Aiming Dust and Breath Toward Peace

Aiming Dust and Breath Toward Peace

a sermon based on Matthew 5:38-48

given at Palm Bay, FL on November 28, 2010

by Rev. Scott Elliott

A middle-aged pastor remarked to a trusted parishioner, “When you get to my age you spend a lot more time thinking about the hereafter.”

“Why do you say that?” the parishioner asked.

“Well, I often find myself going into a room and thinking, what did I come in here after?”

Lately I have especially been meditating on the hereafter. See in the November 15th issue of Time Magazine, renowned physicist Stephen Hawking answered ten questions from readers.

Dr. Hawking has recently written a book called “The Grand Design” about the origins of the universe, and so a couple of the questions touched on theological issues.

The question and answer in Time Magazine that fascinated me the most was: “[Dr. Hawkings] [w]hat do you believe happens to our consciousness after death?” Hawking’s answer was quite intriguing. He wrote:

“I think the brain is essentially a computer and consciousness is like a computer program. It will cease to run when the computer is turned off. Theoretically, it could be recreated on a neural network, but that would be very difficult, as it would require all one’s memories.”

I heard this exchange to mean that Dr. Hawking understands humans to be a body run by a brain that acts like a computer with a program that includes consciousness; and that when we die that’s it, we are no more physically or consciously.

This dying and being no more is not an uncommon idea.

Nor is it new.

One of the afterlife traditions in the Old Testament relates to Sheol a place of neither good nor evil, an afterlife of essentially metaphysical nothingness for what we’d call the soul (what I assume Dr. Hawking and the questioner referred to in the recent issue of Time as “consciousness”).

In fact, Sheol came to mind when I first read Dr. Hawking’s answer. Parts of the Bible suggest that the ancient Hebrew people would have agreed with Dr. Hawking’s notion that our consciousness ends with our life on earth.

Or to use Dr. Hawking’s more modern metaphor, once the brain, the computer, goes, so goes the consciousness, the program. 1 We cease to run and therefore we cease to exist.

That can be bit disturbing to those of us raised in a culture with religious and secular attitudes that consider afterlife for our consciousness pretty much a given.

We tend to think there is some kind of heaven or some kind of hell for our soul waiting on the other side of this life.

As a product of this culture and its attitudes, as a Christian I believe in afterlife. Even though I don’t know what it is, exactly, I believe in it.

Yet truth be told, I cannot prove in a scientific way that the spirit inside this now graying and middle-aged body will have an existence beyond earth.

I certainly do not deny there is an afterlife somewhere else out there beyond the physical world we know. I believe that there is after life, but, I understand why some do not believe it.

Living life toward goodness on earth, toward peace on earth ought to be our goal either way. While I believe in an afterlife I also believe we are not supposed to aim life on earth toward life after death.

I think that for those who have a relatively good life – which is most of modern America – living and making life choices aimed solely for afterlife can be, and often is, blasphemy; it is a profound waste of the blessing of that good life.

There is precedence for this approach. My understanding is that Judaism – the religion of Jesus and the theological context he came from – has long considered the physical and the spiritual to be united. And as a consequence, the Jewish religion has a long history of focusing on life in the here and now, as opposed to life after death.

Rabbi Morris Kertzer notes that “Jews have always been more concerned with this world than the next and have concentrated their religious efforts on building an ideal world for the living.”2.

And indeed, despite a good deal of emphasis in some of Christianity on living for an afterlife, much of Jesus’ teachings can be heard to echo this age-old focus in Judaism on living and loving and caring in the here and now.

In other words, Jesus, a good Jewish Rabbi, taught that we need to focus our efforts on bringing the realm of God to earth for the living before we die.

If you think about it, this is kinda the opposite of focusing what we do on earth as an effort to bring the living to the realm of God after we die.

Life is not supposed to be focused on bringing ourselves from earth to heaven, but rather it is supposed to be focused on bringing heaven to earth through ourselves.

