November 02, 10:30am (Sare Gordy)
You see, knowing – feeling or actually experiencing – God’s adoration of us, is the source of gratitude. It is simply impossible to touch that place within ourselves where we can feel and accept that God adores us as God’s very own, and not experience gratitude. And when we experience gratitude we are moved, even compelled, to care for and nurture that which we have been given.
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Sermons @ Trinity
November 2, 2008:
Propers for All Saints’ Day, Year A
“4th Principle of Stewardship”
The Rev. R. Cameron Miller
***
Jesus sits down. In our world if someone is going to speak – to speechify…pontificate…preach – they stand up. In Jesus’ day, the rabbi sat down to speak. I don’t know that it means anything, I just think it is interesting how things change.
Take the word “Blessing” or “Blessed.” It does not come from Greek or Hebrew, it comes from Latin, benedictus. It is the Romanization of our Semitic religion. The Hebrew word translated in English as “blessed” meant “To bend the knee.” In Greek, that same word meant “to worship or adore.”
In English, because of the Latin, “blessed” or “blessing” has come to mean rewarded.
When we hear someone say, “I’m blessed” what we may be hearing is: “I have something.” And sometimes, in the way it is said, it can also mean: “I have something…and you don’t.” When we hear someone say, they know somebody else who is “blessed” it often means: “they got something.”
“Blessings” have come to mean commodities; godly commodities that God bestows invisibly on some but not on others. Even if they are not material commodities they are something God sprinkles somehow on those who have “got them” and not on others…
We never say that somebody is “Unblessed” because we don’t have to – if some are “blessed” then it follows that there are those who don’t have the blessings. And if blessings are commodities, either material or spiritual commodities, then we are talking about a divine economy that operates on the principle of scarcity. But our economy operates on the principle of scarcity.
The economy of God operates on the principle of abundance. In the economy of God, abundance is the invisible hand that guides the market so that if we are talking about blessings, they are universally available and there is no shortage of them. So to think of and speak of Blessings as something somebody gets and that others, by implication, do not get, is an example of how effortlessly we translate abundance into scarcity.
The commoditization of God’s love is something we do without even thinking about it because we are so well trained as consumers to see everything as products for which there is a potential shortage.
We are nursed on the idea of reward and punishment, of haves and have-nots, and nursed with the anxiety that there simply isn’t enough so we better get ours before it is all gone.
But let’s look at Jesus’ most famous sermon.
Now if you don’t know anything else about Jesus or about the Bible, then you probably have heard or read a reference to Jesus’ so-called “Beatitudes.” Even that word, “Beatitude” comes from Latin, “Blessing.” Anyway, Jesus’ “Blessed are youse guys” to put a Buffalo spin on it, is the core of his spiritual wisdom.
Now let’s look at it a moment. I prefer Luke’s rendition because it is more direct. Where Matthew says, “Blessed are the poor…” Luke says, “Blessed are you who are poor…”
But either way, the poor are “blessed.” The grief-stricken are blessed. The meek, those without land (Ps. 37:1) are blessed. The violated or wronged, that yet practice mercy, are blessed. Those who are authentic and void of cynicism are blessed. Those who promote peace are blessed. Those who are persecuted are blessed.
If we are going back to the Hebrew or Greek this can only mean one of two things: either all these people are worshipped, as “on bended knee” or they are “adored.”
But since worship is only rendered to God in the Bible it likely means that all these folks are adored. How is it that the sorts of folks that Jesus named,
who generally are citizens of the margins, are adored?
Well first of all, lets just get honest: there is class warfare going on here. Excuse me John McCain but the Bible is an unselfconscious proclamation of class warfare. From Joseph sold into slavery to Moses leading the slaves out of Egypt to Isaiah calling the exiles to come home…the Bible is a book about God’s special love of those on the margins.
Jesus, while he had some pals and benefactors with means, was a peasant whose audience were peasants and whose followers were peasants. His enemies were people who had power and had privilege.
So lets be honest and recognize that, when it comes to the Bible, it is us, or at least most of us, who are on the margins looking in. Now having said that,
context is everything.
There are many of us here this morning who are poor in pocket-book or poor in spirit; grieving; without property; violated, bruised or abused, earnest and authentic; and doing our dang best to give peace a chance.
Jesus says…we are adored.
You are adored. Now take that in…you are adored.
I know for a fact that many of us do not feel adored. I know for a fact that you probably have a fishhook of self-hatred swallowed deep into your craw. I know for a fact that you do not feel adored. I know for a fact that you live in the shadow of your failures; that the fungus of past humiliations populate the floor of your heart; that the love you are so thirsty for and that you so earnestly give to others is as unavailable to you as full lungs to those with emphysema.
I am preaching to myself here…I’m sure you know by now, I am always preaching to myself.
You are adored. That is what Jesus is saying to his audience. The most unadorned people in the world – abused, violated esteemed-as-worthless peasants living under the jackboot of empire…are adored.
Huh?
It is not too much of an imaginative leap to say that if they adoredwe might be also. Even you…even me. You are adored.
Now you should know that this is a sermon about stewardship…This is the fourth in a series about stewardship…A series of stewardship sermons that do not ask for money.
So if you haven’t asked yourself already, then you might start wondering
what adoration has to do with stewardship?
It is this: You and I will likely have pretty limited effectiveness as stewards
of whatever it is we have been given to care for, until we are able to go deep inside and touch that place – to actually feel that place – where we not only know we are adored but actually trust that we are adored.
This is not just a gooey hypothetical psychologizing of the Gospel.
In order to get really good at stewardship, to increase our effectiveness as those who care for and nurture that which we have been given to care for, we need to know where the groundswell of gratitude lives within us. Gratitude.
You see, knowing – feeling or actually experiencing – God’s adoration of us, is the source of gratitude. It is simply impossible to touch that place within ourselves where we can feel and accept that God adores us as God’s very own, and not experience gratitude. And when we experience gratitude we are moved, even compelled, to care for and nurture that which we have been given.
And perhaps even more than that, gratitude is the antidote to cynicism, pessimism, self-hatred and bitterness. Within the realm of our gratitude we are propelled toward hope and moved into action and healed of resentment. If you want to see and to experience a miracle, then start digging for the source of gratitude that pulsates inside of you.
The fourth principle of stewardship is gratitude.
The closer we are able to live in the presence of our gratitude the stronger and more effective we will be as stewards of that which we have been given to care for and nurture. And the passageway to gratitude is the experience of
and trust in God’s tender and healing adoration of us… It is like the adoration a mother and father for the sudden and miraculous presence of their newborn. God adores us and God’s adoration is not a commodity to be gotten, taken, found, purchased or achieved. God adores us… period…forever…and always.
The fourth principle of stewardship is gratitude and we get their through the experienceof God’s simple adoration of us.
Now, I am going to finish this series next Sunday and I am going to finish it with a major announcement that will have direct impact on anyone who calls Trinity their spiritual home. I hope you will be here for it.
But now we are going to light candles. It is one of the ways we pray together. It holds that tension between I and we that is so much a part of our kind of worship. We move together in prayer – we pray with our bodies – but we bring our own individual prayers.
Today I invite you to come forward and light a candle of gratitude… gratitude for the knowledge that you are adored.
