The Story of Princess Buttercup

Princess Buttercup on the left with her brother Tubby snoozing beside her.

As Christmas approaches the Deckard household we find ourselves embroiled in busy times.  We have an excited 6-year-old, a newly-excited 3-year-old experiencing her first conscious Christmas, plus a dad and mom running everywhere to make sure meals are made, presents wrapped, and Christmas Eve services accounted for.  The hustle and bustle is in full swing!

But it was not always that way for me.  As I beam in gratitude for so many people surrounding me, family and friends both, during this joyous holiday I hearken back to a time when I was all but alone on Christmas.  It was my first Christmas in Iowa, six months after graduating from seminary and accepting my first call.

You don't get to choose where you will serve when you leave seminary.  You can put in a request for the church to send you to a favored location, but it's kind of like the army.  You ask, you hope, then you go where they tell you to.  Being from Portland, I requested the church call me somewhere in the West.  Apparently western Iowa was as far in that direction as they could imagine, because there I was in frosty December.  Family and friends were back home.  Fellow seminary students had scattered to the wind, serving their own calls.  When the 25th rolled around the only person in my house, or anywhere in reach, really, was...me.

As you can imagine, this was a semi-depressing situation.  My family had mailed gifts but that actually made the loneliness worse.  Without the presents I could have pretended that this was just another day...a day off for me, in fact.  But when the postman delivered those presents I was stuck.  I couldn't ignore them, nor did I want to.  But you have not lived until you've opened Christmas presents on a wooden floor in your living room alone...no tree, no stockings, no nothing.  The gifts almost become ironic, highlighting the situation instead of alleviating it.

But as I sat down to unwrap the parcels I realized I wasn't quite alone.  You see, when I graduated from seminary I promised myself two things.  First, I'd save enough money to get a satellite dish so I could watch my beloved Portland Trail Blazers.  Second, I wanted a cat.  It didn't have to be a fancy cat, just one like I had growing up...something to say, "Hello" to when I came in the house, someone to sit on my lap and purr when I watched TV.

A month prior, right around Thanksgiving, I had made both my dreams come true.  DirecTV installed a dish and I saw my first Trail Blazers game in years.  Plus I made a trip to the local shelter to get a kitten.  Sadly they didn't have any at the moment, just grown-up cats.  I asked the attendant when she thought they might get in more kittens but as I did so my hand accidentally drifted towards one of the cat cages.  A soft paw came out and curled around my fingers.  The paw drew my hand to the cage bars where a little tabby-cat face peeked out.  When my fingers met the bars the tabby cat nuzzled them with her cheek.  I stooped down to look and met a hopeful gaze staring back at me.

Well, why not?  A kitten would probably be too much trouble anyway.  Besides, this cat was only two years old and she was small enough to be a big-sized kitten.  I asked to take her home.

Being a young-ish male apparently made me a person of suspicion to the cat-minder at the shelter.  She asked sternly, "Now, you are going to take good care of this cat, right?"  Ha!  She didn't know me very well.  I named the kitty "Princess Buttercup" and we immediately became best of friends.  She greeted me at the door, sat on my lap, curled in my arms, and even played fetch upon occasion!  We quickly grew to love each other.

But it wasn't until that first Christmas alone in Iowa that I discovered Princess Buttercup's best trick of all.  She loved...and I mean loved...opening presents.  I took the brown parcel paper off of the packages my family had sent, revealing ribbons and brightly-colored wrapping paper beneath.  And suddenly I had company.  Princess Buttercup pounced on the first present and began opening it with her teeth.  I couldn't help it.  I laughed out loud.  She didn't stop until all the paper was off of that box.  I opened it and saw what was inside.  She didn't care about that.  She was waiting for me to pull out the next box.  As soon as I did she went at it again.  She and I unwrapped every present my family had sent together.  She was as happy as a clam and I was smiling too.   I had made her Christmas and she had made mine.  I wasn't alone after all.  As long as she was around, I never would be.

We had liked each other plenty before, but that Christmas Day ended the getting-to-know-you period for Princess Buttercup and I, making us family.

