Orchard Ridge United Church of Christ

Stewardship Sermon preached by Winton Boyd October 14, 2007
Psalm 119:105ff; Exodus 3

(Biblical texts at the end of the sermon)
Every Monday, during the summer months, I drive out to the Vermont Valley CSA farm in Vermont township west of Madison. It is an area with many hills and valleys, streams and rivers. One of the landmarks that signals I am just about at the farm is an otherwise unremarkable hillside.

However, about 5-6 years ago, this hillside and some adjoining valley land were bought by a couple from Madison with the hope that they could return this small set of acres to their original, native state. This has been a multi-year process. First there was clearing brush and trees, removing invasive species. Then there was researching and planting native species and giving them time to grow. Because of the size of the hillside, they also were doing one section at a time. To drive by it once, you wouldn’t notice it. To drive by it week after week, year after year, you see remarkable change. They have a vision – but it is a step-by-step process. It doesn’t happen all at once.

Some of you have been participating in a “Eating local Eating well challenge” with Leslie Linser and LuAnn Greiner. This is an effort to help us deepen our connection to the land, our farming neighbors and our God by eating more food grown near by – thus cutting down on often wasteful transportation costs, among other things.

Leslie and LuAnn are are inspirational women. They eat almost 100% locally grown or produced food. Now they are doing their best to invite others to start this same journey. But they are wise women – they have given us various options for how to move towards eating more local food.
• Increase the number of meals,
• increase the percentage,
• try it for 4 or 6 or 8 weeks.

To get from where we are to where we want to be – they understand, we must go in steps, garner support and ideas, build on our base and over time increase to more locally grown food. They don’t expect everyone to go from eating McDonalds today to 100% local tomorrow.

I joined about 10,000 others last weekend running the Twin Cities Marathon. On an otherwise ugly and hot day, there were lots of spectators and cheers. There were the common, “you look great” “its downhill after this” “you are almost there” cheers. But two signs stand out in my memory.
1. A guy with an old couch and a sign that said, “the couch of temptation”
2. A woman with a sign that said, You have run 1 million inches, only 660,000 inches to go – run once inch at a time.
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Our Next Generation Mission Team has been meeting talking about the future of the church, the future of this congregation. Key to that conversation is where are we now, where do we want to be next year, in five years, in 10-20 years. While the scope of the NGI is long range – they are very cognizant that to get their we must go one-step at a time.

So much of what we do in life is done one step at a time.

I want to suggest that the same is true with our faith – and invite, encourage and challenge us to look closely, honestly, intently at our lives and ask ourselves – what small steps can I take this year to grow in my faith, to increase my generosity, to deepen my commitments?

Stewardship season – which is upon us – isn’t really about money. It is about faith, growing faith, stretching faith, challenging faith. It is about slowly, ever so gently, putting ourselves in a place where we can give more time and energy to our faith, deepen our commitment to this community and build our generosity.

As people in the Jewish Christian tradition, we live with Moses on the one hand – Moses with this amazing and unbelievable call to lead the people out of Egypt – to fight of plagues and armies and complaining and weather and fatigue and confusion – and to trek across the continent, through the desert to the promised land.

If ever there were “the long view” – this is it.

But after this first call in Exodus, there is chapter after chapter, book after book, generation after generation – of next steps to get from Egypt to the land of milk and honey. While this is the grand vision – the nitty gritty of the Old Testament is much more small scale, much more specific.

We also live with this famous and wonderful line from the psalms. Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.

An interesting thing about these lamps – they were very inefficient oil lamps – they were not high beam laser lights. They were dull, dim and only lit one step at a time. In fact, they probably did more to signal to another you were coming that they actually illuminated the path. But the image is valuable when it comes to the life of faith – God’s spirit is with us one step at a time, one step after another.

Stewardship season is about commitment and spiritual growth. It is an annual time of revisiting – what does this faith community and its mission in our lives and the life of Madison and the world mean? It is even more an annual time to assess, how am I doing on my spiritual journey and what is the next step I need to take? What small steps can I take this year coming up – in 2008 – to grow, to deepen my sense of community, to offer my witness and love to my fellow church members and the world?

I would invite us to consider taking one step beyond where we are this year in 4 ways.

Spiritually, socially, communally, Financially

Spiritually – what one thing can we do to grow in our faith? Here I would suggest we think more about practice than a change in belief. One of the challenges of our faith is that we often stop “practicing” faith when we get a bit stumped theologically or spiritually. We try to “think” our way out of our blahs – when maybe we should “act” differently in a small way to see if the Spirit might shake our spirit loose a bit.
What one thing can we do to put ourselves in a place to feel and know the presence of God more than we do now? Is it a prayer time, increased attendance at worship, pausing for reflection and journaling in the midst of our busy life?
My colleague in California used to say about worship and experiencing God’s presence: “You have to be there to be there when the good stuff happens.” You have to make that a priority and take the step of being there. What one step can you take this year?

