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Pentecost 18, Proper 22 Lesson: Genesis 2:18-24
October 4, 2009 Psalm 8
The Rev. Karen Evans Epistle: Hebrews 1:1-4; 2:5-12
St. James’ Church, Marietta Holy Gospel: Mark 10:2-16
I speak to you in the Name of God: Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.
There are two words that come from my understanding of today’s lessons that I would like to highlight. They are relationship and commitment. They are the key words also for the theological underpinnings for our annual giving campaign which starts today.
The Hebrews lesson is meant to bolster the faith of a congregation going through hard times, hard times that include persecution. It is a Jewish-Christian congregation with fond memories of the Temple worship in Jerusalem. So the writer draws on those images to show how Jesus Christ, as both priest and victim, establishes the relationship with God that formerly was occupied by the Torah and the Temple. You and I are not 1st century Jewish-Christians. That makes Hebrews difficult to understand, and especially to relate to Christian stewardship.
The Gospel (and the Genesis lesson) has to do with marriage and divorce. Neither is an easy subject these days. Jesus sets the highest standard for the marriage commitment – higher than either the Jewish or Greco-Roman cultures of the times. So high, in fact, that a few years later, when Mark’s Gospel was written, the early Church had found it an impossible standard to meet. So Mark includes a “secret” teaching of Jesus that seemed to allow divorce – equal opportunity divorce, in that the Jewish Law said that only the man could initiate divorce proceedings.
What is clear in all the lessons for today is that it is the relationship we have with God that is the most important relationship in our lives. Jesus, for instance, in talking about marriage and divorce, says that the laws of Deuteronomy are subject to the original intention of God in creation. God’s intention, we infer from the Genesis lesson, was that human beings would be in relationship with God and with each other. That relationship was to be built on love, faithfulness and exclusivity. Why, after all, would you want to go after another god when you could be with the Creator of heaven and earth?
More than that, how could you turn away from the God who have you life? How can you not be faithful to the God who created everything you are and have? How can you not love the God who gives you life and love every day?
That relationship with God is the standard Jesus sets for everything else. It is based on love and thanksgiving. That is the standard that is to be the basis for our livers. As God has been generous, so we are called to be generous. As God has given to us, so we are called to give also. As beloved children of a heavenly Father, we are called to give thanks.
All that is pretty theological, so let me give you, as an example, a time when this really came home to me. In the 11+ years I have been at St. James’, I have been close to death twice. The first time was when I was in an automobile accident. The second was when I became seriously ill with an infection following surgery. One of the things I learned from those experiences was that when we are on the verge of dying, all of the things we put up to protect ourselves go away. Reeling from the impact of a head-on collision, with the dust of the airbag filling your lungs, it does not matter what kind of car you were driving – it is gone. It does not matter where you live, what you do, how smart you are. What matters is whether at that time you are going to live or die – and that is up to you and God. It is our relationship to God that will bring us back to life in this world or lead us to new life in the next. The only authentic response I know in that situation is thankfulness – for whatever happens it is a win/win situation.
The second word for today is commitment. I tried, but I could not think of a healthy relationship that did not include commitment. If you watch “Project Runway,” you know that Tim Gunn has a saying, “make it work.” The will to make it work, even when things are not 100% the way you would like them, is the essence of commitment. Sometimes that involves sacrifice. Sometimes it is based on persistence and stubbornness. But mostly it is built on love, and love in the Bible is not a feeling, but an act of the will. It is a decision.
So, you can apply these two words to your life as is appropriate for you. What I ask of you is that you apply them to your relationship with God and with St. James’. Over the next weeks, you will hear about the programs your money supports. You will hear about the people in Marietta and around the world who benefit from your generosity. You will hear about the way the money you give to the church enables our worship, education, outreach and pastoral care.
For all those reasons, I ask you to fill out a commitment card and to be as generous as it is possible for you to be. I want you to fill out that card because we depend on each other to be able to do God’s work in the world. But even more than that, I want you to make a commitment to the church because your relationship with God depends on it. I want you to give thankfully because God has given so abundantly to you. So we say, “All things come of you, O Lord, and of your own have we given you.” AMEN
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