Taste and See

Scripture Readings

WWTW- ME!

What makes us Presbyterian

I got to ask the head of the PC USA’s theology wing once on a trip to Louisville.

And he had two answers:

The rules?

Now, let’s be clear about this: I love the polity of our tradition.

It’s a very democratic system, where the ultimate authority rests not with me as pastor or the governing bodies above us, but the ultimate authority in decision making lies with you all as the congregation.

And that’s great!

But that’s a little bit like saying you like football because of the roughing the passer penalty.

No one falls in love with the rules, do they?

Luckily the second answer he gave was a good bit more compelling to me.

Grace and Gratitude

Grace- Everything, absolutely everything, is a gift

That job you have? That’s a gift from God.

The house that you get to call home? That’s a gift from God.

This church that we are sitting in? A gift from God.

The very next breath in your lungs? That’s a gift from God.

Absolutely everything we have is a gift from God above, the giver of every good and perfect gift.

Gratitude- It’s all about how we respond.

We (did talk) (will talk) about this at the Ragamuffin Gospel lesson this morning: we don’t earn God’s favor.

It’s not like if we do enough good things God will be proud of us.

It’s that God loves us very deeply, and has given us every good and perfect gift.

And so we respond from a place of gratitude.

But the order there is incredibly important.

God acts, and we respond

In our tradition at least, we are in the right lane when we allow God to act first, and then we respond.

In fact, most of the times that we get ourselves into trouble is when we decide we’re going to act first, to try to get out ahead of God and what God’s up to in the world.

When our discernment is less about what God is calling us to and more about what we feel like we want to do, we’re in trouble.

When we want to shape the world into how we want it to be, rather than allowing God to shape us, we’re in trouble.

When we live with the attitude of ready, fire, aim, we’re a lot like the disciple Peter.

We’ll find more trouble than we can handle before the roster crows.

At 6 AM.

But when we allow God to act first, and the respond to that action, we are on a new level.

When we see that God is speaking to us constantly, and we respond with a discipline of listening and praying, we’re on to something.

When we examine the world that God has given us, and the way God has designed it to work, we allow ourselves to grow into the people God has designed us to be.

When we carefully listen for God before we take our next steps, we’re doing it right.

This is unique to a reformed way of thinking about faith and theology.

And it’s also something else.

This is stewardship

I know, I know.

But hang with me!

Paul got this in 1 Corinthians

The original text didn’t have these handy chapter divisions

The text would have flowed all together, in one linear thought.

So even though it made for an awkward way to write this in the bulletin this morning, we have to see how Paul rolls right from the end of chapter 15 into 16.

Paul tells the church how God has acted in the end of chapter 15

The end of Chapter 15 is all about what God has done, right?

We have the grace of everlasting life in Christ

You and me? We’re going to live forever baby!

That’s a pretty sweet deal!

Death is swallowed up in victory!

Oh, I just love this line in the scriptures!

There is so much victory in Christ that death doesn’t stand a chance!

See what good things God has done for us!

Death has no sting!

All of these things are a result of God’s working in the world through Jesus Christ.

All of this is the grace of God in action in our lives.

And then Paul asks for a collection for the saints.

Paul has seen a vision of a great famine coming on the horizon.

So he’s asking all these churches that he’s started to chip in so that they won’t go hungry.

This can’t be understood outside of context!

It is literally impossible for us to jump right to this.

To simply hop on the stump and ask for money, Paul would have been a sleezy televangelist or something.

It would have sounded gross, or opportunistic, or like the money was the main thing about what he was saying.

But instead, Paul couches this in the language of grace and gratitude.

God acts, and we respond.

God acts

By sending His Son Jesus to be in the world with us.

By gracing us with live immortal!

By swallowing up death in victory!

By taking the sting out of death!

God has acted.

And so we respond.

We respond by taking care of each other.

We respond by pooling our resources to care for the saints who are about to face famine.

We respond by doing ministry together that is much bigger than anything any of us could do on our own.

We respond by giving our time, sending not just a collection for the saints in Jerusalem, but by sending representatives from the congregation to offer their time and their talents.

God acts, and we respond.

I’m tired of small stewardship sermons!

If you groaned the minute I said “stewardship,” you should know that I usually groan at that too.

My impression is that most preachers and most churches have far too small a view of stewardship.

Stewardship is not a different word for money.

To be sure, money is a part of stewardship.

But it’s not a substitute.

To think of stewardship the same way that NPR or PBS do their member drives, as if we’ll get tote bags at the end of it, that’s just so small.

That’s not the Kingdom of God.

That’s just fundraising.

Stewardship is not only about what we do to benefit the church.

Again, it is, and we’ll talk more about that.

But that too is too small for the Kingdom.

Preaching a fundraising sermon just to make sure that the doors stay open, that the institution stays afloat, just isn’t that compelling in our world today.

Stewardship should be about the way we move through the world, not just the church.

How are our neighbors impacted by our stewardship?

How is the view others have of Christianity itself changed by our stewardship?

How are the saints in towns we’ve never even seen blessed by our stewardship?

It’s not just about Beulah Presbyterian Church.

It’s way bigger than that.

Stewardship is not a solo activity!

Stewardship isn’t something that you do alone.

Really, the more and more I dig in to my own faith, there’s very little of it that’s a solo activity, right?

I don’t pray alone. I pray for and with the community.

I don’t study Scripture alone. I have brothers and sisters in the community that study with me, challenge me, push me, invite me to see things differently, and come to hear a lesson on the Ragamuffin Gospel!

I don’t work through forgiveness alone. I have a community that keeps pushing me and challenging me and inviting me into new spaces.

Christianity isn’t a solo sport.

Stewardship is something that is going to impact the entire community.

What I do with my own time, talents, and resources is going to have an impact on the person sitting next to me, and the person sitting next to them, and by the way have an impact on our mission partners all over the world.

It might be a decision that I make on my own or with my family, but it’s going to impact the entire community.

Shouldn’t it then be a conversation for the whole community to have?

What is Stewardship?

If all of those are too small definitions for stewardship, what do we really mean when we talk about this thing known as stewardship?

Stewardship is paying attention to how God has acted.

The first step in stewardship (and really our whole faith lives) is to notice what God has done in our lives.

There are kind of three big buckets of this when we’re thinking about stewardship:

Time

If you spend a whole bunch of brain power on this, it gets really trippy really fast.

But God has given each and every one of us the gift of time.

This week, you might have heard in my voice this morning, I was suffering from one of the most annoying afflictions ever: the man cold.

Not COVID, not the flu, not ebola. Man cold.

Three things are required to cure a man cold:

An active Disney Plus subscription

An extremely patient family.

And time.

God gave me plenty of time to rest, to heal, to sleep it off, and to get better.

In fact, God has given us all time.

We all get the same 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

We all treat them very differently.

But time is a gift from God.

And you know, I think the more we recognize that time is a gift from God, the more I think we’d spend it differently.

Maybe that episode of Judge Judy isn’t as important as you think.

Maybe you could set work aside for a little while and spend that time with your family.

Maybe the time we get to spend with our friends is a bit more valuable to us than that argument we always seem to find ourselves in.

God acts by giving us time.

How can we respond to God’s action?

Talents

Last night, as mentioned, the family and I got to go to the Penguins game.

And because it was Julian’s first game, we wanted to give him the full treatment.

So we went down front for the warm ups, and got to watch the boys get ready for the game.

Now sadly, last night it seemed that warm ups were the only time the Penguins skill was on display.

But watching those guys skate last night, even though I’ve seen it a thousand times before, my mouth was wide open in awe.

A lot of those guys skate better than I walk!

The hand eye coordination is off the charts!

It’s like they’ve been doing this their whole lives!

And here we have to be careful, because there’s a trap when we think about the talents God’s given us.

We tend to think that because we don’t have the same level of talent as say Sidney Crosby that we’re not talented.

And that’s just not how it works.

God has given each and every one of us a unique set of remarkable talents.

Some of you are ridiculously talented at cooking meals, preparing food, and the hospitality that goes with hosting a meal.

Some of you are ridiculously talented at praying with and for your neighbors, putting words together that magnificently speak to the moment at hand and the movement of God.

Some of you are gifted musicians, and bless us with your musical offerings every Sunday!

Some of you have the warmest of smiles, capable of making even the most uneasy person feel welcome and included.

Some of you know how to juggle!

Whatever it might be, God has acted and given you incredible talents.

How can we respond to God’s action?

Treasure

I have great news for you!

Everyone in this room is rich!

One anthropologist put it this way: If you have a sink in your house with a faucet that you can turn and get water, you are by global standards rich.

Most of the world can’t say that.

Nearly half of the world’s population lives on $5.50 a day.

None of that is to make you feel guilty!

In fact, quite the opposite.

It’s meant to inspire a spirit of gratitude for what God has given us.

We are all of us in this room, especially when compared to the global economy, ridiculously blessed with treasure.

Again here, beware the trap.

In our American culture, we tend to leave God out of the equation of our treasures.

We went to work, put in a day, and came home with a paycheck, right?

We earned what we have.

Sure!

But God also gave us the time, and the talents, and the opportunity, to earn that treasure.

I would argue that ultimately it’s not our treasure anyway, God’s just loaned it to us.

God has acted and given us a remarkable amount of treasure and material wealth.

How can we respond to God’s action?

Stewardship is about responding to God’s action with gratitude.God has acted.

We respond with gratitude.

We are grateful for the time that God has offered to us, and so we offer back some of our time to engage in the work of kingdom building here and around the world.

We are grateful for the talents that God has offered to us, and so we work diligently to enhance our talents, and put them to use for the benefit of the Kingdom.

We are grateful for the resources that God has offered to us, and so we give back so that we can do more together than any one of us could do alone to see the word proclaimed and the mission spread.

Stewardship is about helping others to taste and see that God is good.

Like the Psalmist invites anyone who will listen: Come taste and see that God is good.

We become aware of how good God has been to us, and we can’t help but invite someone else in.

Come taste and see that God has given us a tremendous gift of time. Let’s use that time well.

Come taste and see that God has given us remarkable talents, each and every one. Let’s put them on display for God’s glory, not ours.

Come taste and see that God has blessed us with resources. Let’s use them to make life in this age and the age to come better for folks.

What can we do?

Cover this season in prayer

I think this should be a response to just about every sermon, to pray through what God is revealing to us.

But in this case, I think one of the best prayers of scripture fits in.

Moses says to God “Show me your glory.”

God, show me how you’ve acted in my world.

Show me what you’ve given me, time, and talents, and treasure.

Show me God.

The more we pray that kind of prayer, the more our eyes will be open to what God has to show us.

Take notes!

In my world at least, if I don’t write it down, I forget it.

Carry a note card with you this week, or if you’re really hip use the notes app on your phone.

Document every time you see God acting in your life.

Every blessing that comes your way.

Every time you feel particularly close to God.

Every time God speaks a word over you.

Every time you are just aware of God’s goodness.

Write it down.

You’ll be surprised what kind of document you end up with at the end of that practice.

Cultivate Gratitude

Gratitude is a discipline, one that we can cultivate and get better at.

As we practice, we start to realize that we’re never short on things to be grateful for.

We can be grateful for this church family. Go ahead, in this moment, look around at these people who have gathered here. Aren’t we grateful?

We can be grateful for our history, both as a community and our own individual histories.

We can be grateful for the pleasures of life, like a cup of coffee in the morning or (in my case) Rikola cough drops.

And if you’ve got absolutely nothing else, take a breath. That there was a gift from God. We can be grateful for the very breath that fills our lungs.

Gratitude is a practice that we can all excel in.

God acts, and we respond in gratitude.