Sermons

The Future Is Now: Faith Growing Abundantly

John Wilkinson	Third Presbyterian Church
November 4, 2007	II Thessalonians 1:1-4, 11-12

                           
This past week I attended a conference of a denominational affinity group, working for change in our denomination’s ordination policy and practice. The group has been in existence for 10 years, and I have been privileged to serve on its board all that time. Term limits do not seem to be in our by-laws!

As these things go, it was a very positive time, a combination of lamenting where we are, expressing hope about where we might go, seeing old friends and making new ones. We heard some very wonderful sermons and very fine lectures. We shared the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper, strategized, socialized.

More than half of the attendees were ministers: if you think a conference of ministers has the potential for excitement, you have no idea! I’ve never been to a lawyers’ convention, or a teachers’ convention. For the five years that I served on the Presbyterian Theological Task Force on the Peace, Unity and Purity of the Church, we met at a conference center in Dallas. That same conference center was used for training American Airlines employees, and a company called Snap-On, a tool manufacturer, held their training there as well. Those folks always seemed to be having much more fun than we did – and they all had matching gold shirts, which I kind of envied.

At any conference, I presume, talk turns to work, and so at a conference attended by a bunch of ministers, talk often turns to preaching. Imagine the scintillating conversations. And anxiety levels grow, from the first day to the second to the third, as Sunday approaches and vans take nervous preachers to airports.

Here is how it often goes:

* “You ready for Sunday?”
* “Oh, sure!” (Which really means “NO.”)

* “What’s your text?”
* “Oh, interesting…I made a different choice.” (Which really means that you made a questionable choice.)

This past week, the conversation ping-ponged back and forth between stewardship and All Saints, as in “we are doing stewardship” or “we are doing All Saints.” We are doing both, I replied, receiving a spectrum of responses, from skepticism to confusion to doubt. And, I would add, we are also holding a meeting of the congregation to discuss a major and bold capital campaign. At that point, I might as well have been Evel Kneivel announcing that I was attempting to jump a tricycle across the Grand Canyon.

I must say that it all fits together in my mind, and we will see if it all fits together in our collective minds.

As I have said, it was a wonderful conference. It is not always easy to find hope in the world these days, let alone in the Presbyterian Church, but I found hope in abundance. Yesterday morning, I experienced one of the best sermons I ever had, so much so that tears formed in my eyes. I was sitting next to a friend and she turned to look at me, with a look of sympathy and solidarity.

I would beg your indulgence as I share three quick conference episodes with you. None of them were listed on the official conference program, nor involved any highly credentialed preachers or theologians. Nor had they to do much, explicitly, with church politics. Three offline, under the radar, experiences of faith, abundant faith.

1. At one point, we had a Taize worship service, based on music from Taize, France, something like what we will do tomorrow evening in the chapel. The room was filled with lit candles, and also many unlit ones, on the floor in the front chancel, which we were invited to light. An older couple walked to the front of the chapel, slowly, haltingly. They held each others’ arms as they knelt down, and had much greater difficulty getting back up. One made it up, and then with profound affection and tenderness, helped the partner. And the light shone just a little bit brighter, and a little bit warmer.

2. Earlier, as we piled on the shuttle buses to take us back to the hotel, I noted a man on the bus who I did not recognize from the conference. I do not know his story and I entered in the middle of the episode, so I can only speculate. He was somewhat confused and perhaps emotionally troubled. He had somehow wandered onto the bus, and the volunteer driver did exactly what he should have done – offered him a seat. We dropped him off at the Marta station, and as he left he announced that he needed a little money for train fare. We all know the arguments about why this is not a good idea, but a conference attendee had the dollars ready in her hand and pressed them into this gentleman’s hand – touching on several levels. He thanked her, thanked the driver, thanked all of us. “If I don’t see you soon,” he said, “I will see you in heaven.” It seemed as if we already had.

3. The aforementioned Taize service was yesterday morning. What else is one to do early on a Saturday morning, except go to church? More showed up than were expected. So we ran out of bulletins. But we made it work. We buddied up. We shared. Like loaves and fishes – although nothing that dramatic – we looked around, scrunched together, battled our reading glass limitations, looked over shoulders, and God was worshipped in community.

It is what we do.

1. When we need a lift, a helping hand, we offer it. When we are down and can’t get back up, we support one another.

2. When the world around us – embattled by poverty and discrimination and injustice and all sorts of travails – we do what we can to make a difference.

3. When we experience a perceived scarcity, we take stock of the situation, rearrange our values just a little bit, and share from our abundance.

