A Sermon by Fr. Davenport
7 December 2008 , Year B
Isaiah, 40:1-11
2 Peter, 3:8-15a
Mark, 1:1-8
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Like just about every other institution in the nation, our parish family has some money troubles. It=s important and healthy to discuss openly difficult things, such as this. Our parish largely relies on the remarkable generosity of its people, but we also have been blessed with an endowment heavily invested in equities. We are feeling the collapse of Wall Street.
For most of my fifteen years here, our endowment has helped pay for five, ten, even as much as twenty percent of our day-to-day bills, our operating expenses. But we have withdrawn a modest percentage of the endowment for these operating expenses, generally less than four percent, some years even less than two percent. For fifteen years we=ve had the same, extremely able asset manager, who has achieved outstanding returns and has smoothly weathered previous depressed markets.
As most of you know, in the spring in 2007, the vestry decided to make a major investment to expand our ministry. We decided to expand our staff, adding a curate, and to fund this position, at least initially, from the endowment. We had a similar strategy at the beginning of this decade when we created the position of a parish administrator. As then, we figured that we would grow into it. And there is evidence that is beginning to happen now with the latest staff addition. We soberly, prayerfully decided last year to raise our withdrawal for a short period to about nine percent of the endowment. We believed that we would gradually reduce that.
The problem is that the market=s collapse means that we would be spending over twenty percent of the endowment=s value in 2009. This is untenable. So these two things B market collapse and staff expansion B are the primary causes of our financial difficulty. We=ve always had trim budgets, and we=re going to have to tighten our belts further.
This autumn the parish=s governing bodies have directed an enormous amount of energy toward our finances, considering ways to increase revenue and to decrease expenses. The Vestry, the Finance Committee, the Stewardship Team have put in long, intense hours of work. I am impressed by, and grateful for, the significant talent and ability and dedication of our parish=s officers.
Our financial troubles are not unique: churches, non-profits, academic institutions, businesses are all under significant pressure. In this parish, we have acted prudently, and I am confident that we will continue to do so. The financial mess is temporary; it will not last. Even if we are entering a second Great Depression B and I strongly doubt that, in the scope of this parish=s life that=s not a great amount of time.
While we may not welcome this, it is nothing to be scared of. Indeed, I see many blessings arising from it. First, we enjoy the gift of faith, and that=s why we have responded to our financial challenge positively. We=re pulling together. As of last Sunday, we had received 47 pledges, over $190,000 pledged, and two-thirds had increased their pledge. Altogether the average pledge had increased about 18 percent. There=s real sacrificial giving here. It=s tremendously inspiring and strengthening to be part of this kind of faith, generosity, and commitment. By doing our best, we are part of it; everyone pulling together.
Why do we make such sacrifices for the parish? Because we know that what matters most is love and hope and forgiveness. That=s what Jesus= ministry was all about. Being generous reminds us that the things we most value are not the things money can buy. Rather, the things we most need, most desire, are friendship, prayer, self-expression, purpose, growth. That=s what we receive at church; that=s why our life together means so much; that=s what is attractive. People come here looking for love, acceptance, support, renewal, purpose, transformation; people want an meaningful orientation in life, a connection with eternity. That=s what Jesus offers us here, and what we reach out and offer others.
Last week, a vestry member reminded me that we see the quality of our character in difficulties, that tough circumstances can be constructive. God is always giving us opportunities for growth, and especially when something more is required of us. We don=t panic when there=s a challenge, and what I=ve mostly experienced through many, many hours of meetings in recent months is serious, sober reflection along with good cheer and humor.
Another positive response to this challenge has been a renewed focus on why we=re here together, what Jesus means to us, what our responsibilities to God, to one another, to the world are. The Vestry has begun meeting twice a month, once to focus on regular business and once to focus on parish growth. Now, we are not so naive as to think that growth will resolve our financial crunch. We=re not going to attract other people to come and to share the privilege of paying our bills. Nor do we believe that the primary reason for growth is revenue enhancement. When times are tight, we often become more grateful for what we have and more eager to share with others. The more aware we are of the great gift Jesus has given us here, the more real the gospel is to us, the more we want to share it.
We live in frantic, hyper, anxious world, which is probably most crazed in December. I find it among the most demanding months. We expect so much of ourselves. The next weeks are full of >holiday parties.= Our culture has lost Advent and impatiently rushes straight into Christmas even before Thanksgiving ends. We=ve lost the preparation, the waiting, the quiet, the rest, the anticipation. Once Christmas comes, we=re tired of it. I am always saddened that the Christmas music disappears two or three days after Christmas when the Christmas season is still young. The twelve days are now twelve hours and a month long pre-game show.
Patience, sitting still, waiting is not beyond our capacity. Advent provides the opportunity to re-discover the value of waiting. While we find these Advent disciplines of quiet and waiting demanding, they are especially necessary in the heightened anxieties we=re experiencing now.
In Advent, the Church turns its attention to the Second Coming, and it helps us recall how early Christians struggled to overcome anxiety and to learn patience. Paul, Matthew, Mark all expected that Jesus would return again at any moment. The early Church lived with bated breath anticipating his re-appearance. It took a generation or two before the Church came to see that the waiting, the delay, was not a cause for despair, but a gift, a time of preparation.
In the Second Epistle of Peter, the author acknowledges that the delay has caused disappointment, stress, anxiety among Christians. The early Church endured a real crisis when Jesus didn=t come again soon after his Resurrection and Ascension. Some were not able to stand the hardship of delay, the anxiety of delay. They fell away. Second Peter says these became >scoffers.= Those who didn=t lose heart came to see the delay as evidence of God=s forbearance, that we had additional time to prepare ourselves for eternity, that this was God=s way of reaching out and embracing more people. They saw opportunity where others saw hardship.
Second Peter
tells us that the way we live expresses our faith, and reflecting on the end of
time will renew our attachment to what is eternal. I love the passage from the Sermon on the
Mount where Jesus tells us, ADo not be
anxious for your life, what you shall eat or what your shall drink, nor about
your body, what you shall put on. Is not
life more than food, and the body more than clothing?@ (Mt 6:25) Jesus directs us to seek the
Early Christians
reflected on the end of time because it led them to consider how they were
living now, whether they were emphasizing the right things in their lives and
seeking the
Today=s gospel takes
us out to the wilderness, the desert B the place of
Timothy Radcliffe puts it this way, AThe coming of God is not like the calvary galloping to our rescue. God comes from within, in our deepest interiority. He is ... closer to us than we are to ourselves. Or as it says in the Qur=an, God is closer to us than our jugular vein. ... God comes in our fertility and that cannot be forced. Pregnancy takes time.@[1]
With a holy Advent, that is a quiet, calm, relaxing Advent, we will make a way for God and see him coming B not only later this month, but every moment, in our hearts, in every person we encounter B those we know and those we don=t know; he=s coming in every pleasure, in every joy, and in every challenge. He=s coming all of the time. Let us watch for him. Let us welcome him. Let us be grateful to him.
+ In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
[1] Timothy Radcliffe, Just One Year, Orbis Books (2007), p. 24.