Repaying Our Loan from God by The Rev. Donald L. Hamer
Posted on
Trinity Episcopal Church
Proper 25
October 23, 2016
Sirach 35:12-17 Psalm 84:1-7 2 Timothy 4:6-8, 16-18 Luke 18:9-14
Pour out upon us your Spirit, O Lord, that we might hear your word and that your wisdom may draw us closer to you. Through Jesus Christ, the Living Word. Amen.
Every so often two events coincide in a way that you just know the Lord is at work. I remember eleven years ago when out of the blue I received a letter from Manuel Goty. Manuel was a Cuban refugee whose family had been assisted in their resettlement by Keith and Alexis Hook and other Trinity families in the late 1960s. He sent me a long letter explaining how much he and his family had benefited from the care and support given them by his Trinity family, and now, he wrote me, he wanted to give something back. Now a mid-level executive at Nike, he began sending me an annual check in the amount of $1,000 to support re-establishment of a refugee ministry at Trinity. Three days after I received that first letter, on a Sunday morning, Fred and Emily Bohlen and their three children walked through our doors having just escaped the ravages of the war in Liberia.
It happened a few years later when a new wave of refugees, this time from Myanmar or the former Burma, arrived in Hartford. The Sunday after they arrived, Roy McAlpine and Emily Estes introduced me to their friend, Fr. Saw Tin Ohn, an Anglican priest from Myanmar who was studying at Yale Divinity School for the year. For that academic year Fr. Philipo, as he was called, worshipped with us and served that community.
A truly amazing thing happened this past week, and I want to share that with you in a moment. But before I get into that, I want to share some thoughts with you about our stewardship of this wonderful congregation known as Trinity Episcopal Church, Hartford. Today is popularly – or maybe unpopularly – dubbed “Stewardship Sunday” because it is the day when we focus on how we give back to God just a small portion of all that God has given to us. Traditionally, this has been the final Sunday following about a month of build-up by a committee of our brothers and sisters who have put together a coordinated campaign of letters, flyers, and brief testimonies during worship. Last year, Toni Fatone put together an amazing series of video collages portraying the many facets of our community life and ministry here at Trinity.
This is what we have done for the past 10 years, and it has been successful. Our annual giving has increased over the past 12 years from approximately $270,000 per year to over $375,000 this year. Twelve years ago, over 70% of our operating budget came out of our endowment; in this year of 2016, only about 20% of our operating budget comes out of our endowment – 26% if you include the costs of capital improvements to the property. In either case, an amazing turnaround, especially in a time when churches are closing and congregations in general are aging and shrinking. These figures are testimony to a community that is growing in faith and in faithfulness.
And now it is time for us to take the next step. For the past 11 years, we have waited for a small leadership group to encourage us and guide us – perhaps goad us? – into giving more to support God’s mission here at Trinity. I believe we have achieved the spiritual maturity as a congregation that we are ready to assume this responsibility on our own as part of our baptismal covenant.
You see, to some extent, our practice over the past 11 years has been based upon an old model of church—the model of church that many of us were raised with. Each American congregation was organized a lot like a social club, around which religious community grew. In this scenario it was natural that the church became the clubhouse. It became a place where the “members” gathered to engage in activity that was reserved to them and, to be sure, people who wanted to be like them – people who wanted to join the club – were always welcome so long as they fit into the community norms. This may sound cold and crass, but when you analyze it, it describes an awful lot of churches.
The unfortunate corollary to this was that the clergy and lay annual appeal leaders were placed in the position of selling a product – in this case, the services of the church – and the congregation was placed in the position of being consumers of that product. Give to the church BECAUSE we do this, and this and that. We provide good music, pastoral care, snacks on Sundays and hopefully you get a good feeling while you are here. It was like the club management going to the club membership each year and asking you to renew your membership and, oh, by the way, there is a voluntary increase in the dues for the coming year so we can balance the budget. To be sure, God was always part of the picture, even at the center of it. But we have to ask ourselves, if God is really at the center of it all, does God really require an organized campaign to get God’s people to do the right thing?
The inter-testamental writer Jesus ben Sirach exhorts us to "Give to the Most High as he has given to you, and as generously as you can afford."
As Christians, we all would agree -- at least theoretically -- that God created the universe and all that is in it, including us. This is a fundamental tenet of our faith. And yet, when it comes to practice, very few of us live fully into that belief. We have all kinds of pressures on our personal resources, and so often as a practical matter, we count giving back to God as just one more of those many pressures. Most of us also give to any of a number of charitable causes, and so often, as a practical matter, we count giving back to God as just one more of those charitable causes.
But as an expression of our faith, our priority in our giving should be directly to God’s mission as that is lived out through our community of faith, and that is Trinity Episcopal Church. It shouldn’t come from what we have left over – it should be the first thing we attend to before anything else. Giving of our first fruits is what God calls us to do, and we can do it with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. With prayer and reflection, each and every one of us can develop a discipline of giving back to God as God has first given to us.
And so this year, we’re going to try something simpler. In the coming week, each of you will receive a letter in the mail along with some simple materials to guide you. Each Sunday between now and the end of November, we will have an inspirational piece as part of our service leaflet insert. On November 1, All Saints Sunday, we will have an ingathering ceremony. At that time, each one of us will have an opportunity to walk directly up to the altar to place before God our intention for giving of our first fruits for the support of God’s work through the ministries of this church in the coming year 2017.
Oh, about that amazing thing that happened this week. I was actually thinking about my message for this morning when the mail arrived on Thursday. There was an envelope addressed to me – no return address, no other identifying information in it. I have no idea who sent it. But when I finished it, I was so moved that I broke down sobbing in my chair – that’s how powerful it was for me. And so I would like to share it with you this morning:
I think there is nothing more to say. As we prayerfully consider how we will support furthering God's mission through the ministries of Trinity Episcopal Church in the coming year, I invite you to inventory the blessings in your life, and to respond as faithfully as you can. AMEN.