Sermon for the 121st Anniversary of Eugenia United Church

Rev Shawn's Sermon for Eugenia's 121 Anniversary:

Too often, we focus on the negatives and what we lack rather than what we have … our readings this morning have request for prayer for those in places of authority and power, the parable of the unjust manager from Jesus and lament from Jeremiah seeking a Balm in Gilead … balm, a substance that brings healing and comfort to a wound … and a lament – that powerful tradition of prayer that names the harsh reality, while standing firmly grounded in the Holy Presence of God, knowing full well that God is with us even in the face of the negatives and the challenges …

One of our commentaries for today notes: “the problem is, we often feel overwhelmed and do not know where to start. This is especially true when it comes to the brokenness … we wonder if there is anything we can possibly do” … BUT … it goes to note: “to long for healing means to live in hope. It is a beginning …”

To long for healing is to live in HOPE … Hope, is as American Theologian Jim Wallis likes to point out - believing inspite of the evidence and watching the evidence change … Hope is knowing God is with us …

So, today, 121 years on as a Church and a congregation, awash in challenges and struggles – where do we find our hope?

How do we stand on our anniversary Sunday and not only feel hopeful, but live in a hopefilled way?

Where do we draw our hope from ?

How about all around us?

I set out with a challenge – to list 121 things about us as a Church community that we do and are and give thanks for, but 121 things that give us Hope and show the world we are alive and well and still sharing our lives and faith … (I didn’t quite make it … not because there aren’t 121 things to be thankful for – things that make us hopeful, but because as I compiled my list I started realizing how oriented backwards that list really is …)

So, I started by noting:             

1.  We have a beautiful building

2.  We are a small buy dedicated congregation

3.  Our music

4.  The prayer circle

5.  Men’s coffee

6.  The women’s group

7.  The annual pancake breakfast

8.  The yard sale

9.  Coffee and goodies after church once a month

10.      The Xmas pot luck

11.      Our space for community groups

12.      Our commitment to the food bank

13.      Our involvement in the community

14.      Our easter morning sunrise service

15.      Our easter breakfast

16.      Our Christmas services

17.      Our observance of November 11^th at the cenotaph

18.      Our Pork dinner

19.      Our Sunday school – past AND present

20.      Our volunteers

21.       Our musicians

22.      Our stuff – the books, tables, chairs and the things we use regularly in our outreach

23.      Each other …

And it was at this point I started thinking about the things not only whisper HOPE today, but that are the very embodiment of HOPE.

I quickly got to 23 … there are more.

If each of us started listing the things we can think of, the list would grow and grow and grow … and that my friends is the very essence of HOPE … being able to frame the world with things – people, items, places and most importantly – relationships and interconnections – that that say boldly and with faith – we can and we do make a difference

The world is a better place for our presence

The challenge in the Church today, is that we’ve stopped believing that. We’ve stopped seeing that we do make a difference, and we’ve convinced ourselves that the world doesn’t care if we live or die as a community … but as we transition into whatever we are becoming – and as a church, we are most definitely in a time of transition and change – the old ways of being and doing church are waning, and something new is looming … we are being called to be part of birthing or delivering this new entity … as we make this transition, it gives us the opportunity to seriously consider the core values of who we are and what we are about and we will build with our lists in the future.

Likely the most important piece of who we are and what we are about as a Church – past, present and future – are the connections and relationships that we forge through our interactions and our faith … our dinners and services and outreach activities will ebb and flow, and we will lose interest and try new things, but the constant is and will be US – you and I – the people …

In modern theology it is drilled in our head that the church is NOT the building nor the stuff – the Church is the gathering of people - and even that is a broad definition … if you ask most church people, their definition of Church includes things like worship, a building, and many of the things that may or may not be important in the future …

What if … what if, as we move forward into our next 121 years, instead of focusing on Sunday morning worship, our building and the stuff that we’ve taken to be part of our working definition of Church, we instead allow the things that we do well – the things that are stirrings perhaps of where we are meant to be … we allow those things to dominate our life and ministry.

What if … we let go of our buildings and dare to dream of being Church in new ways.

What if … we let go of our services and instead focus on the small groups – the mens’ coffee, the womens’ group, the knitting group, the prayer circle, and other gatherings as our main ministry – using those times as places to worship and fellowship and reach out into the world by being present to our community?

What if … we dare to let go and with prayer, reflection AND faith boldly step out that door this morning open to the call of the Spirit and having the guts to follow wherever it may lead ?

