THE SERMON ON THE AMOUNT (2005)

a sermon preached by the Rev. Dr. Tim W. Jensen
at the First Religious Society in Carlisle, Massachusetts
Sunday April 3rd, 2005


extemp intro -- say something about the Pope
Standing in line at Ferns for "This Old House" tickets


Relatively early in my career, I discovered the profound irony of trying to preach an Annual Stewardship Sermon -- which is, of course, that the people who would probably benefit most from hearing it preached never seem to be here to hear it anyway; whereas the people who do show up on a Sunday morning to listen to the preacher talk about money are almost always predisposed to be generous anyway. And as a preacher, once I figured this out I also quickly realized that the whole purpose of preaching an annual "Sermon on the Amount" is NOT really to persuade people to give more money; rather, it's to thank you for the generosity you've already demonstrated, and then to remind you why your contributions are so important to the well-being of this entire community.

A couple of weeks ago, when we formally recognized and welcomed into our community the nineteen New Members who have joined this congregation in the past 12 months, I talked about how the Meaning of Membership basically resides in half-a-dozen other "ships" -- Worship and Fellowship (which is what we are doing right now); Discipleship, Stewardship, and Leadership (basically studying, caring for, and sharing with others the spiritual heritage and traditional ethical values which are our legacy as a religious community), and finally Authentic Friendship (which is the glue that holds everything together in the here and now). And my point was that these half-dozen activities all go together -- you can't just pull out one (like Stewardship, for instance) and look at it in isolation, and expect to understand how being a good caretaker of an institutional legacy is also both a disciplined act of personal learning and a good public example to others, as well a means by which we express our affection and concern for one another, and a vehicle for lifting up and celebrating our highest, most deeply-felt values. If you separate Stewardship from its context, and only think of it as "fundraising," then you are missing 80% of the point.

As a historian, I'm always curious to learn how other religious organizations at other times and in other cultures have managed to pay their bills. Even people who are spiritual for a living have certain material requirements, and I'm often astonished by the ingenious techniques that people of faith have found to keep body and soul together. It's such a rich subject, I hardly know where to begin -- God provides for the people of God in so many mysterious ways. In my own mind I often contrast the image of a tonsured, saffron-robed Buddhist monk in Thailand, going door to door each morning with a begging bowl seeking offerings of steamed rice to sustain him another day, with the stereotype of a Christian televangelist with an expensive haircut and a tailored suit, appealing over the airwaves for viewers to send their "love offerings" to a post office box in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I know which of these I believe is closer to the Holy, yet I can also imagine the kind of response I might get if I were to shave my head and start going door to door here in Carlisle asking people to feed me breakfast. What IS the real difference between a Buddhist monk with a begging bowl and those annoying cult members who used to sell flowers in airports? Is it just a matter of cultural context? Would we feel any differently about the monk if we had actually grown up in that culture, and it was OUR door that they were knocking on? And how does it make us feel when we see the Diocese of Boston closing churches and selling off real estate and other assets in order to settle liability claims resulting from decades-old acts of sexual abuse by a tiny handful of predatory priests? The claims of the victims are legitimate; the acts of the perpetrators inexcusable. And yet the people still end up paying for it in the long run, one way or another.

Nowadays, the Catholic Church is said to be the wealthiest not-for-profit organization in the world (with Harvard University running second...although Harvard's annual operating budget of 1.3 billion dollars dwarfs the mere $260 million spent by the Vatican. It's the salaries.) Yet according to the Book of Acts, the early church was a form of socialist communitarianism, in which "the whole body of those who believed were of one heart and soul, and no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common." The Bible has a lot of things to say about money, and most of it is pretty negative: things like "the love of money is the root of all evil" and "it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven." So when religious institutions come to us with their hands out, saying things like "the Lord loves a cheerful giver," it seems a little disingenuous, kind of like "if money is so bad, why are you always asking for more of it?"

Of course, there's also the problem of over-reacting in the opposite direction: of becoming so self-conscious about the subject of money that we never speak of it at all. And the bottom line, of course, is that money itself is just an abstraction -- it's something that we use to try to account for the things that we value, and how much they are worth to us. There is a cost and a price to be paid for every choice we make in life, and money is one way that we try to measure those things, so that we can compare them to the price and costs of making other choices instead. Sometimes money is power, sometimes money is love, sometimes money is life itself....and yet there are still some things that money can't buy, and those are the things we seem to value most of all.