Heaven, the Realm of God, is about love and justice and righteousness for all, it is in the end all about aiming for peace. It’s not limited to concern for individual immortality and peace on another plane of existence in the afterlife. It’s very much about bringing peace on earth.

There are and have been traditions in Judaism relating to afterlife (3) but there is pretty much no major concern about individual immortality.

Basically, the approach, “We don’t know and we cannot know what happens when we die.” 4

Intellectually, I tend to lean this way. I agree that we cannot prove afterlife occurs on some other plane like heaven or hell or whatever else we might imagine way out beyond life.

My thinking is that in reality, we can learn about and better this life, so let’s focus on making it better – whatever afterlife there is will come soon enough. Wasting a good life for after life is a shame.

Our life ought to aim for peace on earth good will to all. And isn’t that what Advent and Christmas are all about, peace on earth good will to all? It is certainly what Jesus aimed toward with his short but very powerful life.

This is not just a Christian notion. Jesus’ religion, Judaism, considers it wise too. Proverbs 3 (13-17) sums it up nicely:

Happy are those who find wisdom, and those who get

understanding, for her income is better than silver, and her

revenue better than gold. She is more precious than jewels,

and nothing you desire can compare with her. Long life is in

her right hand; in her left hand are riches and honor. Her

ways are ways of pleasantness, and all her paths are peace.

Psalm 34 (14) tells humans to “Depart from evil, and do good; seek peace, and pursue it.” That is what we are to do with our lives in this world.

Again, I am NOT disputing that our soul or consciousness goes on to heaven. I am disputing the importance and value of leading our lives focused on that afterlife. It can be a folly to do so.

The afterlife we need to focus on is what we can do and leave behind that influences peace on this plane, earth. And we have a choice to make that our focus or not.

My first thought when I read Dr. Hawking’s computer metaphor, was “Wait a second there is always a person making choices with input on what a computer and its programs will or will not do. And likewise we aren’t like an unmanned or unwomanned computer or program. There’s an operator at the keyboard of our being on earth.

Now I don’t know about the rest of you, but I will be the first to admit that computers don’t always do what I want them to do, and I’d be the first to admit that I have experienced more than one program that seemed to have a mind of its own. But, even so, when I am on the computer the reality is that I have the power by means of knowledge and data input to be in control of both the computer and the programs.

So who is it that is at the controls of the human being and what does that mean during our body’s life and its consciousness?

Well, we are in control! And we are comprised of the stuff of science, like atoms and molecules, but we are comprised of the stuff of religion too, spirit.

This is not a new premise either. It’s an age-old idea presented in the book of Genesis. Chapter 2 indicates that human beings are made up of two things. Earth and Spirit. “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.”

In his answer, Dr. Hawking, as a scientist, seems to rely heavily on the earth part of the human equation.

Scientists deal with the elements of the universe and their physical attributes, their properties and the laws of nature that govern and control those elements. Science deals with these things relying heavily on empirical evidence, that is observed or experienced proof.

And to be fair, Dr. Hawking’s answer seems in general, to be a sound acceptable scientific answer. But in my view– and I mean no disrespect to Dr Hawking or scientists – but one bit of empirical evidence is missing from the equation and his answer.

When we are conscious we experience that we have more than just a body and more than just a consciousness.

We experience a soul, a living-ness and being that includes (but, at the same time is more than) our physicalness.

It does not take a modern scientist to discover this empirical evidence.

Thousand of years ago when Genesis was written folks had already perceived this.

Genesis suggests that we are not just earth (the physical) but that we also have God’s breath (the spiritual) within us.

In other words, we have a physical and a non-physicalness to our existence; what we tend to call body and spirit.

The author of Genesis essentially names these two things as dust (earth) coupled with the breath of God – both of which appear to be necessary to animate life.

Consequently, we understand that our life amounts to a body controlled by a spirit which together forms a unique self-ness that is us.

Notwithstanding Dr. Hawking’s musing, most of us tend to experience existence like this. And with the exception of automatic body functions and illnesses, ordinarily our spirit runs the show, pretty much telling the body what to do.

