Sermon
Stewardship
John and Jane Smith
had two children, Bobby and Suzie. They
had a house and the typical expenses associated with it. Both were very talented people, very
accomplished in their fields, had no shortage of good job opportunities, but
were also very lazy. Because they were
lazy to get full time jobs, and even lazier in keeping them, preferring to
sleep in each morning and spend most of the day watching TV, they jumped around
from job to job and never had enough money to cover their expenses. When the bills came due at the end of the
month, they were always short. One
month, they were short $500. So Jane
said, “I can bake cookies and Suzie can put up a stand in the yard and sell
them.” Now in order to make $500 on
cookies, which Jane sold 2 cookies for $1, Jane had to make 2,000 cookies
because she had to figure in the expense of making the cookies. Suzie didn’t make any money for her time
selling the cookies but she started falling behind in school because she didn’t
have time to do her homework because she was busy running the cookie stand.
At the end of the
month, there was still not enough money.
So John told Bobby, we’ll go out and mow some lawns so we can make some
more money. So, John pulled Bobby off his
baseball team and they went out and mowed lawns together. Bobby began to hate his father.
Despite the lawn
mowing and cookie baking, there still wasn’t enough money. So John and Jane put their heads
together. “Ah,” they said, “we have lots
of friends, let’s have them over to dinner.
We’ll put on a lavish feast for them and we’ll charge them to eat here.” “Wait a minute,” Jane said, “These are our
friends, we can’t charge them to eat with us.”
John answered “you’re right, we can’t charge them. We’ll put a basket at the end of the buffet
table with a sign that says ‘donations’ and then in parenthesis ‘a minimum of
$25 is ‘suggested’.’” Jane said, “sounds
good to me.”
The day for the feast
came—lots of money was spent on food.
Lots of friends came and ate. As
they got to the end of the buffet line, and saw the basket, many of them looked
awkwardly at each other—“I thought John and Jane had us over because we are
friends, not too make money off of us” said one. The others nodded in agreement. But they felt guilty about not putting money
in the basket and the food looked great.
When John and Jane counted the money from the donation basket, they were
ecstatic. “This was great,” John said,
“let’s do another one next weekend.”
Jane said, “even better, we could put a donation basket in our driveway
and then maybe our guests could put in a little something when they park their
cars.” So, the next weekend came, and
half of the friends didn’t come, but the ones who did begrudgingly put money in
both trays. John and Jane were
excited—they made the same amount of money and only had half the people to
feed. There was so much food leftover,
they invited their friends to come back the next day. Only a couple of friends showed up, but that
didn’t deter John and Jane from putting out the collection basket in the
driveway and on the buffet line—now their friends were paying twice to have the
same food, no overhead, this was still a successful event. The next weekend when they hosted another
dinner, no one came.
Over time, Bobby and
Suzie grew more distant from their parents.
Suzie flunked out of school and eventually ran away from home. She sent
her parents a letter which read in part, “at a time when mom and I should have
been having mother/daughter shopping trips, I was made to sell cookies to pay
our bills. And every time I needed a
hug, all I got was another tray of cookies in my hand to sell.” Bobby did end up going to college but not on
the baseball scholarship he’d hoped to get.
As he left at 18, he said, “Mom and Dad, thanks for stealing my
childhood, I don’t think I’ll be coming back any time soon.” John blamed Jane for being hard on
Suzie. And Jane blamed John for being
hard on Bobby. Eventually they got a
divorce.
How could this story
have played out differently? If only
John and Jane could have kept regular
jobs that were constantly being offered to them, there would have been money to
cover expenses. Bobby could have gone to
college on a baseball scholarship, Suzie would have gone to college too. John and Jane could have had lots of friends
over all the time to the house. Instead
they were left childless, friendless, divorced and penniless.
