Stewardship Sunday Sermon

Giving Ourselves to the Vision:
Consecration Sunday: Proper A25: Deut 34:1-12; 1 Thess 2:1-8; Matt 22:34-46
Kristen R. Richardson-Frick
St. Paul’s UMC
October 26, 2008

Yesterday after our two-day uplifting leadership training, I took my son to Greenville for his “best little buddy’s” birthday. Long ago I grasped the vision of him having a life-long friend in my closest friend, and that involved being at each birthday party. It involved my son jumping with his friend in the jump castle his mom had rented and enjoying seeing his far-away bud. So I spent the money on gas, food, present, and I spent an entire afternoon and evening making it happen. The vision of the day and the friendship had grasped me, so the rest was secondary.

Last night while coming home and driving through Columbia, I heard the old George Harrison (former Beatle) song: “I Got My Mind Set on You”. You remember the lyrics: “I got my mind set on you…gonna take time, a whole lotta precious time...it's gonna take money, a whole lotta spending money...it's gonna take plentya money to do it right, child.” At least in the song, the vision of George courting this lady, of them being together, had grasped him. So spending the time and $ to make it happen was not an issue. The cost was worth it. The sacrifice was simply what was necessary to make the vision happen.

We live according to the visions that grasp us, you see.

A couple dreams of having a family, grasps a vision of making that happen, and they begin to make a priority of it. They talk about it. They try for it, and when they are expecting a little one, they spend time and money at the doctor’s office, making sure everything goes just as it should. The woman makes and effort to take prenatal vitamins. They clear out a room in their house and begin spending lots of time, effort, and $ on making it just the perfect nursery they see in their minds. The vision has grasped them, so the sacrifice is worth it. The time and money spent is secondary, not even an issue.

Or a family gets a vision of a dream home, so they buy a fixer-upper of a house start spending all their extra time and all their disposable income on planning, on lumber, or cabinet builders, or new furniture or watching HGTV to get ideas.

Or a man retires with a vision of traveling. As soon as his party is over, he hops a plane to travel a whole day to get to some exotic location, where he spends exorbitant amounts of money on luxury.

Or a woman desires peace and quiet after she’s raised children and cared for a sick husband. So she buys books and creates a quiet sanctuary in her home filled with a new comfy chair and beautiful potted plants and a view of trees. It takes a good bit of time and money to get it right, but she doesn’t care. She has been grasped by the vision, and the rest is secondary.

Do you see what I mean? We give ourselves to our vision of what the world, our world should be: time, energy, money, blood, sweat, tears…We willingly give them to create the vision.

Often we have no trouble on the kind of visions I’ve described so far, secular ones, not necessarily bad, but having little to do with God’s kingdom creation in the world.

But what about when the vision is God’s for us and the world, and not ours for ourselves? It seems that often we have more trouble on that front.

Tony Campolo, whom you know is one of my favorite preachers, describes how he saw this first hand (in his book Let Me Tell You a Story). Having taken a red-eye flight across the country, exhausted from days of speaking and needing rest, he was met one morning by his secretary who promptly apologized for failing to cancel an early speaking engagement that had previously been on his calendar. It was a World Day of Prayer service for a large group of women. He had to go, even though he was exhausted.

His secretary drove him, and he sat trying to stay awake as the service began. The prayer time came before he was to speak, and the presider brought a request from a missionary woman in Venezuela. She described this missionary, a doctor, who desperately needed $5000 to build an addition onto her medical clinic because there were so many people who needed treatment that she had to have many of them outside, her building was so small. The woman turned to Tony and said: “Dr. Campolo, could you please lead us in a prayer that God will provide the $5000 our missionary needs?” Not thinking clearly because of the exhaustion, Tony could not control his tongue before he said, “No, I won’t. But what I will do is take all the $ I’m carrying on me and put it on the altar and ask everyone else to do the same. No checks, just whatever cash you’ve got. Then I’ll ask God to write out a check for the difference.”

Tony had only $2.25 in cash in his wallet, but he put it down. The presider smiled and said, “Well, we’ve gotten the point,” but Tony said, “No, I don’t think we have. My $2.25 is on the altar—it’s your turn now.” The woman was taken aback, but she pulled out $110 from her purse and put it on the altar. “We’re on our way,” Tony said, and looked at the next woman. One by one, he took 25 minutes to have every single woman present come forward and lay her cash on the altar. At the end they counted: $8000+. Tony said, “The audacity of asking God for $5000, when He has already provided us with more than $8000. We should not be asking God to supply our needs. He already has!” He sat down and said nothing else.

Yes, it can be hard to give ourselves to God’s vision, to embrace God’s vision as our own. It takes a transformed mind, one that is set completely on loving God and neighbor with everything we are and have. Just as Jesus said: the first and greatest commandment is this: to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and the second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.

