In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost. Amen.
Each year we set apart the first Sunday in October for what the Prayer Book calls the Feast of Dedication. So our Collect for the Day and our lessons from Holy Scripture are for Saint Thomas the Apostle, our patron under whose name we are dedicated. There is no better way as Rector for me to honor this day than to ask every one of you make a pledge to Saint Thomas Church and Choir School for the upcoming year 2007. By the way, I enjoy doing the “money sermon,” and by the time I’m done, I hope you’ll see why.
The Every Member Canvass Committee has sent out their letter and pledge card, with return envelope, to our large mailing list of members and friends. In case you are not on that list, there are the same materials placed in the pews. Every Member Canvass committee members may be identified by their red ribbons with name tags and their friendly faces; they are ready to answer your questions. Please come to the coffee hour today in Andrew Hall. I would be thrilled if you could deliver your pledge to us there and then.
Last year’s campaign had 569 pledging units for $1,060,000, an historic milestone and a great encouragement. But we need to reach for more pledgers and a higher amount pledged in order to attain mature stewardship and financial health. What I mean is this. Saint Thomas could not exist without its endowment, which is the legacy of our departed benefactors and the hard work of our Vestry’s stewardship of investments over many years. But we, the living, provide just about 11 percent of our budget, when it really needs to be about 25 percent. We depend too much on what has been given by the faithful departed and mortgage the future for the next generation. I think we need to have closer to 1000 pledging units (large and small) who give about $2,500,000 in annual pledges. That is the goal, $2.5 million, which the Wardens and Vestry have set for us to reach in 2010. Don’t faint or tune out; keep listening. I see signs that by God’s grace we can do this.
We need every person’s pledge, and, as I shall show you shortly, we need your pledge in a very specific spiritual way. But let me start with some practicalities. Are you simply making an anonymous plate offering? No matter how large or small, I urge you to convert that offering into a pledge. A pledge moves you from the anonymous aggregation into the visible congregation. It moves you towards known friendship, even membership; it expresses your involvement and ownership in the life of the Body here.
If you are already a pledger, I urge you to increase for 2007 if you can. Could you increase your pledge by 25 percent? If all our current pledgers did that, we would make a big step towards our goal. I am so grateful to the many of you who have already helped us make the strides we have over the past year.
Jesus talks about our relationship to money a great deal in the Gospels. [By contrast, he talks hardly at all about sex, although you wouldn’t know that from the way the Church does, on all sides.] He said, where our treasure is, there will our heart be also. The Apostle adds that God loves a cheerful giver. In other words if you’re grumpy about giving, then keep it. That is why Jesus holds up as a giver the poor widow who gave her coin to the Temple. Observing the wealthy who put in large sums, Jesus said the widow had put in more, because the wealthy gave out of their abundance, whereas the widow, out of her poverty, gave everything she had.
The issue here is the proportion given. If a person with an income of several hundreds of thousands of dollars per year plus lands and investments gives $5,000 or $10,000, we are grateful, but the person living exclusively on a fixed income of $25,000 per year who gives $500 or $1000 sacrifices more for obvious, proportional reasons.
Saint Thomas needs honest, sacrificial, cheerful pledges, lots of them, large and small, from all our people. These represent real devotion. They are powerful prayers. Sometimes we are tempted to hide behind the “widow’s mite” as an excuse for a tiny pledge when we know perfectly well we could afford a much larger one. But Jesus didn’t commend the mite per se, the pence, the widow gave. He wasn’t being sentimental about the little coin. He commended her offering because it was her whole living. From Jesus’ point of view, the issue is what your gift represents as a proportion of your means; in other words, how much “heart” it has in it. The biblical tithe is ten percent of what one has. Is your gift a tithe? A half tithe? A quarter tithe? Not even close yet? Whatever it is, let us each start somewhere and work up. The question put by Jesus really is this: What is it worth to you?
A pledge to the Church is unlike any other contribution you make. It is a return of thanks to God through the Church for all we have received. More specifically, through the Church we receive particular, local expressions of grace: the word and sacrament, the worship and music, the fellowship and service of Christ. Making a pledge is as religious an act as receiving Holy Communion. Making a pledge is a material expression of a prayer.
I am praying that for 2007 Saint Thomas receives 600 to 650 honest, sacrificial, cheerful pledges, one from every member and friend we have, large and small. And for that, we should go a good way further towards our goal of responsible stewardship and financial health in our beloved Saint Thomas. What is it worth? “It” is the worship, love and service of our Lord Jesus Christ here. “It” is here next to me – this figure of Christ crucified; and you can receive him up there, at the Altar. “It” is also this worship, love and service of Christ expressed through the rich, glorious Anglican tradition. “It” is the faith given wings on this great street corner in this great world city, in this breathtaking gothic temple, by our unique choral heritage.
Let us make Saint Thomas stronger than it is now, on this day of Dedication, by dedicating that most sensitive and revealing of subjects, our money, to the glory of God and the building up of his Church. Thanks for listening.
In the Name of God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Spirit. Amen.
