2008 Assembly
Lay Meditation
Grace, Gratitude, Giving: Living a Generous Life
New Testament Lesson
Luke 21:1-4: He looked up and saw rich people putting their gifts into the treasury; he also saw a poor widow put in two small copper coins. He said, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them; for all of them have contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty has put in all she had to live on.”
Sermon
Good Morning! This morning our Nebraska Synod (Sin’ uhd) Assembly is winding up a three-day meeting in Grand Island. And, since all across Nebraska our pastors are attending, lay men and women are delivering this message this morning. Bishop deFreese and the entire Nebraska Synod staff join our brothers and sisters from the 260 congregations, six synodically authorized worshiping communities and four new mission congregations of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America to send us greetings from Grand Island.
If you’re not sure what a synod is, the word comes from the Greek language spoken in Jesus’s day. In Greek, Synod means “journeying together.” Through Nebraska Synod and our national Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, we Nebraska congregations join together to do ministry that by ourselves we either can’t or don’t do.
Things like Lakota ministry out in Scottsbluff, Asian ministry in northeast Nebraska, Latino ministry in Omaha and Lexington and Sudanese ministry in Omaha and Lincoln. We also do prison ministry in Lincoln where about a hundred inmates gather each Saturday evening to worship as Followers of Christ Lutheran church and we are developing a ministry at the women’s reformatory in York.
For the first time in a number of years, we have four new mission congregations starting up. Hope Columbus is now almost two years old. It’s grown from thirty to just under a 100 folks. Its full-time pastor developer is Pastor Gary Harris.
Pastor James Lindberg has been called to develop our new west Omaha mission congregation. He’s based at Rejoice Lutheran in Omaha and is being supported by six west Omaha congregations, several of which will be sending members and leaders to help start the new mission. Their first worship service will be September 14th in an area elementary school.
Todos (Toe’ dos) los Hijos (eee’ ohs) de (day) Dios (Dee ohs’) is our newest synodically authorized worshiping community. It meets on Sunday afternoons at Holy Cross Lutheran in Beatrice for a Spanish-language worship service. Between 20 and 30 attend.
Asian United Evangelical Lutheran Church of Dakota City has a new pastor-developer, Soriya (Sore’ eee yah) Roeun. (Rue on’)
All of these ministries are supported by our own congregation’s Mission Share dollars. But the dollars sent to Nebraska Synod as our Mission Share go much further than just the borders of Nebraska. As one of 65 ELCA synods, we gather together to do even greater service to our nation and world.
Did you know that Lutherans administer 25 percent of the nursing home beds in America? Or that the Lutheran church is this country’s third-largest non-profit child care provider through our innumerable preschool, day care and latch key facilities? Many of these are located in our own Nebraska Synod congregations.
Did you know that NBC News calls Lutheran World Relief one of the four most effective relief agencies in the world? Lutheran World Relief has an administrative cost of only seven percent compared to 37 percent for the next most efficient provider?
The ways in which we join hands as a synod and national church of 10,600 congregations and nearly 5 million members clearly demonstrates that while no ONE of us has it all together, together, we have it ALL.
Together, we provide pastoral and congregation training through our Nebraska Synod fall theological conferences, our Striving for Pastoral Excellence conferences, our fall and spring Lay Leadership conferences and many other training events. We gather our pastors in their first call three times each year for training.
Our synod’s Operation Idea is focused on helping children and youth from grade school through college to determine whether God is calling them to ministry. At the time Operation Idea was begun, there were 17 Nebraskans in seminary. Today there are 70 either in seminary or in education leading to seminary.
Our synod’s Assistants to the Bishop spend many hours recruiting pastors and working with call committees to place them in our congregations.
Our Theological Education in Emerging Ministries or TEEM program is surfacing and training gifted lay leaders who are feeling God’s call to become pastors. Our Associates in Ministry and our Parish Ministry Associates are equipping those who feel called to church work but do not wish to go to seminary.
We do so much more than that. Together we could easily fill this entire sermon time with many other activities or ministry stories. The point is that our congregation’s Mission Support dollars, combined with those of our other 260 congregations make all this possible.
We…you and me and everyone here…together are a part of an exciting ministry that is so much bigger than just our own congregation. This morning’s New Testament lesson from Luke is a wonderful teaching moment for all of us. Because it shows us how important each of us is in doing God’s work in the world.
Jesus had been teaching in the Temple court but now he and the disciples were sitting in the Temple just watching people. As they watched, several wealthy Pharisees walked in and put an offering into the collection basket. Jesus saw them, but he also saw a poorly-dressed woman come toward the basket. Her worn clothes indicated she was a widow who daily lived in poverty. She seemed almost invisible as she walked up to the collection basket and put in two small copper coins. But Jesus seized on the moment to teach his disciples a lesson that still echoes down through the ages to us.
