The Sunday after All Saints' 2019

Sunday after All Saints’ Year C November 3, 2019 Years ago, I attended a Stewardship Summit where the speaker asked us a question. He asked us to think about the first memory that we each had about money. He gave us time to think about that, and then we talked about it in table discussions. Think about it for a second. What is the first memory you have about money? Then, after we talked about that, he asked us to think about how that first memory of money is connected to how we understand God? It’s a strange concept, right? What on earth does our first memory of money have to do with our understanding of God? My first memory of money is one that came easily to my mind that first time I heard this question. I was a young child, maybe 5 or 6? and I had started taking piano lessons, but my family did not have a piano. One day, I remember my paternal grandfather, who was a Methodist minister we called “Pop,” telling me that he was going to start saving the quarters from his pocket change every day to help me buy a piano. And not long after that, Pop took me on a little trip. He and I went to the Citizens’ Bank in Columbia, Mississippi, where he lived, and he opened a bank account with his collected quarters, with both of our names on the account. I was given this little blue bank book which he would write all the deposits in, until, one day, we had saved enough to buy me a piano. When I grew older, I never thought to ask my grandfather why he did that—helping me buy a piano and putting my name on the account with his, even though I didn’t contribute a single quarter (although I do remember finding quarters in their house and bringing them to him and telling him I’d found another for our bank account). But I suspect that for him, there were similar themes that we will hear when Bobby Minis speaks in a few moments: the ribbons of gratitude and generosity and love woven throughout. And what this story says about my understanding of God is that God’s love is so abundant and so overflowing that it is God’s very nature to need to give. And God gives joyfully, thankfully, and God invites us to be full partners in giving as well. We, who are created in the image and likeness of God, need to give. Nothing that we have is really ours, but God gives us a full and equal share—the inheritance of the saints (as the writer to the letter to the Ephesians calls it), and we are not truly fulfilled until we also, in turn, give. One of the things that I discovered that day at the stewardship summit was that I was not unique in having a story that involved a family member or loved one or fellow church member in my first memory of money. Everyone who shared around our table learned something from someone else about money and this informed their understanding of God. Today, we celebrate the feast of All Saints’, one of the 7 major feasts in the life of our church. It’s a time when we give thanks for all those who, (as one of our Wednesday service participants put it), “have held our hands along the way”. These are the folks who have lived lives of faithfulness, and whose faith has shaped ours, even if we have not personally known them. And even though they have passed beyond the veil of this life, they are still with us, and we are all connected and united together in the body of Christ, invited by God to be full participants in that life, even though we have earned none of it. The inheritance of the saints includes them and it includes us, even now. This week, I invite you to ponder a number of things. Think about your first memory of money and what that says about your understanding of God. Think about what saints in your life had a hand in teaching you those things. What have the saints in your life taught you about God? About gratitude? About generosity? And then, as we all prepare for our Consecration Sunday commitment next Sunday, where we will gather in worship and turn in our commitment cards for the year and then break bread together at God’s altar and at table for lunch together, think about how you have been created by God to give, and how it is a practice of faithful discipleship of Jesus for us to be intentional in our giving, paying attention to what percentage of our income we give and giving to God through the church of the first fruits of our life and not merely what is left over. In just a minute, you will each be invited forward to light a candle. That candle can represent the one who first taught you about money, about God. It can represent other saints who have held your hand along the way. As you light the candle, think of at least one saint for whom you are grateful, whose life has shown a light in your life and faith, and know, as you light the candle, that you participate in the inheritance of the saints, even now, as your life shines for the light of God’s abundant generosity.