A sermon The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland on the first Sunday of Advent

Jeremiah 33:14-16

Psalm 25:1-9

1 Thessalonians 3:9-13

Luke 21:25-36

The days are surely coming, says the LORD, when I will fulfill the promise I made to the house of Israel and the house of Judah. The days are surely coming.

Jesus said, There will be signs. Signs in the sun, signs in the moon, and signs in the stars. There will be distress. There will be confusion.  The sea will roar, and people will faint, and fig trees will sprout out leaves. Jesus said, There will be signs.

Welcome to Advent.

The trouble is, which Advent is it?

There are, by my count, at least three.

Firstly, there is the Advent you can see all around us. This Advent used to begin as soon as Thanksgiving Dinner was over. Some of us still insist upon this timing. Stores do not. This Advent, the one they sell in stores, begins a bit before October. It begins as a display on the end of the aisle, as familiar tunes on the dedicated radio station, as the return of seasonal flavors at Starbucks.

This Advent is not all retail experience. This Advent also includes parties. Staff parties, church parties, community organization parties, department at work parties, fund raising parties. Lots of parties. This Advent also includes gift giving. Gifts for family, gifts for friends, White Elephant gifts, gifts for those less fortunate.

This Advent knows how to sell itself. Santa Claus, once a quaint Dutch fairy blended with an old medieval saint, is this Advent’s spokes model. This Advent is pulled through the sky by magical flying reindeer and runs over the river and through the woods. This Advent has colors: Black Friday, Silver Bells, Red Ribbons, White Christmas. This Advent has theme songs, and signature flavors, and smells that bring back memories of a childhood we never had.

Let us name this Advent, Popular Advent. Popular Advent is very, very powerful.

Secondly, there is the Advent you find in church. This Advent always begins on the fourth Sunday back from December 25^th. Sometimes this is the Sunday after Thanksgiving, and sometimes it’s not. The date is very precise, in a vague sort of way.

This Advent is purple, or, sometimes, blue. And, for one week, pink. This Advent is solemn, and dignified, and restrained. This Advent is not precisely penitential—it is not Lent—but it is reserved. This Advent waits. It is a time of waiting, of getting ready, of preparing the way.

This Advent’s spokespeople are somewhat out of style. They aren’t trendy. The main character of this Advent is a baby who hasn’t even been born yet. His parents are fairly passive folks—his mom likes to sing but his dad hardly says anything at all. This Advent has lots of interesting subplots though: here are shepherds surprised at night by an angel; here are wise kings of the east following a portentous star; watch the small family look for a place to stay, then run away from the evil king who wants to hurt their newborn son.

Let us name this Advent, Religious Advent. Religious Advent also has music. Some of which has been stolen by Popular Advent.

Thirdly, and finally, there is the Advent we try to ignore around the beginning of December each year. This is the Advent of Jeremiah—this the Advent of Jesus warning the Disciples. The days are surely coming, says The Lord. Jesus said, there will be signs.

This is the Advent of the second coming, the Advent of Christ risen from the dead and come again, the Advent of judging the living and the dead. This is the Advent of those taken up and those left behind, of celestial battles between dragons and angels. This is the Advent of, “are you ready?”

This Advent is not popular. It has no songs, it has no flavors, it is not for sale at Best Buy. This Advent will not invite you to a party, or give you a present, and tell you a sweet story about a baby. The spokesman for this Advent froths at the mouth.

This Advent does offer hope. Be ready, it says, be on guard so that your hearts are not weighed down with dissipation and drunkenness and the worries of this life. Don’t let that day catch you unexpectedly, like a trap. For it will come. It will come upon all who live on the face of the whole earth. Be alert at all times, praying that you may have the strength to escape all these things that will take place, and to stand before the Son of Man.

Let us name this Advent, Scary Advent. Scary Advent is hard. It wants no excuses, but promises salvation to those who are judged worthy.

So. Which Advent is it going to be? Popular Advent is the clear front runner. Even people who don’t give a fig for babies placed in mangers on December 25^th will happily eat fruitcake during Popular Advent. Those of us who favor Religious Advent like to scoff at Popular Advent. We like to say that Popular Advent is just a commercialization and sentimentalization of our treasured Religious Advent, with some odd northern European cultural practices grafted on here and there. We are right, but that doesn’t scare Popular Advent. Popular Advent is not afraid of us.