It starts with prayer … prayer for each other, prayer for our community, prayer for the work we have to do … prayer that calls on God to be present in our midst as we seek to discern where we are to go, and what we are to be about … prayer for courageous openness that builds relationships in our community and enhances and encourages the interconnectedness that has kept us alive and well for 12 decades …

I’d like to think that when the call went out over a Century ago to bring sparkly stones for the foundation of this building, the men, women and children who dug around in their fields and yards and in the bush around Eugenia, had a dream of a Church that generations later would be the hub for their community – not a building that is used once a week for an hour or so, but of a gathering of people IN A BUILDING that was present to the community around them. A place of fellowship, a place of belonging, a place that welcomes one and all, and was a presence in life’s ups and downs …

We ARE that, if we dare to dream and dare to believe.

Our financial crunch will not suddenly disappear, and our problems and challenges will not just go away – but if we take seriously that dream of presence – that HOPE embodied and shared across the decades, we can start to be something different … something new … something that not only speaks eloquently (and often) about the Resurrection, but instead embodies it and more importantly - LIVES it …

We can focus on what has been and continue to wring our hands in worry as things seem to fail … or we can embrace our hope and boldy dare to embrace the future in the same way a dedicated group of people did 122 plus years ago when they saw HUGE and hopefilled potential here in Eugenia, and gathered their sparkly rocks and build themselves and US a beautiful little church to call home … let us this gift to build and grow the Church for our community and our world … let us begin with dreams and prayer and the knowledge that God is with us now and always … thanks be to God - Let us pray …

Sermon for February 26th 2012 - 1st of Lent

One Moment, One Penny, One Dollar ...
... making a difference in our world:

In the Jimmie Stewart movie “Mr Smith goes to Washington” it is observed that “all good things in the world come from fools with faith.” As I reflected on our readings today, and moved through my week, I realized the truth of that statement, and how through faith our world has been shaped and changed for the better. It’s all part of being a Good steward, and as we move into the season of Lent and the preparations it embodies, we face the challenge of thinking about how we can live as Good Stewards in our world today.

To be honest, I think I’ve offered maybe 3 or 4 Stewardship sermons in my twenty some years of ministry. But today, the readings combined with ongoing conversations and worries about our budget here, drew me to the realization that offering one today wouldn’t be a bad idea.

My previous forays into preaching about stewardship have been in similar moments of convergence where the need was pressing. In Bella Coola I offered a “dig deep into your pockets” reflection that hoped people would come up with more than just lint … I think I even invoked that image of Jack Benny and his legendary frugalness along with jokes about moths fluttering out of wallets when they get opened.

My favourite Stewardship sermon though began with the joke: “The Minister rose on a Sunday morning to address the congregation and said, I have bad news, I have good news and I have the absolute most horrible news of all … he continued the bad news is the roof is leaking, the furnace packed it in last night, the back stairs have collapsed and thanks to a computer hacker ALL of our computers and electronics need to be replaced. But the good news is we have the money. In fact we have more than enough to cover ALL these expenses and more. HOWEVER, the most horrible news of all is that every dime of that money is in your wallets, purses and pockets and you’ve been pretty cheap lately …”

I tend to avoid stewardship sermons. I’m not particularly comfortable offering them, and I chose instead to weave the idea of stewardship throughout my preaching and reflections on an ongoing basis. Too often the tone of Stewardship sermons is uncomfortable and laced with guilt and the overarching theme of “here I stand in the pulpit, and my salary is paid by you – so you better do better” SO I tend to avoid that theme all together, choosing instead to celebrate our achievements and encourage us to work together in a positive way … but often stewardship themes are met by the response of “how dare he suggest I give more …” and the oppose reaction kicks in and we end up with fewer people pulling MORE of the weight … and everyone feels bad …

So, having set the context I would like to point out that if we were to consult the Stewardship guides and books written on the topic for Churches, we will discover that as a Community of faith, we’re doing pretty good in our stewardship. We can pat ourselves on the back for the simple fact that we are doing ‘all the right things’ according to the gurus of things Stewardship in the United Church, and we have a pretty good level of givings and support – so I don’t offer this reflection with a tone or even a suggestion of guilt, but rather as a means of opening up the discussion as it pertains to our current situation.

The reality is that as a Church we can’t avoid Stewardship, and we should avoid speaking of it on an ongoing basis. I have in my office a tiny selection of the Stewardship books and resources that are created regularly for Church use. It’s part of who we are – but in the United Church, we’ve shyed away from the discussion for fear of offending the very people who put their donations of time, talent and treasures up for use every week. We don’t want to offend anyone, so we don’t talk about it … we don’t talk about it despite the reality that every time we open the Scriptures and begin to read we’re standing in a context that is permeated with the very idea of faithful stewardship.

Noah, hearing the promise of God to never again destroy the earth by flood, and offering the gift of the rainbow to remind ALL of us of this Covenant of love and faithfulness, is a story about being a Good Stewards and caring not only for creation, but for one another, and our relationships and how we live our lives in faith … Noah embodies a second chance to be lived out in God’s promise of love … how can we NOT be a good stewards of our life and all that fills it?