That is how we experience life works.

Our spirit makes most of the decisions that our body carries out. As I said, we seem akin to computers with operators. Consciousness may be a program, but it is one that receives commands from our spirit.

We have lots of names for the operator part of our existence, the part we hope will continue on after we die. I’ve been calling it spirit, but it is also called things like soul and consciousness.

The Judeo-Christian tradition includes in our being, breath from God and also refers to humans as images of God. So as a religious people we understand that, in the body and spirit of our human-ness, the very breath of God resides.

I note that the word spirit is derived from the Hebrew, Greek and Latin words for breath.

Literally without breath we cease to exist, and without spirit our physical bodies die. Whether it fits into a scientific box of proof or not, humans have long-observed and experienced the critical existence of the spirit or soul in the self.

This is very important. Because we are not operator-less machines, our consciousness is not like a pre-programed program. Our soul sits in the operator’s seat and makes conscious decisions to run on its own. And these choices matter.

They matter not only for the here and the now but for the future, for the earthly existence that continues after we die.

So even if, for the sake of argument, we were to agree that we do just return to dust and our soul’s only existence is from the time we arrive in our body to the time we depart from it, we nonetheless can experience an afterlife by living on in the vibrations our life sends rippling out in time through the generations that we influence.

Jesus is a perfect example of this.

No one can seriously deny that historically Jesus has had an afterlife here on earth.

His choices to aim his life toward love and peace have made his life just as relevant today, if not more so, than when he first walked the earth in human form two-thousand years ago. This is true whether we believe in the bodily resurrection of Jesus or not. Jesus has an afterlife. His life continues to affect lives. His life aimed toward peace still matters on a world-wide scale today!

Our lives are supposed to matter like that too. It may be on a smaller scale, but we can live on affecting lives after we die by how we live while we are alive.

So regardless of whether we live on in some other plane someday, right now we can choose how to live on after life through our actions while we are alive.

Boiled down, Jesus’ teachings and life give us the choice that we are reminded of every Advent and Christmas Season: Do we, or do we not, live our life – operate our body on earth – for peace on earth good will to all?

Advent and Christmas are proof that one person answering that question with a resounding “Yes!” makes all the difference in life – and in the afterlife.

Peace on earth good will to all is the choice that Advent, Christmas, Jesus and God call us to make.

May our souls make that choice for peace – and experience an afterlife.

AMEN

ENDNOTES

1. Kaplansky, Howard, This information is from the Impact of Judaism on Christianity course at Eden Theological Seminary taught by Rabbi Howard Kaplansky in the Spring of 2005.

2. Kertzer, Morris N. What is a Jew, Touchstone, 1993, 118.

3 Ibid., 117.

4. Kaplansky.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

The Reign of Christ is Doable

The Reign of Christ is Doable

a sermon based on Luke 23:33-43

given at Palm Bay, FL on November 21, 2010

by Rev. Scott Elliott

I have never been a fan of horror films or stories. I know lots of people are. But they tend to just not work for me.

I know of one, what could be called a horror story, that I have ended up admiring. I’ve heard it many times, but I first heard as a kid.

The story is about a homeless man people (including his family) thought was insane.

Some community leaders called him a drunk. No one is sure about the truth of that accusation, but, the record is pretty convincing that he did hang around with shady people and ne’er-do-wells. It’s also pretty clear he moved from town to town and broke laws.

Despite his ill repute the man had a bit of a following, he was apparently charismatic and is even said to have had otherworldly powers.

But his story is chilling. Just before he was caught by the authorities he is supposed to have met with followers behind closed doors and talked to them of eating flesh and drinking blood.

History records that when the law caught up to the man he was arrested, tried and convicted of a capital offense; and then put to death.

It is said that to make sure he was dead the authorities ran a pointed stick into him and a huge stone was placed over the tomb with guards posted to watch over it through the night.

After he was buried the account gets even more ghoulish.

