Sermon for the The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost, October 14, 2007

The Twentieth Sunday after Pentecost

Proper 23

Year C

October 14, 2007

Jeremiah 29:1-, 4-7 Psalm 66:1-11

II Timothy 2:8-15 St. Luke 17:11-19

Nine of the lepers in the Gospel today simply forgot the three “G”s. And it has been a long time since I have spoken about the three “G”s from the pulpit but we have been trying to live them out here at St. Peter’s. Every vestry meeting begins with one of the three “G”s. And we at St. Peter’s have been carrying them out in many ways in the life and ministry of our parish family, but it is good to be reminded of them again. The three “G”s are Grace, Gratitude, and Generosity.

We seem to live in a rather crude and unthankful world. I don’t know if it is any worse now than in the past, but it sure feels that way. People just don’t seem to say thanks any more. Maybe it is just wishful thinking on my part that we as a people were more intentional about expressing our thanks back in the good old days. But so often when I’m around town in shops and other places, the simple kindness of a thank you seems missing. Everywhere in the world today there seems to be a lack of the three “G”s. Oh you find wonderful exceptions now and then which surely gladden the heart, but overall the world seems a rather ungrace filled, ungratitude filled, and ungenerous place.

For those who like to count, it was a very poor return of gratitude in today’s story, only 10 percent. Jesus healed ten people of a horrible, defacing, incurable disease and only one returned to express his gratitude for that miracle.

Gratitude is more than just saying words of thanks. In the Christian faith it is also living it. I believe that the three “G”s provide an excellent starting place in our Christian faith walk.

The three “G”s are tied together. They are integrated in a naturally flowing manner. The first “G”, grace is that which we experience from God. We live in a world created by a wonderful, caring, and loving God. Beyond the wonder and miracle of creation, we experience the grace of God through Jesus and in all that we are blessed with in the world.

If we are truly in tune with all that we have received from God, the grace of creation, the grace of redemption, the grace of all that is on our table and in our home, then that should naturally lead to the next of the “G”s, gratitude.

I don’t know what it was in the nine that lead them to fail to see the grace of God at work in their lives. Perhaps the excitement of what happened and the desire to return home as new people made them forget their benefactor. But it is a powerful warning to us. They were touched by God in a way that is both powerful and moving. And yet the nine failed to return to thank God.

Living a life centered on gratitude sometimes calls for gratitude for the hard things as well. The prophet Jeremiah today was basically telling the people of God to get over it and get on living their lives. They were called to get over their exile from Jerusalem to Babylon and start living their lives fully in the here and now.

When things are not going as good as we might have hoped, the tendency is to focus on that issue, rather than making the best of our circumstances and being grateful for the places in which we can see God in our lives. The people from Jerusalem had missed this point and rather than focusing on living their life, in the place God had lead them, they were focused on the past, on the place they had been before.

Finally the experience of grace and gratitude lived out in our lives will hopefully call us to lead lives of generosity. I quite frankly believe that many of the difficulties facing the Episcopal Church and the wider Anglican Communion would be much less fractious and contentious if all of us practiced generosity in our lives. A little generosity of spirit could go a long way to healing our church.

If we intentionally focus on grace, gratitude, and generosity, it will help us to naturally move to a more positive kind of focus in our lives. We will learn to pay attention to what we can do in the world and in our lives in the here and now. We will free ourselves to be less focused on how it might have been better in the past or in a different present reality.

We are called to be evangelists. Those are people of share the Good News. Part of the Good News that God wants us to share are the three “G”’s. We need to share them in word and deed.

Sermon for the Twenth-Third Sunday after Pentecost, November 12, 2006

Sermon for the Twenth-Third Sunday after Pentecost, November 12, 2006

Oh my favorite topic once again! Actually that is not true. It is really one of my least favorite topics. But still for today, we get to talk about money. I suppose it is timely since the Vestry is once again working on the budget and we will soon to presenting that to the congregation and beginning once again our parish stewardship campaign.

And if we have to talk about money I think the first thing to share, is that God is great. St. Peter’s has been blessed this year once again, thanks to the generosity of many, many people.

So if things are so good, we do we keep talking about money. Well we keep talking about it because Jesus and the Bible keep talking about it. I forget now where I heard this and don’t remember the actual numbers anyway, but it was once told to me that the Bible speaks over 600 times about money in one way or another and less that 100 times about sex. And yet it seems in many churches in the world today we hear a lot more said about sex than money. That would indicate to me that something is wrong in our priorities.

And so we return to today’s story in the Gospel of Mark. Jesus sits opposite the treasury (or offering plate if he was here at St. Peter’s) and watches the crowd coming forward to put in their money. They are giving their gifts to God. Out of this crowd coming forward to give their gifts to God the author observes the rich people putting in large sums and then along comes a poor widow with two small copper coins which he tosses in. This poor widow is giving sacrificially. Jesus points out that she “has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.” After this gift she literally didn’t have two coins in her pocket to rub together. It is this same level of giving that Jesus had called the rich young man to. To give all that he had to the poor and follow Jesus. And yet the response of the rich young man was to go away in sadness because he was wealthy. He could give all he had away and follow Jesus.

Now a more practical person, like myself, would, if giving something at all in this time of great financial crisis and need, might have convinced myself to give one of the two small coins and save the second for myself. After all, that is a gift of 50% of all that I would possess back to God. That is a very exceedingly generous donation.

But when you compare this donation to what the others were giving it seems like nothing at all to us. But it was definitely not nothing to Jesus. It was the most valuable gift given that day. This poor woman held nothing back from God. She was willing to give all to God. And she had to be demonstrating her trust in God at the same time. Widows and orphans were the most disadvantaged groups in Jesus time. She would have nothing to fall back on. She would have no one to depend on. So this woman turned to God. She gave all that the possessed to God with the expectation and trust that God would care for her needs.

This is not unlike the other widow we met today. This widow was ready to die. She had nothing left but enough to make one last loaf of bread for her and her son and then they would die. But Elijah called her to faith. Like the widow in Mark, Elijah called on this other widow to trust in God as well. She was also called on to give up all she had and trust in God. She did it and God provided for her needs.

To me this never seems the smart thing to do as I read these stories. To give up what I have in life and what I can control and instead trust in God is a hard thing to do and often seems just a bit crazy. And yet both these woman were able to do so. We know that it worked out well for the widow in First Kings. We never hear again about the widow in Mark.

How would have we responded if either of these women had come to us, asking for advice on what to do? I know that my faith would have been more lacking then theirs. I would have encouraged them to give to God, but not everything! I would have reminded that the standard goal for the Episcopal Church is to tithe, so even though it would be a sacrifice, I would have encouraged both to tithe. How much less my faith is than theirs is!

How do we apply these lessons in our lives today though. I’m relative sure that none of us here, including myself, is going to run out and give every last cent in our possession to the church. And just as it is hard to turn this into a lesson convincing everyone to give everything, it is also hard to turn it into a lesson about tithing. After all, all the other people in the story were most likely tithing and they get no recognition from Jesus at all. And it is very hard to turn someone who gave everything into a dutiful tither.

I think that the lesson we can take today is about control. I know for myself, I’m the kind of person that likes to be in control. The idea of turning control over to someone else, even God, is very difficult. All of us like to control that which is going on around us.

But these two widows were willing to give up that control. What is it in my and your life that we want to control and not give up to God. Each of us needs to examine our lives. Those areas which we refuse to turn over to God can become idols in our lives eventually controlling us rather than us controlling them.

Control. We want it. God needs it. If we are to be effective serving God in the world today we need to turn it all over to God. Just as those two poor widows were willing to do.