“We give to God and his Church - Wholly” FUNDING OUR FUTURE - Sermon 4

FUNDING OUR FUTURE - Sermon 4

Sunday 31st October 2010 - All Saints Day

“We give to God and his Church - Wholly”

Readings:   Ephesians 1:11-end

                    Luke 6:20-31

This is the fourth and last in our series of sermons ‘Jesus is God’s gift to us.  In response, we give to God and his Church . . . . .’ 

The first week, both Jennifer and I preached on  ‘. . . . we give to God and his Church Generously’, then the second week, Andreas and I preached on ‘. . . . we give to God and his Church Prayerfully’ and last week, Mary and John each preached on ‘. . . . we give to God and his Church Sacrificially’.    

Today, the sermon subject is ‘. . . . we give to God and his Church Wholly’.   There is something very ‘final’ about the  word “Wholly” and it is no coincidence, that this culmination of a month of preaching and teaching and encouraging you to engage with the Funding our Future campaign, should end as we celebrate Patronal Festival - All Saints Day!   

If you have missed the other sermons, I do urge you to catch up with them on the Parish Website where they are all posted, with the exception of the All Age Worship one from P&J on the 17^th.  Also, if you haven’t already got one, please take a copy of the Funding our Future booklet which is at the back of the Church. And, as this stage of Funding our Future comes to an end, I would like to say a huge thank you to the team: Nick Doran in the chair, Pauline Moyse, Emma Judge, Chris Bull, Richard Buller, and Andreas.  Thank you for the hard work, but thank you also for the insight and clarity with which they have presented an old story with a new edge! 

Talking of stories – there is one about two brothers who lived in a particular town where they were notoriously bad - they had been involved in corruption, deceit and every manner of bad thing - it was even rumoured that they were involved in organized crime!  Anyway, as a result of their ‘dodgy’ living both brothers had become very rich! 

One day, the older brother died.  And his younger brother, wanting to honour his elder sibling, went all out in planning a memorable funeral.   The problem was that he couldn’t find a minister who was willing to do the service?  Hearing that the one of the local churches was in the middle of a huge planned giving campaign, the younger brother called on the Minister of that church. 

“Reverend,”  he said, “I know my brother and I never attended yourchurch, as a matter of fact we never attended any church.  I alsoknow that you’ve probably heard a lot of bad things about my brotherand me, but nevertheless, I’d like you to do his funeral.  And when you do the Eulogy, I just want you to say one small thing - I want you to say that he was a saint!  And if you’ll do that, I’ll set up a Gift-Aided Standing Order to pay £10,000 a year to your church for the rest of my life - that’ll go along way towards fixing your deficit, won’t it?”  

After some thought, the minister agreed to do the service.  And so it was, on the day of the funeral, the church was crowded, and the minister had the Gift Aid form, which he had taken the precaution of getting advance, safely tucked away in his back pocket.   The service began with the usual scripture readings, hymns and prayers - and then the Eulogy began.   The minister immediately  launched into a tirade about all the horrible things that the man had done - how he had been selfish, greedy, corrupt, caring about no one but himself, womenising, drinking excessively, and so on.   The younger brother, sitting in the front pew, was getting hot under the collar about how the minister was not fulfilling his promise, but during the service there was not much he could do about it.  He could only wait and hope that the minister would eventually keep his end of the bargain.   

Finally, after about ten minutes of outlining the rich man’s flaws, the minister concluded his sermon in a booming crescendo proclaiming: 

“Yes, my friends, this man was a good-for-nothing, cheating, rotten scoundrel!  But, compared to his brother, he was an absolute Saint!” 

The word ‘Saint’ derives from ‘Sanctus’ - which we translate as the word ‘Holy’. 

But often this interpretation becomes skewed by our secular society!  You would probably be surprised how often, when I visit a bereaved family to arrange a funeral, I am told that ‘she (or he) was an absolute Saint’!  By that, the family usually mean, that she or he was neighbourly, treated their family well, and was selfless in most of what they did!  So the short answer to ‘they were an absolute Saint’ has to be “Well, actually, no they weren’t”! 

Having said that, Saints are most certainly not confined to the great Peter’s, Paul’s, John’s, Francis’s etc - rather Saints are all around us – but they are only in people who are holy - people who are set apart from the rest of the world - people who are different because they believe in Christ Jesus and seek to live faithfully as he has shown them. 

And we are all called to be saints - every one of us!  But the way to sainthood is a journey - one which begins when we are baptised into membership of the Church, and ends when we stand in the presence of the living God!  But in order to be able to achieve that, we don’t just need to be “Holy” - H - O - L - Y!  We also need to be “Wholly” - W - H - O - L - L - Y - Wholly committed to Jesus Christ through the life of faith, and through the work of our local Church! 

Nobody has ever pretended that living the Christian Way is easy - and it can only be done through generosity of spirit, constant prayer, and more than a degree of sacrifice - the three subjects of the other sermons in this series! 

And above all, living the Christian Way cannot be lived in isolation - as I was saying two weeks ago, it can only be achieved through building community!  Let me reaffirm a few other things that have been said the past three weeks:

• At the start, I warned you that these sermons were going to be hard-hitting, but honest!

• I also said that Funding our Future was the most important thing in the life of our Churches at the moment - in some ways even more important than the buildings etc - and to that statement I want to add today my personal plea, that if you haven’t yet reviewed your personal commitment to Planned Giving in the parish, and in response to the teaching you have heard these past four weeks, this week is most certainly the time to doso!

•  Because, this is all about sustaining the resourcing of our ministry and mission to reach out into the streets and homes of Fleet, and to be a welcoming, loving and inclusive community!   

And we cannot do that without the proper financial support!  Without that support - from you - we will not be able use our new facilities for the purpose for which they have been built - to do that reaching out into the community - and we will not be able to ‘live out’ our mission statement to “Welcome all in our Community into the love of Christ”! 

Funding our Future is just that - because if we fail at this point, the ‘future’ will be bleak - the shape of Anglican ministry in Fleet will become very uncertain!   Now that is not in any way meant to sound like a ‘threat’, and I hope that you will not think of it as such - but it is meant to sound like a warning bell and a call to reality.  Because what I mean by it, is that unless we can bring an end to the year on year deficit budgets which this parish has been presenting for more than a decade, then the simple truth is that there cannot be two places of worship staffed by two full time priests in the parish of Fleet! 

Having said that, I also have to say that both Andreas and I remain totally committed to resourcing what we have, and will fight for it all the way!  The day that the Parish of Fleet has to lose a stipendiary priest or lose one of its two church buildings - and that could be either All Saints or St Philip and James - that will be the day that both Andreas and I will know that we have failed completely in everything we have tried to do!  

Most of us will be here, worshipping in a Christian Church this morning, because at some point in our lives we have been touched by an earthly Saint who has shown us a glimpse of something greater than we can understand or dream of, and has called us to be part of the Vision.   

Saints are those who gone all the way - those who have given “wholly”!  This is the point at which we are all being called to be Saints and to give ‘wholly’ to the life of our Church! 

When the time comes for our funeral eulogy to be delivered, will there be anybody who is prepared to stand up and say that we were a Saint? 

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