The story goes, that despite all the extra efforts to make sure he died and stayed that way, the dead guy came back to life. Witnesses claimed to have seen him on road, on a beach, in a garden, even coming through the walls of a locked up building. He was last reported vanishing into the clouds.

Sounds like a zombie story, but it’s not. It’s not about one of the so-called living dead.

If you did not already guess, it’s a general summary of sorts of parts of the story of Jesus, the one we know today as the living Christ.

Today the horror for us in the story is that a man dedicated to God and love was treated so poorly and killed so brutally.

We think of Jesus as pure and perfect and a man of peace, but, that’s not how Jesus would have been understood by a lot of people who heard about him at the time he lived and died and arose and ascended, and even for a long while after.

In the Gospel accounts we can hear echos of how Jesus was really considered by probably most of his world that heard of him back in the day – back in the day when people who knew him were still alive.

Those echos suggest a sense of Jesus more akin to the horror story outline I just told than how we remember Jesus now as ardent followers, or even as a culture shaped by his life and teachings a couple of thousand years later.

Back in first century Palestine a number of people thought Jesus was odd, even crazy. He was bucking the system, tearing down barriers, and calling for the love of everyone. The Gospel of John tells us that, “Many [were] were saying, “He has a demon and is out of his mind. Why listen to him?” (Joh 10:20).

The Gospel of Mark’s report sounds even worse. Jesus’ was gathering a following and curing people and casting out demons; and Mark reports that, “When his family heard it, they went out to restrain him, for people were saying, ‘He has gone out of his mind.’” (Mar 3:21 NRS).

Jesus had a rep. And it was not just about questionable sanity.

In the Gospel of Matthew Jesus himself is reported to have described his reputation as a drunkard who hung around with seedy people. In chapter 11, speaking of himself he says: “‘the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, ‘Look, a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners!’” (Mat 11:18-19 NRS).

Jesus does not just have a reputation by some in his culture as a crazy party animal, he actually really broke laws. He did stuff the Biblical or secular laws said he was not supposed to do. He touched the untouchables. He worked on the Sabbath. He usurped powers reserved for Temple elite teaching people how to mediate God without the elite. He cured and healed people and cast out demons. He criticized and chided those in power. He fraternized with shady people. He claimed criminals and others were forgiven outside of the law.

He did something even we would consider a crime today. He entered a Sacred location, the Temple and he intentionally trespassed, disturbed the peace and overturned tables.

We have come to believe he was doing what was right, even if unlawful, but that does not make Jesus a non-criminal.

Today’s Lectionary selection is a text that remembers the inescapable fact that Jesus was a criminal.

We need to remember too that his conduct was not some petty crime under Roman law. Jesus’ rebellious acts were considered so egregious they were very much frowned upon by the law and the authorities.

Indeed, we know from the text and the times that Jesus was in fact convicted for being a rebel. We know this because he is given the torturous punishment Rome reserved for those who rebelled against it. He was hung on a cross to die a horrible death.

This text is the story that is chosen for “Christ the King Sunday,” or what’s been renamed, “Reign of Christ Sunday.” It’s the Sunday where we celebrate the end of the Christian calendar year, it’s basically the New Year’s Eve of the church.

Next week we begin the new church year with Advent, the beginning of the hope that the Christmas Season promises. That promise, that hope is the Reign of Christ, the one this text reporting a horrible event is meant to remind us of.

If we stand back and look at the text for today and are frank about it, on the surface it’s a very a peculiar text to commemorate the Reign of Christ.

Honestly, even in today’s terms, it’s no less than scandalous. Jesus an enemy of the state, a rebel outlaw, a person who broke laws in such an unacceptable way that the state sanctioned death penalty was lawfully invoked and implemented against him. As a consequence Jesus was hung in a very humiliating way – naked, nailed to a cross – to die in shame in public.

Christ the King dies a horrid earthly death.

Why is this text chosen for “Christ the King Sunday?”

