Fall is traditionally pledge drive time in churches, and we are having our Commitment Sunday today. As I write parishioners are travelling all over town visiting each other, talking about the church, sharing why it's important to them, and making their 2012 financial pledge by filling out their pledge cards. Later today, we will gather for a special service at 4:00, at which we'll gather all the pledge cards and dedicate our commiment to God and share in the bounty of God's abundant feast around the communion table. Then we'll enjoy a great supper together downstairs.
Pledge time can be an uncomfortable time for people in the church, because whenever you start talking about money, anxieties show up. Gertrude Stein said, "Money is funny," and I couldnt' agree with her more! But this year I have come to understand in a newly deep way how important it is for us to talk about money and to be generous in giving. I will be sharing at our service later today a quote from Bishop Mark Andrus of California, who wrote these words on his blog while attending the recent Bishop's Conference in Quito, Equador:
I was part of a group that stayed in Quito but journeyed a long
distance in culture and economics, to Sector Comité del Pueblo, a community of
poor and working class people who squatted some thirty years ago on a large
swath of a valley that absentee landowners had left fallow. They finally
received recognized land rights, and they have created a vibrant community,
which has a wonderful Episcopal mission in it, Mission Cristo Libertador,
Christ the Liberator. ... It was there I attended a worship service, and the
opening song had this refrain: “May we always have hearts without doors; may we
always have open hands.”
Immediately I remembered what I learned this past spring about the Guarani people - they call themselves the people with open hands. What that means is that as they receive something –money, material possessions, emotional investment, ideas – they are thinking about how they can enhance the gift, and pass it on.
The Guarani, through several centuries of experience with colonizing
Western culture have learned to call us the people of the closed hands; people
who immediately invest energy in how to hold onto possessions of all kinds.
I felt a sting of recognition when I was referred to here as
a person of closed hands. And I have since been imagining how my life would be
transformed by becoming a person with open hands. And I believe that is what
Jesus calls me to be - even with my material possessions - even with my money
-even though a voice inside me tells me I don't have enough and I'd better hold
onto it just to be safe. I've been imagining how our church would be
transformed by becoming a people of open hands - and how our community, our
economy and our world could be transformed. This is a dream of no less than the
kingdom of God - a vision of the gospel in action - this becoming and living as
a people with open hands.
So I am grateful this year for our pledge drive, which
reminds me in a kick-in-the-stomach kind of way that everything in this life is
a gift, not a possession - and that as a disciple of Jesus I am called not to
store up possessions, but to steward them, enhance them, and then give them
away for the sake of God's love - in response to God's abundant love for me and
for the whole world.
So I am praying this morning for Grace Church and for all our parishioners, out there talking to each other right now about the sometimes uncomfortable topic of money. And I'm praying that we may truly develop hearts without doors and become a people with open hands.
