Sermon Archive
Second Sunday after Epiphany
Year A
- Listen
to me, O coastlands, pay attention, you peoples from far away!
The LORD called me before I was born, while I was in my mother's womb he named me. He made my mouth like a sharp sword, in the shadow of his hand he hid me;
he made me a polished arrow, in his quiver he hid me away.
And he said to me, "You are my servant, Israel, in whom I will be glorified."
But I said, "I have labored in vain, I have spent my strength for nothing and vanity;
yet surely my cause is with the LORD, and my reward with my God."
- And now the LORD says, who formed me in the
womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob back to him, and that Israel
might be gathered to him, for I am honored in the sight of the LORD,
and my God has become my strength-- he says,
- "It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob and to restore the survivors of Israel; I will give you as a light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the end of the earth." Thus
- says the LORD, the Redeemer of Israel and his Holy One, to one deeply despised, abhorred by the nations, the slave of rulers, "Kings shall see and stand up, princes, and they shall prostrate themselves, because of the LORD, who is faithful, the Holy One of Israel, who has chosen you."
1 Corinthians 1:1-9
Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by
the will of God, and our brother Sosthenes,
To
the church of God that is in Corinth, to those who are sanctified in
Christ Jesus, called to be saints, together with all those who in every
place call on the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, both their Lord and
ours:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and
the Lord Jesus Christ.
JJohn saw Jesus coming toward him and declared, "Here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world! This is he of whom I said, `After me comes a man who ranks ahead of me because he was before me.' I myself did not know him; but I came baptizing with water for this reason, that he might be revealed to Israel." And John testified, "I saw the Spirit descending from heaven like a dove, and it remained on him. I myself did not know him, but the one who sent me to baptize with water said to me, `He on whom you see the Spirit descend and remain is the one who baptizes with the Holy Spirit.' And I myself have seen and have testified that this is the Son of God."
The next day John again was standing with two of his disciples, and as he watched Jesus walk by, he exclaimed, "Look, here is the Lamb of God!" The two disciples heard him say this, and they followed Jesus. When Jesus turned and saw them following, he said to them, "What are you looking for?" They said to him, "Rabbi" (which translated means Teacher), "where are you staying?" He said to them, "Come and see." They came and saw where he was staying, and they remained with him that day. It was about four o'clock in the afternoon. One of the two who heard John speak and followed him was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother. He first found his brother Simon and said to him, "We have found the Messiah" (which is translated Anointed). He brought Simon to Jesus, who looked at him and said, "You are Simon son of John. You are to be called Cephas" (which is translated Peter).
Sermon
The Rev. Susan B. P. Norris
“Come
and See.”
In Fiddler on the roof, Menacham-the-begger, meets Yentel–the-butcher on the main track in Anatevka, a poorRussian Village
“Alms for the poor, Alms for the poor,” calls Menacham.
“Here, Menacham, here are two kopeks”
“Two kopeks!? But you always give me four kopeks.”
“I had a bad week.”
“So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer!?!”
* * * * *
Last Saturday GraSP had a really bad week.
The vestry, finance committee and various parishioners met
to organize the 2008 budget for the annual meeting.
Pledges and envelope giving estimates came in
thirty thousand dollars short
of a very tight, but faithful budget.
After a few small cuts there was nothing left to eliminate.
So, after voting to try to raise about half of the missing monies through
requesting upped pledges and going heavy on fundraisers,
the final budget “finds” the $15,000 by cutting our
Diocesan asking in half!
Which suggests that the mission and ministry of the Diocese ofNew Jersey National Church
Valuable than I am !?!
(Talk about ABSURD!)
A week later I am still spitting a few nails.
(Jack probably would be too, except that rectors aren’t supposed to spit nails.
It’s rude, and possibly bad for parish self-esteem.
Blessedly, I’m NOT the rector!)
I’m asking the vast majority of us to up our pledges
by approximately $5.50 a week beginning this morning.
We are not wealthy people, about 20 or so of us a downright broke,
but the rest of us have enough of everything, and a little bit more.