It is what we do. It is what we do, have done, will do, past, present future.

1. We care for those in the community.

2. We care for those beyond this particular community.

3. We care from our abundance.

As we mentioned several weeks ago, we are all about themes, and today several themes come together. “Faith for the Future” – our proposed capital campaign theme, which we will consider in its next, not quite final, phase in a congregational meeting this noontime. And “The Future Is Now,” our stewardship theme, as today we launch ourselves out of our pews and place our pledge cards in baskets.

Lots of talk about the future, but the real point is faith. Faith this is planted within us, that grows within us, that flows out of us to be shared with a church and a world in hungry need.

It seems almost odd to talk about money in the face of such lofty matters. But perhaps not. This stewardship conversation and the subsequent capital campaign conversation is not about how much you give. OK, maybe it is about that just a little bit. It is more so about the spirit in which you give, the vision of the church you seek to support and your own sense of abundant, growing faith that compels your response.

Paul writes to the little church in formation in Thessalonica. They are afflicted. They are persecuted. Paul is concerned about that. But his concern in trumped by his deep sense of gratitude. “We must always give thanks to God for you, brothers and sisters… because your faith is growing abundantly, and the love of every one of you for one another is increasing. Therefore we ourselves boast of you among the churches of God for your steadfastness and faith during all your persecutions and the afflictions that you are enduring. To this end we always pray for you, asking that our God will make you worthy of his call and will fulfill by his power every good resolve and work of faith…”

Talk of church growth is a funny thing. Culturally, it seems as if there are two options.

(A) The mega-church movement, based on savvy marketing and designed to address the needs of the primarily “un-churched,” an odd kind of term. I disagree with mega-church theology quite a bit, and at the same time, am somehow grateful that people are finding a faith expression there that has meaning for them.

(B) The other option is something called “the gospel of prosperity" which suggests that somehow your faith in God and your ability to build your portfolio or fill your bank account are related. I don’t get it very much, and what I do I don’t particularly like.

Two models of growth – in huge numbers of people and in huge numbers of dollars. How do we here, at the Third Presbyterian Church of Rochester, New York, think about these things? How does faith grow abundantly here? Within you? Within all of us?

I do not want to pretend to say that we are not called to grow. We are. Numerically, perhaps, never for its own sake, but for the sake of inviting people in, offering them who we are and what we do, inviting them to share their gifts here for service and nurture. We are, in fact, a bit of an anomaly – a central city, northeast United States, mainline, somewhat traditional congregation. And yet we are growing, somehow. Programmatically, numerically, in our capacity to give and our capacity to serve. I am thankful for that, as fragile as it sometimes feels.

And even if we were not growing in all of those measurable ways, we would be called to grow in abundance, in faithfulness, because that’s what we do. We care, by picking people up when they are down. We are aware of the world around us and we reach out. We meet needs by sharing what we have, and, I hope, by stretching ourselves in that sharing.

You know the programmatic litany, and I will not review it here, but think of that interaction of compassion and hospitality and generosity. And the physical act of filling out a pledge card, after prayerful consideration, and marching it down the aisle, is not that – it is not abundant faithfulness on its face. But perhaps it is, and it certainly supports it. Nor is a capital campaign, except for the very same reasons that is supports our ability to do what we are called to do, to live into a vision of abundance and growth, to express the faith growing in each of us by making a commitment – a real commitment of our time and energy and financial resources.

And what does this have to do with All Saints? Perhaps everything. We remember with gratitude that earlier church prayed for by Paul. Without them, there would be no us. And without the abundant faith, witness and commitment of those who have gone before us – those in our own lives and those in the life of the congregation, there would be no us. They nurtured this place in their season, and we remember with deep gratitude. It is now our turn to nurture this place in our season. We remember, and then we join the parade, for this generation, and all those to follow.

What are we to do? Consider Paul’s prayer of gratitude and entertain the notion that it might be for us as well. And if so, then what is our response? Certainly, the prayerful completion of a pledge card, a response not based on stewardship sermons and never on strictly purely budgetary needs.

Consider the faith planted in you. It may flame and it may flicker. Mine certainly does. But even then it gives warmth and sheds light, and together our faith grows abundantly.

What are we to do?

* We are to pick each other up when we are down, and also be open to the possibility of being picked up.

* We are to take risks beyond these walls for the sake of justice and reconciliation and peace.

* And we are to share – and to know that faithful abundance trumps perceived scarcity every time, every time.

An extraordinary witness from the past, steadfast strength for today, bright hope for tomorrow. Great is God’s faithfulness, and the blessings of faith growing in and through us. Amen.