Luke 13:18-19 word count: 2,130
I am standing in a room full of so much light it is almost too much to bear. There is quiet activity all around me—people coming and going, clusters speaking in low, respectful tones. The rabbi leans back onto a blue gurney, clutching a worn prayer book, which he fingers with one hand—his other hand stretches out to the nurse’s care. He is rail-thin and has a curling beard descending down below his yarmulke. He wears a calm reserve and a bared arm for the needle that will penetrate his vein. Tom, the organizer, makes small talk with him, and we (the nun, the evangelical, the new-age minister and I) give him encouraging glances before turning to talk more about the reason we are here. The director, Charles Wilcox, wears the emblem of the Red Cross on his lapel, and he represents the need that we rarely think of, which is the call for the substance inside each of us that moves within us and gives us life—our blood, making its roundtrip within our bodies every 30-45 seconds. The platelets; the tiny cell fragments so small we cannot see them, and yet so crucial to healthy blood, and the various other components that can be transferred from ourselves to others who need them just to live. From such small things, a shelter from illness and death can stand. Charles is the director of 35 local Red Cross stations, where every day at each station, 45 people must volunteer to come in and give blood in order to reach the crucial 1500 units that are needed daily for our local hospitals. Charles knows the facts and tells them. Blood has a life-span of 42 days before it must be replaced by a fresh pint. Only 60 % of people are eligible to give blood, and nationally, only 5% do. Perhaps out of busy-ness or lack of knowledge, hearts appear smaller in Orange County, where one of the wealthiest counties in the nation boasts the smallest percentage of blood donors, at 3%. 4.5 million people are saved each year by through blood transfusions, and 38,000 pints are needed each day. We absorb his words until the camera woman tells us that it is time for a photo for the press release for which we are gathered. The rabbi on the gurney squeezes a red ball in his fist and we move to stand behind him; ecclesiastical set-dressing for a PSR on civic duty. We smile as if we have done something, and the camera flashes. How did we get here? Tom Riles is the organizer. Tom was a merchant marine who lost faith and hit rock-bottom when his brother died after a drunk-driving crash. His attitude prevented him from getting any kind of job, as he believed in nothing. He then read about what vision and belief could give him through Norman Vincent Peale’s writings, and with whatever small piece of faith left within him that could still be planted, he devoted himself to a goal. Tom became a successful businessman, and lectures around the country on the power of positive thinking and belief in setting goals and achieving them. He quotes Norman Vincent Peale, saying, “Failure is the path of least persistence.” Then Tom became ill with a strange disease. His blood produces too many red blood cells, and he must have blood taken from him, blood which must be thrown away. At the same time, he met a little girl who was born with Diamond-Blackfan anemia, and needs a blood transfusion twice a month for the rest of her life in order just to live. The 57 year-old man and the now 11 year-old girl have teamed up with a vision that they are enacting in the world—to increase the world’s blood supply. Their goal is to get 5,000 people in Orange County to give blood three times this year.1 I know this because Tom told me himself, in a call to our church to see if we would have a Red Cross drive ourselves. And now, I was meeting him in this bright donor center. Tom is a quiet and modest man who knows how to enact a vision and see it through. Someone once said, “The tragedy of life doesn’t lie in not reaching your goal. The tragedy lies in having no goal to reach.”2 Today, on our Stewardship Sunday, I am inspired by how one man discovered what was perhaps his last grain, his last small seed of faith and hope for his future, and planted it for the good—not only for himself but for his community and the world. He set a goal to reach. I am happy to occupy a world where men like Tom Riles have dreams, and happy to help enact those dreams. We live in a world where we have lost our metaphors that once guided us; we look flatly at the carrot hung in front of our faces, and not to the stars now obscured by bright lights that once guided the magi, the discoverers, and those who envisioned a realm beyond them inhabited by Something Greater. We have reduced the Great Mystery into a piece of cardboard drawn in dogmatically linear black and white and reflecting no vision nor hope for those who will come after us; allowing no shades of gray or deeper meaning to meander over the well-defined borders of a status-quo that we seem determined to keep even if it is our un-doing. It is hard to create and enact something different, something better for ourselves, in such an environment. There are people who put their dreams in a little box and say, “Yes, I’ve got dreams, of course I’ve got dreams.” Then they put the box away and bring it out once in awhile to look in it, and yes, those dreams are still there, packed away.3 I need to be surrounded by those who have a vision, if only to remind myself of the importance of looking forward to our own vision for the future, and the positive results I see performed by such people let me know that anything we want to do as a church and as individuals is possible when we believe that the seeds of our planning and patient persistence will grow. In the parable, Jesus said, “What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.” This is a parable for visionaries—a reminder of what is possible with faith. When faith exists and a goal is in mind (even the smallest beginning in which to start), with the persistence to nurture, and to keep nurturing, the goal ahead will be larger than one could have imagined. William Sloane Coffin once said, “I love the recklessness of faith. First you leap, and then you