It’s true that Jesus IS called king in the reading; but it’s a very mocking “King of the Jews” and a very mocking “Messiah.” Specifically we are told: the leaders scoffed at him, saying, “He saved others; let him save himself if he is the Messiah of God, his chosen one!” The soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine, and saying, “If you are the King of the Jews, save yourself!” There was also an inscription over him, “This is the King of the Jews.” One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah? Save yourself and us!’”

The whole point of Jesus being named king by the powerful, and even the ridiculing violent rebel that day, was sarcasm.

They mean “So, dude, like, some king you turned out to be hanging here naked dying as a lowlife with lowlifes. If you’re such a wonder why can’t you stop this?”

There is great irony in that sarcasm. But the author of Luke and the early Christian community are pretty smart and sophisticated – and have a keen sense of humor.

See Luke reports it as a double irony. Jesus the humble nobody who is mocked as a king who can do nothing, actually turns out to be the King who is Lord over everything.

The joke (Macabre as it is) is on those who mock Jesus, those who side with earthly human institutions that oppress humans and make Jesus a criminal worthy in their eyes of capital punishment for preaching, teaching and enacting love.

They mean to tease Jesus with what they and the world mostly think at the time are outlandish assertions that so low a man could be king. But, as we know, he really is the greatest of all royalty; Lord of lords, King of Kings, Jesus the Christ.

The early church experienced Jesus as Messiah and King and they found a way to embrace this scandal and turn it completely on its head to make fun in essence of the attempts to make fun of Jesus. God vindicates Jesus by crowning him King of Kings, Lord of Lords, Jesus the Christ.

And it is supremely ironic that a scandal becomes the very vehicle for God’s coronation of Christ as King and the beginning of the Reign of Christ. From what the world’s leading institution of Jesus’ day deems the worse type of being, a criminal sentenced to death on a cross, God creates an everlasting King.

Amazingly it is there on that cross, naked, nailed, humiliated and as low as one can go in life, that God – through Jesus – demonstrates what the Reign of Christ is made up of.

From the worse possible place in all the world Jesus acts as God’s instrument delivering love and compassion to enemy and neighbor, to the culture’s highest to the culture’s lowest.

Against the powerful who hung Jesus up to die neither God nor Jesus seek vengeance.

Jesus does not call down armies of angels to destroy or defeat them, he does the opposite kind of a power move.

Jesus invokes the mightiest tool in the universe, love – which is God.

Jesus uses love to forgive the people who commit the heinous acts that put him there on that cross.

For those who hung him and those who are torturously killing him he mediates the Sacred and Holy by praying this astonishing prayer to God “Father, forgive them; for they do not know what they are doing.”

For what would seem to the rest of the world his enemies Jesus has love, demonstrates love and offers prayers of love. Jesus has no enemies all are loved and all are entitled to forgiveness regardless of what they have done.

Jesus embodies God on earth.

Jesus is God incarnate at that moment in those very acts.

We are called to strive to be such person. Jesus as a 100% human being shows that it can be done. But it’s hard, very hard to do.

Yet our salvation is not dependant upon successfully doing that.

We can be saved from our lesser selves just from our efforts to love.

This lesson can be found in the kind criminal who on his own cross has compassion for Jesus, who strives to side with the oppressed and shows that he recognizes and turns away from his old ways of sin. Jesus exchanges his last words to another human to this kind and caring criminal before dying.

Here’s the last bit of that story again: One of the criminals who were hanged there kept deriding him and saying, “Are you not the Messiah?2 Save yourself and us!”

But the other rebuked him, saying, “Do you not fear God, since you are under the same sentence of condemnation?

And we indeed have been condemned justly, for we are getting what we deserve for our deeds, but this man has done nothing wrong.”

Then he said, “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.”

He replied, “Truly I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise.”

I am struck in the story how two humans get to paradise. Jesus who embodies God and the full potential of humankind gets there. But so too does the kind criminal who’s imperfect and a sinner like us, but turns toward God and love, striving to be better even on his own cross in his last hours.

And did you notice how that kind criminal does not have to bow down to Jesus? We are told that the kind criminal addresses the King informally as “Jesus.” It’s an otherworldly Kingdom with no hierarchy. The Lord of Lord is accessible to all without regard to class or formalities.

