postID: 6948; title: The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost
groupKey: secondary
groupKey: other
The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost
Almighty and everlasting God, who art always more ready to hear than we to pray, and art wont to give more than either we desire or deserve: Pour down upon us the abundance of thy mercy, forgiving us those things whereof our conscience is afraid, and giving us those good things which we are not worthy to ask, but through the merits and mediation of Jesus Christ thy Son our Lord; who liveth and reigneth with thee and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen. (Proper 22)
Array
(
[date] => 2016-10-02 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 1261
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => formatted
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2016-10-02 11:00:00
)
2 post(s) found for dateStr : 2016-10-02postID: 231839 (Holy Guardian Angels)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 231839; date_type: fixed; year: 2016
fixed_date_str: October 2
fixed_date_str (mod): October 2 2016
formattedFixedDateStr: 2016-10-02
=> check date_assignments.
dateAssigned: 2020-10-02 (2020)
yearAssigned (2020) does NOT match year (2016)
displayDates for postID: 231839/year: 2016
Array
(
[0] => 2016-10-02
)
postPriority: 999postID: 6948 (The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6948; date_type: variable; year: 2016
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6948
displayDates for postID: 6948/year: 2016
Array
(
[0] => 2016-10-02
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2016-10-02 with ID: 6948 (The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost)
The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost
Array
(
[date] => 2016-10-02 11:00:00
[scope] =>
[year] =>
[month] =>
[post_id] => 1261
[series_id] =>
[day_titles_only] =>
[exclusive] => 1
[return] => simple
[formatted] =>
[show_date] =>
[show_meta] =>
[show_content] => 1
[admin] =>
[debug] => 1
[filter_types] => Array
(
[0] => primary
[1] => secondary
)
[type_labels] => Array
(
[primary] => Primary
[secondary] => Secondary
[other] => Other
)
[the_date] => 2016-10-02 11:00:00
)
2 post(s) found for dateStr : 2016-10-02postID: 231839 (Holy Guardian Angels)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 231839; date_type: fixed; year: 2016
fixed_date_str: October 2
fixed_date_str (mod): October 2 2016
formattedFixedDateStr: 2016-10-02
=> check date_assignments.
dateAssigned: 2020-10-02 (2020)
yearAssigned (2020) does NOT match year (2016)
displayDates for postID: 231839/year: 2016
Array
(
[0] => 2016-10-02
)
postPriority: 999postID: 6948 (The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost)
--- getDisplayDates ---
litdate post_id: 6948; date_type: variable; year: 2016
Variable date => check date_calculations.
=> check date_assignments.
=> NO date_assignments found for postID: 6948
displayDates for postID: 6948/year: 2016
Array
(
[0] => 2016-10-02
)
postPriority: 3primaryPost found for date: 2016-10-02 with ID: 6948 (The Twentieth Sunday After Pentecost)
A Sermon by
The Rev. Canon Carl Turner
✛
My pledge will manifest my gratitude.
A few days ago we celebrated the Feast of St Michael and all Angels. It is a wonderful feast and I love the collect especially; it begins, “O Everlasting God, who hast ordained and constituted the ministries of angels and men in a wonderful order…”
Angels are not the same as human beings but they have the same kind of relationship with God as we do and, like us, depend on him. More than that, they share with us in two important functions as the collect goes on to remind us – worshipping and serving. Do those tasks sound familiar? They should, for they are at the top of your Sunday bulletin, on the outside of our church, and on the home page of our website: “Our Mission is to worship, love and serve our Lord Jesus Christ through the Anglican tradition and our unique choral heritage.”
Worship, love and serve: The angels worship and serve God and we reflect that heavenly employment in our lives here on earth in our worship and our service – that means inside and outside our church. It is the ‘summary of the Law’ – words of Jesus to the lawyer but words, if you will, that he still speaks to us today… “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” (Matthew 22:37-40)
Jesus tells us that loving God and loving one’s neighbor fulfills all the law and the prophets. Worship and Service – all done in love; love which flows from the heart of Jesus broken on the cross for us; love which flows from those wounded hands stretched out to bring all the world into his embrace; love which flows from his risen life and enables us to live in hope.
I began my sermon talking about worship, love and service and how that is bound up with the ministry of angels. How significant that one of the donor categories for our Friends of Music is ‘angels.’ Yet many of the supporters of our concert program are not even Christians!
Today we begin our annual appeal for finance to support our parish life. But, you may say, there are so many demands in our everyday lives and so many other commitments, why bother giving to this church especially when it has a large endowment it can draw on?
Father Mead, my predecessor, at the beginning of the centenary year of this church said this: “My pledge is a dynamic function of my relationship to God, to Jesus Christ his Son. If I love the Lord; if I am grateful to him for all he has done for me, my pledge will manifest my gratitude.” (sermon preached on Sunday, October 6, 2013)
There is only one real reason why we give money to the Church – as an act of duty to God given in love and gratitude. The scriptures show us that everything comes from God and, therefore, our giving should first and foremost be a reflection of that; he gives to us – we give back to him.
We do not give simply because we like the building, or appreciate the unique choir school, or enjoy traditional worship. We do not give because we like the hymns, or the education program, or the Sunday school, or the coffee hour or even, dare I say it, the Rector! We give because we love God and we want to worship and serve him; because this place has made a difference to us and we want to say ‘thank you Lord’.
And what a difference your pledges make. Without them, it would not be long before all that we hold dear here would be unsustainable.
The reality is, without the generosity of those now dead, the choir school and our unique choral heritage would have been long gone. Here’s the problem; put very simply, the endowment is not large enough to support this Church and its unique choral heritage as we have come to expect it. We need about 12 million dollars a year to run our beloved church on Fifth Avenue and its choir school on West 58 Street; and that is to continue doing what we do now, not even contemplating growth. To be prudent, we should only draw 5% from our endowment – currently that’s just over 7 million dollars. Pledges last year amounted to 1.6 million dollars. You can do the math; we bridge the gap by drawing extra funds from our endowment. In 2015 we drew down an extra $2.5 million – more than our total pledged income and a little more than the cost of running the choir school. This is not new – it has gone on for years and years – but, particularly since 2008, it has become apparent that it is unsustainable. At some stage the unrestricted funds will dry up and then we will be forced to draw only 5%; the gap will not be bridged.
“If I love the Lord; if I am grateful to him for all he has done for me, my pledge will manifest my gratitude.”
If you love this church and its unique choral tradition then it is up to you – up to me – up to us, and that “us” includes our webcast listeners. We have to make Saint Thomas Church our most important charitable commitment and, yes, maybe above others. We cannot rely on hopeful future legacies; neither can we rely on the kindness of strangers. Only sacrificial giving will help this church to grow: More of us tithing our income; more of us moving to the leadership category of pledging $5000 or above; All of us asking the question “Am I grateful to God for all that I have received here and do I want to help the Lord build up his Church?”
Last year, a third of you increased your pledges by 10% or more – some very significantly more than 10%. But we are in this together and we need to encourage one another so that, like the angels, we can worship and serve God here in Manhattan and continue to be a church that transforms the lives of all associated with it from chorister to most senior member, thus allowing future generations to be inspired by the very same things that we have held dear but cannot take for granted.
From our Epistle reading:
“Once you were not a people,
but now you are God’s people;
once you had not received mercy,
but now you have received mercy.” (1 Peter 2:10)
“If I love the Lord; if I am grateful to him for all he has done for me, my pledge will manifest my gratitude.”
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