Either we don’t intend to pay our bills, OR
We don’t understand what they are about and how much they cost.
(I’m convinced of this congregation’s faithfulness and generosity – which runs all the way back to Milton Craft – so I’m betting on the second explanation.)
(Full disclosure – Nobody asked me too give this sermon
Nobody suggested I might even think about giving this sermon.
I’ll lay bets that Jack, Gladys and Scott are mostly praying fervently
that I’ll keep a civil tongue in my head -- so don’t blame them for my statements)
What I hope to do in the next minutes is
to make clear what the current inadequate vestry budget
actually would do and what it says about our congregation
and about our commitment to Christ’s body, the church.
I begin with church budgets in general.
All church budgets have at least two main groups of expenses.
The first group is the costs of keeping up the congregation, its building, and its priest and other staff and its programs.
Most of those costs are fixed, and exist primarily for the benefit of the local congregation.
In catholic communions – like our Episcopal Church -
many congregational expenses exist and are funded at the diocesan level.
Want your catechumens confirmed?
Searching for a new Rector?
Your finance committee needs training.
Need a Deacon?
Want to go on retreat?
Members of your staff need medical insurance?
You need your money invested wisely?
You had a fire, a flood, storm damage?
Your youth group wants to build houses inEl Salvador
If so, you need the Diocese and its monies.
That’s where those and many other vital functions happen.
Parish budgets also have a second group of expenses,
the costs of being Jesus’ disciples, of being lights to the nations
or at least to the people our community.
Food pantries, shelter for troubled families, grief counseling
marriages, burials, emergency aid, children’s education, & elder care,
all show up in our parish budget,
an again, mainly in the monies we send on to the Diocese
(and through the Diocese to theNational Church
Normally accepted wisdom is that a diocese needs
about 8% of each parish’s total income to fund its structure, staff
and the programs that support us. The diocese also needs an
additional tithe for persons and places in great need.
This 10 percent of our diocesan asking
DOES NOT come back to us in services and support.
Instead it goes to mission congregations and services with little hope
of paying any of their bills.
Congregations of people who are quite poor themselves,
who have almost no monies for priests,
heat, light, phone service, or even to
aid the poor who walk into their chill halls directly off the streets.
The Diocese of NJ is asking GraSP
for about 18% of our pledge income from two years ago.
They will then send a similar percentage of diocesan money to the national church with the majority of those pledge monies going to the relief of poverty, suffering and disaster in our own country
and around the globe.
You see, the further we get from the parish budget,
the more money moves to missionary giving
and away from local staff and program,
When we stiff our own out-of-parish giving
we’ve pretty well made certain that no matter what our stated intentions, or our official “pain,” virtually ALL of “our money” will be spent on us.
(“our money ! ? ? !”)
In any household money must go first to people most in need.
We don’t leave our kids without food and clothing,
to go out drinking and dining in fine restaurants.
We do not buy our healthy child a new bike
every time our physically handicapped child gets new braces or a wheelchair.
We usually spend more time and energy
- (though I hope not more love and concern ) –
on the troubled among us, rather than the healthy.
God’s household operated in the same way.
In GraSP’s household we have it all.
Here are God’s presence and power,
love, forgiveness, beauty, sacraments and salvation,
We have safe buildings, a rector, other staff, heat, light, toilets, food,
music, education, fun traditions, 24-hour human support,
and a whole congregation of people who help us learn to live faithfully.
We’re pretty darn well off.
So why, having passed the hat and had it come back half empty,
are we giving that half-empty hat to the “Diocese” which has infinitely more demands and responsibilities than we have.
That’s outrageous ! ! !
It is wrong to insist that people who have even less than we, cover our expenses as well as their own
It is wrong to hold onto everything we NEED
AND also to much of what we WANT,
before helping those in our extended family who have little or nothing
God has given us monies that are meant for others,
and we are called to use them for God’s purposes.
In last Sunday’s NY Times Magazine an article by Steven Pinker suggested that within each person’s genetic makeup,
there are five BROAD categories of moral behavior:
Harm, Fairness, Community (read group loyalty) Authority and Purity.