And did you notice that the kind criminal does not have to believe in Jesus in some special way? Back then all the way up through today individuals have no need for formalities to get through to Christ. An informal address is as good as any other, and you do not even have to ask to be with Jesus in paradise, simply be remembered does the trick.

Unlike what many churches insist, this story suggests that we do not have to follow a formulaic acceptance of Jesus to affect results. All that the kind criminal on the cross did was turn to Jesus, call Jesus by name, acknowledge Jesus’ righteousness, understand his own shortcomings, and pray to be remembered.

In short, repenting and showing love toward God, self and others is enough to get you into paradise – if this story is to be believed.

And, also, did you notice that there is no hellish consequence in the story for all the others who do not do this, or for those who mistreat Jesus. Jesus forgives them, loves them without their even asking or changing their ways. Jesus’ love has absolutely no strings attached. Even those who are up to no good are loved and forgiven. That’s Grace, the no-strings-attached-love we talk a lot about here.

It’s kinda ironic that Jesus was painted in a bad light in his time by his opponents. They made his advocacy for love and care for all, the work of an insane, homeless criminal rebel who got caught and put to death for it.

There’s an irony of sorts today in as much as it is not Jesus’ opponents who make Jesus out in modern terms to be a kinda monster of another sort, it’s some of his followers. Some Christian leaders claim that Jesus is someone we have to “believe in” (as the they tell us to believe) or we will suffer horrible consequences, worse than crucifixion, that is torment without end for eternity.

To these leaders Jesus’ forgiveness is not freely given as it is in the story. To these leaders Jesus’ love has strings attached. And the strings are their strings, since Jesus has none in this story. It is an inescapable fact that on the cross Jesus loves all steadfastly and forgives all without regard to a person’s request or belief or conduct.

Christians that insist Jesus requires he be believed or entreated for forgiveness to avoid the horrors of hell seem to miss the point of today’s lesson.

The point of the story seems to be that all are loved and that there are at least two ways to paradise. Perfect incarnation of God as Jesus managed; or repenting and showing love toward God, self and others as the kind criminal managed.

The story shows that both are possible, and neither one is about belief in Jesus in some formulaic way.

The promise of the story – the Good News – is that if humans find a Way to do one or the other the Reign of Christ will be upon us. That Way is loving, or striving to love, all even those who do wrong, even those who reject Jesus, even those others might want to consider enemies.

See in the end it is all about transformation through love and the need to love all. The promise of Christ the King is that when humans love, value and forgive one another the Reign of Christ breaks in.

May the Reign of Christ come sooner than we expect.

May the hope of Advent that starts next week lead us closer still to the Reign of Christ in the year to come.

Love God. Love self. Love others.

AMEN.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott © 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Teaching and Embodying Love

Teaching and Embodying Love

a sermon based on Matthew 6:19-33

given at Palm Bay, FL on November 14, 2010

by Rev. Scott Elliott

As we’ve already heard, today is Stewardship Sunday.

For those of you who are familiar with Comedy Central’s TV program “The Daily Show,” I need to put this out in the open at the start: Stewardship Sunday has nothing to do with that show’s popular host Jon Stewart.

So if you came all charged to see Jon Stewart or hear talk of him, it’s not going to happen, beyond what I just said.

Frankly I don’t even do an impression of Jon Stewart, and even if I did, as I have mentioned before, all my impressions sound like JOHN WAYNE: “Welcome to “The Daily Show.” I’m Jon Stewart, pilgrim. Wagon’s, ho!”

In case you are wondering, except for Jon Stewart fans, the words I started this sermon off with – “Today is Stewardship Sunday” – tend to be words that preaching experts would recommend pastors not begin a sermon with.

Why?

Well Stewardship Sunday is one of those days in a lot of churches that people hope to avoid or just grin and bear. So there is a perceived risk that mentioning it at the start of the sermon in church could set folks on edge.