The story of John and
Jane, Bobby and Suzie is quickly becoming the story of the Orthodox Church and
how we support it. When you know it
costs money to run a church, to pay salaries, to operate ministries, to pay
utilities, insurance etc., and we know how much it costs, we, as a community
should bear this cost. We are not poor
people in this community—I see the cars, I’ve been to the homes, I go to the
weddings, and I see the stewardship totals, and yet when we turn everything
into a fundraiser, a money-making opportunity, when the church has its
spiritual children working and selling instead of praying and growing, the
children eventually become fed-up and leave.
Hence 60% of our young people leave the church when they go to college
and they never return. Others leave
wondering if we worship the Almighty God or the almighty dollar.
This week marks my 5
year anniversary as the priest of this parish.
I love being a priest, and I love being the priest here. I’ve had ample
opportunities to leave, including opportunities in my home state, but I stay
here because of not only the tremendous growth of the past five years but the
potential for even more growth and progress in the years to come. However, my biggest frustration as a priest
comes from events like last Sunday’s Parish Assembly meeting—I am thankful to
those who donated over $10K towards repair of the roof. After we fix that,
we’ve got a $30K repair job on the roof of the administration building, and
probably another $20K for the skylights in the Kourmolis Center. And that’s after we find $60K to meet our
stewardship goal for the year. Perhaps we’ve not done a good job asking for
help in making repairs to the roof and other things at the church. As someone
said last Sunday, “you ask us Father and we will give.” So, I’ve just asked for $110K but unlike the
meeting I won’t ask for a show of hands to give it. The problem with that is I don’t want to be
like John in my story, so concerned with raising money that I miss out on the
lives and needs of my spiritual children.
I also don’t want you, as my spiritual children, to think of your
spiritual father as anything other than a kind and benevolent father. I don’t
want you to ever think I carry a cross in one hand and a tray in the other. We
regularly give updates on stewardship and we will start putting a list of needs
in the Messenger. I hope this will
translate into needed income so that sermons can be about Christ and not
fundraising.
I mentioned last
Sunday that one of our kids from summer camp, a 17 year old girl from
Pensacola, committed suicide last Saturday.
I went to her funeral and offered the eulogy, which I emailed to many of
you—please take time to read it and send it to your children and their
friends. Suicide is reaching epidemic
proportions in this country—it is the second leading cause of death among
teenagers. As I stood over the open
casket, looking at this beautiful girl with the bruise over her right temple
where the bullet went in, some things became crystal clear to me.
First, in my eulogy, I
referenced a line in a movie I saw as a child, “It couldn’t happen here.” This is the attitude that many of us take
when it comes to certain things, like suicide, drugs, alcohol, etc.—It doesn’t
happen to Greek kids, it doesn’t happen to Orthodox kids, it can’t happen to my
kids. It does. It did.
It can.
Second, we are in trouble—our
Orthodox youth are leaving our church in droves. And our youth, and our society in general are
leaving morality and human decency in droves.
Their grounding is found in I-pods, text messaging, immodest dress,
sports and parties. And meanwhile, we
had a meeting for three hours last Sunday about fixing a roof. As someone said to me, “We raised some money. We’re making positive steps forward.” But the rate of societal moral deflation is
quickly swallowing our progress.
This morning’s Gospel is
a parable about stewardship, about a landowner who owned a vineyard, and set a
hedge around it, and dug a wine press in it and built a tower, and let it out
to tenants and went to a far country.
When the season of the fruit drew near, he sent his servants to the
tenant to get the fruit; and the tenants took his servants and beat one, killed
another, and stoned another. Again he
sent other servants, more than the first; and they did the same to them. Afterward he sent his son to them, saying
“they will respect my son.” They ended
up killing the son. When the owner of
the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants? They said to him, “He will put those wretches
to a miserable death, and let out the vineyard to other tenants who will give
him the fruits in their seasons.”
The Lord is the
landowner. The earth and everything on
it is His vineyard. We are the
tenants. We are not owners, we are
tenants. Currently we occupy the
vineyard. In 75 years for some, perhaps
much less for others, the landowner will send his servants to collect the
fruits we are supposed to be cultivating.
