Asbury First United
Stewardship Sunday
Text: Mark 12:28-34
Skaneateles Lake runs south ten miles past Mandana and New Hope and Scriba, to rest in embrace of the Allegheny plateau. Down there some years ago a man told how he came to faith:
It was in those years of too few dollars and days, and too many deliveries and diapers. We seemed to be always at odds, kids crying, not a dollar or an hour to spare. I had signed up for a morning prayer group in our church, every Wednesday. It got that I dreaded going. I was tired; the meeting was chaotic, attendance spotty. I like things done right. One morning I didn’t go. The next Wednesday my wife kneed me out of bed. Our deal was to pray and then to take a card from a pack the pastor had of service needs. So I took mine: “Boy needs ride to Sayre Hospital tomorrow”. That was the straw, or almost the straw: “this is a whole day, not an hour—I didn’t sign up for this!” I huffed out. Sometimes though after I blow off some steam I think different. That little card rode around in my jacket during work. When I got home I made the mistake of telling my wife about it. She didn’t say anything, but she had that look and that jaw set back and that, you know that attitude. About 11pm I called the home and said I’d take the boy.
Early Thursday I drove across town. He was already there on the curb, alone and with a little suitcase. I was still so frosted about the whole thing I just kept silent for a while. I watched him though from the corner of my eye. He took some cookies from the bag and offered me one. He watched the scenery. I saw him read a note that was wrapped around the cookies. He was about 5. With our four girls I realized I didn’t have much practice at talking to a boy. After a while he told me about his leg. It was something he was born with. The operation was going to help him walk right. They had to postpone it until his mother got work again. She had just gotten another job and was so grateful. Then he asked me the most surprising thing I have ever been asked: “Mister, are you God?” He asked so sincerely that I stifled my laughter and asked what he meant. He said:
“Last night after dinner I got ready for bed. My mom was really upset. She said she had to go to work today or we would lose our house, but that I had to get to the hospital or my leg would not ever be right. She came into my room and prayed, “God please help us. God please take my boy to the hospital. God help us somehow for tomorrow.” When I got up this morning she told me God was helping us. So that is why I asked you: Are you God?”
You ask how I found my faith? I found my faith by practicing my faith.
Virtue is formed by habit. Faith is formed by practice. Habits form virtue. Practices form faith.
Said the tourist to the violinist, at 50th and 9th Ave, “How do I get to Carnegie Hall?” “Practice, practice, practice…”
You would like to have self-control? Practice restraint.
You would like to be gentle? Speak gently.
You would like the gift of faith? Act faithfully.
You would be good? Do good.
You want to become kind? Live kindly.
You desire patience? Practice the arts of prayer.
You hunger for peace? Live peaceably.
You hope for joy? Sing and practice singing.
And love? One who would know love must love others.
Dr. Lohmeyer long ago, rightly in my view, identified the original setting of this controversy story along the Sea of Galilee. Its positive depiction of the Pharisees, its rough directness in speech, its colloquial character, and its willingness to see Jesus receive the praise of his Jewish neighbors all argue so. The careful readers among us will note that Mark already has us in Jerusalem. Yet the original setting for this crucial teaching on love was, probably, the lakeshore. No surprise. Half the gospel happens upstate.
A powerful summary of the law is here rendered for the first time in history. How are we to live? By loving God and loving our neighbor. Who first connected Deuteronomy and Leviticus? Mark? The early church? Jesus? All we can say is that we have the teaching as our Word of God.
As Flip Wilson’s Geraldine told her\his boyfriend "Killer": “What you see is what you get”. The gospel in a word is love. And what is love?
First, love is commitment. If you thought you would escape this service without hearing the word ‘commitment’ you are about to be disappointed. For when the Bible speaks of love it really means to speak of commitment. Commitment implies staying power, the power to see things through, the lasting strength that carries you beyond a valley to the next hill, beyond sickness to future health, beyond poverty to future wealth. Commitment in youth. Commitment, if God so blesses you, for children. Commitment through middle-age. Commitment as you take your places as working, caring members of the community. Especially a commitment to grow old in community. Then as the gray hairs multiply you will begin to see what love can mean. For “in this is love, not that we loved God, but that God loved us.” No mere infatuation this. For if God had been merely infatuated, how quickly he would have given up on us. Rather it is God’s own commitment that directs and encourages us to mimic him.