Religious Advent has a small but dedicated following. If Religious Advent was a movie they would call it a cult-hit. That means that some people like it a whole lot but most people are fairly indifferent. Oddly, supporters of Religious Advent seems to spend very little time telling other people about how great Religious Advent is. Instead they talk about how sad and misguided Popular Advent is, but that does not scare Popular Advent. Popular Advent is not afraid of us.

Scary Advent is not afraid of us either. Not even a little bit. But we are afraid of it, oh yes. Scary Advent is best ignored, I find. It only lasts for a couple of weeks at the end of November anyways. If you’re lucky, your preacher will be kind to you and make Scary Advent seem funny. Then you can pretend that the Bible didn’t just say to you that you had better flip your life upside down and turn it around and hang on tight because things are going to get very, very, odd before the end. At best, Scary Advent does not get celebrated, it gets respected.

Welcome to Advent! Advent is complicated. It is not one thing, or one idea, or one time. Advent is huge, and deep, and not entirely under control. We are here, for the next four weeks, to observe Advent, to celebrate Advent, to respect Advent. I promise that the rest of the Advent sermons will not be this strange. Probably. But think on this: over the next four weeks, which Advent will you be celebrating?

View archived copy of The eClarion here.

The Friday Letters, Special Thursday Edition

26 November 2009

Thanksgiving Day

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

Thanksgiving Day is one of those days surrounded by, nay, encased in tradition. Even leaving aside the menu most families have traditions about where the meal takes place, who sits at what table in which room, who does the cooking and who the cleaning-up, who sits on the couch to watch football and who sits there to nap after dinner. The shape of the meal is predestined with a rigidity that would have made John Calvin uncomfortable. Even if the standard turkey and fixings are not de rigueur in your household, surely something is. The side dishes are less standardized but no less concretized in tradition. What is the odd side that your family always has to make? Squeaky, canned green beans with condensed soup and fried onions? Makes me shudder, but I’m never surprised to hear the subject raised.

Even breaking the traditions is traditional for some folks. The fact that not eating turkey and mashed potatoes on the day is an important decision only reinforces the power of the tradition. This is the camp I’m in: I get a perverse pleasure out of not preparing the traditional meal. Not that I don’t enjoy the traditional meal, mind you; I’m a big fan of slices of turkey covered in gravy and surrounded by heaping piles of carbohydrates in nine forms. I do like sauerkraut on my leftover sandwiches, but otherwise my idea of a Thanksgiving meal is fairly orthodox. Yet I get the bigger thrill out of not doing what’s expected, even though I enjoy the expected.

Center place on this year’s menu is Turkey Tortilla Soup, which has dual benefits of being non-traditional but still including turkey. It’s a pot of soup that says, “yeah, I know it’s Thanksgiving. You wanna make something of it?” Soup with attitude. And delicious.

The other tradition that is fairly wide-spread is the giving of thanks. In my family this was always an awkward little conversation that started with, “so Ben, what are you thankful for this year?” I always came up with something, and felt silly doing so. I get a similar feeling even now when, during the Prayers of the People, the reader leaves a space of silence into which we are meant to offer our particular thanks. This silly feeling, this moment of awkwardness, is nothing to do with how thankful I am. I am very thankful. So thankful, in fact, that narrowing my thanks down to one or two things is an exercise in futility: to be thankful for one thing calls to mind another thing for which I ought to be thankful. It is a never ending spiral of humility brought on by perspective: truly, I have so much to be thankful for.

Foremost in my mind as I write this letter is Christ Episcopal Church of Puyallup. There is so much here to be thankful for. I’m thankful for children at the early service, who chatter at my sermon and shake hands at the peace. I’m thankful for Sunday School teachers who care enough to be nervous about the lesson they are to present. I’m thankful for musicians who translate our prayers into another language. I’m thankful for coffee hour hosts and the people who come early to make coffee. I’m thankful for those who give their time to the behind the scenes work of finance and governance and administration. I’m thankful for the homeless folks who never come to service but who know our church as the place where the fuzzy white dog works during the week. I’m thankful for the people who come to church every week, and the people that come once every couple of months. I’m thankful for the people who make soup on Wednesdays at noon.