Then as he rises from the waters of Baptism, Jesus hears the voice saying “this is my son, the beloved …” words we echo in our own baptism. If we are to be celebrated as one of God’s beloved, how can we live as anything less than a good steward over our blessings and treasures?

Our faith is ALL about Good Stewardship … and yet, so often we don’t want to talk about Stewardship in Church circles because we may offend people … so we limit our Stewardship talk to seasonal letters and campaigns, or special appeals, and we HOPE that by some mystical process of osmosis, people will ‘get it’ when it comes to our finances and our needs on committees and councils … we won’t talk about it openly, but we hope people will give generously and freely … it’s a strange dichotomy that we’ve set up for ourselves really …

Yet, when we do dare to talk about stewardship it’s been my experience that amazing things begin to happen … and the way to best talk about Stewardship is through stories … stories of what ordinary people can do, and do easily that makes a world of difference.

When it comes down to it, the story I like to tell is that of the First Nations Church in Bella Coola wanting to buy copies of Voices United when they first came out. There was a real willingness to buy these new hymn books, and number were purchased almost immediately as memorial gifts from families and church members, but we didn’t have enough for the whole congregation … so we were left wondering what we could do.

Then one of the elders of the community came up with the idea of collecting pop and beer cans and turning them in for the nickel and using THAT money for buying the hymn books.

It worked … almost every morning I would find a plastic bag of pop cans at the garage door of the manse that I would add to the growing pile in the garage, and in turn I would sort in to bags of 100 cans which I could take to the store and turn in. Uma, the elder and others encouraged the kids and youth to gather pop cans after basketball games at the hall, and from the ditches around the community to help the Church – we had people who seldom entered the building helping out, and the trickle of cans quickly became a torrent.

One memorable afternoon we loaded two pick up trucks to over flowing – the bags were bungee corded into place over the box and cabs of the truck as we headed up the road to the store to cash in thousands of pop cans …

The campaign was SO SUCCESSFUL that not only did Emmanual Church buy enough copies of Voices United for their use, they had money left over to buy another set of hymn books that the United Church was no longer going to publish, and that we used extensively in the Congregation there … and it ALL happened one pop can at a time.

This past week I had the privilege of spending some time with some of the greatest minds behind the running of Food Banks across Canada. During the course of our informal chat David Northcott, the director of Winnipeg Harvest one of Canada’s biggest and oldest Food Banks mused that he finds the promotion of hunger and addressing it most challenging within the United Churches of Winnipeg and Manitoba. He said off handedly – “I don’t get it really … people are hungry, we’re called by faith to feed them, why is this so complicated for Churches?”

And in that moment, he hit the heart of Stewardship … why is it so complicated? Why is talking about stewardship so frightening and so fraught with danger? Why is it, when a minister stands in front of a congregation and offers a reflection stewardship, he or she runs the risk of being run out of town for offending people? Why do we have to make something so simple as good stewardship so complicated?

I’ve always like the story that Tim Huff offers in his book Bent Hope, about the young man who lived on the streets of Toronto and LOST everything in a sudden flood following a summer rain storm. This young man lost his backpack and a precious and irreplaceable picture of his sister that he carried with him in the hopes that one day of finding her again … and yet even with this enormous loss of everything he possessed, Tim marveled how later he found that same young man begging on the streets with a time horton’s cup full of change and a sign that said the money collected was for the survivors of Hurrican Katarina because they had lost everything.

The young man knew what it meant to lose everything, and was compelled to help. But more than that, even in his dire straits, he saw the folks in New Orleans as worse off than him, and wanted to do something … a young man with nothing, was doing what he could to help someone he say worse off than himself … and he did. With Tim’s help, he donated his collected change to one of the funds set up to aid the people who survived Katarina.

That’s GOOD STEWARDSHIP … and it’s what we’re capable of doing when we live our stories, and our faith and have the courage to really look at what’s before us and respond.

It’s been suggested that we engage a Twoonie Challenge where in ALL of US are challenged to donate an extra twoonie each week to help address the deficits we’re facing … it is startling to realize that if each of our 95 resident members in the Pastoral Charge donated JUST two dollars extra each week we would by the end of December have almost 9900 dollars more in our budget … if we each donated 5 dollars we would have almost 25 000 more dollars … and if we each donated an extra ten dollars a week we would have almost 50 000 extra dollars in our budget this year.

One small gesture can make a difference … a pop can … some spare change … a twoonie … a five dollar bill … if together we each respond as good stewards of our time, our talent and our treasures we can and WILL do astounding things in faith … all it takes is a willingness to try.

As Margaret Mead once said – “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful citizens can change the world – indeed, it is the only thing that ever has …”

In faith, we gather here as thoughtful fools … let’s go and change the world !!

May it be so, thanks be to God, let us pray …