Sermon

Sunday, October 19, 2008

Being Cheerful

I would like to begin the sermon this morning by reading two very different letters. The first letter is an email I received this week from a parent of one of the kids who goes to summer camp who attends another parish in another state. Over the years, we’ve become friends and exchange occasional correspondence. I’ve changed some of content in order to disguise who it is though I don’t believe anyone in this parish would know this person. Here it is:

Dear Father Stavros, Thanks for writing to ask how I am doing. To be honest, not so great. The kids are doing okay, at least they have their health. Sometimes I feel like they all deserve a good beating—don’t worry, I won’t actually do that, it just feels good to write it. It’s been rough. My oldest ones are demanding and never happy with their freedom and the things they have. They constantly harass me, argue with me. Just as I think everything is okay and I begin to trust them and let go a bit they get themselves in situation that I would never approve. It falls on me to set their limits. When they fail, I fail and it’s not a good feeling. As if that stress wasn’t enough, my oldest is on a roll with expenses. In the summer, he hit his car and never even apologized. Why should he? It wasn’t his fault he slammed on the gas and hit my car while backing out of the driveway. I never fixed it because I needed $1,200 and I thought he would get a part time job to pay for part of it. Jobs are not easy to find these days. Then he got two traffic tickets that I have to pay soon and today someone crashed his car at school (on the other side) in the school parking lot. At least he wasn’t in the car. As for my youngest, well, she managed to get two referrals in one week followed by a parent teacher conference that was humiliating and to top it off her grades are horrible. Then there is the day to day grind of soccer, football, volunteer work, and music lessons. Our lives are ridiculously packed with things to do! Events are already overlapping and people are still trying to fit more in our schedules.  I wish I could be bored for a little.  I have to clear our schedule somehow and I just don’t know what to cut, everything seems so important!  We don’t have time for dinners, homework, house cleaning, family home time is gone!   I did manage to get something off my schedule—I’m dropping out of the book club I belong to. It really bothered me because that’s the only thing I do for myself and now I had to give it up. But so be it. Sorry to vent, I guess I needed to tell someone who is not involved in my daily life.  The sad thing is that most of my friends are feeling this craziness as well so they can relate but no one has any suggestions, their stuck as well! (pause) Now, if I were to ask for a show of hands of whose lives can relate to the woman who authored this letter, probably a lot of them would go up. It doesn’t matter if you have no children or three, or if you are not married or your children are grown and gone, the majority of lives it seems, on any given day, reflect the letter I just read. No really much joy at all. A lot of days just leave us wanting to tear our hair out.

The Second Letter I want to share was written almost 2,000 years ago by Saint Paul to the Christian church in Corinth. It reads, in part, “He who sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and he who sows bountifully will reap bountifully. Each one must do as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work. As it is written, “He scatters abroad, he gives to the poor; his righteousness endures forever.” He who supplies seed to the sower and bread for food will supply and multiply your resources and increase the harvest of your righteousness. You will be enriched in every way for great generosity, which through us will produce thanksgiving to God. (pause) This letter of St. Paul to the Corinthians, this morning’s Epistle lesson, stands in marked contrast to the first letter I read. Cheerful giving, enough of everything, every blessing in abundance, these things are quite different than “sometimes wish I could beat my children,” “lives ridiculously packed with things to do,” and “the daily grind.”

The phrase “God loves a cheerful giver” is often used as the rallying cry for financial stewardship to the church. The Parish Council President of the one of the churches in our area came to meet with me the other day. Among the questions he asked me was “Why is it that people in non-Orthodox churches give so much more than the people in our churches?” The answer is not that they have more money to give. Demographic studies have shown that people of Greek extraction are consistently the number one or number two most affluent group of people in the country. It’s not that they have less children—in many cases, they have more. The answer is that they have been taught how to give—and that is to give cheerfully. While many Orthodox Christians seem to give almost begrudgingly, many non-Orthodox Christians eagerly and cheerfully embrace the concept of the tithe, the ten percent offering that is described in the Old Testament as the minimum. I remember a priest sharing a story with me about a non-Orthodox person who came into the church and wanted to know what was expected of her as far as financial contribution. She asked what is the average pledge? The answer was “about $500” because that’s what the annual average pledge was at the time in that particular parish. She asked, “Is that per month? If so, that’s great, that’s about what the average was per month in my last parish!” I’m working on the stewardship packet for next year and have written about stewardship in the Messenger that is going out this week. This year’s slogan is “Stewardship, the required responsibility.” Perhaps in a future year, I’ll use “cheerful giving.” When it comes to a financial pledge, by and large, we have not been taught or learned how to give sacrificially or cheerfully. That’s why non-Orthodox parishes of our size have two or three pastors instead of one, pay music ministers and catechism directors rather than relying on volunteers, and have large outreach programs to the poor—because they give cheerfully and sacrificially, the churches are able to do so much more.

Let’s go away from financial stewardship for the church and talk about other kinds of cheerful giving. What are some other things we give? How about respect? It doesn’t sound like the kids of the lady who wrote the first letter know how to give respect, especially to her. They certainly don’t give it cheerfully if one can’t even apologize for crashing a car. I’ve seen youth sports coaches yell at and berate their players who are six years old, as if they are under contract on a professional team. Some may call that motivational speaking, but for a child, cheerful encouragement probably works better. I’m not sure but I would think that saying “I care” would go a lot farther in life than saying “I demand.”

