Sermon for Sunday, October 28, 2007

WITH GLAD AND GENEROUS HEARTS

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Consecration Sunday

Scripture: Acts 2:43-47    

⁴³Awe came upon everyone, because many wonders and signs were being done by the apostles.   ⁴⁴All who believed were together and had all things in common;   ⁴⁵ they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.

⁴⁶Day by day, as they spent much time together in the temple, they broke bread at home and ate their food with glad and generous hearts, ⁴⁷ praising God and having the goodwill of all the people. And day by day the Lord added to their number those who were being saved.

I had a chance this week to visit for a few minutes with Phil Wilson who with his wife Wanda was very active in our congregation until two weeks ago when they moved to a different city in Colorado.

Phil had come back to Denver for an appointment and stopped by the office to talk about what their involvement over the past few years has meant to them. They were both very active in many areas of this congregation. They had been in Disciple Bible study classes, involved in Outreach ministries. Phil volunteered as the bus driver for some of our monthly activities for seniors and served on our building committee and our Leadership Council.

He told me something that I have heard many, many times from St Andrew members who move away that they are finding it difficult to locate other congregations who are as active and involved as what they have seen here, and I usually encourage people to be missionaries wherever they have moved and see if they can just replicate in other congregations what has been helpful to them in this one.

And one of the usual insights that people have when they leave and visit other congregations is that the high commitment level in this community of faith is a really important ingredient in our identity and culture.

It goes with what we said last week that many of us begin in our relationship with God and with a congregation being “sitters and gitters”; many of us begin by just needing to be consumers and recipients and that is just entirely OK at first. It has to do with the verse that is on the wall next to our kitchen: God accepts us right where we are----AND God loves us too much to just leave us where we are. God’s grace and love help us to change and mature and grow up into the likeness of Christ.

We begin as recipients and then at the right time we are able to move on to be followers of Christ, DISCIPLES who support the outreach and other ministries with those four promises of PRAYERS PRESENCE, GIFTS AND SERVICE. And if you have been in our membership information sessions you know that people who want to join St Andrew Church and identify themselves as Disciples of Jesus Christ will be asked to follow through on those promises and will be asked to do more than just come to worship occasionally and put a dollar in the offering plate.

We will be your congregation whether or not you decide to join; if and when you do join, the expectation is that people will be present, that you will pray, that you will offer back to God your service and your gifts.

None of this is new and it is really basic and elemental, but it is a large part of what makes us who we are. It is those expectations—not our expectations but the expectation from Christ who says that when we follow him and live in his ways of compassion and justice and service to others we will find the best life possible. That is true of most every other thing we have done in our lives that has been rewarding and satisfying—it has asked and required something of us. Do you want to go to college, to graduate school? It will ask a great deal of you and it will not be easy, but it will be important and rewarding and you will not regret the time and efforts that are expected of you.

I have told some of you the story of the program called Teach for America that is about ten years old now and helps recent college graduates who are very capable and bright into the most challenging public school classrooms in our country—rural schools, inner city schools—to teach for two or more years. The Teach for America program was the brainchild of Wendy Kopp and it is working well providing young, dedicated teachers for classes where some folks have been reluctant to teach.

One reason it has been so successful is because of what we started saying about high commitment and high expectation: Wendy Kopp began to talk with potential applicants for the program by telling them how hard it would be and how demanding their training and their teaching role would be. She said to the 22 year olds that this might be the hardest thing they had ever done, the job that would require more sacrifice than any other job in their life. She told them that if they applied, most of them would not be accepted and others would not make it through the training program. She was not trying to scare them; she just was being honest and forthright.

What do you think happened to the numbers of applicants when she told them how demanding—and how important these two or three years would be? Did the number of applicants decrease or increase? THE APPLICANTS INCREASED SIGNIFICANTLY!

Why do you think? Because people WANT to be part of something that is important and demanding and significant and meaningful.

Let me put today’s service in the context of the next few Sundays of worship. Next Sunday we will celebrate All Saints Day; we will be remembering loved ones and friends who have died over the past year. We have had an unusual number of funerals here over the past few weeks and I have been raising the question we always ask people to consider: how do you want to be remembered? Steven Covey asks us in his book Seven Habits of Highly Effective People to imagine your own funeral. It is a sobering question. Who do you hope will be present? What do you hope they will say about you? Then, he says, be honest—are you living right now in a way that will allow people to say that about you?

If you want to be remembered as an unselfish and generous person, is that how you are living right now? Do you want to be remembered for making a difference for others? Are you living that way and if not, what do you need to do starting today, to be thought of in that way at the end of your life? These are good questions on the day we recommit ourselves as servants and disciples of the compassionate Christ. 

Two Sundays after today we will be honoring our veterans and we will be remembering persons who have made sacrifices so we can enjoy freedom and safety and prosperity. Sacrifice is not a popular word for some people, but it is a very important word and a very Biblical word. Jesus says that the way we share and give ourselves to others is to be sacrificial and not just superficial and tokenism. How close can we get to giving back to God sacrificially?

Three Sundays from now is the Sunday before Thanksgiving and we will read from the book of Deuteronomy where Moses is talking with the Israelites right before they go into the Promised Land God has led them toward after escaping slavery in Egypt and wandering for forty years. Moses gives them a warning: when you enter this land and become prosperous and have more than you need, do not forget that you have not caused this all by yourself.

It is God who has brought you here and God has given you the ability to prosper, so be thankful to God and honor God and do not be selfish and arrogant and wrapped up in yourselves.

Let me close with a conversation as though we are a family gathered around a table. We have another ambitious year ahead of us. We have a list of needs and opportunities for 2008 that total an additional $600,000 at least—maybe more. It included bringing on a couple of staff persons including an administrative assistant to work with the three clergy who currently are scrambling to keep up with the additional needs since we have relocated. It includes additional funds for children’s choir music and curriculum and ways to make space for more people in worship until we get the next building underway in the next couple of years. 

Let me continue to talk frankly as a family. One other factor for program year 2008 is that we will be losing some active and generous leaders in our congregation as they have moved away or will be moving, and while we do a very good job of nurturing and challenging people and growing people in their faith, some of those folks then move on to other places and it takes others of us to step up and replace their leadership and their giving patterns.

We have a great variety of abilities and financial situations here in this congregation. Some of us are hanging on by a thread. Others of us are more able right now to share more of what we have. We clergy know that probably better than anyone. We understand those differences and ask each other to do what St Paul says—give to God in proportion to how blessed you feel.

Next year’s plans include ambitious list of needs and they will be a challenge for us. But I don’t want you to let that list of needs determine how you fill out your commitment card in a moment. I want you to think about how fortunate we are and how blessed we are and how Jesus says that of those to whom much is given, much will also be expected. We have never asked people to make a pledge toward a budget. We ask each other to respond to God’s work in your lives as a step of faith, and each year, to take some further steps of faith toward the 10% tithe and then beyond it.

It is a high expectation and it will be rewarding as well. That is what Phil Wilson told me Thursday. He talked about how involved and active they have been here –more than in any other church-and how much that required of them and then he said, we have gotten much more out of our participation in this church than we gave. We have received more than we gave.

Does that make sense to you? Have you experienced that yet in your relationship with Christ and with the community of Christ? Would you be willing to experiment and see if that can be true for you?

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