This community, which I have been blessed to be a part of over these past two and a half years, is a community that fills my heart with thanksgiving. I hope it is just such a place for you as well. This year, as you eat your turkey (or whatever else it is you’ll be eating) I hope you’ll spare a moment of thanks for this place we share.

In Peace and with Thanksgiving,

Ben.

A sermon by The Rev. Benjamin J. Newland on Christ the King Sunday

2 Samuel 23:1-7

Psalm 132:1-13

Revelation 1:4b-8

John 18:33-37

King’s have fallen somewhat out of fashion over the past century or so. There are still a couple countries that refer to their highest political office as that of ‘king’. There are several more for which a constitutional monarchy is maintained; the trappings and titles of kingship are preserved though not the absolute authority. Of course, there are plenty of countries where the person holding the highest political office exercises a complete and total authority but where the word king isn’t used at all. Very few of us, living in modern, representational democracies, have much use for kings, except perhaps as pieces of political theater.

King has fallen out of fashion as a religious metaphor as well, particularly over the past few decades. To speak of Jesus as king is to speak in  patriarchal and hierarchal language. To talk about the Kingdom of God is to perpetuate a system that is very much of worldly organization and not divine organization. Let us instead talk of Jesus the Shepherd, not Christ the King. Let us speak of the City of God, not the Kingdom.

There is some element of political correctness to this manipulation of language, of course. As if by using the right words about God we might manage to define God’s system of government into something we approve of. I think we’ve all learned to take political correctness with the grains of salt it deserves by now, and yet there is more to our uncomfortableness with this metaphor than simple correctness.

The fact is, we don’t really know what the word king means anymore, at least not in the same way that those who first used this metaphor did. None of us here this morning have ever lived in a Kingdom, not an historically accurate one anyways. None of us has ever experienced a system of rule in which the one at the top of the totem pole exercised complete and unrestrained authority, and did so by divine right. Certainly we understand different levels and exercises of authority in our lives. Yet even in the most restrictive situations, I can’t imagine that any of us here present has ever been asked to willingly give over all personal and communal rights to another who would then have complete and utter control over us, and to do so willingly believing that God arranged the world in just such a way for just such a purpose.

And yet. While king is an antiquated concept in practice, it is a living metaphor in our imaginations. Compare it to other Biblical metaphors that are equally our of date: we don’t have any practicle experience of shepherding either. We’ve never been household slaves, or itinerant teachers. There are many jobs mentioned in our scriptures that do not have modern equivalents. The implications of metaphors using these jobs then are generally lost on us. Those of us who gather at church to consider such metaphors must constantly be reminding ourselves of what it must have been like to be a shepherd, of what the social position of itinerant teachers was, of what freedoms slaves did and didn’t have in the first century world of the ancient near east.

The concept of king is different. Everyone knows what a king is. Even those who don’t flock to fantasy-themed movies or renaissance faires know exactly what a king is. Or do we? If anyone ought to be an authority here it’s me. I am a voracious reader of fantasty stories. I keep a lits of all the books I read in a year. This year’s list is typical: I just finished book number seventy. Most of these fantasy stories contain kings, or something like them. So I should be well versed in the complete sense of this concept.

I’m not, though. As any astute fantasy reader can tell you, fantasy stories aren’t really about the past. They are about the present. The trick of good fantasy is to to take you far enough outside your regular world that you can then see it more clearly, or in a different way, through the medium of this fantastic metaphor. Science Fiction does just the same thing only in the other direction. All of the kings in these stories fall into one of two general categories: they are either evil tyrants, or they are idealized versions of modern politicians. Even when story tellers make heroic attempts to describe them otherwise, their characters can only interact with them in one of these two ways. There is no success to be had in creating a fictional king that functions in exactly the way a real king would have in the time of Jesus.

There can be no success at this, because story tellers are limited by their audience. If we cannot imagine a thing, they cannot describe it to us. They can push, and pull, and challenge our imaginiations, but they cannot make us imagine something for which we have no basis for understanding.

