November 09, 10:30am (Sare Gordy)
The 5th core principle of stewardship is Interdependence. In some ways interdependence is the most obvious. All we need do is look at the world around us and the universe of micro-organisms within us to recognize that God, the creator of it all, wove this entire cosmos of Life into a web of inter-connected relationships.
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Sermons @ Trinity
Sunday November 9, 2008
“The 5th Principle of Stewardship”
The Rev. R. Cameron Miller
***
Good morning.
For the last four weeks we have been thinking about stewardship even though we have not been soliciting money. That in itself is noteworthy.
When we began I said that I wanted us to think about stewardship as a big idea the way Environmentalists do, rather than as the small idea regarding monetary contributions given to the church, as religion often does.
So we have been reflecting on stewardship and I have been naming the core principles of stewardship along the way. The four we named prior to today are:
1. The perspective of abundance
2. Clear and honest acknowledgment about what it is we actually treasure
3. Love is a verb, and
4. Living in close proximity to our gratitude
Today we are going to complete this series and I want to issue a call to action.
The 5th core principle of stewardship is Interdependence.
In some ways interdependence is the most obvious. All we need do is look at the world around us and the universe of micro-organisms within us to recognize that God, the creator of it all, wove this entire cosmos of Life into a web of inter-connected relationships.
It is astounding and exquisitely beautiful how entirely inter-connected we are to one another: the flea to the gorilla, the naked mole-rat to the condor, the tiny human and the giant piece of a dead star hurling through space.
A better definition for the theological idea of Sin, if indeed we wanted to recover that word, would be to abandon the peculiar idea of Sin as the absence of perfection, and embrace the idea of Sin as the arrogance of self-sufficiency or the denial of inter-dependency.
We know what happens when an eco-system that is delicately balanced upon
a matrix of relationships becomes imbalanced: it begins to die. Nothing throws an eco-system out of balance faster or more violently than human beings acting as if we are independent. Whenever we act as if what we do does not affect every other living thing, we find ourselves sliding down a terribly dangerous chute towards painful self-destruction.
You and I can’t even throw away a piece of paper without it having an impact on something or someone elseon the surface of this earth. We may not be able to see our impact, and we may never even know our impact, but we can be absolutely certain that our smallest action echoes beyond ourselves.
Because of what we know about how the cosmos has been created – with exquisite intricacies and interdependence – we know that even our smallest action has an impact beyond our own life.
Now that is both good news and bad. We usually think of it in the negative, as how big of an imprint we are making on the environment. But it is also a positive. You and I, our every decision and action, has an impact far beyond our ability to see or to know or to discern what it is.
That means that we have enormous power. You and I…we are powerful. We get lost in a sense of powerlessness but we are exceedingly powerful precisely because we are so interconnected.
The economy of God is built upon teeny tiny actions whose impact is amplified by the intricacy of our relationships. We know this! We have felt it and seen it, and we have been both the fortunate recipient and tragic victim
of this clear and present fact of our existence.
We are puny little critters with enormous power because of how inter-connected we are to one another and to every other eco-system that lives within the matrix of life on this planet.
Now that may seem abstract to those of you who are concrete thinkers or like to swim in the details rather than stroll in the Big Picture (which is my favorite habitat). So let me bring it closer to home.
We like to use the word “community” but what does that really mean? We use it inter-changeably for Trinity, Buffalo, our kid’s school, an organization of professionals, and even for virtual, digital groups that have never seen each other and never will.
But let me tell you what a community is, because community has a very distinct definition even if we don’t use it.
A group of people is not a community until…they can see and name what links them and their futures together with one another. In other words, a community is a group of people who know and act as if their destinies are inextricably linked. By that measure Trinity is not a community…not yet.
But I am issuing a call right now, for that to change.
As long as this place is just a nice church to go to to get a fix now and again
we will never be a community. As long as we are only trying to put two cents together to fill the mortar and heat the sanctuary and pay me and the rest of the staff to keep it all going, we will never be a community.
As long as it is about doing some good works here, and some interesting classes there, and preserving a nice old building elsewhere, we will never be a community. The one thing that our experience with Nueva Esperanza has taught us is that community is formed when people throw their lot in with one another and understand that their destiny’s are inextricably linked…and that my welfare depends upon your welfare and vis versa.
In contrast to the kind of community we have witnessed in El Salvador, we have been able to understand that more than anything else community is what we have lost in The United States.
The whole basis of our economic life has been made into competition with one another, and rooted in out-consuming each other. Instead of inter-dependence we have all been raised in the myth of self-sufficiency. We have been told that the ideal home is fairly well removed from any other home and is a place where no one else goes except by invitation.