He asked the disciples, “Do you see that poor widow? She just put far more into the collection basket than all of those wealthy men we’ve been watching. Because she put in all she had to live on.”
Think about that for a moment. Which one of us has ever put all we had to live on for the week into the Sunday morning collection plate? The wealthy Pharisees may have thrown a large offering in the basket—but as a portion of their income, it meant little sacrifice.
This morning, as we worship here, 1,100 Pastors, PMAs and lay folks just like us are gathered at the Nebraska Synod Assembly in Grand Island. The theme of this year’s assembly has been “Grace, Gratitude and Giving—Living a Generous Life.” They’ve spent the past three days putting stewardship into perspective. And what they’ve heard over and over is that giving is NOT a financial issue. Giving is a spiritual issue.
The world we live in today offers many temptations. Of every hour we spend with television and radio, at least 20 minutes is spent on glossy commercials that try to convince us to buy more stuff. The pages of our newspapers and, increasingly, the Internet are filled with advertising. During the past few decades we’ve been told thousands of times that if only we’d buy this or that we’d finally be satisfied. We’d be proud that buying that item would show the world that we had made it. And that if we chose not to buy it for ourselves, surely we could see our way clear to buy it for our children. After all, who deserves it more?
And somewhere along the way, so many people have become convinced that buying stuff can satisfy us—fill the hole in us that longs for something more they are working harder and harder to “make ends meet.”
God’s plan for us is NOT for us to use ourselves up making more money to buy more stuff. In Matthew 6 Jesus is very clear about the priorities God has established for us. He tells us, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust consume and where thieves break in and steal; but store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where neither moth nor rust consumes and where thieves do not break in and steal.” And then he adds one of the most clear sentences in the whole Bible. He says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
In our Gospel lesson this morning, Jesus urges us to build our lives on a firm foundation. He asks us to be wise men and women who center their lives in Scripture and in Jesus—not like foolish people who build them on the sands of secular materialism, busyness and selfishness. Remember what he says about those folks? “GREAT will be their fall.”
Generous giving is a life choice that clearly demonstrates for our children, our neighbors and others that we believe our faith is worth working for. That our life is built upon the rock named Jesus and because it is, it’s a life worth living. That’s God’s values system for us is to give ourselves and our money to our faith. That’s in deep contrast to the world’s value system that teaches us to spend, spend, spend our time and money on ourselves.
Though the poor widow had nothing of material value, her life had meaning and purpose because of her values system. She so strongly believed that she put what little she had where her heart was. She gave it to God. Though the well-to-do contributed much more, it was only petty cash to them. And so, through the act of giving, the widow and the-well-to-do showed anyone watching who and what they were and what kind of life they had chosen for themselves. That’s the lesson that Jesus taught on that morning in Jerusalem.
The poet Walt Whitman once observed that “most people live lives of quiet desperation.” The theme that’s being established in Grand Island this weekend is to encourage each of us to stop, take a moment, and ask ourselves, “Is my life filled with meaning and purpose or is it meaningless and empty? Look at those around you whom you believe to be authentic Christian people. Are they that way because they believe in God’s values system of care for them and for others? Or because they believe in the world’s values system of sin and selfishness?” The answers to those questions depend on, and are demonstrated by, the choices each of us make.
How many times have we heard someone we know complain that all the church ever does is ask for money? The folks who are in Grand Island this weekend are being taught that those who complain about being asked to give completely miss the point. Remember what Jesus tells us? He says, “For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Giving is not about grudgingly giving away some of our petty cash, then griping about it. It’s not about showing off like the Pharisees were doing that day in the temple. It’s about God’s values system and God’s care for us. It’s about our own spiritual well-being. Those are the lessons being taught in Grand Island this weekend.
Let’s end with something to think about this morning. In Nebraska, median household income is just over $45,000 per year. There are 121,000 ELCA members in our Nebraska Synod congregations or roughly 40,000 households. Did you know that if each church member’s household put only five percent of income per week into the offering plate—only HALF of the 10 percent God asks us to give for our spiritual well being—together our congregations in Nebraska would have a little over one and three-quarters MILLION dollars each week or $90 MILLION per YEAR with which to do ministry? Not only would God be served, we’d each be served by establishing meaningful priorities and by having congregations that could offer vibrant, dynamic ministries to the communities around us and throughout the Nebraska Synod, the state, nation and world.
Following Christ in a meaningful way in an increasingly meaningless world is rooted in our relationship of faith and trust in God. In our Gospel reading this morning, Jesus concludes Matthew’s gospel with a “word to the wise.“ The words of Christ received and acted upon form a foundation for authentic living. Jesus says, “Everyone then who hears these words of mine and acts on them will be like a wise man who built his house on rock,“ The key words here are, “…acts on them…“the widow and the wealthy, the generous and the selfish. Which ones are we?
Grace, Giving and Gratitude–Living a Generous Life. It’s a rock upon which we can depend when the storms of life blow all around us
Amen