It may seem odd to quote the newest California, by the way easily the finest governor that professional body building ever produced. But I will. Asked how he could possibly manage a job like the one he now has he said: “I think it is like body building. First comes the commitment.”
Virtue is formed by habit, faith by practice.
We have sometimes worn better men’s clothes to become better men.
A judge wears a robe not because he is less human than we but because, being equally human, he needs to pretend to a higher wisdom. Children dress up on Halloween not because they are less human than we, but because, being equally human, they need to pretend to a greater imagination. Clergy wear vestments not because they are less human than others but because of the opposite, being equally human we need to pretend to a fuller spirit. Brides and grooms wear tuxedos and gowns not because they are already mature but, to the contrary, because they know their human limitation on the one hand and the mountainous nature of the commitment they are making on the other. So they dress up. So at least they can look the part. So they can pretend and—here is the point—by pretending, prepare, and by preparing, become….faithful.
Do all the good you can….And over time you just might become--good. In our church it is time to hear the wedding bells for the Bride of Christ. In this congregation we have plenty of courtship, some serious dating, even some engagements in faith. But there are some cold feet out here this morning. Now it’s time to come to the altar and tie the knot and make some commitments. I tell you, they will be the making of you. Faith is formed in the practice of faith.
I am told of a man stranded for a decade on a desert island. At last a ship came by and rescued him. The ship captain saw three buildings carefully made and asked about them. “The first is the house I live in.” And the second. “The second is the church I attend.” And the third. “The third is the church I used to attend.” Isn’t it time we settled in and made this our real home? To do that takes commitment.
Second, love also means delight. Times of sheer delight will come upon you when you least expect them. Take the time to savor them! They are meant to give you strength. Yes, the groom’s delight as he sees for the first time his bride’s beauty as she appears before him in the wedding gown. After some time together, the delight of a shared glance across a crowded room—perhaps a reception or party—as friends and partners in an instant know without speaking what is in each other’s minds. Let us warn you that life is not chock full of delight. For some the moments of delight are few and far between. But they come to us all. When they come, take the time to savor them. And hope that God on occasion even delights in us, his creatures. “For God so delighted in us that he sent his Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life.”
What clouds our native delight is the accretion of what the Scripture calls sin. Sin has many forms, but all of them mar the delight of the day. Our besetting adversary in Rochester, NY in 2003 is a pervasive spirit of entitlement. I breathe therefore I am. I exist and so I deserve. I live and so I expect. Our sin is a sense that life owes us. Something.
The economic sword of Damocles now hovering over us will cleave neatly, like Hitler through the Sudetenland, through generations of sloth and will burn out, like wildfire in San Diego, our besetting sense of entitlement. We will go backward in time. We will have to move 100 years into the past and 100 miles out into the lake country to recall the innovation, the risk, the frugality, the industry, the generosity, the commitment that built our home here. We will return to a time of hard work, modest income, limited budgets, requisite sobriety, daily gratitude, community spirit and the delight that comes daily with love. No, I do not relish the prospect. Its individual hurts, present in some measure this morning, I mourn and abhor. But there is one communal development that comes, if we will work with it together, from recession and trouble: a gradual spiritual movement from entitlement to gratitude.
Love has a way of delighting us. Remember Paul at his best?
Let love be…genuine!
Hate what is…evil!
Hold fast what is…good!
Love one another with…mutual affection!
Outdo one another in…showing honor!
Never lag in…zeal!
Be ardent in.spirit!
Be patient in…tribulation!
Be constant in…prayer!
Contribute to the needs of the...saints!
Practice..hospitality!
Third, love is wonder. God so wondered at the world’s possibilities that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him might not perish, but have eternal life.
