2 Timothy 3.14 - 4.5, Luke 18.1-8
The Eighteenth Sunday after Trinity, Sunday 20 October 2019
Austwick, Clapham, Eldroth
Every good church leader’s strongest desire is to encourage the people in their life of faith. So, wanting to encourage Timothy, Paul wrote: “Continue in what you have learned and firmly believed, knowing from whom you learned it, and how from childhood you have known the sacred writings that are able to instruct you for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.”
Imagine that you walk into a room and find it full of all the people you have ever known. They are all there - because this is a party for you. They turn and smile and welcome you, and you find yourself walking through a throng of friends. Music is playing and the air is full of chatter and laughter. Stories are being shared and connections made. You have plenty of time to talk with everyone you want to - friends and relations, heroes and neighbours. Some you haven’t seen for many years, and there are conversations that need to be finished, or even begun. You realise that this room sums up your life, your presence in the world, for it contains all the people you have touched and affected in some way or another. Inside, you experience a wonderful, warm glow as you feel known and cared for and understood.
Slowly, one by one, the guests start to leave, and the room begins to empty. The music quietens down and you are left with your family. The host of memories and stories you share is like treasure - treasure that you gave them to cherish and look after: your deepest, most significant, most vulnerable being. The cracks where it has been dropped in the past remind you of the fragility and the pain you felt in unhappier times. But today, it seems, is not to be such a time. Today, you are held carefully and with respect, and you feel secure.
Finally the last guests leave, and you find yourself standing alone.‘Hello there,’ says a voice. You turn and there is someone who seems familiar but you can’t quite place, smiling, who says, ‘You haven’t seen me before, but I’ve seen you. Or, should I say, I’ve been watching you, since - well, since before you even existed, actually. I knew you when you were tiny, growing inside your mother’s womb. Yes, I was there with you. I was there in the room when you were born, when you took your first gasp of air. I was there in those early months, I saw inside you, the things you couldn’t see. I saw your fear when you were left alone and your joy when your mother returned. I was there when your first tooth came - and when the first tooth fell out. I saw you take your first step, and when you cried once when you fell on your nose. I watched your hair grow, being washed and cut. I was there at the school gates when you first went in, feeling your anxiety as no one else could. I knew your first house. I was there at your birthday when you were given that toy you had asked for and asked for.
I was there, too, when you thought no one else was looking, no one could see. Yes, I saw it all. I was there when you thought no one knew or cared or understood, in the night when you were alone, crying inside. I felt it with you. I have felt everything with you. And now, I know what you do - each morning, when you wake, how you feel about the day, and about yourself. I know what it means for you to face another day. I have been there in your greatest victories and your greatest defeats. I have watched your life take shape. I’ve watched as you’ve hidden parts of you away, I see the scars, the anxieties about other people. I know what you long for in the deepest part of your being. I know what you believe you can achieve, and I know the frustration you feel at not being able to do it. Each night, I hold one by one your regrets for all the mistakes you have made, and I hold the shards of your shattered hopes so that they don’t fall to the ground’
This oddly-familiar stranger pauses and then says your name, says it as if they know it very well, as if they have been saying it for years. ‘I came here to tell you one thing: that to me, you are the most special and precious person in the world. I want you to know that whatever happens to you now, in the rest of your life, nothing will change that, and you will never be alone.” [1]
Now, keeping that picture in mind, holding the feelings it brings, I invite you to consider the question: Why do I come to church? …. Could it be, at least part of it, because each time I come I hear again those words I’ve learned from childhood, the sacred writings which assure me that I am deeply held and loved by God, that I have salvation through faith in Jesus Christ….?
Church is not the only place, but for many of us it’s perhaps the primary place where we’re reminded just how much we are valued and loved, by the One who made us and this earth, it’s where we’re reminded that no matter what we do, however we may stray from His Way, God is open-hearted in compassion and grace towards us. And we know this because of what we learn here.
Now you may be thinking, what does this have to do with Stewardship - for we are in the middle of three weeks of reflection on our church’s finances and our own giving. I’d say it has everything to do with it - for our giving comes not at first from our purse or wallet or bank account; it comes from our heart. Our giving is a response to all that God gives us. Remembering just how much we are loved, we give in gratitude.
And further to that, our giving is also informed by what the scriptures teach us about how we should live as followers of Jesus. We give also out of a sense of God’s justice which we’ve learned in church, in scripture reading and teaching.
Consider just one bible book alone - the Gospel of Luke, which you’ll have noticed we have been following for the past few months. It’s full of stories about people and their money. We’ve had the parable of the Good Samaritan - how he and the innkeeper used their resources to help a man in need; and we’ve had the story of a man obsessed with building bigger and bigger barns but dying sad and alone. Elsewhere in Luke the forgiven tax collectors Levi and Zacchaeus repent and redistribute their ill-gotten gains, the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the prodigal son speak of the interplay between our material values and our deeper spiritual values. In Luke, the meals which Jesus hosts are sacraments of fellowship which blur the social distinctions between rich and poor, and also serve to sustain the poor. [2]
So when we consider our giving to the work of God, let scripture guide us - first of all towards a gratefulness for all we know that God has done for us, for all we understand of God’s great love for us; and secondly towards a sense of the justice which God requires from us - to live lives which are generous towards others, generous in giving of our time, talents, and whatever money we can also afford.
Notes
[1] Simon P. Walker, The Undefended Leader. p.103-105. Altered.
[2] Giving in Grace, Sermon notes: Background notes on four passages in Luke’s Gospel [PDF]. From the web resource Giving in Grace: Stewardship resources for the local church.
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