And so the Biblical metaphor of Christ the King is somewhat out of fashion. What does it even mean for Christ to be a King? Does it mean that he’s like a modern politician except perfect? Is that even a coherant thought? Does it mean he rules with absolute authority like the kings of old did, only he’s nicer? Is Christ the King the archtypal benevolent monarch? Is there a way in which we can understand this metaphor?

The readings for today offer differing opinions. In second Samuel David writes his own epitaph as a King of Israel. The words are all of praise and majesty for David, and David’s kingship, and David’s house. These are the words of a true king of old: I rule, I rule utterly, and God endorses my rule such that all who oppose it will be righteously burned from the earth. So powerful is this image of righteous and triumphant kingship that when Jesus, heir of David’s house, comes along many, many years later, no one can recognize the kind of king that Jesus wants to be.

In the Revelation of John the Kingship of Jesus is given vivid and cosmic wrappings. Among his titles are ‘faithful witness’, ‘firstborn of the dead’, and ‘ruler of the kings of the earth’. Jesus is king of kings, set as high above kings as kings are set above the common person.

In the Gospel of John Jesus speaks of his own kingship. Here is the conversation with Pilate, who while not a king is the agent of the world’s greatest king, and as such wields true, unquestioned temporal power. And yet, for all his power, Pilate is trapped. He knows Jesus is not guilty, but he cannot set him free for fear of what will happen. And so he tries to trap Jesus in a crime for which he can punish him. “Are you the king of the Jews?” he askes. To answer yes is to commit treason. To answer no is not exactly true, though here is that misunderstanding of kingship that David’s words from earlier helped create.

So here we are on Christ the King Sunday, wondering what that means. We wonder what it might mean to say that Jesus is our King, even though we don’t really have any concrete understanding of what a king is on any practicle level. And yet, the thing about really powerful metaphors is that you don’t always have to know what either half of the metaphor means in order to understand it. The perfect example of this is one I bet we’ve all used before: “It’s hotter than hell out here.” You know just what that means, though you’ve never been to hell and you have no idea what the temperature there might be.

To say that Jesus is a King unlike any other King is to say something in just that way. None of us really comprehend the concept of king as those who first wrote these words did. Yet we know what Christ the King is, anyways. Politically incorrect it might be, yet even without practicle experience we comprehend a God whose authority is ultimate, and divine, and absolute. This is our God above all gods, our King above all kings, our ruler above and unlike any other ruler. It is in his kingdom that we seek to live, under his law that we ought to act, and because of his grace that we flourish. AMEN.

View archived copy of The eClarion here.

The Friday Letters

20 November 2009

Edmund of East Anglia, King and Martyr

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This Sunday is the last Sunday in the series of long, green Sundays that stretch from Pentecost through to Advent. In many churches it is known simply as The Last Sunday After Pentecost (Proper 29). In more Anglo-Catholic circles we call it Christ the King Sunday. It is a day of special significance for us at CECoP because it is our patronal feast day. (Does the word ‘patronal’ conjure images of Harry Potter for anyone else now?) Christ the King Sunday is something like the birthday of our parish church; it is the day of its naming.

We’ve chosen this day on this year to be Ingathering Sunday. This is the Sunday we gather in the financial commitments we have made, we place them on the altar, and they are blessed. This is what makes pledges different than other kinds of bills or even charitable giving. A pledge card is not a contract with the church—it is not legally binding—but an offering to God. On these little white half sheets of paper we make a gift to God and hope that God will assist us in fulfilling those gifts. It is yet one more unique way in which this community belongs both to us and to God. If you can be at church this Sunday please bring your card or plan to fill one out when you arrive. If you can’t be there, feel free to drop yours by or mail it in soon.

Christ the King Sunday inevitably includes scriptures that feature Jesus as a king in one way or another. This year’s lectionary gives us a Gospel passage that we might expect to find closer to Easter: the conversation between Jesus and Pontus Pilate about whether or not Jesus is ‘King of the Jews’. The start of Advent is always like this: we are preparing to consider God incarnate—Jesus present in the world as a child. Yet before we can get to that Advent, we first consider another advent: the advent of God’s Kingdom, which is the task entrusted to us.