Socially – What one thing can we do to witness to God’s justice and love in the world this year? We all know the danger of compassion fatigue, we all know the host of good causes, organizations and ministries that vie for our time and energy and money. As tempting as it can be to step back, to pull away, to isolate ourselves, or focus only on our own loved ones or our own individual lives – the gospel continues to call us into deeper engagement in the world. We can’t get around it, we can’ dodge it. Rather than being overwhelmed, however, we can ask, “what one thing can I do this year to further God’s justice? What one thing can I do to remind myself that engagement with the world matters, is a good thing and actually feeds my soul? I was struck in 2006 by how many people in this congregation made just such a commitment to the fight over the marriage amendment on the fall ballot – and how rewarding it was to them even though it did not turn out the way they hoped.

Communally – Being in a church community is, in many ways, a counter cultural activity. Notice I didn’t say “going to church is a counter cultural activity.” While church going is still quite common, committing ourselves to a church community is less so. With busy lives, serious health issues, travel, retirement, soccer for our kids, two working adults and stagnant incomes – there is enormous pressure to pull back from others – to live our lives together with those in our household – but to remove ourselves from community living because it is too demanding, too time consuming, too unpredictable. Once again, however, our faith teaches us that we are a community. What one thing can we do this year to commit ourselves to this community – join a choir, become a pastoral partner, help on a ministry, lead children during worship. How can we connect in one simple but significant way to others in this faith family in a way that will bring a bit of the light we carry to another; and allow us to receive a bit of the light of another?

Financially – In your order of worship there is a small insert that has, among other things, a simple giving chart. We all know that the biblical tithe of giving 10% is a difficult and often out of reach goal. We also know, however, that giving to others in a spirit of joy and delight and gratitude is one of the best things about our life of faith. We pay bills all the time out of obligation – and ask the question this year – can I increase my giving just a bit in those areas where I give out of love and gratitude and faith and hope? If our giving is currently 1% of our income, can we increase that to 2%? Can we increase our giving – not because the budget needs it – but because it is an act of faith and trust and confidence that this faith we profess deserves to remain vital and positive and possible?

Some of you have heard of the book, The Tipping Point, published in 2000 by Malcolm Gladwell. It’s a book about how little changes, if they are the right ones, can have enormous effects. The idea of a “tipping point” comes from epidemiology. It’s the name given to that moment in an epidemic when a virus reaches critical mass. You might say, it’s the boiling point. Gladwell looks at this in social terms – and his famous illustration is his observation as to why crime has dropped dramatically in New York City since the 1990’s. He showed how a small change by authorities – a stepped up effort to keep subway cars clean and graffiti fee, and to crack down on fare dodgers - led to lower crime rates. Disorder on the subway showed tolerance for lawbreaking, orderly subways signaled just the opposite. This perception cut across racial and economic and social class.

I think what is true socially is also true personally and spiritually. We often think that getting from where we are in our spiritual lives to where we would like to be is a logical, proportional journey. In fact, it often doesn’t work that way. One experience, one slight change in our lives, one changed habit, one significant relationship – these can all create enormous synergy in our lives.

So, we think about making small changes in our daily lives in hopes that we can find such a tipping point. It is not easy to know what is the right change – and this is where we fall back on the faith of the psalmist – who reminds us we don’t walk this journey alone – and that if our faith can only light up the next step – God will walk with us. God will honor that step and open the way for the next one. Our task, our challenge, our opportunity is to hold our lives open to that next step, to that unforeseen tipping point, to the amazing and trustworthy spirit of God in our lives. May it be so! Amen
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Texts for October 14, 2007

Psalm 119:105ff
105 Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.
106 I have sworn an oath and confirmed it, to observe your righteous ordinances.
107 I am severely afflicted; give me life, O LORD, according to your word.
108 Accept my offerings of praise, O LORD, and teach me your ordinances.

Exodus 3
3:1 Moses was keeping the flock of his father-in-law Jethro, the priest of Midian; he led his flock beyond the wilderness, and came to Horeb, the mountain of God.
2 There the angel of the LORD appeared to him in a flame of fire out of a bush; he looked, and the bush was blazing, yet it was not consumed.
3 Then Moses said, “I must turn aside and look at this great sight, and see why the bush is not burned up.”
4 When the LORD saw that he had turned aside to see, God called to him out of the bush, “Moses, Moses!” And he said, “Here I am.”
5 Then he said, “Come no closer! Remove the sandals from your feet, for the place on which you are standing is holy ground.”
6 He said further, “I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob.” And Moses hid his face, for he was afraid to look at God.
7 Then the LORD said, “I have observed the misery of my people who are in Egypt; I have heard their cry on account of their taskmasters. Indeed, I know their sufferings,
8 and I have come down to deliver them from the Egyptians, and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land, a land flowing with milk and honey, to the country of the Canaanites, the Hittites, the Amorites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.
9 The cry of the Israelites has now come to me; I have also seen how the Egyptians oppress them.
10 So come, I will send you to Pharaoh to bring my people, the Israelites, out of Egypt.”