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Sunday, October 19, 2008
A House of Salt and Light?
By Rev. Cindy Bates
Joshua 24:15
“Now if you are unwilling to serve the Lord, choose this day whom you will serve, whether the gods your ancestors served in the region beyond the River or the gods of the Amorites in whose land you are living; but as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.”
Matthew 5:13-16
“You are the salt of the earth; but if salt has lost its taste, how can its saltiness be restored? It is no longer good for anything, but is thrown out and trampled under foot. “You are the light of the world. A city built on a hill cannot be hid. No one after lighting a lamp puts it under the bushel basket, but on the lampstand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father in heaven.
Today I want to talk to you about a house of salt and light…this house, our house, the place we come to worship and serve and study…a place we have chosen to find meaning for ourselves and our families, to grow in our relationship with God and one another… a place we call St. Andrew United Methodist Church. And that should be pretty easy to do, because I love this church and feel I am very blessed to serve in such a place. Now, here is what I find is not so easy. October is that time of year when we have our annual financial campaign. We cannot be “a house of salt and light” if we do not have financial resources.
The past six weeks have been some of the most disastrous weeks ever in terms of the economy of our country, and that certainly has a trickle down affect on all of us. And, the person who is always the one standing before us this time of year, doing an incredible job of helping us understand how crucial it is to practice generosity and stewardship as spiritual disciplines, needed to take some “down time” and he could not choose the timing!
Now, to make it even more interesting, here is a bit of trivia that I find a little humorous.
One of the reasons that I deliberately chose early in my career not to be the senior pastor was I really did not want the responsibility for the fund raising and the administration of the church, particularly a large church. For 30 years now, I have avoided preaching a sermon on MONEY! I am not saying that is necessarily a good thing, it is just how it has been. So, for all of you out there who are going, “I can’t believe it! Every time I go to church all they talk about is money!” Know that there are preachers who haven’t talked about money in 30 years! And when I say, I haven’t talked about money, in all fairness, I have talked about stewardship and the giving of ourselves and the importance of generosity, because I believe these actions really are imperative on the spiritual journey. However, the responsibility for asking all of us to be generous and not fearful, faithful not obligatory, when filling out the pledge card for this year’s annual commitment, has taken on a whole new meaning for me this year, and after 30 years God is probably saying, “It’s about time!”
The scripture passages this morning seemed appropriate when talking about who we have been called to be as a congregation. The passage from Joshua is a challenge to the people of Israel to keep their covenant with God and not serve others gods. Joshua tells the people they need to decide whom and what they will worship and serve. Joshua’s witness to them is very decisive. He says, “…as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.” And then, the passage from the Gospel of Matthew is another challenge, this time from Jesus. In this sermon on a hillside Jesus is saying to the congregation before him, you have been called to be in community for a purpose, a mission that cannot be denied. He was calling the community to be salt and light…not just for themselves, not just for the Galilean community, but for the world. That community knew the importance of salt. It was a precious commodity used for a variety of uses including a seasoning, a preservative and it was also used in religious ceremonies involving covenants. Salt was very beneficial because of the effect it had on what it came in contact with. But, salt could lose its saltiness or its ability to be effective, if it got so mixed with other elements it was no longer pure salt.
Jesus wanted his followers to be true to their calling, to make a difference in the world. And then he used another metaphor… light! And light was not just something that everyone knew was needed to find one’s way in the darkness. In the ancient world, light was synonymous with God. In asking his disciples to be “light” for the world, Jesus was asking them to be God, in and for the world. Could there be a higher calling?
I chose these scriptures for this morning because I believe with all my heart that God is asking this community, this house, to claim who we will serve. In a time when we are going to have to make some choices about how we are going to spend our money, because we might not have the same resources we had a year ago, God is still asking us, “Who or what will you serve?” I believe we are being asked to be salt and light for the world and we are discovering together that we can fulfill these commandments in so many ways. But the reality is we cannot continue to do so unless we are willing to bring our gifts and offerings together…and certainly that is not just our financial offerings, but if we cannot financially support this “house” and the ministries that happen within the household, we will fall short of our mission. We will fall short of being who God is asking us to be.
This has been a week of getting to know our new bishop here in the Rocky Mountain Conference. Elaine Stanovsky’s installation service was held here in this sanctuary last Sunday and many of you were here to witness that occasion. Then, later in the week the clergy of the conference got to spend time with her at our annual orders retreat. I think Bishop Elaine will bring a strong and hopeful leadership, to the United Methodist church in this area, and we will be very blessed by her gifts and presence with us. From her sermon last Sunday and then, from her message to the clergy this week, I bring some thoughts that I believe are pertinent to St. Andrew, and where we find ourselves in this time and place. First of all, in a week that was a financial disaster for this country and the world, the Bishop preached a message of “abundance” and asked if we were willing to share in the abundance of God’s grace for each one of us. She said, “If you know that your life is a gift, and you are willing to share it, God has a mission for you.” I believe that for us as individuals, and I believe that for us as a congregation. Then at the clergy retreat, the bishop talked about the Church, especially the United Methodist Church, as an “institution” and as a “movement”, and she said there is some tension between the two. We can relate to that can’t we? We know and understand that people have left the institution because it has often gotten bogged down in bureaucracy and a structure of rules and regulations that often seem to leave people out rather than inviting them in. We can relate to a movement intended to feed the hungry and heal the sick and free the oppressed and offer life giving grace and hope. That was the movement Jesus was about when he birthed the Church. That was the movement the Wesley brothers were about when they founded Methodism. But a movement needs a structure if it is to flourish. A congregation needs a house, a home if it is going to be nourished and sent out. Yes, we at St. Andrew want to be a movement, an outpouring of God’s love into the world but there are some very practical, “institutional,” financial responsibilities that have to be met if we are going to be able to answer God’s call.