Of course, I avoided that problem completely with my witty pun on the Daily show and my perfect impression of John Wayne. So I am quite certain the preaching experts did not mean me.

Actually I started with the words because this church community has a non-edgy way of approaching Stewardship Sunday.

It is true that Stewardship Sunday in general is about offering gifts in the form of pledges of amounts people in this community (both the members or non-members) hope to provide in the coming year to the accomplish the mission and ministries of this church.

Places of worship do these gift pledge drives in all sorts of ways, often high pressure or demanding. Which is why the phrase I started with is thought to be edgy.

Our church has a different approach. I love that it is very low key.

We do remind everyone Stewardship Sunday is on the calendar and important, but no one tells you what gift you have to give or should give.

No one calls and questions the size of a pledge or missed payments.

Basically what the Stewardship Team does is suggest that those who feel a part of this community prayerfully consider making a pledge in conversation with God, and then make a pledge based on those prayers.

Here, a pledge is between members and God. It’s a Sacred offering of a Sacred gift based on a Sacred conversation with our Scared Maker.

Our offering of gifts to the church is about giving ‘til it feels good, not about giving ‘til it hurts. No one here wants anyone in pain over these Sacred gifts. What the church hopes for is joyful giving to continue God’s work through this community in the year to come.

The church council – the representatives you selected to administer the operation of the church – ask for pledges so that they can know what gifts, what treasures, folks hope to provide so that a budget can be worked out to operate the church next year.

Our pledges give a starting point for figuring out what we can afford to do and who we can afford to pay during the operation of the church next year.

However, our gifts have so much more depth than helping plan a budget. They are our intended and heartfelt gifts – OUR GIFTS – given in response to all the blessings God has graced us with. And in hopes of our blessing others through the church in the year to come.

Like Sacred blessings they are gifts that keep on giving. Like a miracle they multiply their blessings.

To sort of paraphrase the reading today, the gifts we give are not treasures stored on earth where moth and rust consume them and where thieves can break in and steal them, they are gifts to heaven, used to do so many things for the realm of God ON EARTH!

Our gifts, in fact, give action to God’s love.

How?

Well, the church carefully uses the gifts to enable our community to do basically two things: (1) teach love, and (2) embody love.

This ties in with the last section of the reading for today where Jesus is remembered as saying:

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air; they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them.

Are you not of more value than they? And can any of you by worrying add a single hour to your span of life?

And why do you worry about clothing?

Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow; they neither toil nor spin, yet I tell you, even Solomon in all his glory was not clothed like one of these. But if God so clothes the grass of the field, which is alive today and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you – you of little faith?

Therefore do not worry, saying, ‘What will we eat?’ or ‘What will we drink?’ or ‘What will we wear?’ For it is the Gentiles who strive for all these things; and indeed your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

But strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be given to you as well.”

Jesus is not talking about kicking back and waiting for God as some kinda Santa Claus in the sky to rain down food and clothing in our life through supernatural intervention.

He tells us that we have to, “strive first for the kingdom of God and [God’s] righteousness.” And when we do, then all will have enough, all will have their necessities provided for.

The kingdom of God, you see, comes about when humankind learns to embody God; that is, when our actions are God’s actions, when we incarnate God on earth. As a church we are doing our best to do this by teaching love and embodying love.

Listen to some of the ways that the gifts we offer to God in time, talent and treasure accomplish this….this teaching love and embodying love.

We finance this beautiful space and its upkeep wherein, and from which, we act love out; and we pay professional staff members to help in these actions.

We have worship services with music and liturgy and prayers and sermons that educate us and bring us God’s Word about what love is, and we embody love by our welcoming care and kindness to each other in fellowship.

We have Children’s Sunday School.

We have Adult Sunday School.

We have two Bible Studies.

We have additional classes during Lent and other times of the year.

We have a justice ministry that focuses on education regarding social justice issues.

We have a green team teaching us to be more responsible stewards of resources and to the environment.

We also teach love through our actions which embody love.

