At The Protestant Episcopal Seminary located in Alexandria Virginia, “Living in Community” is the core value. The program insists that each entering student sign a covenant that he/she will go to church, go to lunch, go to class. Every morning at 8 AM for 3 years you kneel beside people you may not like. Every day for 3 years, you sit across a dining room table from people you may not like. Every morning and afternoon you sit in a classroom listening to someone you may not agree with spout off their interpretation of the subject of the day. By graduation 3 years later, you’ve either learned deep tolerance or you’ve developed bleeding ulcers! The experience can be hard on the system but it is terrific practice for parish ministry.   And from a human development standpoint, forced community is also valuable because hearing the opposing view challenges us and helps us clarify our understandings.

      One day while eating lunch in the refectory as proscribed in the covenant, a classmate said, “When stewardship season comes around, I’m not preaching about money. That’s the work of the finance people. I’m a spiritual leader and I ‘m only speaking to inspiration.” I thought that sounds like a plan to dodge a bullet. Maybe I can make that work for me. But I remembered the truism, “With faith, if it sounds easy, it’s probably wrong!” So I asked the student, “Who is your model for this approach?” And he said, “What do you mean?” And I answered, “Well, Jesus talked about money all the time. He told parables about a steward burying gold coins and a widow giving away the last of her money and a rich young man wanting to get into heaven and a rich old man wanting to get out of hell.  And it doesn‘t end with Jesus, in about every letter Paul wrote, he’s looking for money to fund his next missionary trip somewhere. In later church history, Pope Gregory the Great scrounged money to rebuild the roads and sewers in Rome so his people wouldn’t die from the plague. He also pressured nobles to fund his missionaries to the British Isles. His stewardship campaign got all of us started. 

     Besides Holy Scripture making clear directives, and church tradition giving numerous examples, Title 3, Canon 14, section 2, subsection b, items 2 and 3 say “ It shall be the duty of the Clergy in charge of a cure of souls to instruct all persons in their charge concerning Christian stewardship including the generous and consistent offering of time, talent and treasure for the mission and ministry of the Church at home and abroad ; and the biblical standard of the tithe for financial stewardship.” I ‘m not sure I knew the exact Canon and wording that day. I looked it up for this sermon. 

     My classmate said, “All I know is that the pursuit of pledges and offerings doesn’t lift my spirit.” I understand his point. Speaking to budgets doesn’t paint a vision of a better world or a heavenly banquet. But stewardship is pure practical theology. Giving is a God driven activity. From our earliest spiritual ancestors, we learn that God told his people, all that you have comes from me. The air that you breathe, the grain in the fields that nourish you, the brains you use to provide for your family, they all come from me. I give you everything you as free blessing. I want you to create a marvelous life for yourself with the resources I provide. I want you to travel or dress well or invest in advanced degrees or take music lessons or fly model airplanes or have 6 children. Do whatever your heart desires and in addition, at the end of the day, respect the blessings I’ve poured out on you. Give thanks for my generosity by returning some of those blessings back to me for my work. Use a portion of my ample gift to you to care for the needy; those people who are in want in body, mind and spirit. Give from your pocket to the service of others. 

   And dear children, use some of the money that I’ve allowed to flow into your life for to advance my kingdom on earth. Use real dollars to tell my story. Spread funds around letting folk know about God the creator, about his Son Jesus, the moral teacher and savior and about God’s Holy Spirit, that active agent moving in the world today. Use real money for evangelism inside your church walls. Spend. Spend for resources to steep your people in the knowledge and love of God so that they will be empowered to carry the word out into the world beyond your doors.

     God is very clear in his directive to give back for his work. In this parish we pay attention. We use the pledges of our members to help the victims of Katrina rebuild their lives. We send money to feed starving children in Burundi. Our church collects food for the local food pantry and we help a school as it moves from failure to success. We join their effort to promote education and values in young adolescents. Soon we will send 40 people to work and serve with a parish in Cost Rica. With real dollars from our personal treasury we return some of our blessings for care of others.

     And while Episcopalians do not think of themselves as stellar evangelists, we are surprisingly adept at proclamation. We start by preparing ourselves with solid understanding. With our pledges, we purchase wine and wafers and candle oil to help create a sacred space to hear the Word of God. With our wallets, we engage the services of someone dedicated to opening up the scripture to encourage us to live its message every day of the week.  We use our tens and twenties and fifties with other tens and twenties and fifties to make thousands. With the thousands, we buy the mundane and the sacred things necessary to inform our faith. We pay for fuel oil and cool air and nursery workers. We offer funds for a staff to plan music, to keep up our buildings and manage our office. Our contributions insure that in our darkest hours, in the hospital or jail or courthouse, we have clergy to stand beside us and point us to God’s grace and the hope which inevitably comes.