May Advent be for us not simply a season of the year, but a season of the heart. Let us make our gifts, and prepare the way.

Peace,

Ben.

The Friday Letters

13 November 2009

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

This past Tuesday our Vestry met for their regular monthly meeting. Much of our time was devoted to things financial. Like all meetings, we reviewed the income and expense figures for the month as well as for all the months since this year began. In addition to this regular review we discussed the first draft of our 2010 budget and looked at some giving data for our parish over the past several years.

The budget for next year is a bit intimidating at this point. Church budgeting is, from my perspective, half an exercise in faith and half an exercise in amateur prophecy. We can only really guess about our income, since that income is almost entirely dependant on pledges and it is still early to have all of our pledged gifts in writing. The expenses are more concrete. Our budget here at Christ Church is not fancy; nearly everything we spend is spent on paying the bills associated with our church and the salaries associated with our staff. There is very little in the way of fluff to trim out, and even trimming all the fluff to nothing wouldn’t change the overall budget picture very significantly.

There will be several relatively minor but cumulatively significant increases in our budget next year. It’s almost impossible to talk about balanced budgets or budget deficits right now because we don’t know how much income we’ll have. At this point our 2010 budget looks to come in around $267,000, which is about $21,000 more than last year. We’ll need to raise more money in the coming year in order to balance this additional amount.

This is still a draft budget of course. The Vestry will approve a final version at the end of the year and it will be available for you to see in the weeks before our annual meeting on Sunday, January 31^st.

We also had some very heartening financial data to look at this past Tuesday. Henry Nielsen performed some mathematical wizardry on pledge data provided by Maury Hedlund. The results of this were tables of well sorted information about the people who give to our church. Of course no names were included in any of this—just numbers of givers and amount given.

What we saw was that the pattern of giving at Christ Church is not the normal pattern of giving at many churches. In many churches a very few givers, giving very large gifts, contribute an overwhelming percentage of the parish budget. It is not uncommon to have 5% of the givers contributing 50% of the income, or 20% of givers providing 80% of the income. This kind of top heavy dependence in quite common and generally unhealthy.

At Christ Church this is not how we give. Like other churches we have a few givers who give large gifts, and like other churches we have many givers that give small gifts. Unlike many other churches though, we have a very respectable distribution of these gifts, and that distribution is getting better. Across the spectrum, from the people giving less than $500 per year, to the people giving between $1000 and $2000 per year, to the people giving more than $5000 per year, all the different categories of giving are solid; none are carrying the others.

In addition, we have since 2003 been adding givers and amount given at a very respectable rate. The bottom line is that this parish has a pretty healthy financial foundation. We still have our challenges, of course. The national economy has taken its toll on us as it has on others. While we began this year with a balanced budget we are about 10% behind in our pledged giving and in our plate offerings on Sunday. 10% behind is much better than the 40% or 50% behind that many churches are struggling with this year, but it is still a shortfall that we must deal with. Next year’s budget will provide similar challenges, I’m sure.

All in all it was an encouraging Vestry meeting. Not all the news is good, but not all is gloom and doom either. I am confident that the bottom line will be what the bottom line has always been: this parish and our community here will sink or swim based on the generosity of our givers. There just isn’t anything else for us to depend on. Stewardship is both an exercise in providing for the financial needs of a church and an exercise in spiritual development to which we are called by God in scripture. I hope I have provided the background for the first of those exercises. On Sunday I hope to start speaking more about the second.

May God bless our church through his grace, and may we bless it through our generosity.

Peace,

Ben.

You can view an archived edition of The eClarion here.

A sermon by the Rev. Benjamin J. Newland on the 23rd Sunday after Pentecost, (Proper 27)

1 Kings 17:8-16

Psalm 127

Hebrews 9:24-28

Mark 12:38-44

Hopefully you have noticed by now that it is stewardship season here at Christ Church. For those of you who have joined the church in the past year and aren’t familiar with the practice, we take a few weeks each fall to remind you how much you love the church, and how it would be sad if we weren’t here, and how we need you to put a dollar amount behind your support of this place. It’s pretty much exactly the same as a pledge drive on National Public Radio except that instead of providing you with slightly liberal news reporting we provide you with eternal salvation. Such a great deal!