Like our monthly volunteer work at Daily Bread and in our garden that grows food for Daily Bread and our other gifts to Daily Bread, as well as work and gifts we give to The Cold Night Shelter.

We also embody love in regular gifts to The Sharing Center of both food and money.

We embody love when we share our space with other non-profits like PFLAG, Mateh Chaim, Renewed Hope Christian Fellowship, Riviera Key Association and a recovering addiction group.

So too our work with Back Bay Mission, Habitat for Humanity, Crop Walk, and the Heifer Project also embodies love.

As does our Shepherds Fund which we use primarily to help individuals and families in need.

We are also a UCC “5 for 5” congregation which means we support the United Church of Christ’s “Our Church’s Wider Mission” and four special mission offerings, One Great Hour of Sharing, Neighbors in Need, Strengthen the Church and the Christmas Fund.

You, the congregation, also encourage me to provide pastoral visits to the sick, bereaved and homebound, as well as to those in jail or detention centers. I go as your representative bearing God’s love.

And I am not alone in doing compassion work, we have a volunteer compassion team that is excellent at visiting the sick and tending to the bereaved, bringing God’s love to those in need.

We also have a marvelous professional volunteer who provides mental health care to those at church.

We have a new youth group blossoming under the direction of adult volunteers and the past two summers we have connected youth and community through the performing arts with exceptional productions of plays that a lot of our adults and youth worked on.

We help sponsor interfaith connections in the area and the Shepherd’s Center educational program for adults.

We embody love in our drive to collect money and goods for children at Riviera Elementary School.

We gather up food baskets at Thanksgiving and gifts for angel trees at Christmas to provide for those less fortunate during the holidays.

We embody love when we stand up to cultural oppression by welcoming all and proclaiming in word and deed that God’s love has no strings attached, and voting to declare loud and clear to the world that we are an Open and Affirming church. This is nothing new here, as this church has long embraced a theology and the God of radical love – love for everyone who walks through those doors.

All of this loving stuff we do takes your breath away. It takes your breath away to think that this little church is doing so many things to teach and embody love.

To put it in the vernacular of my teenagers: This church rocks!

The treasures of time and talent and money that you all do not store on earth but generously give through this church makes all of those breathtaking, loving things come about all year long here. All year long.

The Stewardship drive and Stewardship Sunday are a time when we remind each other that gifts are needed to do all this love stuff. Without the gifts we would not be able to do all this amazing stuff as church community. It is that simple.

Sometimes people complain about this or that in church.

One complaint I have never heard here is that our church does not do enough teaching or embodying love.

The reason I never hear that complaint is that we are, as you just heard, one heck of an amazing church. We are putting our resources to very good and very effective use.

Our time and our talent and our treasures go to do God’s work in the world teaching and embodying love.

It’s easy to complain and criticize. What is hard to do is God’s work in the world.

And it is hard to fight our cultural ethos to hoard and instead of storing our treasures on earth, put them to where our heart is called to be: teaching and embodying love. You all do this in amazing wondrous, compassion laden, love-filled ways.

The teaching and embodying love work that we do here matters much. Stewardship Sunday is how we begin that work for next year.

The United Church of Christ nationwide theme for today is “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”

Our treasures are investments in this church that go toward teaching and embodying love.

Our treasure is in love, and we have proven time and time again that there our heart is also.

See our gifts really do have so much more depth than helping plan a budget.

They are our gifts – OUR GIFTS – given in response to all the blessings God has graced us with.

They are gifts that keep on giving.

To again sort of paraphrase the reading today, the gifts we give are not treasures stored on earth where moth and rust consume them and where thieves can break in and steal them, they are gifts to heaven, used to do so many things.

Our gifts give action to God’s love in the world now. Stewardship Sunday is the start of our revving up and getting ready as a community centered in Love – to do more of this action in the days and weeks and months and the year ahead.

I am deeply grateful to be a part of this loving community. I know that you are too.

May our treasures continue to do God’s work, and may our hearts always be with God and in God’s work teaching and embodying love.

AMEN.

COPYRIGHT Scott Elliott 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED