The Rector’s Stewardship Sermon, 2024
Year B, Proper 24
October 20, 2024
Job 38:1-7, 34.-41
Walk in Love as Christ loved us and gave himself for us, a perfect offering for the whole world. Amen.
Years ago,
I walked into one of my first high school dances, which was in our school gym.
I didn’t really think anything of that
until a student coming in after me made some sarcastic comment
about being in the gym.
A nearby upperclassman whipped around, looked at the sarcastic student
and laid in to them.
“Where were you all day?” she demanded.
“Where were you when we were in here hanging streamers and trying to make it look nice?
You weren’t here.
You weren’t helping, so you can’t complain.
Next time, you can actually help if you want.”
Ninth-grade me just stood and watched and was very taken aback.
I was definitely very scared of the older student;
quite uncomfortable on behalf of the sarcastic student,
and belatedly prompted to look around and see and appreciate
all the work that had been done for us and on our behalf.
The older student wasn't addressing me per se,
but I certainly learned the lesson she was imparting right in front of me:
to participate before I critique,
and to pay attention to the behind-the-scenes, ongoing work
we can all, always, join.
This same dynamic was at play for me this week as I sat with the portion of Job
that we just heard this morning.
Complete discomfort at first . . .
gradually, very gradually, replaced by an awareness of God’s constant wondrous work
that we can always join.
*********
The book of Job is, in general, a hard story to read.
At the very start of it, we hear that Job was a righteous man,
a good and faithful man without blame.
And yet God allows the adversary, to test Job
by taking away all that Job has, all that Job loves, even the lives of Job’s children.
Job’s friends try over and over to get Job to confess whatever it was
that he must have done to deserve this punishment,
but Job remains faithful to God.
And when he does begin to waiver just a bit,
God whips around in the whirlwind and seems – at first read – to lay in to Job,
as that older student did to the sarcastic student so many years ago.
“Where were you,” God demands of Job, “when I created the earth?
What makes you the expert on what I do?”
It wasn’t until I remembered that – as was true in that gym, so many years ago –
I was not a part of this conversation between God and Job,
but an observer to it,
that I could move through the fear and discomfort it evoked,
and instead hear within it
that subtle invitation to stop, so often belatedly,
and look around to see and appreciate all God does, all the time . . . .
“Look at all I do,” I could hear God saying
“Look around, don’t take it for granted,
All this on-going work in the background, done for you and on your behalf,
and for all of creation.”
Work, I eventually remembered, we can always join in.
It was this shift of perspective that helped me see
how a reading from Job – of all the books in the Bible – could, actually,
hold a message for us today on Stewardship Sunday.
**********
Stewardship Season is that time of year, when we intentionally stop
and think about the ways
in which we join in the work of this parish
within our community gathered as Redeemer
and in the broader world.
Each of us is invited to think about all the ways we can offer
our gifts and talents, our money and our time, our very selves
to the work of Redeemer,
to take care of each other,
and to join the work of caring for others in Lexington and beyond.
Through the hard work of the Stewardship committee,
we are reminded of all the amazing things we accomplish
when we all join this work.
And,
this reading highlights that all that work that we do together,
that work we are invited explicitly to join in this season,
that work is also – fundamentally – the work of our God.
The ministry of each of us, the ministry of all of us together
is how we join the ongoing work of God in the world.
*******
Given the moment in which we live, I find both comfort in that, and inspiration.
I find comfort in the reminder that it’s not all on us.
As we look at the work of budgeting with less cell tower income,
of discerning our way toward and into a new phase within a different context,
as we look at ways to fill our call and longing to invite more people in,
to pass on the wisdom and rituals of our tradition
as we look at how many hungry people there are not just in our world,
but in our town and our neighborhood,
as we try to bear the pain of division in our world
and the pain of the individual wounds of those we know,
we know, viscerally, that it is a lot.
But this reading, along with so many other stories of how God works in the world,
reminds us that a lot need not be either overwhelming or defeating.
This reading invites us to stop, look and see and appreciate the work
God is already doing in the world,
and to see our work as a community as a part of that work
work, we are all invited to join.
The theme for our Stewardship Season this year is “walk in love,”
a phrase so familiar to us because of how often it is used in the Offertory sentence
before we turn to the Liturgy of the Table in our Sunday services.
“Walk in love as Christ loves us and gave himself for us,
a perfect offering for the whole world.”
It is our invitation to bring all of who we are,
our longings and wounds, our joins and celebrations,
our gifts, talents, our time, money, skills and knowledge,
all of who we are and all we can offer
to the table, along with the bread and wine.
Our offering, as generous as it may be,
is not, however, itself the sacrament.
Were we to bring the bread and wine and all our gifts and intentions and pledges to a table
and just leave them there without explicitly offering them to God
for God’s work in the sacrament and in the world,
they would remain just things and intentions.
The bread and wine, and all that we offer becomes miraculous, mystical nourishment
for us and the world
because we offer it to God for God to work through it,
and God does work through it.
Our offering is a way we join in God’s work
work that transforms our offerings
to become more than they alone could possibly ever be.
So too with the pledges we are asked to offer this Stewardship season.
When we remember that we offer them not only for our own efforts in the world,
but also for God’s work in the world,
we remember that, with and through God,
our offerings will do more than we can ever imagine.
Each individual offering joins our collective offering,
joins in God’s healing and transforming work,
the ongoing work God invites us to join always.
And, that work is amazing!
God’s message to Job from the whirlwind is a message that hearkens Job back
to all that God has done since the beginning of creation,
since the laying of the foundation of the world.
There is so much more in this conversation than we get in our small passage.
In it, God evokes the wind and rain and lightning,
those places where snow is stored,
God reminds Job of the power God gave horses,
the ability to leap that God gave locusts.
God reminds Job in great breadth and detail of this incredible creation
God formed and continues to form.
It is wonderful and evocative,
and such a reminder of all the ways God creates
beauty and abundance and joy and healing in this world.
And that is the work, the ongoing work, that we can always join,
that God wants us to join,
that God calls us to join:
this incredible work of creating and re-creating and co-creating
the world God longs for us to know.
That is the work we join when we join God by offering all of who we are to God’s work
That is the work Redeemer joins in its ministries
and we join in when we participate in and support Redeemer's ministries.
It is incredible work, powerful work,
work we could never do on our own, work we don’t need to do on our own
work we don’t do on our own.
As we are reminded in a well-known Jewish commentary,
“ . . . [we] are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are [we] free to abandon it.” 1
We are called to join the work –
as a community and as individuals,
walking in love with one another, and with God.
Amen.
“Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now. Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.” This well-known quote is often simply attributed to The Talmud; others say it is better attributed to Perkei Avot 2:16. In either case, it is understood as a commentary on Micah 6
In preparing this sermon I consulted the following homiletical texts:
New Interpreters’ Bible essay on Job
Feasting on the Word, Year B, Vol. 4 (particularly exegetical essay and homiletical essay
John J. Collin’s Introduction to the Old Testament
Working Preacher Blog
As always, my thinking is shaped by conversations with my family, friends, and colleagues.