“The world does not lack for wonders, but only for a sense of wonder”: G K Chesterton, poet, playwright and Englishman, had it right, as he usually did: we long for a rekindled sense of wonder. From Shakespeare to Tennessee Williams to right now: what this world needs is a sense of wonder!
And for this rebirth of wonder, this new rebirth of wonder, we come to worship
This gracious and lovely space itself inspires wonder.
The music, choral and organ and solo and congregational, does too.
So do the sturdy lines of venerable liturgy, hundreds of years in use, by kings and commoners alike, all who knew, as John Wesley said of himself, “how to prize the liberty of an Englishman”.
We are certainly heartened by such a gathering, too.
Sometimes I scratch my head and wonder, in a more reflective way, about what is becoming of life. I see women and men plunging headlong into existence, and laboring under heavy yokes. I work therefore I am. I earn therefore I am. I earn therefore I am. I have therefore I am. I control therefore I am. I think therefore I am. But the great Apostle to the Gentiles warns us about all these and more. They will cease. When we finally hear that, we pause, as we do right now. And when we do, we are truly thankful for those who keep hope alive, those who keep drama alive, those who keep dreams alive, those with a sense of wonder.
For much of life we end up seeing what we expect to see. I do so every day. I need the reminders that come and the blinders that go with wonder.
“You see things as they are and ask ‘Why’. We dream of things that never were and ask, ‘Why not?’ My generation thought Bobby Kennedy had written the line, but he did not. Actually, he did something better, he lived it. Actually, he did something even better still; he gave the last full measure of devotion to it. What was that about love being giving not taking, giving not using? You truly have only what you fully can give away. No, the line comes from the hand of a great Irish playwright, GB Shaw: “you see things as they are and ask, ‘why?’ I dream of things that never were, and I ask, ‘why not’? (repeat).
Sometimes I find myself leafing through the imaginary photo album of doubt, leaves, you could say, from the photo notebook of an untamed pastoral cynic. I wonder: just how much has the human race learned in one generation? I lament: Are we dreamers anymore? And then I come to church. And I feel a rebirth of wonder. You take the world and make it young again! I remember David Mamet’s admonition: “Train yourself for a profession that does not yet exist. That is the mark of an artist—to create something that formerly only existed in his or her heart”.
Remember Robert Frost: “Yield who will to their separation, my object in living is to unite my vocation with my avocation as my two eyes make one in sight. Only where love and need are one, and the work is play for mortal stakes, is the deed ever really done, for heaven and the future’s sakes.”
You see. The world does not lack for wonders. Love is wonder. Love is commitment and delight. And love is wonder. Wondrous Love! “It is the God who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness’ who has shown in our hearts to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
Yes, there is a sense in which every Sunday is a return to the altar where vows are taken and then lived.
I encourage you to tithe primarily because of what it will do for your character, your temperament, your personality, your spirit, your soul. And you can start today. Maybe you already made out your pledge card. But you can take another and add a zero. We will know which one to count.
Our habits form whatever virtues we have. Our practices form our faith. Do good until you become good. Preach faith until you have faith. This is what John Wesley, of all the Christian tradition, best taught.
At one of our seminaries there lived a professor and his wife who for many years, every Sunday evening, gathered a group of young clergy for dinner. The dinner began at 5pm and their table was always full. After retirement his mind left him, and she lived the 36hr a day illness, which some in this room know far better than I. As he weakened his students would come to visit. He muttered unintelligibly, listening hardly at all. His wife explained, offered tea, and graciously received the prayers of her visitors. Through such an hour the professor made no sensible statement, a stunning reversal for such a brilliant teacher. His mind was gone. But not his heart and not his faith, formed in years of practice. As the visitor was about to leave he would stiffen, sit formally forward, his eyes would brighten, and his own voice would return, as with earnest deliberation he would say, as he had for fifty years prior, “My wife and I are glad to have met you. We would be ever so pleased if you would be our guests this Sunday, for dinner. Come to our home at 5pm. You will honor us with your presence.”
Virtue is formed by habit, and faith by practice.
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