One of the things that keeps me entertained as a sermon writer is the interplay between what I’d like to say and what the Scriptures appointed for that Sunday have to say. My colleagues in free church traditions do not have access to this source of entertainment. When it is time for them to preach a stewardship sermon, they can simply select whatever passage of scripture suits their message. Not so the lectionary preacher. Stewardship dates are usually chosen by looking at the calendar and not the lectionary, so I never quite know what I’ll have to work with when it comes time to preach on stewardship.

Often it works out quite well. Jesus spends much time talking about money, and much more time talking about generosity, or what is really valuable, or about priorities in religious life. All of these can be turned to the purposes of stewardship. On the rare occasions when the appointed scripture has nothing at all to do with stewardship, then even that can be made funny and ignored as the sermon continues on. The trickiest combination, the one that we have this morning, is when Jesus is talking about money, but his message is not one that a reasonable stewardship committee would care to have the preacher expounding upon.

On first glance the Gospel reading for this morning is perfect for a stewardship message. Oh, look at that faithful widow, who has given so generously! Jesus and his disciples sit in the Temple courtyard and watch the people come to give their gifts into the temple treasury. Here are some wealthy people, who put in a quite a bit of money. Their coins rattle and ring in the metal cones that funnel the gifts into treasury boxes. Very impressive. And here is a poor widow. She has almost nothing, but she gives of what she has, her two small coins making a tinny, sad sound as they are swallowed up. Who has given more? The rich who give out of their abundance, or the poor widow, who makes a true sacrifice?

On first glance this is a perfect stewardship lesson. Jesus commends the deep sacrifice. You who are wealthy, your preacher raises his finger, must give a truly sacrificial amount, not just a skim off the top of your abundance. The problem with this, besides the general creepiness of guilt trips delivered from pulpits, is that I’m not sure Jesus approves of the widow’s gift at all. I think he’s making a point, but it isn’t about the widow.

Consider the context. As soon as this object lesson is completed Jesus and his Disciples will leave the courtyard and Jesus will foretell the destruction of the Temple. He has spent the first part of the chapter our reading comes from arguing with the Scribes, and the first part of our reading condemning them. Before noticing the widow, Jesus excoriates the Scribes for their lavish robes, their prominent social positions, their political influence, all bought with Temple funds contributed to by poor widows. This passage is not a stewardship message about true giving. It is a harsh critique of organized religion. Not exactly the message your stewardship preacher ought to be too comfortable with.

Consider too what Jesus says the widow has done. “…she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all that she had to live on.” This is not a generous gift out of limited resources, this is suicide by charity. She is giving away her only source of food or shelter, and she is giving it to a Temple Jesus has condemned as doomed through a priesthood Jesus has shown to be corrupt. There are horribly accurate parallels between this Gospel reading and modern churches that take advantage of elderly givers.

With effort I might be able to turn this around. It’s possible I could revisit this lesson and place it in just such a light that the widow’s sacrifice would be a meaningful lesson on generosity that somehow applied to what we do during stewardship season. I don’t think I want to, though. I don’t think that the one person in this room wearing long robes, and holding a place of honor, and reciting long prayers in public ought to be the one to try and convince you to act like that widow. Jesus’ warning this morning, if not specifically about me, is about people like me. I think I’ll let that warning stand and not try to explain it away.

The lesson from First Kings today is not part of the sequence of historical readings we’ve been enjoying all summer long. It is part of the alternate track of readings selected to compliment the Gospel reading. I had them switched today because I am fascinated by the near parallel story that has such disparate results.

The widow in 1 Kings is in exactly the same spot as the widow in Mark’s Gospel. She has exactly enough for one more meal. Then she plans to die. Into this situation Elijah arrives, and asks her to give him the tiny bit that she has. The parallel with the Gospel story is nearly exact: a representative of God asks for and receives a gift that this poor widow can in no way afford to give.

There the perfect similarity ends, for we know that Elijah does not equal the Scribes of the Temple. We know because of the narrative that what Elijah is asking is only what God has commanded him to ask. We know that the widow’s small supply of food will not fail and that she will not die. Most importantly, in the case of Elijah’s widow we know that God is behind this situation.