And then there is simple honesty. It’s easy to be cheerful when you are honest. Some people try to be cheerful liars, even smiling while shaking your hand saying “I’ll be totally honest with you” when at the same time scheming how to take advantage of you. But eventually, truth comes forward—it may take a long time, but eventually truth wins. Even Jesus tells us “the truth sets us free.” Lies actually keep us hostage so to speak, and the compulsive liar or cheater always ends up being not a very cheerful person.

Another thing we give is effort. Many people in our congregation are in jobs that involve customer service or customer relations, you work with clients or constituents. Do you serve them cheerfully, or begrudgingly? Do you regularly do the minimum, or go above and beyond what is expected? Many of you are parents—are your children more of a joy or a drag? Yes, I am a parent, and some days it is certainly more drag than joy, but on the overall, it is more joy than drag. Well, you may say, he isn’t a teenager yet. And all I can say is, I do know some respectful teenagers and some parents who still love parenting teenagers and I sure hope that we and our kid end up in that category. And a lot of that will depend, I’m sure, on our effort and our attitude.

What a difference it makes when we are cheerful and when we are not—When you go to a restaurant and you walk through the door and the whole staff yells “Welcome to Moe’s” as an example, it makes you feel good about walking in there. And when you walk into a restaurant, someone hands you a pager and says, “it’ll be an hour!” it makes you sorry you went. Of course, you’d feel somewhat different if the person with the pager said, “It will be about an hour wait but it’s totally worth it, you’ll love it here.”

Do we all have days we want to tear our hair out? Absolutely, I know I do. Do we all have days we dislike our jobs and wish we did something else with our lives? Absolutely, I know I do. But I certainly try to have more good days than bad ones. So much of life is based on our attitude—As an aside my mother, who was diagnosed with stage four cancer last month, is doing much better. She went home from the hospital this week, but still has a long treatment protocol ahead of her. And when I went to visit her in California, I told her, the success of the treatment, depends in large part, to your attitude. Approach this with a positive attitude, and it’s more likely to be successful. Go at this with a bad attitude, and as they say in football, you might as well take a knee and run out the clock. And this goes with just about everything in life, from cancer treatment to being a parent, holding a job and supporting our church. Do it cheerfully, and as St. Paul writes to us in his letter to the Corinthians, God will provide us with every blessing in abundance. Do it with negativity and you might as well take a knee and run out the clock.

On a side note, we have our church festival in three weeks. The success of our festival is based, in large part, on the attitude with which we approach it. Can you imagine if the people selling tickets at the door greeted visitors with “Pay your fee”? We’d probably lose all of our visitors right there. When people come for the festival, they should get a cheerful greeting from everyone in our parish, as if we are welcoming them to our home, which in a sense we are. Before the festival, there is still much preparation to do. In meeting with some of the festival heads the other day, I am seeing that there haven’t been many people who have signed up to work in the various venues. I’ve even heard through some gossip that some people are boycotting the festival this year for whatever reason. How does this fit with cheerful giving? It doesn’t. St. Paul wrote that God loves a cheerful giver, not a begrudging giver, and certainly not a boycotter. So in the Kourmolis Center following Liturgy, please sign up today to work at the festival. And do it cheerfully. The festival helps us to keep our church going, at least until such time that we earn all of our income on stewardship, when we all learn to be cheerful and sacrificial givers. The festival helps to share our faith and culture with the greater Tampa community. The festival gives us the opportunity for fun and fellowship, especially when we are cheerful in our work. And the festival gives us the opportunity for charitable outreach, as we will again give a portion of the proceeds to LifePath Hospice. What a good feeling it had been the past two years to offer a sizeable check to LifePath Hospice from our church. I didn’t for a second think “There goes some many thousand dollars of our profit.” There was great pride and joy that our parish worked hard and a portion of what we made went to help someone else. What a great feeling!

Once in a while, I have to drag myself to church in the morning, but that is more the exception than the rule. Generally, I come with great joy to worship God. In fact, this past Friday, we had an evening Liturgy, just like we are having this Wednesday. Someone asked me Friday, what kind of day are you having? My answer, “I’m having a great day—only a few hours until I get to celebrate the Liturgy.” So worship of God set a cheerful tone for my entire day. I’m not saying that life is always easy or that we should try to pretend that it is. There are days when my life is dragging, and since I’m not a very good actor, people know my life is dragging. Hopefully I don’t bring too many people down when I’m like that. I like smiling and laughing, and even when I’m serious on the outside, my heart inside is usually cheerful—I love doing what I do, and even on the worst day, I wouldn’t trade who I am or what I do. That is a very cheerful thought indeed.

When we give cheerfully in whatever we are doing, God promises us abundance. And when we give begrudgingly, holding back and saving something, we still will find ourselves lacking. So be cheerful as a parent, in your jobs, in your interactions with other people, in giving sacrificially to the church, in volunteering for the festival and put more positive attitude into what you are doing, and you will see, I really believe, an abundance of joy and blessings come back to you. And when you are having a day, like the person who wrote me the first letter I read, the first thing to do is take a deep breath, the next is to stop for a minute, get on your knees and pray for God to bring peace into your life, and then go at your challenge one step at a time. Don’t meet frustration with anger, take it as a challenge to meet frustration with a positive attitude, be cheerful in your taking on of that challenge, and see how that challenge can be met. “God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that you may always have enough of everything and may provide in abundance for every good work.” Amen.