About Those Gifts

Sermon

In her novel Father Melancholy’s Daughter, Gail Godwin writes these words, spoken by Margaret, a young woman considering the ministry as she musters a prayer to God.
“Oh, You. Who are You? What do You want of me?
What will I be doing on this day next year?
Don’t tell me. (You wouldn’t anyway, would You?)
Do You know, Yourself, or is it partly left to me?
Are You withholding my life from me, or unfolding it with me?
Are You an eternal parent or are we eternal partners?
Are You there for me now?
I think so. Otherwise it would be too lonely.
This is for Your eyes only. Here is what I want.
Is it possible to have everything on this list, including the right to serve You?” (p. 404)

As people of faith who seek to follow Jesus, most of us ask these questions of our God in one way or another. And how we understand God’s answers to our questions shapes us not only as individuals but also as members of the body of Christ, the church. On this day, as we ordain and install elders and deacons, and as we have our annual meeting, I’d like us to consider our questions for God and God’s purpose for us. And I’d like to use three lenses to look at all of this: the lens of time, the lens of identity, and the lens of faith.

So, the lens of time. I wonder if our experience of the pandemic changed the way we think of time, and particularly, how we use the time we have. A few decades from now, sociologists will offer all sorts of interpretations about how the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world and culture and how human beings operate. More immediately, I think the pandemic gave us an opportunity to reconsider how we are willing to spend our precious hours in a day.

Last week, when five of us led the worship service, and we sang and preached and prayed in an empty sanctuary, I had some flashbacks to 2020 and 2021. We weren’t together. We canceled activities. We learned that people have capacity to engage on a Zoom call for about ninety minutes, and that was it. We had so much time on our hands, and when everything was on lockdown, all that time felt almost oppressive. Really, how many loaves of homemade sourdough bread does one household need?

The pandemic forced us—as people and as a church—to stop doing things we’d always done. So when the pandemic was over, and we could gather, and we could resume activities—well, we felt differently about all of it. Do we really want to drive out to the church for a committee meeting on a dark and rainy night? Am I really interested in what that group is doing or reading or planning? Or would I rather be somewhere else—at home in my pjs, or learning how to play mahjong?

This has played out at Westminster, of course. We’re in the midst of surveying our folks about their interest in having an All-Church Retreat this summer for the first time in four years. The high schoolers that loved that event have graduated and moved on. The families with little kids who would come have filled their summers with other camps. The adults who enjoyed that intergenerational experience now find that the accommodations don’t quite meet their needs. And some will take that survey and say, “Yes, yes, yes!”

Many of our committees and small groups now meet by Zoom. That’s partly an issue of time, but also an acknowledgement that Westminster people no longer live within a five-mile vicinity of the church. Why not attend Bible study on a screen, with your slippers on a maybe a glass of wine next to the Bible?

So we’ve made some changes to how we do things. But we’ve also seen a drop in the number of volunteers to do all things we used to do. That’s not unique to Westminster nor is it simply a casualty of the pandemic. Nonprofits have been seeing a decline in the number of volunteers for years, for a wide swath of reasons. Sometimes I joke that American church culture has never recovered from women going back to work.

For about ten years I have provided staff support to our Nominating Committee, and it feels like every year it gets harder and harder to find five elders and twelve deacons and four trustees and two Nominating Committee members willing to serve a three-year term. We have 580 members on our rolls, and 180 people are willing and able to be asked to serve every year. As for the rest? Some can’t because they live three states away. Some won’t because they are done with meetings. Some we haven’t seen at church in years and so inviting them into a leadership role doesn’t feel quite right.

I tell you this not because I want anyone to feel guilty about saying no to something. In general, I don’t find guilt to be a very sustaining motivator. I tell you this because who wants to do what impacts our mission and ministry. Which brings me to our second lens, identity.

The 20th century theologian/mystic/scholar Howard Thurman once commented, “Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.”

It is possible that getting to Westminster early on Sunday morning to make coffee and set cookies on trays puts the spring in your step. Or maybe it doesn’t. It is possible that being a parish leader and checking in on ten households in the congregation, people who might be strangers to you, is your worst nightmare or exactly what you feel God is calling you to do. It is possible that Robert’s Rules of Order triggers you and you relive a thousand terrible meetings you’ve attended. Or maybe you really appreciate things being done decently and in order.

But what makes you come alive? And what at Westminster, in this particular expression of the body of Christ, makes you feel carbonated, light on your toes, excited?
Does anything?

There are weeks when I get up on a Sunday morning and I am just not feeling it. I don’t think the sermon is any good, or I didn’t sleep well, or I’ve got a headache and I think to myself, “If I weren’t the pastor, I would stay home today.” But I put my big-girl shoes on and make it in. And then Michael starts the prelude and the pastors process up to the chancel and I sit down and I watch all of you come in and I come alive. Worshipping with you wonderful saints makes me come alive. So thank you for that.

But if there’s something that happens here and it makes you feel alive, are you doing that? Or are you doing something else, out of a sense of obligation or duty? Don’t get me wrong, I am deeply appreciative of those who do things out of a sense of obligation and duty. If people like Doug Youel and Greg Moore weren’t motivated by that, we would be worshipping in a cold, cold sanctuary this morning.

But if you only do things out of duty or obligation, you’re going to burn out. Maybe for too long we had people doing the right things for the wrong reasons, and they burned out, and now they say no because nothing makes them feel like they’re coming alive anywhere at church. If that is you, I am sorry. We should have done better.

And yet, there is something about our faith tradition that also lifts up the notion of sacrifice, and that brings me to our third lens: faith.

Frederick Buechner famously wrote, “The place God calls you to is the place where your deep gladness and the world’s deep hunger meet.” (Wishful Thinking: A Seeker’s ABC) How is God calling you—you who may be the hands or feet or eyes or ears or bellybutton of the body of Christ—and how is God calling us, the one body with many members? What makes us glad? What makes us come alive?

Most of us want to feel that what we’re doing makes a difference, that we’re not just spinning our wheels but that what we’re giving our time and talent and treasure to will impact someone or something. Most of us don’t do it for the glory or recognition. That’s why we don’t have plaques around here commemorating donors of this or that.

And the ministries that have an impact—speaking at a City Hall meeting or hosting a vaccination clinic—can be hard work. So can hosting a pancake supper or a baked-potato bar for a congregational meeting be hard work. Do fellowship meals have less impact than social justice advocacy? I suppose it depends on who is hungry for what. If you’re hungry for people to earn a living wage, that’s one thing; if you’re hungry for friendship, that’s another. I’m not sure I’m willing to say one is more important than the other. As Paul noted is his letter to the Corinthians, “If the whole body were an eye, where would the hearing be? The eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have not need of you,’ nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you.’”

Rather, as Teresa of Avila wrote,
“Christ has no body but yours,
No hands, no feet on earth but yours,
Yours are the eyes with which He looks
Compassion on this world,
Yours are the feet with which He walks to do good,
Yours are the hands with which He blesses all the world.
Yours are the hands, yours are the feet,
Yours are the eyes, you are His body.
Christ has no body now but yours….”

So you, members of the body of Christ, how will you spend your time? How will you come alive? How will you live out your faith? And how will that impact Westminster?

Let us pray.

Oh, You, God. What do You want of us? What will we be doing on this day next year? Do You know, Yourself, or is it partly left to us? Are You there for us now? We think so. Otherwise it would be too lonely. This is for Your eyes only. Here is what we want. Is it possible to have everything on this list, including the right to serve You?

Amen.