We have been taught that the heroes are those who pulled themselves up by their bootstraps as if there was no one else around them to help. And we were taught the villains are those who are poor as if no one and nothing else has anything to do with their poverty. We have succumbed to an awful, evil myth.
Community is the antidote. Living as if our destinies are intertwined is required if we are to ever climb out of this Prodigal swine yard into which we have descended.
Now I know that we are good folks here, and that you and I are not personally responsible for the utter immorality of the Financial crisis, or the evil of the war in Iraq, or the degradation and suffering of those who live on the fringe of our empire, or the national disgrace of unlawful imprisonment
and torture of our prisoners. But we are not living an obvious counter-example to it either.
So I want to call upon us to take advantage of these two simple facts.
First, the absolute paucity of authentic community in our world; and second,
the incredible power of even small actions amplified by the accumulation of many other small actions.
If we were to form an authentic community in downtown Buffalo, one that had the energy and intensity of people who understood that their destinies were interdependent, how powerful would that be?
How do we build inter-dependence? By investment. The more personally invested we are in something the more we see our own fate dependent upon its health and wellness.
Now I know you are thinking, “Oh yeah, here it comes, the big money pitch.” But that is not what this is all about. It is your time I want.
Time is much more valuable than money and besides, where we make a personal investment of our time we will make certain that the other necessary resources follow.
I want to change the culture of Trinity Church so that we expect one another
to be personally invested with our time – but not just to hang out. I want to change the culture of Trinity Church so that we expect one another to be personally invested in the successful pursuit of our mission to name and heal the wounds of injustice. I want us to have clear, open and well articulated expectations to be personally invested so that we see it in our own self-interest that the mission of Trinity is powerfully embodied in the life of the community.
Clearly this is not something that can be achieved just because I call for it –
it has to be something that we all buy a piece of, as if it were the rock of our lives.
But let me just remind you of our mission.
“Trinity is a metropolitan house of prayer, a community that gathers for worship, spiritual inquiry, and welcomes all people. Recognizing our common brokenness, yet rejoicing in the reconciling love of God, we will
Embrace the diversity of the Christian faith as expressed through the Episcopal Church;
Nurture one another in our spiritual life;
Proclaim God’s love for all people in the voices of each new generation;
Gather the wisdom and resources of the community of faith to name and heal the wounds of injustice.”
Now you see, we have been very effective at creating a culture of openness and inclusion. That is all good. But we have had very low expectations of each other because we did not want to scare anyone away. We know that many of us here are here because we have had bad experiences with organized religion…precisely from expectations that other religions or churches held up for us.
So the idea of clear and open expectations for a personal investment of time may be very scary and seem counter to the openness and inclusion we have tried to establish.
It does not have to be, especially because we respect autonomy and because we honor personal conscience. But it is a legitimate concern and will bear our conscientious thoughts.
But the other part of this is that we have indeed embraced the diversity of faith and well beyond the Episcopal Church. We have people who are deeply invested in Trinity who are Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish and generally non-aligned!
We have also given a great deal of time and opportunity for the nurture of our spiritual lives, and if we consider worship to be part of that, it is what we have devoted the greatest of our efforts toward. And we are reaching out to each new generation and have a membership that actually parallels the ages of the surrounding culture.
What we do not have is a common investment, nor a concerted focus, on the part of our mission that seeks a destiny greater than our own: To name and heal the wounds of injustice.
Specifically, I am calling upon the vestry and the congregation to engage in a parish-wide discernment of a ministry that this community is uniquely and urgently well-suited to offer Buffalo, and for which we will ask each and every person who worships here to become personally invested in with their time and their talent and their money.
I am going to ask you now to mark your calendars for the two weeks from January 5th through the 19th 2009. We will hold a variety of discernment opportunities, in homes and at church, in which to discover how we will take the combined efforts of those who worship here together and form them
into a vehicle by which we name and heal the wounds of injustice in downtown Buffalo.
It will be a process that leads to something that young and old, wealthy and poor, talented and the talent-challenged, can together invest in and share our time, talent and money —the success of which will depend upon us all.
In order for Trinity to be an authentic community we need to be seriously invested in a common mission such that we see our own destiny as personally connected to its destiny. We need to be seriously invested as individuals and households with our time. Where we invest our precious time with the labor of our hands and our hearts, there will our treasure be also. And right there, with interdependency, is the fulcrum upon which stewardship is balanced.
“What will you do with your one wild and precious life?”
