Abundance and Want

From the Sounds of St. Francis, 12 October, 2017

We are now into the third week of Stewardship-Tide at Saint Francis, when we are asking you to consider your financial support for the ministry of our parish in 2018.  Our vestry will also need to decide on a pledge in the next few months, how much we plan to contribute to the ministry of our diocese in the coming year. With God’s help, both pledges will increase, so that together we may all be more faithful and effective in serving Christ and sharing His Gospel.  

The pledge we make to the diocese, like the gift you make to Saint Francis, testifies to the fact that our faith is communal, that a relationship with Jesus draws us into mutual dependence on other brothers and sisters.  Because we follow the apostolic model of church governance, we must have a bishop, our chief teacher and minister of those sacraments that connect us with the universal body of believers.  Our gift to the diocese first supports her ministry.  

The Gift of Limits

“God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty…That no flesh should glory in his presence.”  I Corinthians 1:25, 27

A few days after I accepted the call to serve as your rector, I met up with Kathleen Alexander for some orientation to our new home.  Just before I left, she told me that she had some reading material for me—and I’ll say she did.  She presented me with a stuffed jumbo-sized three-ring binder entitled, “The New Century Project,” circa 1998.  This was followed by a tall ream of printed sheets.  These were the collected comments from your rector search survey and a transcription of all that had been written on newsprint sheets posted around Saint Francis Hall at a big parish meeting held just about a year ago.

I went home and dutifully set to work, and I read it all.  And as you would expect, there was a great deal of continuity.  At the beginning and end of nearly two decades marked by great change, the people of Saint Francis placed their central focus on faithful Anglican worship, beautiful traditional music and inspired preaching.  Then and now, you wanted to learn together, to grow in your relationships with each other, to form the young, and to serve the poor.  Of course, many of the people who were leading the projects and making the comments were the same, a remarkable thing in a part of the world where everything often seems to be in flux.

But there were also great differences. 

Our Crowns at His Feet

“He is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning, the firstborn from the dead, so that he might come to have first place in everything.”  Colossians 1:18

I went to see a friend recently who has come to a certain age, and is in the process of moving from her grand old house into a retirement community.  She’s made the decision with proper deliberation, and she knows it’s the right choice.  A smaller space means freedom for her, the ability to age with more dignity and grace.  But it’s a challenging and sometimes sorrowful task to sort through all these things that fill her old house, and to make those inevitable decisions about what can be taken and what must be left to others.

She wanted me to see the house in all its glory, before the packers descended, stirring up the dust and setting things ajar.  She led me from room to room, and told me the stories behind the furniture and the pictures on the wall.  This piece was her grandmother’s and that one she spotted at a sale in the rain and bought it for a song.  The friend who painted that picture has been gone for years, but this artist went on to become a smashing success.  The things we gather together over a lifetime do clutter our houses and accumulate ever so much dust.  But they are the tangible signs of our memories.  They express our relationships.

My friend seemed most excited about the things in the house she was preparing to send on to others.   A local museum in her grandfather’s home town had agreed to take a few items that couldn’t really fit in anyone’s drawing room.  Her son had said he would like to have a cherished collection.  She was surprised by that.  He’d never shown so much interest when she’d tried to explain all the parts to him before.  But she smiled when she thought about how he had already decided where it would fit in his own home.  She would make him notes about where each piece had come from, why it was significant.  He would never be able to remember all of it, she guessed.  But it reminded him of her, of course.  He knew how much she loved the collection, and that matters.

A Path to Virtue

“Why is it, then, that these necessary things, which sustain life, are created by God for common use, while money is not common? The reason is twofold: to safeguard life and to open the path to virtue. On the one hand if the necessities of life were not common, the rich, with their usual greediness, would take them away from the poor. In fact, since they keep all money for themselves, they would certainly do the same with these necessities. On the other hand if money were common and available to all, there would be no opportunity for generosity on the part of the rich and gratitude on the part of the poor.”

John Chrystostom, quoted in "John Chrysostom and the Virtue of Giving."  Covenant 1 Dec. 2015