(If anyone wants to talk further about these ideas we can do that after the service – speak to me at coffee hour)
Our present budget problem highlights questions of “Community”
Is community defined by blood/tribal relationships or by something else?
Americans believe that fairness to all trumps community in public life.
We sort people by ideas of merit.
We say, “May the best one win”
Other cultures think that community is all about blood/tribal ties.
They find it immoral to choose strangers over one’s own relatives, no matter the stranger’s merit.
We are Americans here, so when we first sort our the budget, we try to begin with the “most important things” first.
This almost never works, because it clashes with our own tribal ties.
We expect “our money” to go for our “congregation”
But, again, it’s not “our money” It’s “God’s money and we are mostly not the poor, nor are we God’s only congregation.
The vestry has suggested going all out for fundraisers – which
might be a possible way out, and surely, one or two more
“Happy ways to pick our pockets can’t really hurt.
They also can’t come close to solving the money deficit
There are sixty “five hundred dollar units” in $30.000.
Unlike the parish-wide, week long, $4000.+ Roast Beef Dinner
most of our folk don’t patronize/work on other fundraisers.
3-6 people, who work hard for several days - losing some nights and a weekend, generally spearhead those,
and raising five hundred plus dollars.
Sixty individual fundraisers?!?
Maybe it works this year. But Next Year? The Year after?
How long before this much smaller group gets pretty tired of paying our entire parish mission budget by themselves?
Soon we will be in Lent, remembering Jesus, who died on a cross in a garbage dump to reconcile us to God and to each other.
(Which makes our relationship to everyone in Christ’s body a blood relationship!)
We surround our marriages and partnerships with this relationship.
We baptize our children into this relationship.
We declare that this relationship is the pillar of our lives.
When we die, we expect to rise to new life because of this relationship
So, why are five-six extra dollars a week too much to pay for the expenses of our church, and its mission to the very poor, the war torn and natural disaster stricken?
Is this a case of “I’m happy to die for my Christian faith,
but to give up my morning Bagel with coffee, or double latte – No way!
At the moment, I see two basic options:
1. We can balance the smaller budget by CUTTING BACK ON THINGS WHICH SERVE US, and instead choosing to pay our full fair share of our Diocesan and national ministries.
We might turn the heat down to 60 and wear coats/hat in church.
(Yes, I Susy Norris, am seriously suggesting this – I’ll DIE,
but at least we won’t be hitting those who are already down.)
We could fire one of the staff members (We have such huge salaries!)
We might skip insuring the church. (And substitute extra prayers.)
OR
We can each RAISE OUR GIVING that extra 20-30 dollars a month, to adequately FUND THE TIGHT BUT FAIR budget first proposed to the vestry.
I know we can pretty easily fund the full budget.
We just need to get our heads on straight.
Jesus’ teaching was pretty clear.
“Blessed are you poor, for the reign of God is yours.
But woe to you rich, for you are now receiving your comfort in full.
. . . Give and it will be given to you; a full measure—packed down, shaken together and running over—will be poured into your lap.
For the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back.”
We have from now until next to sort this out
What are we going to do about this?
Just because we had a bad day, should the poor suffer?
Next Sunday the 27th is the annual meeting.
“Come, and see.”
In nomine . . .
In Fiddler on the roof, Menacham-the-begger, meets Yentel–the-butcher on the main track in Anatevka, a poor
“Alms for the poor, Alms for the poor,” calls Menacham.
“Here, Menacham, here are two kopeks”
“Two kopeks!? But you always give me four kopeks.”
“I had a bad week.”
“So, if you had a bad week, why should I suffer!?!”
* * * * *
Last Saturday GraSP had a really bad week.
The vestry, finance committee and various parishioners met
to organize the 2008 budget for the annual meeting.
Pledges and envelope giving estimates came in
thirty thousand dollars short
of a very tight, but faithful budget.
After a few small cuts there was nothing left to eliminate.