Everything we know about Elijah’s widow we do not know about the widow in the Temple courtyard. We get no background for her, and we are told nothing about what happens next in her life. We assume the worst. From the perspective of those taking these widows’ gifts, this is not the same story at all. From our perspective as readers, this is not the same story at all. Yet from the perspective of the widows, it is exactly the same story.

Each of these women gives up the very last of what she has, hoping that in doing so she is making a faithful sacrifice to God. In one case, the result is good. In the other, the result is unknown, but Jesus surely doesn’t expect it to be good. Yet in both cases the sacrifice is real, and I believe, transcendent.

The story of the widow’s mite is not a good story for a stewardship sermon. I hope none of you are ever even in the position to make such a gift. If any of you ever tried to give this church your last hundred dollars and then die, I wouldn’t take it. Whatever these faithful widows have to teach us it is not the responsible stewardship of a humble parish church.

Yet it is stewardship season, so I have to end by asking you for money. This place where we gather each week to share sacred story, and fellowship, and the communion of God’s presence among us is very much worth our support. I hardly need to tell you that. Christ Episcopal Church of Puyallup is an amazing place, yet it is not so amazing that it can balance a budget on happiness and prayers. Please consider prayerfully making a financial commitment to this place and support our community for another year. While I hope none of us will ever be in the place of those two widows, prepared to give away our very last resources, I hope each of you will come to appreciate that jug of oil that never quite got empty, for there is the perfect metaphor for the gifts we give in thanksgiving to God. AMEN.

The Friday Letters

6 November 2009

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ,

November is National Novel Writing Month, a fact that you may or may not be aware of. National Novel Writing Month, better known as NaNoWriMo, is not a national holiday but a non-profit enterprise designed to motivate people to write novels. The basic premise is this: during the month of November, beginning at midnight of November first and lasting until midnight of November thirtieth, participants strive to write a 50,000 word novel. It is an exercise in quantity over quality and a powerful witness to the motivation of a deadline. Participants register on the NaNoWriMo website, update their word counts throughout the month, and, if they reach 50,000, they win!

Prizes for winning, besides the sense of personal accomplishment, are generally on the level of a sticker, or a free graphic for your personal website or Facebook page. Yet the sense of personal accomplishment is not to be underestimated. 50,000 words sounds like a lot. It is a lot. It’s 1,667 every single day for an entire month. That’s about the length of the sermons I write out most Sundays, so it’s like writing a sermon every day. Except I still have to write a sermon too. Though to be fair, novels are much easier to write than sermons, at least on the single day level. If I’m not sure what to write for NaNoWriMo in the morning, I can just whip up scene where my hero battles a horde of zombies with some imitation samurai swords he got at the mall. If I’m not sure what to write for a sermon, I have to spend more time doing research or praying for guidance. Though maybe if I could work a zombie or two into the sermon…

I mention NaNoWriMo because, like Christ Church, they are a non-profit organization. And like Christ Church, they are completely dependent on the donations of those who participate in their community. There is no fee to join, no cost associated with being a member of the NaNoWriMo organization. And yet people pay anyways. People, myself included, freely give their hard earned money to this cause that is slightly inspirational and slightly educational but mostly just for fun. I can easily and honestly say that I get far more out of the experience than the money I send in.

Organizations like NaNoWriMo exist solely due to the generosity of their members. Christ Church, while our goals are very different, is exactly the same in that sense. We exist due entirely to the generosity of people who could have everything we have to offer for free if they wanted to. Oh, I suppose it’s true that if nobody gave any money the church might eventually close. Yet it is equally true that if you want to go to church for free you can do that for your entire life. Giving to church is completely optional, which is what makes if a gift in the first place.

Good old fashioned letters were sent out from out office this week, asking you to consider making a commitment to give to Christ Church over the next year. I ask you most sincerely to make such a commitment and to become, or continue to be, a pledging member of our parish. The community we have here in this place is worth a very great deal. I’m asking you to reflect that value with cold hard cash now, so that we can all be nurtured and rewarded through our participation in the future.

Also, if you have any good novel ideas, I’m not sure what’s happening next in mine. Thanks.

Peace,

Ben.