When our heart, soul, mind, strength is set on this: on loving God and neighbor centrally in lives, when we’ve grasped that vision--God’s vision of a world where the divine will reigns and where people love one another as God loves all of us--then the sacrifice necessary in building God’s kingdom on earth becomes secondary for us. We willingly give ourselves: time, energy, money, blood, sweat, tears, to create God’s vision. For God’s vision has become ours.

Think it doesn’t happen today? To people like us? Consider Gayle Williams, a British woman about my age, who moved from her comfortable life, giving up worldly pleasures and all her time, to live and work in a dangerous place among people who were desperate. She worked for Serve Afghanistan, “which helps young boys and girls who have lost limbs to land mines and bombs” in that war-torn nation. Gayle had been working there because God’s vision of love of these particular neighbors had grasped her. She loved God with all her heart, soul, mind, strength, and these neighbors as herself, so the sacrifices necessary to show these children and adults with them Jesus’ love, and tell these people who had never heard about Jesus’ love all about Him…the sacrifices were secondary—the time, money, effort—not an issue. They were just what was necessary to make the vision a reality.

Gayle was killed this past week by the Taliban in Afghanistan for, as they said, “spreading Christianity.” Her mother Pat told the newspaper The Independent: “Gayle was serving a people that she loved, and felt God called her to be there for such a time as this. We know her life was blessed and she was a blessing to those around her. No one could have asked for a more humble daughter with a more loving heart. She died doing what she felt the Lord had called her [to] and she is definitely with him.”

This week, Gayle joined the long line of Christian Martyrs who were killed for following Christ, for witnessing to him in a hostile world, but she had willingly gone into harms way, because God’s vision had become hers. God’s kingdom vision had grasped her, and she was willing to give it all to see that vision become a reality.

Gayle had entered the line of those like Moses, whose burning bush vision from God had grasped him so thoroughly that he was willing to walk away from his comfortable life with wife and family to face Pharoah in Egypt and then wander with a stubborn ornery people for 40 years in the desert, without food, water, clothing, permanent shelter, in the sweltering heat, just so he could see God’s vision of the Israelites prosperous and free in the Promised Land come to pass. For his faithfulness, before his death, Lord gave him that glimpse. And the time, sacrifice, effort, it was all worth it.

Gayle followed those like Apostle Paul, whose vision of complete love and devotion: heart, soul, strength for God and neighbor--whose faithful following of Jesus his Lord in the way of self-giving sacrifice for the salvation of the world--had so completely grasped him that he gave up his life of power and privilege within the Jewish community of the Pharisees to become a wandering preacher who lived among the “unclean” Gentiles so he could show them the love of God in Jesus, so he could tell them about Christ’s love, so he could invite them into relationship with Jesus and form communities of salvation for them, with them. “So deeply do we care for you,” he wrote to one of those groups of people, the one in the city of Thessolonica, “that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us.”

This kind of self-giving love of Paul, that was his imitation of Jesus, that he imparted to the Christian communities he formed, became hallmark of early Christian churches. The earliest historians tell us so.

Theologian Daniel B. Clendinen quotes two (on his journeywithjesus.net website): A generation after the first believers, the theologian Justin Martyr (c. 100–165) summarized the appeal of a "holy" Christian community: “Those who once delighted in fornication now embrace chastity alone. . . we who once took most pleasure in accumulating wealth and property now share with everyone in need; we who hated and killed one another and would not associate with men of different tribes because of their different customs now, since the coming of Christ, live familiarly with them and pray for our enemies.” Similarly, Tertullian (AD 155–220), who wrote, "Our care for the derelict and our active love have become our distinctive sign before the enemy. . . See, they say, how they love one another and how ready they are to die for each other."

My friends, God’s vision for the early church is still God’s vision for our church today. God’s vision of salvation for the world through Jesus Christ--God asks for us to make our very own vision. The Lord today has a vision for St. Paul’s UMC as a place where people are so in love with God: heart, soul, mind, strength, and so love with brother, sister, neighbor, stranger, that we willingly give ourselves: time, money, effort, energy, everything, to see that we show that love to people everywhere: from here in our own neighborhood to the other side of the world.

When God’s vision for St. Paul’s becomes fully our own vision: when we care so deeply about seeing that we are a vibrant, holy, Holy-Spirit-filled, actively-ministering-in-Jesus’-name, offering-salvation-through-Jesus’-love-to-the-people-around-us by inviting them, embracing them, serving them, loving them…when that happens, then we won’t have to have a stewardship emphasis month anymore. Because God’s vision will be ours, the giving of our money, our resources, our talents, our time, or energy…it will all be natural, just what we know we’re called to do.

Today, God invites us to begin, or continue in a more dedicated way, the journey with Jesus into that vision. Today, God invites us to embrace the divine vision for St. Paul’s. Today, we can come to the altar and give ourselves to living it. What do you say? Will you embrace the vision? Will you give your lives to it?