Episode Transcript
[00:00:41] Speaker A: The holy gospel of our savior jesus christ according to matthew.
The Pharisees went and plotted to entrap Jesus in what he said.
So they sent their disciples to him along with the Herodians, saying, teacher, we know that you are sincere and teach the way of God in accordance with truth and show deference to no one, for you do not regard people with partiality.
Tell us then what you think.
Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?
But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?
Show me the coin used for the tax.
And they brought him a denarius.
Then he said to them, whose head is this? And whose title?
They answered, the Emperor's.
Then he said to them, give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor's and to God the things that are God's.
When they heard this, they were amazed, and they left him and went away.
[00:02:39] Speaker B: I invite children ages 3 to 10 to go with Katie now to the music room for a story. And so songs and prayers, and they will return to us at the feast.
[00:02:48] Speaker C: In the name of one God, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen. Please be seated.
Well, as many of you may remember, and as hard as it is to believe, September was when I marked my first year with you all.
Oh, thank you.
I'm really glad that was your reaction, because this is Stewardship Sunday, so I have to ask you for money. So that's great.
Would have gone poorly the other way.
I say it's hard to believe, for me, at least, because in some ways it feels like it flew by. In other ways, it feels like I've been here longer than that. And I mean that in a good way.
I see this as a sign of, at least from where I'm sitting, a good fit.
And it has been such a blessing for me this year. I truly mean that.
Partially, it's because of how dedicated you all are to living our mission, to live God's love.
Partially, it's because I get to work with the best people I have ever had the pleasure to work with, and that includes your incredible staff, clergy team and vestry.
But if I could really distill it down to one thing, one reason I'm so joyful to be with you all.
It's because you all give me hope.
Something that feels in short supply some days.
But when I talk about hope, I want to be really clear. I'm not talking just about some sort of fuzzy, nice little feeling.
In the last few weeks, we've been talking A lot about hope and what it really is in the Christian understanding of things.
It's a trusting expectation and rootedness in God's faithfulness, especially revealed in Jesus, and lived out through the work of the Holy Spirit together.
It's not just simply wishing things will turn out well.
It's rather an almost dogged refusal to look at our world and say, this can never get better, things will never change.
Hope refuses to believe that because we have been given the unending hope of God's eternal love, and we get to live it out here together.
That's why we chose the theme Love between and Beyond Us for our stewardship campaign this year. Because for us, hope in the form of God's love is what we have been given and what we must give back to the world.
And then finally, in the Christian tradition, hope is also, you might say, the raw material of what the Holy Spirit has to work with within us.
Without hope, there's not a lot to offer, but even a small bit of hope.
When we see it, we notice that together a small bit of hope in the body of Christ does so much more than we can ask for or imagine.
So for us, Christianity says that hope is ultimately a matter of stewardship because it's a giving back of ourselves to something bigger than ourselves for the service and love of God.
It's investing in God's future, putting stock, if you will, and what God says is possible in this world and, and that's what we hope in.
So ultimately, our Gospel reading today is an exercise in hope stewardship.
Jesus is essentially asking us what has the ultimate claim on our life. What are we actually putting our hope in?
Two groups come to him, the Pharisees disciples and the Herodians.
Now, the Pharisaical hope is founded in the mosaic law. Over 500 purity laws of Torah Torah, which are not bad in their own way, but taken to the extreme, it can mean that we are putting our hope on the work of living out those laws, that our salvation belongs to the law and how well we can perfectly do it.
Now, I don't know about you and me, but that doesn't inspire hope.
I feel hopeless when I think that way because I know I can never do enough for my own salvation. It is a gift from God.
Now, the Herodians, as the name would suggest, are follow and are loyal to the Herods, the puppet kings who are cozy with Rome.
Rome essentially lets them have small territories to rule. As long as they follow Rome's objectives.
They put their their trust not necessarily in their own abilities, they. But they put their trust and hope instead in empire, in power and money.
If their Herodians place their power on empire and the Pharisees place their hope in a person's ability to follow a law that's turned into something of an idol, then what we see here are the probably two most common things we put our hope in and how much they lack.
Because if it's only up to us, or only up to the powers that be outside of God, there will never be enough.
It's only God and God's great gift that has enough to establish a foundation of hope. Empire will crumble.
Individuals can't do it alone.
Finite things only give us hopelessness.
Now instead of falling for their gotcha trap. Jesus wisely says that this is not just about paying taxes, it's about what taxes the soul.
And the coinage that gets traded in God's kingdom is of a very different nature than that of Caesar's. So he asked them to take out a denarius, the common coin of the day in the Roman Empire.