grow wings.” Today you are a part of this parable. You are one of the success stories of the United Church of Christ: a new progressive church start in a theologically conservative environment. But you are not at the end of the story—no leafy branches full of birds making nests in you yet. You are still in the part of the story in which that mustard seed is being nourished and is growing in its mission. The Stewardship sermon is the one where we traditionally say, “Show us the money.” We have a budget to make; ministries, maintenance, repairs, salaries, insurance—a host of things that cannot be done without your pledged support. These are just the facts, Ma’am. Our problem is that we usually go about this all wrong. In our mainline churches, we don’t want to talk about money, so we come up with roundabout ways of talking about it, and then the minister (or some rented minister) comes in and tries to talk about the subject without actually using the word, “money” while looking down and kicking the carpet with the toe of his shoe. The results should not be surprising. Now, our televangelists have it down—but for the wrong reasons. The best example I can think of is Oral Roberts. In 1977, Oral Roberts’ Stewardship approach was to tell his people that a 900 foot tall Jesus had appeared to him and told him to build an enormous building, which his people would presumably pay for. Not wanting to anger a 900 foot tall Jesus, they came up with the money. A few years later, he wanted to build a hospital in his name, so he went back to his people and said that God told him, “I want you to get this going in one year or I will call you home. It will cost $8 million and I want you to believe you can raise it.” He then went up to a tower on the campus where he said he would wait until they raised the money. I have to say that it was also a pretty successful Stewardship campaign. So much so, that I brought my ladder with me today. (Get ladder and set it up.) After church today, I am going to climb up onto the dome, and if you don’t raise $250,000…well…. But I think that the crux of the Stewardship message today is neither about feeling embarrassed by talking about money in church, nor conjuring images of a leviathan Jesus. There are two theological questions to be asked. What is our essential nature, and what is our essential purpose? A church that knows who it is and why it is, can then figure out HOW to be who and what it is. We know who we are. We know that in the face of religion for the status quo, we have always been an irritant. We know that in the chill of theological certainty, we are the church that promises to extend Jesus’ radical welcome to anyone, whoever they are, and wherever they are on their faith journey. We know that we look primarily at the gospel to the example of Jesus, and try to be every possibility we can be of that example’s expression. We know who we are; we just need to be reminded. Church writer David Ray says, “Most churches think the biggest issue is fiscal—how to buy and pay for what they think they need. But the major issue is and always will be theological—how to be the kind of church God is calling us to be. The sub-plot is how to pay for it. But any church that knows who it is, and why it exists will figure out HOW to be what it wants to be.”4 You have been in a long discernment process about where you want to go. Your leadership is in the process of long-range planning. This particular mustard seed is growing to say, “We wish to be more of a force in the community, to truly be who we say we are.” I have collected 70 interviews from you that speak of passion for your church. You have communicated a direction, and the goal in this direction is attainable, but not free. And I am in Orange County because I think this church is an opportunity, poised to enter a new and vibrant time. So, Carl and I have taken our pledge card and filled it out in our own faith in what will come. We are exactly the right church in exactly the right place at exactly the right time. We need to believe and know it. We are rooted deeply and have borne exactly the right fruit in every stand and every statement, and in our inward expression of community that keeps you the Spirit-filled people you are. Look at your church history in retrospect. If God is for us, then who can be against us? (Romans 8:31). Finally, as one member said to me lately—let’s keep on standing for what is right. But let’s also remember to stand for one another, and help each other get through a hard day. Let’s keep our doors open for the stranger at the gate, but also for one another in deepened friendships where we learn how to help each other to open up to all that is possible and see the amazing gifts that can come to us because we open up in the Spirit—another substance inside each of us that moves within us and gives us life. And let’s begin that today with our Stewardship to IUCC and to each other. Don’t make me go up on the roof. AMEN.
Sermon Resources:
Scripture for Sunday, November 12, 2006 Stewardship Sunday
Luke 13:18-19 18 He said therefore, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? 19 It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’
For Comparison:
Mark 4:30-4:32 30 He also said, ‘With what can we compare the kingdom of God, or what parable will we use for it? 31It is like a mustard seed, which, when sown upon the ground, is the smallest of all the seeds on earth; 32yet when it is sown it grows up and becomes the greatest of all shrubs, and puts forth large branches, so that the birds of the air can make nests in its shade.’
Matthew 13:31-13:32 31 He put before them another parable: ‘The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in his field; 32it is the smallest of all the seeds, but when it has grown it is the greatest of shrubs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and make nests in its branches.’
Thomas 20 (non-canonical) The disciples said to Jesus, “Tell us what Heaven’s kingdom is like.” He said to them, “It’s like a mustard seed, the smallest of all seeds, but when it falls on prepared soil, it produces a large plant and becomes a shelter for birds of the sky.” |