The Lord is My Portion

The New Revised Standard Version God’s Steadfast Love Endures

19 The thought of my affliction and my homelessness

is wormwood and gall!

20 My soul continually thinks of it

and is bowed down within me.

21 But this I call to mind,

and therefore I have hope:

22 The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases,

his mercies never come to an end;

23 they are new every morning;

great is your faithfulness.

24 “The LORD is my portion,” says my soul,

“therefore I will hope in him.”

25 The LORD is good to those who wait for him,

to the soul that seeks him.

26 It is good that one should wait quietly

for the salvation of the LORD.

Good morning — what a beautiful day it is as we celebrate World Communion Sunday. This past week, we have kicked off our Fall Stewardship drive and today, my sermon is directly focused on our collective call to Christian Stewardship, responding to God’s abundant gifts with the financial support of God’s work in our church.

Stewardship

Pledge to Legacy

You might find it bizarre to hear a passage from Lamentations as a lead in to a sermon calling for Christian Stewardship. Wait for it! This passage is rich with calls for us as God’s people to respond, even from a place of lament or fear or sorrow. It is a passage full of possibility borne out of reality, out of affliction, loneliness, heartache, longing — a passage of hope for a people who need it most, who must rely on God and God alone.

Pledge to Hope

Let’s pray, that we might hear this word opened up to us today and hear our own call to action.

Prayer

Are you lonely? Are you tired? Do you feel isolated, like you’re not sure where you belong?

Have you walked the halls of your home and felt out of place? Or has your home been taken away from you, are you no longer able to live where you would choose?

Today’s scripture is for you, for us, in this place. The book of Lamentations is written as a cry for the people of God in Babylonian exile. The temple, their place of worship and the central icon of their civic life has been destroyed, sacked by the empire from the north. Bloodshed and heartache have replaced songs of praise and religious feasts.

To these people, the prophet Jeremiah speaks. We have heard from Jeremiah all this past month, his prophetic words ringing out about destruction. And yet, his closing passage from last week told the story of buying land in Israel that would one day be returned to and new life would be restored there. It was a story of hope, amidst all the chaos and loneliness.

So again we hear in Lamentations — “the thought of my afflictions and my homelessness is wormwood and gall! (they taste horrible in my mouth, like a growth or fungus, and make me want to vomit in pain).” It goes on — “My soul continually thinks of it and is bowed down within me.”

We hear the pain and the uncertainty.

Do you not know this yourself? Can we be honest with ourselves about that?

And yet, we find there is something deeper at work — something which calls out amidst all the chaos and beckons us.

As we engage the question of our call to stewardship — you may immediately taste wormwood and gall — it may feel like a hollow topic that has run you through the ringer before. You may feel uninspired and lack hope for what good our work here at the church truly does. The preacher just wants to inspire us to give more of our hard earned money again… :)

But today I pray that you would be beckoned on by vs. 21-24: “But this I call to mind…and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. ‘The Lord is my portion,’ says my soul, ‘therefore I will hope in him.’”

Yes — we may face loneliness, heartache, a loss of home.

But also yes — we find that the Lord provides a portion for us, a refuge, a home here and a hope for the future that is greater than all homes, all possessions, all privileges and honors of this world — a home in the fellowship of the family of God — which we are here, in this church, today.

Today, I want to claim for us that we steward and return our financial resources to God’s work at St. James Presbyterian for three key reasons: We give to restore, we give for legacy, and we give in hope.

Give to Restore (Love)

Over the last decade the St. James Presbyterian congregation has experienced a great deal of change and transition. For those who have been here the last 10 years, you’ve had 5 different pastors, a changing climate of church attendance, the loss of many members to the end of life and the transition of church culture.

With such tumult, the practical reality is that financial giving for the needs of the congregation has changed as well. Living out of the economic recession of 2008, the last decade has seen a large shift in giving for many non-profit organizations.

Most significant in recent history for our congregation was a steep decline in giving going into 2017. The congregation was in the midst of a pastoral transition once more, near what would be the end of a search and nomination that would lead to my being called to serve here. But nonetheless, this was a time when giving to the budgetary needs of St. James declined quite significantly. Pledged giving from 2016 to 2017 declined by about 11%, or roughly $20,000.

While we have made modest gains to restore the pledged amounts to our congregation’s budget in these past two years, along with growing unpledged offerings that we receive each week in the offering plate, the church’s budget has felt the strain from this significant drop, even as we experience restoration in other ways.

With the word restoration, we must always be careful to clarify what we mean, especially as the people of God’s reign and coming Kingdom. Restoration is not a return to the way things were — making Church great again — restoring what once was because it has some sort of idyllic nature to it. Rather, restoration, as Christians understand it, is about the reclaiming of our very most essential nature of goodness and flourishing God has made us for.

A pledge and participation in this year’s stewardship campaign is an opportunity to participate in restoration, a chance to get back on a positive trajectory.

With the word restoration, we must always be careful to clarify what we mean, especially as the people of God’s reign and coming Kingdom. Restoration is not a return to the way things were — making Church great again — restoring what once was because it has some sort of idyllic nature to it. Rather, restoration, as Christians understand it, is about the reclaiming of our very most essential nature of goodness and flourishing God has made us for.

Humanity is made to bring beauty, goodness, and flourishing to the stewarding and care for all creation. This is the mandate for God’s people from the Garden of Eden to the City of God, all through Scripture. It means living as our truest self, being who God has designed us to be, bearing the image of God in its fullest form.

And in practical terms, restoration in financial matters means entrusting God with the fullness of all that we possess so that it might be used to aid in this work of goodness, beauty, and flourishing.

Think about it like contributing your part to the great feast of God. With what you have, bring the best of it, as Scripture calls it, the first fruits, to the table — your best recipe, your most exquisite wine, your decadent dessert — to share, to enhance, to spoil in riches the work of God’s family because we — the church — are meant to bring this kind of beauty to the world. Beauty and bounty are what we do!

The passage from Lamentations tells us that the “steadfast love of the Lord never ceases.” We need not worry if God’s love will run out! It is our response to those riches with our riches that we are invited to, waiting upon the Lord, entrusting our whole selves to God, mind, body, soul, spirit, finances, work, family, resources — all things.

A final question on Pledging in Restoration — on the practical, what would it look like for you to increase your giving back to God’s work here at St. James by that 11% each month? Make it 10%, just for a nice round number: If you pledge $100/month normally, would it be possible, within your reach, within the bounty of what you have, to make it $110/month?

The concept of making life “10% better” or 10% happier has been written about in popular science and sociology of late. It is argued that incremental changes, like making something 10% better each year or a small change each day, add up to immense shifts and growth over time. People try to shave 10% off the time off their running pace. They try to increase their performance at work by 10%. They don’t happen all at once, but as we contribute a little more energy to a project over the long haul, dramatic growth occurs. Restoration and a new future arrive.

Perhaps the call is to reevaluate how your money is allocated and deepen how you respond to the work of God here at St. James, where you feel you love and friendship and calling and a revival of life among of the people of God.

What might it look like for each of us to consider chipping away at the financial burden of our church by adding in 10% more this year? Have we considered the power of incremental change if we work together, each doing this? Perhaps its time to reevaluate in light of the power of incremental change.

The call to restoring is not that one of us must shoulder a huge burden to get us back on track. Rather, it is the small, incremental work that each of us does which can contribute to the whole restoration work.

We can see the call to pledge for restoration as a call to love. To share of what God has blessed us with, with each other here, is an act of love. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases” — may our love in mutual reply never cease as well.

Give for Legacy (Faith)

Next we turn to giving for legacy. People in exile do not always see the fruit of their labors. But the people of God have always trusted that God’s promises live on beyond their lifetime and therefore commit to themselves and to the generations that follow to leave a legacy of response to God’s goodness in their wake.

If you’ve been around our church very long at all, you also know that we continue to be a church in transition. We are a people changing, growing, reviving the life God is calling us to here as we enter a new chapter of stability.

And if you’ve been on the Christian journey long at all, you know that the path is long and does not always yield immediate results. We don’t return from exile right away. It takes long, slow obedience, patience in the pursuit of God’s mission of loving our neighbor and making lives new.

Perhaps you won’t see the fruit of the labors here at this church.

So the question of giving and stewardship and pledging to the work then becomes — what do you leave in legacy for the future of God’s church here at St. James?

There have been many of great saints of our church’s 130 year history who have understood the need for legacy — the preparing the way for a future we will not see.

This is an act of faithfulness, an unrealized yet anticipated goodness of God. We are faithful because we remember God has been good in the past and we anticipate it for the future.

The people of Israel entered exile repeatedly in their story. Many who ventured out of Egypt never came to the promised land of Israel — they did not make the whole journey, yet their faith persisted beyond and inspired the future generations to go onward.

Is that how you are called to stewardship this year — to prepare for the generations that will follow you? Even as a man in my mid-30s, I recognize this as a deep part of my calling to giving, stewardship, and attending to my work as a follower of Jesus — the work is not for me — it is for those who I can help teach, inspire, help wake up and call to go beyond what I do to carry on the good news of God, far beyond my reach.

To steward what we have is a call to faithfulness, a call that extends far beyond us. And so we pledge to legacy, that extends and expands in the providing love of God’s hands.

Give in Expectation (Hope)

Linked with giving for legacy is that we give in expectation. We trust that the work here is not yet done.

Jesus promised that his disciples and followers would do greater things than he had ever done. And this promise extends to us — great things are yet to come in our neighborhood, city, and world.

Many things seem bleak these days — environmental collapse, political division and war, hatred and violence. How could it get any worse (much less how is it supposed to get any better)?

But for us, the people of God, we have always trusted that we come from good beginnings — made good by God with a good purpose. And it is because of this goodness of God, which has been faithfully lived out through all history that we also expect God’s goodness to persist. Evil does not have the final word. The goodness of God is our hope for tomorrow.

And so we pledge of ourselves because we trust there is more for us here at St. James Presbyterian Church to do — our work is far from done. Our work is reviving, legacy enacting and expectant of much more for us to do to love and carry out the care that calls all creation to flourishing in God’s kingdom.

We all want to be a part of that. The alternative is despair — but we will not let this have the final word. No, never.

Increase our Faith!

Perhaps you feel doubt, or struggle to know how it is possible to commit to this place in a deeper way in the year ahead. Fear not — you are not alone.

The people of God are familiar with doubt — we are a people of joy and bounty, but we also doubt and struggle. This is normal.

I’m encouraged by our Gospel reading today. The disciples are very straight with Jesus — saying “increase our faith!” They need more faith to keep going on the journey.

Is this where you are? That’s ok. We lift our hearts together — Lord, increase our faith. Increase our faith in what you can do through us, with us, by our hands and our gifts. Increase our faith O Lord. Not us, but your will be done.

Let’s close in prayer.