We all know St. Andrew has been incredibly blessed by God. We are flourishing in so many ways. Today is a pretty ordinary Sunday for us and we are baptizing babies and welcoming many new members and filling classrooms with children, youth and adults who are eagerly learning how to be spiritual beings in this world. Persons keep coming to us, celebrating that they have found a church home. And each week we see lives transformed and persons going from this place as salt and light in God’s world. We take very seriously the Bible verse that hangs over our doorway that we can all see it as we go forth from this place. ”Blessed to be a blessing.” I believe we have been blessed because we have acted out of abundance not out of scarcity. We have responded to God’s call with a tremendous amount of faith and commitment. And here we are, once again being asked to share so that God can turn what we give into salt and light.
There is a story that comes out of a small African village where a Methodist Church was established many years ago. The people of the village were especially poor but they felt blessed to have built a church in their village. It was a place of worship and learning. It was a place where people found an abundance of hope and joy even in the midst of a scarcity of material possessions. Each week when the offering was taken persons often had no more than a coin or two to drop in the plate as it passed among them. The story goes that one Sunday a woman waited as the plate moved toward her. When it got to her at the end of the aisle she stared into the plate for a long time knowing she had nothing to take from her pocket. Then she did something that surprised her fellow worshippers. She stood up, put the plate in the aisle on the floor and then she stepped into the plate. Her offering was her very life. What do we believe we have to offer? What are we willing to give? If we could envision ourselves standing in an offering plate, becoming an offering to God, what would that look like?
In the last few weeks, as people have been scrambling to reverse the downward spiral of our nation’s finances, strategists have been turning to financial gurus like Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world. Hearing his name takes me back to 1997 when I was serving a church in Omaha. In the evenings I would often take a walk with my dog Murphy through a sleepy little neighborhood called, “Happy Hollow”. That’s where Warren Buffett lived in a very modest, unassuming home. Sometimes I fantasized knocking on his door and sharing my most recent idea of how together we could solve the world’s problems. At the very least, I thought maybe he would like to give a little gift to the congregation I was serving. In reality, Warren Buffett was very hesitant to give money to churches or denominations because he didn’t always trust the money would really be used to create the greatest good. When Warren Buffett was questioned about why he is giving away 95% of his fortune he said, “My gift is nothing. I can have everything I need with less than 1% of my wealth. I was born in the right country at the right time, and my work is disproportionately rewarded compared to teachers and soldiers. I am just giving back surplus claims that have no value to me but can do a lot for others. The people I really admire are the small donors who give up a movie or a restaurant meal to help needier people.” In other words, Warren Buffet admires people like you who are willing to sacrifice to make a difference in the world. In the same interview, he said he wants to leave his children “enough so they feel they could do anything but not so much that they could do nothing.” Doing nothing with what we have been given will never produce salt and light for this world.
God asks us to look at what we have been given in order that we might give, but not just so others who have less will have more. I believe we are also asked to give because it is life-giving to us. Too often our possessions own us, and when we are owned by our possessions, hanging on for fear we will lose our material wealth, we are losing something far more important, far more sacred. Jesus had quite a bit to say about that. A Hindu proverb says, “They who give have all things; they who withhold have nothing.”
I’ve been reading a book entitled, Giving The Sacred Art by Lauren Tyler Wright. (Oddly enough, I did not realize that I knew the author’s family until I was well into the book and read a story about her husband’s father who had been killed in an airline crash. As I read the circumstances surrounding his death, I realized I not only knew her husband and his family, I had officiated at his father’s service. I continue to be amazed how, in such a global community, we are all connected in some way.) The author’s premise is that until we develop a spiritual discipline of generous giving, we will never fully realize the potential of our lives. Writer and Benedictine monk, Brother Steindl-Rast, when speaking of living generously puts it this way. “Live wholeheartedly, give thanks and praise, then you will discover the fullness of your life.”
We can not be the individuals or the church God is calling us to be unless we are willing to share what we have been given. Jesus wanted his followers to enlarge their hearts, be surprised by grace, take a risk and be transformed. I really believe that when we fill out our pledge cards next week, and make our way to this altar table we are doing just that.
This is a house of salt and light where God is working in our lives and in the lives of people we haven’t even met yet. May we give, so that our light will shine not only for today but into the future, for generations to come. In a world that in many ways has lost the way…in a world where darkness threatens to prevail… in a world that fears the future…may we continue to be salt and light.