Now guys, just yesterday I was at Mount Holyoke College at their museum as part of the parents weekend trip that we made to see Delia, our freshman in college.
And I learned something new about the denarius. This is about as geeky as I get, by the way, which is pretty geeky.
They had a display there about the coins of the ancient Near East.
And the denarius was apparently well known in Jesus time to be the least trustworthy piece of currency in existence.
The other empires, for example, had coins that are about 91% real silver, but the denarius was just 40% silver.
Now they also had an image of the coins that had the image of the Emperor as God on one side. So the Romans just copied that, trying to make their coins look more valuable than what they were.
Now I know what you're thinking. Delia must have been having the best time with their parents.
No college party could ever hope to come close to the raucous good time we were showing them, looking at ancient near east coins in the library.
But my point is the currency of hope, if you will, is the only actual trustworthy coin there is.
Everything else is just a poor copy.
Everything is less than what we can hope to have with God.
You have a symbol of all of this on this coin, about what you don't have when you don't hope in God. Anxiety, empire, power, war. These are all the things that tax the soul.
So Jesus is right. Give it back.
Don't trade in that coin.
Let's keep and deal in hope instead.
Let's deal in the love of God that flows beyond and between us.
This is hope stewardship.
Now, I think when we live this way, when we actually deal in hope, we see that it gives us the courage to critique empires, the ability to do ministry and a purpose and focus on something bigger than ourselves.
For us at this church this year, it means taking an honest look at our finances and asking what more we could be doing to bring hope to this weary world.
And it means we have to be honest about where we've been for the last few years. We have not met our stewardship goals through our pledges.
Thankfully, we have, through strategic asks and government assisted programs during the pandemic, been able to bridge those gaps.
But those sources of income end this year.
Our pledging now needs to increase to cover the true cost of running this church without outside supplements.
Now, we could let that turn us to fear or turn us to some outside power, some sort of anxiety that taxes the soul.
But we could also see it as an invitation to live the life God is calling us to.
If we want to grow this church and maintain its offerings, we need to fund the hope.
On the administration side, we're doing what we can, including looking at our org chart, applying for grants and increasing rental revenue.
But pledging will always be our chief source of funding.
But what gives me hope is that this is a church that desires to make big changes in this world.
Our campaign is looking to raise about $2.8 million.
That is a big number and we can reach it if we all do our part to look towards a hopeful future.
In order to reach that, we are asking those who have pledged in the past to prayerfully consider increasing what you can do.
And we also know that there are some in our church that may need to decrease this year. But please do not feel that your pledge is diminished when we add it together. The impact alongside one another helps to have the hope be greater than any one person can do alone.
And if you've never pledged before, participation matters. Especially in a moment like this where even a small gift can be magnified in a time that needs it so desperately.
Over this campaign, we will provide a lot of prayerful ways to look at appropriate levels for giving. Check it out on the table outside. We've got charts galore for you.
But as you pray, remember this isn't just another bill or membership due or tax.
This is about the hope you want to see made manifest in the world through our work in Christ.
Because we hope in that future we want our resources to serve for that kingdom of God here and now.
I have personally increased my pledge this year because of the hope you have given me and I hope you can join me in that.
Because when I come here I see the way we are genuinely trying to live God's love and it inspires me. It gives me hope.
I see it in the way our church is growing. Our average Sunday attendance is up.
I see it every time I walk into the water ministry or the nursery school or here to work, worship and sing. I see it in our youth and young people, especially when I heard about how SCAP has transformed their faith.
I see it in our efforts to become an anti racist church. Especially in our two beloved community grants given this year to St. George's and Emma's Torch.
Heck, I even feel it in the construction project.
That's how good you all are inspiring hope because you are turning this building into even more of an impactful ministry center.
Thank you. I could go on and on and on because of how good you are at inspiring hope.
In fact, I hope you'll check out our new annual report that shows just a sampling of these things, big and small.
They're out in the common along with cupcakes which I almost hesitate to mention because nothing can distort distract from a sermon more than the mention of a cupcake.
But mostly I just want to say thank you for all of you who've been able to faithfully give over the years and for those who are contemplating giving this year.
Thank you for that generosity and thank you for stewarding your hope.
I know we're ready to join God in this moment with joy, with love, with generosity and yes, hope.
I know we are ready to leave this campaign amazed anew at what God can do through people who are willing to be stewards of hope.
And I know that it's not just me who feels it here. I know that we feel it together.
Friends, let us live hopefully and let us live God's love.
Amen.
[00:16:31] Speaker B: It.