Likewise, there are few things in life more frightening than the prospect of not having enough money -- of not being able to eat, or cloth ourselves, or keep a roof over our heads...of losing our status and our dignity, or our ability to make the choices we want to make and to retain control of our own lives. Money seems so simple, so tangible and straightforward...everything in the world of money is so precisely denominated, right down to the last penny. But it's really just an illusion, through which we try to impose a similar orderliness on the rest of the tenuous and often ambiguous experience of being human.

The church is another place where we sometimes come to try to make sense of the basic disorderliness of human existence. Churches have to pay their bills just like everyone else, and yet if you are struggling with those same issues out there in the "real" world, money is probably the last thing you really want to hear about when you come to church. Most of us are no doubt much more interested in learning about how the church can help us solve OUR problems than we are in hearing about what we should be doing to help the church. And yet these two topics are really just two sides of the same coin. When we really know what we truly value, it becomes far more simple to put our priorities in order. And once we understand what our priorities are, everything else typically falls into place right where it belongs.

Nowadays most American churches derive their revenue from some combination of three basic sources: 1) donations and voluntary contributions, 2) the return on invested assets (including the use of their building, if they own one), and 3) various fundraising activities too numerous to try to list. This church is no exception; in fact, we are quite fortunate to enjoy fairly healthy resources in all three of these areas. But we could also do a great deal more to improve in each of these areas as well. The key is to try to strike a healthy balance, so that no one area has to carry too much of the load, and each performs at its optimal level. And yet, if you had to pick, voluntary contributions from the members and friends of this society are obviously the most important of the three. Fundraising activities are great, so long as they remain "fun" -- the danger is always that rather than supporting the mission of the church, the fundraising BECOMES the mission of the church. Likewise, it's hard to find fault with the presence a healthy endowment, where the generous gifts of previous generations are held in trust for the use of the current generation, and passed on as a legacy to the next. And yet it is all too easy to forget that those funds were also contributed by SOMEONE, and that when we fail to follow their example and do our share too, we are basically just sponging off the generosity of our ancestors.

And this brings me to the one point that I really wanted to make today, which is that church is not just another basic commodity which we are all trying to buy at the best price possible. This church is a GIFT which we give to one another, as well as to our children and to the larger community. So the question shouldn't be "how little can I get away with giving and still make sure that the church is here for me personally when I need it?" The real question ought to be "How much can I afford to give in order to help create something truly meaningful that I can be proud of?"

Generosity is a combination of ability and desire, of the resources to give generously of oneself, and the willingness to do so. And I personally would never ask anyone to give money to the church that they didn't have, or that they couldn't afford to spare. But sometimes we have a hard time figuring out what that number really is; we have a hard time seeing the tangible benefits of our generosity, while our fears about becoming destitute (or even just being taken advantage of) are both real and powerful.

Here's an exercise I was taught at a church stewardship workshop some years ago now which you may find interesting. I don't want you to tell me the answer, but I do want you to think about the answer for yourself, and not just here this morning. How many of you think, that if you were absolutely convinced that the needs were real and the purpose noble, that you could afford to make a six-figure gift to the First Religious Society, either as an outright donation, or perhaps as a bequest from your estate? (Don't raise your hand, because if you do someone will probably be knocking on your door this afternoon....Just think about it for awhile). How many of you think that you could afford to give 10% of that? -- $10,000, again either as a bequest in your will, or possibly as a pledge which you could pay over a period of three to five years? And how many of you think that you could double what you are currently giving to the church, and still keep food on the table and a roof over your head, and maybe even send a couple of kids to college? And this is the last point I want to make this morning (which is two points, actually): that we are all probably capable of being a lot more generous than we may think, if we are convinced the cause is right; and that the contribution doesn't have to be tremendously large in order for it to be generous for us. Small gifts add up to larger gifts; when each of us gives just a little extra, the combined result can be quite profound indeed.

And I'm also not asking you to take out your checkbooks and write that big check today. Actually, I'm going to ask you to do something a lot more difficult than that. I'm asking you to help me make this church the kind of place that is worthy of that kind of generosity. I'm asking you to help me because I think the world needs more places like this, and because I can't make it happen all by myself. I want this church to be the kind of place that brings people together, and changes their lives for the better, and makes the whole world a better place to live in the process. I want you to help me create this kind of place not just for ourselves, or even for our own kids, but for a whole bunch of people we haven't even met yet. Because ultimately, the value of a church is not measured by the size of its budget, or the beauty of its building, or even the diversity of its program. The value of a church is measured by its ability to make a difference -- to help make the world a better place on person at a time, and to be there for those who need it at the moment they need it most.