So, after voting to try to raise about half of the missing monies through
requesting upped pledges and going heavy on fundraisers,
the final budget “finds” the $15,000 by cutting our
Diocesan asking in half!
Which suggests that the mission and ministry of the Diocese of
Valuable than I am !?!
(Talk about ABSURD!)
A week later I am still spitting a few nails.
(Jack probably would be too, except that rectors aren’t supposed to spit nails.
It’s rude, and possibly bad for parish self-esteem.
Blessedly, I’m NOT the rector!)
I’m asking the vast majority of us to up our pledges
by approximately $5.50 a week beginning this morning.
We are not wealthy people, about 20 or so of us a downright broke,
but the rest of us have enough of everything, and a little bit more.
Either we don’t intend to pay our bills, OR
We don’t understand what they are about and how much they cost.
(I’m convinced of this congregation’s faithfulness and generosity – which runs all the way back to Milton Craft – so I’m betting on the second explanation.)
(Full disclosure – Nobody asked me too give this sermon
Nobody suggested I might even think about giving this sermon.
I’ll lay bets that Jack, Gladys and Scott are mostly praying fervently
that I’ll keep a civil tongue in my head -- so don’t blame them for my statements)
What I hope to do in the next minutes is
to make clear what the current inadequate vestry budget
actually would do and what it says about our congregation
and about our commitment to Christ’s body, the church.
I begin with church budgets in general.
All church budgets have at least two main groups of expenses.
The first group is the costs of keeping up the congregation, its building, and its priest and other staff and its programs.
Most of those costs are fixed, and exist primarily for the benefit of the local congregation.
In catholic communions – like our Episcopal Church -
many congregational expenses exist and are funded at the diocesan level.
Want your catechumens confirmed?
Searching for a new Rector?
Your finance committee needs training.
Need a Deacon?
Want to go on retreat?
Members of your staff need medical insurance?
You need your money invested wisely?
You had a fire, a flood, storm damage?
Your youth group wants to build houses in
If so, you need the Diocese and its monies.
That’s where those and many other vital functions happen.
Parish budgets also have a second group of expenses,
the costs of being Jesus’ disciples, of being lights to the nations
or at least to the people our community.
Food pantries, shelter for troubled families, grief counseling
marriages, burials, emergency aid, children’s education, & elder care,
all show up in our parish budget,
an again, mainly in the monies we send on to the Diocese
(and through the Diocese to the
Normally accepted wisdom is that a diocese needs
about 8% of each parish’s total income to fund its structure, staff
and the programs that support us. The diocese also needs an
additional tithe for persons and places in great need.
This 10 percent of our diocesan asking
DOES NOT come back to us in services and support.
Instead it goes to mission congregations and services with little hope
of paying any of their bills.
Congregations of people who are quite poor themselves,
who have almost no monies for priests,
heat, light, phone service, or even to
aid the poor who walk into their chill halls directly off the streets.
The Diocese of NJ is asking GraSP
for about 18% of our pledge income from two years ago.
They will then send a similar percentage of diocesan money to the national church with the majority of those pledge monies going to the relief of poverty, suffering and disaster in our own country
and around the globe.
You see, the further we get from the parish budget,
the more money moves to missionary giving
and away from local staff and program,
When we stiff our own out-of-parish giving
we’ve pretty well made certain that no matter what our stated intentions, or our official “pain,” virtually ALL of “our money” will be spent on us.
(“our money ! ? ? !”)
In any household money must go first to people most in need.
We don’t leave our kids without food and clothing,
to go out drinking and dining in fine restaurants.
We do not buy our healthy child a new bike
every time our physically handicapped child gets new braces or a wheelchair.
We usually spend more time and energy
- (though I hope not more love and concern ) –
on the troubled among us, rather than the healthy.
God’s household operated in the same way.
In GraSP’s household we have it all.
Here are God’s presence and power,
love, forgiveness, beauty, sacraments and salvation,
We have safe buildings, a rector, other staff, heat, light, toilets, food,
music, education, fun traditions, 24-hour human support,
and a whole congregation of people who help us learn to live faithfully.
