Sermons

“Hearts of Love & Gifts of Gold”

Matthew 6:16-21 – Rev. Rebecca Littlejohn

Vista La Mesa Christian Church (Disciples of Christ), La Mesa, California – March 26, 2017

“Hearts of Love & Gifts of Gold” Stewardship Campaign – Consecration Sunday

Holy God, bless the speaking and the hearing of these words, that we might make the choice to open our hearts to the shaping of your Spirit. We pray in Jesus’ name, Amen.

The theme for our stewardship campaign this year, as most of you have heard by now, comes from a song written by a woman named Linnea Good, who is part of the United Church of Canada. I sang it in worship last week, and then we all sang it together during our potluck luncheon. The theme is especially distilled in the second half of the third verse, which goes, “We’ll borrow from each other, till each cup has overflowed, and make this potluck feasting, Hearts of Love and Gifts of Gold.” Isn’t it interesting how the song connects our hearts and our treasures, just like the last line of our scripture reading today?

We’ve taken this image of a potluck and used it as a metaphor for all of church life: this thing we’re doing here, with God’s inspiration and help, the ministry of Vista La Mesa Christian Church only works when everybody pitches in and helps out. We know that without everyone’s gifts, our common life as a congregation would be poorer. So far, we’ve mostly focused on how sharing your gifts makes the Body stronger. We’ve looked at the impact you can have on the whole. Our broader theme for Lent this year has been centered on the Body of Christ – how to become it and why that’s hard. But today, we’re going to turn all of that around a little and look at it the other way ‘round.

I want to give a little shout-out here, to Randy Johnson, a member of the staff of the Christian Church Foundation, who forever shifted my understanding of Matthew 6:21 when he pointed out the actual order in which Jesus said that sentence. Jesus didn’t say “You will give your money to the things that are important to you.” He said, “where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” It’s not so much about intention as it is about formation. And that’s why we’re going to turn everything around the other direction today. It is important that each of us pitches in our gifts for the potluck that is church life, whether it’s our financial support, our capacity to fix a toilet or make cookies, our willingness to care for children or serve communion or any of the countless other tasks that make ministry possible. But equally important is the impact that participating in all those ways has on our own spiritual growth. Being an active partner in a congregation is a formative activity; it shapes who we’re becoming. Offering our gifts as part of the Body of Christ is vital for the health of the Body. But being part of the Body of Christ has an equally important effect on each of us. That’s what Jesus was getting at when he said “where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.”

Let’s shift gears for a few moments. Because there was some meaty stuff in those first few verses also, and they all culminate in this last verse, in some way. Let’s do a little exercise. If you want to get out a pen, you can, but it’s not necessary. I want you to think of three things that important to you, maybe even most important. What are three things that have top priority in your life? Think about what you give the most time to, what you worry about the most, what affects the state of your heart the most dramatically. You can jot those three things down on your bulletin if you want to, or just write the list in your head. Take a minute to decide what your list is. I don’t care that much if you only have two, or if you can’t choose between things and end up with four or five. That’s not the point. I just want you to consider what is most important to you.

Now, if you’ve made your list, I want you to make a second, related list. This time, I want you to answer the same question, but with a twist. For this list, I want you to figure out the top three important things in your life, from the perspective of other people who know you. What do other people see you giving your time to, or talking about, or supporting, or worrying about? Maybe these three things are the same ones as made up your first list, or maybe they aren’t. Based on what other people witness of your life, what do you think they would assume your priorities are?

Okay, now if you’ve gotten those two lists done, there’s one more I want you to make. Same question, new perspective. What would you guess God thinks your top three priorities are? God, who “sees in secret” as the writer of Matthew puts it, may have a better sense of our priorities than we do, so let’s get super honest for a moment and consider that. Based on everything you do and say, but also think and stress about and pray about and silently grumble about, based on the entire inventory of your life and your heart, what do you think God sees as your top priorities? Again, it’s possible this list is the same as your first one, but then again, there may be some mis-match. You decide if the question is about this present moment or over the whole of your life.

So if you’ve got your three lists now – and I realize I didn’t give you much time, so feel free to keep thinking about this at home this afternoon! – but if you’ve at least got a start on those lists, what does it mean if they don’t match? According to our scripture reading today, differences between the first one and the second one may not matter that much. I would argue, however, that if our priorities are not clear to others from the way we’re living our lives, we may just not be very clear about our priorities. But what about differences between the first list and the third list? I wonder if that first list was more likely to contain the things we think should be our priorities, but then by the time we got to the third list, we’d gotten more honest about what we actually spend our time and money on.

What happens when we take these lists and consider them in the light of that last sentence from our Bible lesson today? “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” The implication there is that we can actually shape the desires and longings of our hearts (those feelings that we often argue are uncontrollable) by making intentional decisions about how to use our resources. How we choose to spend our lives each day influences how we will want to spend it in the following days. If making these priority lists made you realize that you’re not giving enough time and attention to the things you want to believe are important, then Jesus is telling you that you can change that by being more intentional about how you use your resources of time, money, attention, talent and energy. Even if it seems hard or annoying to change our habits, if the outcomes of our habits don’t match our values, changing our habits can re-shape our desires till they do align with our values. This is the essence of the process of any spiritual discipline. And it’s why stewardship is perhaps the most foundational of spiritual disciplines. Examining whether our use of our financial resources matches up with our values or not is an excellent way to determine whether we’re living faithfully or not. And the good news is that where we discover we’re not living out our faith, we can make intentional choices to correct that. And once we make those intentional choices about how to invest our treasure, our hearts grow to meet us there in that new place. We think that we invest in the things we care about. But, Jesus is telling us, it’s just as true that investing in things make us care about them more. Our participation in the Body of Christ is not just a gift to the Body, but a formative experience for our own souls. The more we engage in this ministry, the more we want to, and the more we want to engage well and fruitfully.

There is an unfortunate corollary to this rule that some of us have witnessed. Sometimes when a church member gets mad about something, they decide to withhold their giving. Depending on what kind of donor they were previously, this can be a major threat or a barely noticeable one. But the most negative impact, of course, is on the person themselves, because in withdrawing their investment from the common life of their congregation, they are also putting the relationships of their heart to that church family in danger. There is an almost literal process of losing a sense of ownership that takes place. And while the Body is impoverished to some degree by their refusal to participate, there is a much greater withering effect on the person who has withdrawn.

Our choices about how we will spend our lives impact the state of our hearts. We saw this reported yesterday when Sharon Bryant was telling us about the program she directs for the Church of Christ in Thailand. Of the many volunteers who go to Thailand and spend at least two years teaching English in the Christian schools there, 80%, after their return home remain active leaders in their churches, as clergy or lay people. One third of their teachers enter seminary after coming home. Our choices are formative. Here’s a juicy little secret about me: I hated going to Vacation Bible School when I was a kid. Every summer, I would throw a little fit about not wanting to go. But I always ended up going. And I’m convinced that that participation, along with all the other ways my church received my gifts, are why I’m in ministry today.

So where do you fit in, in this potluck that is the shared ministry of Vista La Mesa Christian Church? How do you want to fit in? What intentional decisions can you make to influence how you’ll be involved a year from now? The commitments we’re celebrating today are the many choices that have been made and are being made to support this congregation with regular financial donations. We turn in Estimate of Giving cards to help our budget planners know what to count on. But we also turn them in because doing so influences our own hearts. Offering our “gifts of gold” strengthens our “hearts of love.” Jesus told us it would be so. We have seen that it is so. May we continue to act on this teaching, and make the choices that will lead us to grow in faithfulness and love! Amen.