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Your Portion, My Portion                        Lamentations 3: 24                   October 11, 2009

When you come into the Sanctuary on Sunday morning and pick up your bulletin, do you look at the sermon title? I always did, when I sat on your side of the pulpit. And if you did that, this morning, I bet some of you thought, "Let's see, 'Your Portion, My Portion' - it must be his annual sermon about stewardship."

Well, brothers and sisters, if that's what you thought this morning, you were absolutely right. It's stewardship time once again. It comes around every year, just like falling leaves, shorter days and cooler nights.

So as uncomfortable as it may be for both of us, my job, this morning is to lift up a simple, yet difficult reality. Our Church is a whole lot of things - it's a place to get away from the craziness of the world, it's a place to be surrounded by the powerful presence of the spirit of God, it's a place to learn about how much God loves us, and it's a place to connect with a community of people who share that love and care deeply about one another. Our Church is all of those things and more, but my job, this morning, is to remind us that our Church can't be any of those things unless it is adequately supported by your contributions and my contributions.

So here you go, my friends. My annual sermon about stewardship.

Some pastors, I know, avoid sermons on this subject. Particularly in tough economic times.

And, 'lest we forget, these are still tough economic times. Not as bad as last year this time, perhaps, but tough, nonetheless.

A year ago, as I'm sure you'll remember, the global economy was - to use a technical term - in the toilet. Banks, brokerage firms and huge insurance companies were on the brink of bankruptcy and prognosticators were talking about a repeat of the Great Depression. The stock market felt like it was going to zero, those of us who have 401(k) or other retirement accounts dreaded the arrival of our quarterly statements, and nearly all of us could name someone we knew who either lost their home to a foreclosure or was about to declare bankruptcy. To make matters worse, gasoline prices were well in excess of $3 a gallon.

Now, twelve months later, we have dodged the depression bullet, the US government has pumped billions of dollars into the financial system, the stock market has rallied by more than 30%, gas is closer to $2 than $4, and the professional prognosticators are at least divided; with some still warning of more gloom and doom and others whistling "Happy days are here again."

For those of us here in the real world, though, the picture is still pretty grim. Jobs are still scarce, it is nearly impossible to get a loan, and, if we're among the fortunate ones who are employed, our wages aren't likely to increase any time soon. Corporate profits may have turned the corner, but the kind of expansion that raises ordinary folks' standard of living shows no signs of happening any time soon.

So in this still-difficult environment, what are we, as a local church, to do?

Before we answer that question, let's turn to Scripture, as we Christians must do, to see if some insight can be gleaned.

Our Stewardship Committee has chosen a theme for this year's giving emphasis. It's based on a passage from Lamentations. The bulletin insert I mentioned earlier highlights the theme, "New Love, New Mercy," and re-states the Scriptural foundation for the theme.

The Book of Lamentations is a collection of five poems, one per chapter. It was written following the fall of Jerusalem and the collapse of the nation of Judah, roughly 600 years before Christ. Its context is, in a word, suffering. Intense suffering. Both Christians and Jews have used its verses liturgically for centuries; whenever sadness is the order of the day. It is beautiful poetry; but it has nearly the same impact on the reader as does a Tenebrae service on Good Friday. It's somber, and it's mournful.

Our text, though, stands out from the rest of the book. Listen again to the words: "But this I call to mind," the poet writes, "and therefore I have hope: The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases, his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness. 'The Lord is my portion,' says my soul, 'therefore I will hope in him.'"

Sometimes the experience of a great loss can unite a people. It can motivate a community of faith to find common ground and rise above the loss.

It can happen. It happened to the people of Judah 600 years before Christ and it can happen to us. If we recognize the truth of that simple phrase in our text: "The Lord is my portion."

The economy may well be in the toilet. If the Lord is our portion, it doesn't really matter. Real estate prices and the value of our retirement savings plans may be a fraction of what they once were. If the Lord is our portion, it's not what matters most.

When we throw our entire lot in with God - turn everything over to God - we begin to recognize that God's grace is more than enough. That our portion is more than sufficient.