     Through our worship, our Christian Formation classes, our parish life events, our pastoral care experiences and our youth programming, we come to a sense of the Christian life. And from this informed place we‘re prepared to share the love of Christ with others. Then from our family finances we give the church actual dollars to invite others to God.  We send notices of Animal Blessings and Halloween on the Hill, Epiphany Pageants and Burning of Greens, Chili Cook offs, Choir shows, Vacation Bible Schools and Slave Cemetery dedications to neighborhoods in the community. We invite people to come to be with us and witness how God is moving in our life together. 

     St. Mark’s is blessed with bright, perspective mature folk. We understand God’s abundant blessing on our lives and we recognize his call to return a portion of our “wealth” for the care of others and for the increase of his kingdom on earth. We get all this. The question that often stymies us is, how much? What is the expected standard we give back to God for his work in and through the church? This practical theology question deserves a practical answer. There are 3 standards at work. Some Christians give the safe standard, the amount they feel comfortable backing out of their family budget and then add a bit more to feel they’re on the right road to deeper faith. Some give the fair share standard. They take the annual church budget, (360,000.00 in our case) and divide it by the number of families who say this is their church home, (214 at St. Mark’s) and come to the equitable contribution (32.00 a week for us.)   Some give the divine standard. God says He wants10% of our annual resources.  He expects us to use 90% of the blessings he gives us for our own well-being and he wants us to return the remainder. I take him at his word. 

     This is the standard I preach and practice. And in all honesty, the first year I put that

larger number on the card, I trembled. I was a single mom with a mortgage and shin guards and tutus to buy. But I also knew a loving God does not call his children into financial ruin, so I gulped and wrote the extra zeros. Because God always makes good on his promises, when I took him at this word and made that step in faith, unexpected blessings came into my life. God’s abundance increased and I was supported well in my decision. There is a story that speaks to the advantages of giving the 10%:

    Two men crashed in their private plane on a South Pacific Island.

Both survived. One of the men brushed himself off and then proceeded to run all over the island to see if they had any chance of survival. When he returned, he rushed up to the other man screaming and waving his arms, "This island is uninhabited, there is no food, there is no water. We are going to die!"

The other man leaned back against the fuselage of the wrecked plane, folded his arms and responded, "No we're not. I make over $250,000 a week."

The first man grabbed his friend and shook him. "Listen, we are on an uninhabited island with no food or water. We are going to die!"

The other man, unruffled, again shook his head no and responded. "No, I make $250,000 per week."

Mystified, the first man, taken aback with such an answer, again repeated, "For the last time, I'm telling you we ARE doomed. There is NO one else on this island. There is NO food. There is NO water. We are, I repeat, we are going to die a slow death!"

Still unfazed, the first man looked the other in the eyes and said, "Do not make me say this again. I make over $250,000 per week......

    I think this is true. I think for that kind of commitment to the church, I’d come after you! And while I believe everyone should tithe as a sign of their faith in a loving, hands-on, supportive God, I understand that not everyone is there yet in their Spiritual journey. The standard used, the amount given back to God is not so important. What is essential is that those who follow the life and teachings of Jesus Christ do give something. The offering from the blessings of our life is the way we show gratitude. The pledges we make is our thank you to God. For the well being of our immortal souls, we need to demonstrate our thanks. 10 lepers were healed. One turned back and gave thanks. Which one are we?

   Here’s the truth about St. Mark’s 2008 Every Member Canvas: We need 360,000.00 to do the good ministry we have planned. This is not a grandiose amount. It is a realistic sum for the care of our 214 families and for the mission we’ve been called to. There is no reason for us to end up with less. But whatever comes in, we’ll be alright. We’ll serve God, we’ll take care of one another, and we’ll answer needs in the world. We may be amazed by the abundance, we may be disappointed but either way we’ll look to God for guidance and we’ll continue with our mission. We’ll be fine.

     So today, we’re not about answering the church’s needs. We’re about giving God tangible signs of our gratitude and thankfulness. We about being the 1 leper whose faith makes him whole. Like him, we say, for all the blessings in our lives, we thank you, God.                                              Amen.