Pledge Sunday November 17, 2013
Luther Memorial Church Seattle, WA
The Rev. Julie Guengerich Hutson
Deuteronomy 26: 1-11 + Psalm 63: 1-7 + John 6: 35-25
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O LORD, our rock and our redeemer. Amen.
This is the Sunday when we will say how we will each share what God has first given to us. It is Pledge Sunday, that time when we make our pledges of time and money to the mission and ministry of this place. A part of the reason we do that is so that a budget can be made and kept. How will we pay for all that happens here? And believe me, it’s never an easy thing to consider. We don’t come to church to talk about money – right? We come to talk about God and to remember God’s faithfulness to us. We come to sing the hymns of our faith and to visit with people we have loved and known for a long or a short time.
Yet it is true that Scripture has a great deal to say about money. And it is also true that in order to fund our ministries in a healthy way, we consider our financial giving in light of that holy Word.
Your Church Council has been talking about what our budget would look like if it were told as a story, rather than as columns of numbers and figures. What stories does our stewardship tell? They are numerous and they are wonderful and they are hard and they are life and light giving.
In the reading from Deuteronomy today, the Israelites receive instructions about what they are to do when they come together in the land and place given to them by God. They are to gather the first fruits of what God gives to them, put them in a basket and present them to the priests, before God. And what we note here is that they are to take first fruits, not what is left over. And what they gave to God belonged to God to begin with and was given to them by God in the first place. So first fruits would be the honorable way of giving back, rather than giving to God the leftovers.
But it’s what they are told next that intrigues me. Look with me at Deuteronomy 26, beginning at verse 4. When the priest takes the basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the LORD your God, you shall make this response before the LORD your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation, mighty and populous. When the Egyptians treated us harshly and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, we cried to the LORD, the God of our ancestors; the LORD heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. The LORD brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; and he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring the first of the fruit of the ground that you, O LORD, have given me.”
As the Israelites gave their offering to God, they told the story of God’s faithfulness to them. Remembering the story together, as they brought forward the offering, was a way that they could understand, as a community, that giving back to God was not a chore, it was not an obligation, it was not something that came if there was enough leftover. Giving back to God was an act of worship and a thankful response to God’s great goodness toward the people.
Storytelling is not a child’s task, then, it is a holy response to God.
Let me say this as part confession and part transparency to you, the beloved people with whom I serve. I understand that first fruits giving is hard. Life in the kingdom is grace filled, but life in Seattle is expensive. I know this, just as you do. I know it every time I pay bills or send tuition checks or even put gas in my car.
And this is what else I know. I know that in every part of my journey, in the times that were full of joy, at the birth of children, on joyous days, in golden sunsets….God has been there. And I know that on those hardest of days….in the midst of loss and disappointment, in the face of rejection and remorse….on those days God was there, too. God has never left me. And this I know as well, that I am not worthy of the unimaginable mercy and grace that God offers to me, and to all people, every single day. But God grants me those mercies just the same.
When I remember my story, it makes it easy to offer my first fruits to God in grateful response to such a feast of faith.
We also remember the story of this community of faith. And when we do, we remember times of great joy and times of great challenge. We remember saints past and present whose fingerprints and impact are all over the life of this place.
It is good for us to pause and remember what God has done, especially as we pledge our gifts to the work that God will do. It is a gift to remember our own stories and hard as it may be, it is good to recall the trials and the joys – and to remember that God was with us in both.
The same is true in this place. The narrative of this feast of faith – the story of our ministry here on the corner of Greenwood and 132nd is significant. It is robust. It is God’s work. And whenever we wonder what God is up to , we need only look at the faces of those who come through this place and this space each week.
We see the hungry….those who are hungry for food and hungry for kindness and hungry to hear of word of hope. And here they find lunch or warm gloves or a kind word. They hear of God’s goodness – story after story of God’s faithfulness to God’s people, even when they were not faithful to God. Here the lonely find a listening ear, someone with whom they share a conversation or news of their lives.
We gather here to learn about God. In our Sunday School programs and in our confirmation instruction and our Bible study and our retreats….here we gather to know more of God’s story.
In this place the larger community gathers. They gather as Broadview Community Council to talk about items of common concern to the community. They gather as young fiddlers, learning how to play instruments and sharing their music. They gather as the local Garden Club to consider how best to steward creation. They gather as those who garden in our Giving garden, growing rich harvests of vegetables and flowers. They gather as children and parents on their way to school, walking through a garden path that must somehow deeply echo the first garden. They gather as sixth grade boys learning to play chess. They gather as those who struggle with the effects of addiction on their lives. They gather as young people who need to be set back on the right path. They gather as retired firefighters and car enthusiasts.
And here we gather for those liminal times in our lives. We baptize at this font, in the name of the Triune God. We marry those who stand here and join their lives together. And when their lives draw to a close, we commend them to the everlasting peace of the God who they served and professed as Lord from this place.
Friends, the story of God at work in this place is an active, dynamic story. It is the story of the God who is worthy of our praise – as the Psalmist sung “Your steadfast love is better than life itself”
Our gifts, our first fruits giving, connect the story of what God has done to the story of what God will do. Our gifts connect the story of what God has done to the story of what God will do.
That we offer back to God a portion of what God has first given to us, just as those in our reading from Deuteronomy today did, is a vital and critically important part of the story. Our pledge is a loving response to the God who continues to generously invite us to the feast.
As we sing our Hymn of the Day, I want to invite you to come forward, and place your pledges in the basket, just as the Israelites did. Let us give to God what God has first given to us and let us remember and tell the story of God’s faithfulness to us in all that we do.
Thanks be to God. Amen.