One of the best and most successful TV sit-coms of all time, in my view, was "The Jeffersons" - a spin-off from the classic "All in the Family." Often laugh-out-loud funny, it starred Sherman Hemsley as George and Isabel Sanford as Louise Jefferson, a newly-rich African American couple who move out of their old neighborhood in Queens to the tony Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Perhaps my strongest memory from the series is the theme song, "Movin' On Up." If you're old enough to remember the show, or a fan of "Nick at Night," I'm sure you remember it as well:

Well we're movin' on up, to the east side.
To a deluxe apartment in the sky.
Movin' on up, to the east side.
We finally got a piece of the pie.

Fish don't fry in the kitchen; beans don't burn on the grill.
Took a whole lotta tryin', just to get up that hill.
Now we're up in the big leagues, gettin' our turn at bat.
As long as we live, it's you and me baby,
There ain't nothin' wrong with that.
Well we're movin' on up. . .

You get the point. Getting a piece of the pie is what the American Dream is all about. Most of us strive for it and some of us manage to achieve it. Not many, actually, but that's the subject for another sermon.

But as Jesus tells his disciples in our Gospel Lesson, when he says to them, "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God," and as our text from Lamentations reminds us once again, God has no interest in our quest for a piece of the pie.

In fact, just the opposite is true. God wants us to realize that He is our portion and that sweating and straining over who gets which slice of the pie gets us no closer to where we were meant to be. On the contrary, it pulls us away from God.

When someone asked Jesus, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" do you remember how Jesus responded? He looked him right in the eye and said, "Go, sell what you own, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me."

And do you remember what the man did in response to that blunt answer to his question? He turned and walked away.

As far as I know, this is the only place in all the Gospels where someone is called and yet refuses to follow Jesus. A person who is very much like one of us is invited to be a disciple of Jesus, and this person who is like one of us walks in the other direction. Because of money.

The man, who evidently had a lot of possessions, failed to get Jesus' message. He was so worried about his portion - his slice of the pie - that he failed to grasp the truth that God is our portion, and nothing else really matters.

Let's presume, for a moment, that all of us get what Jesus was saying, and further presume that we all fully embrace the theme of our stewardship campaign - that we all accept, in our very souls, that the Lord is our portion.

Even if we accept that premise, we still find ourselves in a difficult quandary, this year, when we think about our financial support of the church.

Many among us are economically vulnerable. People around us have lost jobs, and some are at the brink of losing homes and futures. Is this really the best time to think about giving? The best time to encourage people to dig deeper and promise to give more?

More than once, a member of our congregation has said to me, "Jeff, do you really think this is the time for a stewardship campaign? In this economy?

Well, if we look more closely at the words of Jesus in the conversation recorded by Mark in our Gospel Lesson, I think we'll conclude that the timing is right.

Because if we look more closely at Jesus' words, we see that, in point of fact, he did not ask the man to do more, give more or be more. Jesus asked the man to submit to God's upsetting, reorienting grace. He asked him to rely on God. And this, in turn, required the man to give away everything that kept him from doing that.

These uncertain times give us a window of opportunity to measure things a bit differently. To measure just what is reliable and what is just an illusion of reliability.

It has never been clearer that the security that comes from accumulating material things and consuming as much as possible can disappear in the blink of an eye. The economics we relied on in the past has been shaken to its foundations.

And it has never been clearer that it is only when we place our trust in the God whose love never ceases, whose mercies never come to an end and who is our portion; it is only when we surrender to the power of God that we can shake loose from everything that hinders our discipleship.

Over the next few weeks you will hear more about the specifics of this year's stewardship campaign, get some information about our expenditures for this year and the next and learn more about exactly what your gift to First Moravian Church actually does. You will also be invited to make a commitment to help fund our 2010 budget.

For today, let us be reminded, once more, that God's mercies never come to an end; that they are new every morning. And let us declare to our God, along with the author of Lamentations, "Great is your faithfulness. Great is your faithfulness."

                                                                             AMEN

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