The vineyard includes not only our homes and our business, but it
includes this church. The fruit is not
money—the fruit is ministry—living and spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. That’s why when I met with the Philoptochos
President and Vice-President the other day, I told them that Philoptochos
should not be the fundraising arm of the church, but the ministerial right
hand. We should fund Philoptochos
through our budget so that the work of Philoptochos is hands-on ministry to the
sick, the bereaved and the poor, not just cookie baking to raise money. There is nothing wrong with having a
festival, but we should not do it under duress and we shouldn’t base our ability
to operate our church on whether people will come and buy our food. There is nothing wrong with having a
Chrysanthemum Ball—this should also be an evening of fun and not duress. The bottom line of a festival is about
celebrating and sharing our food, faith and culture, not just making
money. And the point of our social
events is to be social, not just raise money.
We spend so much time and effort to raise the money—most of us end up
giving more anyway. Why don’t we just
give more money up front and have more time for faith, fellowship and fun?
I felt a little guilty
at this funeral the other day to speak boldly about suicide and teenage
morality. Several parents told me later,
“It had to be said, who else is going to say it, where else can be a better
place than at the funeral of one of their own?”
Sadly, most of the teens were probably hearing but not listening. They’ve probably already forgotten it at the
Labor Day parties.
Jesus said “The very
stone which the builders rejected has become the head of the corner.” On most days of my life, Jesus Christ is the
cornerstone of my life. That funeral the
other day made me realize He better be at the head every day of my life. Because there are lots of young people who
are in serious trouble, and lots of older people too. There are lots of temptations and
distractions that can get any of us, myself included, into serious
trouble. And we need Jesus Christ to be
the head of the corner. Building on
anything else is just going to make the foundation weak and ultimately
unstable. Yes, we come to church to feel
good and I like to deliver messages that are positive. But someone, some place, has to stand up for
truth and be bold. Someone has to say
what needs to be said—we are losing our kids, and if we are not careful, we
could lose our church. It can happen
here.
I should not have to
be the fundraiser in this community. And
I’m not going to be. I’m the parish
priest. My role is to further the message
of the Gospel and help people. The
parish council are not the chief fundraisers either. Their role is to ASSIST ME IN THE MINISTRIES
of the church. And each person’s role in
the community is to be involved in the ministries of the church—to minister to
the young, the old, the sick, the lost.
I’m not going to beg for money anymore.
No more two hour lunches where I try to get someone to make a donation
for something. No more expending of my
time to raising money, not at the expense of losing the future of our church,
which is not the building. It is the
people.
One more personal note
on stewardship—When I heard that this young girl died, I knew right away that
I’d go to the funeral. I knew it was the
right thing to do. I started thinking
how could I get to Pensacola—Driving would make this a two-day event and keep
me away from my family and out of the office.
It would cost money for gas and hotel as well. Flying to Pensacola is not cheap or
convenient, especially on only two days notice.
I ended up spending $700 to fly because it was the right thing to
do. I helped my co-director out with his
flight since he is a new priest and is paying off student loans and doesn’t
have any money. So, I’m out a lot of
money, but not worried at all—Every time I have made an investment in doing the
right thing, I have always gotten it back.
That’s why I wasn’t surprised when $700 showed up “anonymously” at my
house this past Friday. And I’m sure
I’ll get the other $1,000 I spent on this back as well. You never get burned for doing the right
thing, especially when it comes to giving money to a worthy cause.
Last weekend, one of
the fruits in our vineyard cut herself off from the tree and died. How many more will we lose like her? How many more will be like Bobby and Suzy,
and leave or run away from the family, never to come back, because we ignored
their needs, because the church was about everything but the message of
salvation in Jesus Christ? How long will
we be like John and Jane, not doing the important things with our children
because we can’t do the right things ourselves?
It couldn’t happen in
our vineyard? IT DOES. IT DID.
IT CAN. We need to fix the tower,
repair the wine press, and trim the hedge, but we can’t ignore the fruit on the
vine while we do it. Because the
landowner is not going to send His servants to inspect the tower, the wine
press or the hedge. The fruit is what we
are responsible for.