We’re pretty darn well off.
So why, having passed the hat and had it come back half empty,
are we giving that half-empty hat to the “Diocese” which has infinitely more demands and responsibilities than we have.
That’s outrageous ! ! !
It is wrong to insist that people who have even less than we, cover our expenses as well as their own
It is wrong to hold onto everything we NEED
AND also to much of what we WANT,
before helping those in our extended family who have little or nothing
God has given us monies that are meant for others,
and we are called to use them for God’s purposes.
In last Sunday’s NY Times Magazine an article by Steven Pinker suggested that within each person’s genetic makeup,
there are five BROAD categories of moral behavior:
Harm, Fairness, Community (read group loyalty) Authority and Purity.
(If anyone wants to talk further about these ideas we can do that after the service – speak to me at coffee hour)
Our present budget problem highlights questions of “Community”
Is community defined by blood/tribal relationships or by something else?
Americans believe that fairness to all trumps community in public life.
We sort people by ideas of merit.
We say, “May the best one win”
Other cultures think that community is all about blood/tribal ties.
They find it immoral to choose strangers over one’s own relatives, no matter the stranger’s merit.
We are Americans here, so when we first sort our the budget, we try to begin with the “most important things” first.
This almost never works, because it clashes with our own tribal ties.
We expect “our money” to go for our “congregation”
But, again, it’s not “our money” It’s “God’s money and we are mostly not the poor, nor are we God’s only congregation.
The vestry has suggested going all out for fundraisers – which
might be a possible way out, and surely, one or two more
“Happy ways to pick our pockets can’t really hurt.
They also can’t come close to solving the money deficit
There are sixty “five hundred dollar units” in $30.000.
Unlike the parish-wide, week long, $4000.+ Roast Beef Dinner
most of our folk don’t patronize/work on other fundraisers.
3-6 people, who work hard for several days - losing some nights and a weekend, generally spearhead those,
and raising five hundred plus dollars.
Sixty individual fundraisers?!?
Maybe it works this year. But Next Year? The Year after?
How long before this much smaller group gets pretty tired of paying our entire parish mission budget by themselves?
Soon we will be in Lent, remembering Jesus, who died on a cross in a garbage dump to reconcile us to God and to each other.
(Which makes our relationship to everyone in Christ’s body a blood relationship!)
We surround our marriages and partnerships with this relationship.
We baptize our children into this relationship.
We declare that this relationship is the pillar of our lives.
When we die, we expect to rise to new life because of this relationship
So, why are five-six extra dollars a week too much to pay for the expenses of our church, and its mission to the very poor, the war torn and natural disaster stricken?
Is this a case of “I’m happy to die for my Christian faith,
but to give up my morning Bagel with coffee, or double latte – No way!
At the moment, I see two basic options:
1. We can balance the smaller budget by CUTTING BACK ON THINGS WHICH SERVE US, and instead choosing to pay our full fair share of our Diocesan and national ministries.
We might turn the heat down to 60 and wear coats/hat in church.
(Yes, I Susy Norris, am seriously suggesting this – I’ll DIE,
but at least we won’t be hitting those who are already down.)
We could fire one of the staff members (We have such huge salaries!)
We might skip insuring the church. (And substitute extra prayers.)
OR
We can each RAISE OUR GIVING that extra 20-30 dollars a month, to adequately FUND THE TIGHT BUT FAIR budget first proposed to the vestry.
I know we can pretty easily fund the full budget.
We just need to get our heads on straight.
Jesus’ teaching was pretty clear.
“Blessed are you poor, for the reign of God is yours.
But woe to you rich, for you are now receiving your comfort in full.
. . . Give and it will be given to you; a full measure—packed down, shaken together and running over—will be poured into your lap.
For the amount you measure out is the amount you will be given back.”
We have from now until next to sort this out
What are we going to do about this?
Just because we had a bad day, should the poor suffer?
Next Sunday the 27th is the annual meeting.
“Come, and see.”
In nomine. . . .