Preached on the 1st Sunday of Lent by Father Mick Elfred
“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there you heart will be also.” (Matthew 6: 19-20)
There was once a church going family in the United States whose little boy, we will call him Jimmy, swallowed a quarter dollar coin. His mother hysterically turned to her husband and screamed, “Call the doctor!” The husband dutifully picked up the phone but, instead of phoning the doctor, called their church minister. The wife was incredulous and said to her husband, “we don’t need our minster, we need some medical help!” Her husband replied, “Hey, our minister can get money out of anybody!”
The topic of this first Sunday sermon in Lent is “giving” and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you felt that I was about to attempt to utilise skills similar to the one our American dad recognised in his local minster. Well what I actually want to do this morning is have a think with you for a few minutes on what Jesus has to say about the subject of giving based on the text I have just read and then apply it to our situation here in Tadworth.
Very early on in my work as a psychotherapist I learned that money has meaning for people: a different meaning for different people. What are we to understand by what I have just claimed? Well, for example, I once had a conversation with someone who told me that they did not feel safe unless they had at least two million pounds in the bank. Clearly for this person having a lot of money, well to me it was a lot of money, alleviated a certain form of neurotic anxiety. Thinking more generally I would suggest that in a capitalist society like ours for many people money is equated with power; if you have money then you can make things happen or get prized possessions. It seems to me that this is exactly what Jesus realised and He was at pains to encourage those who heard the Sermon on the Mount to direct that power to a good end. Put simply He was saying something like “if your main concern is for the Kingdom of God, building something of eternal significance, if that’s where you heart is, then direct your resources accordingly.” In the teaching that follows our text Jesus wants to encourage His listeners not to submit to the kind of anxiety that the man I mentioned just now was fixated with; an anxiety about money which leads to hording is definitely discouraged by our Lord. Jesus encourages us to creatively use our money not allow it to become our ruler. It is not, as is often misquoted, money that is “the root of all evil”, it is, to quote St Paul correctly, “the love of money that is the root of all evil”.
It is one of those common held myths a criticism levelled at the church very regularly that it is always after money. Well in one sense that is true because the church cannot, like any other organisation, function without it. It can only do things if it can resource them properly; pennies and pounds do not as a rule fall from heaven. Practically speaking there are three main ways in which we can financially resource our work here at the Good Shepherd. 1) By the rents that we receive from two assets we have: the Vodafone Mast and 22 Station Approach. 2) By money raising events which also have the equal benefit of providing a social life for the church. 3) By direct giving by members of the congregation. We have maximised the first two resources and those bring in a considerable amount of money. With regard to regular giving we fall below what the diocese reckons we should be able to raise given the demographic of our congregation. In a couple of month’s time we will have to undertake our three yearly income survey and then go and negotiate with the Diocese the level of our “Parish Share” for the next three years. The “Parish Share” basically pays the stipends of Stipendiary Clergy and the cost of housing them: it also resources the Diocese Offices and Officers. If the “Parish Share” is above £60,000 then the parish is deemed to be paying its way and any extra goes to subsidise parishes who otherwise could not afford a full time priest.
At the moment here at the Good Shepherd we have two financial schemes running in parallel: the Centenary Fund which will enable us to build our Centenary Lady Chapel, and the money raised and the reserves we have built up which go towards paying the “Parish Share” each month and for the upkeep of the buildings. The good news is that through all our efforts and all our giving we are at the moment in a healthy financial state but the two things, the Chapel and the day to day costs, obviously impact on each other. I would like to thank all those who have given so generously either with direct gifts or with considerable effort to get the Centenary Fund to where it is at the moment. I would also like to thank those who give regularly through the envelope scheme or by direct debit so that the church buildings can be kept in good order.
Now the good news is that with all this giving and effort we are in a position to start building the Centenary Chapel this year even though the cost of it has risen beyond the original estimate. Because of this the build would reduce our reserves considerably and so we need to do something of a balancing act. The PCC are eager to start the build so that we are not continually chasing rising costs. We don’t want fall into the trap Jesus counselled against, i.e. hording money for its own sake, we want to make it work for good, in other words do what Jesus counselled: use our resources to further the work of the Kingdom. So for the time being we will keep the Centenary Fund open and you can check its progress by looking at the monthly updates on the Centenary Board by the main entrance of the church. Once the Centenary Fund is eventually closed when the chapel is built then of course the money raising focus will change and all the resources will be redirected to the general fund.
With the concentration of the Centenary Fund it is a long while since the PCC has presented to the congregation the financial needs for the day to day running of the church and it seemed right that when we start to appraise our lives as the church encourages us to do during Lent then our level of giving should be part of that process. Since I last reviewed my own giving to the church and to other causes close to my heart, my financial circumstances have changed considerably. Happily I am in a position to think seriously about upping my level of giving. I know many sitting here this morning love this place and what it stands for and what it accomplishes in the village. Over the nearly fourteen years I have been with you as your parish priest I have learned to love it too. There are others present who have recently joined our congregation and perhaps do not know about the opportunities to give on a regular basis. Whether you are a longstanding member or a relative newcomer I would like to invite you to join me in reviewing your giving and then respond as you see fit.
A final word – generosity is a very important part of being an open hearted human being. Generosity is not about the amount we give, that will vary enormously from person to person according to their circumstances, it is about a state of mind. For we Christians a large part of the motivation for generosity is that we trust in a God who in Christ has been enormously generous to us. Baroness Cox recently wrote the following: “While we might like to think that generosity is largely about what gets given from our own hands, the truth is different. Generous people understand that giving is inseparably linked to receiving, that we can only begin to be used by God to meet another’s need because we have begun to allow Him to meet our own”. We do not have to trust in uncertain riches which if we horde them away might well be stolen or lost; rather we strive to use our God given resources, part of which is the power to achieve which money gives us, to build his Kingdom here in Tadworth.