Eventually things changed, of course.  I got married.  (Though one of the litmus tests for Careen was whether Princess Buttercup liked her.  Fortunately she did.)  Pocket and Tubby came along, which took some adjustment for both Princess Buttercup and I.  We moved to Idaho, cats in tow.  Then Derek and Ali came, human family members to supplement the feline ones.  But through it all Princess Buttercup and I stuck together.  She was my kitty.  I was her dad.  And every Christmas since has reminded me of our first together, mostly because I dare not put presents under the tree until the wee hours of Christmas morning lest they get unwrapped early!  And even then I pretty much have to sleep by the tree to guard them.

Those memories will be especially poignant this Christmas.  Princess Buttercup is old now and has been failing.  Having just checked on her, it seems like today is the day I have to take her to the vet to say goodbye.  I wanted to wait until after Christmas, to have one more together, but it doesn't look like we'll be able to have that.  So I gave her the little kitty bed I bought her this year.  I lifted her into it and we'll cuddle for a while, then it'll be time to go.

It's OK, though.  Everything has its time.  Her life has been long and happy, as has been my time with her...almost certainly more happy than either of us would have been had we missed each other that day in the Fort Dodge, Iowa Animal Shelter or had I stuck to my original idea of getting a kitten.  Besides, Christmas isn't really about the presents, no matter how much you love opening them.  Christmas is about the promise that joy doesn't end, it's about hope coming true, light shining forth, goodness living forever no matter what.  The baby Jesus would have sad goodbyes too, but they wouldn't last.  Afterwards would come a new hello.  I know this, and I've told it to Princess Buttercup while stroking her head.  She'll be OK and so will I.  And in a little while we'll get to be together again.

She's been a good cat, the Christmas Angel messenger who declared to a wayward shepherd that he didn't have to be alone.  Thank God for that message, and for angels wherever we find them.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

  

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve is almost upon us...one of the prettiest and most meaningful services of the year.  I have a soft spot in my heart for Christmas Eve worship.  It helped set me on the path to where I am today.

I didn't have a bad time growing up.  I was kept safe. I was loved.  We always had a roof over our heads and 2.5 square meals a day.  If we were short on money, us kids seldom knew it.

I did have a bit of a fractured childhood.  My parents were divorced.  Our family had...interesting dynamics.  You weren't sure who you could trust, who was on the ins or outs with somebody this week.  Outwardly we had hugs and smiles aplenty but unguarded affection was rare.

Christmas was one of the immediate casualties of this fracturing.  We had two: mom's and dad's.  Sometimes we had another besides with other family members.  The presents were fun enough but those family undercurrents flowed through them all.  We kids "aged out" of Christmas too, as is natural.  You remember near-ideal Christmases when you were 5 or 6 and then you have the 16- or 17-year-old version.  The latter pales in comparison.  It just isn't the same.

So I remember one Christmas...I think I was 17.  By that time I'd had 5 years of split up Christmases, several rounds of my parents not "getting me" (as is typical for teenagers), and I knew that no present in the world was going to make this Christmas ideal.  What was there?  It was like the most cherished institution of my childhood had become meaningless.  And I needed a cherished institution or two to hold onto, to provide stability or hope.  What a bummer!

Fortunately I had discovered a home away from home in my high school choir, with whom I had recently started singing.  My choir director had taken a job at a downtown church and invited me to come and sing in her choir, to be a "ringer" of sorts.  I'd take the bus down there and she'd usually drive me home.

Christmas Eve came around and naturally we were all singing.  So I went to church, ready for just another service.  Mind you, worship was great there.  The messages made plenty of sense.  The music was excellent.  The people were friendly.  What's not to like?  But I wasn't prepared for the beauty of Christmas Eve in a church.  Candles glowed everywhere.  People sang in harmony, knowing the hymns well.  The sermon talked about unreserved, unending love.  Everything clicked.

And all of a sudden I understood.  I was going to lose some things in life.  Institutions might crumble--family fractured, innocence departed, Christmas de-mystified--but God's love and God's giving would endure.  Hope would endure.  Light would endure.  Beauty could be found in the moments you least expected it, in ways you didn't even look for.

That Christmas Eve message of hope, love, and beauty is important.  You never know who it's going to touch.  I'm glad we get to share it again next Tuesday.  Worship starts at 7:00 p.m. with a musical prelude at 6:45.  See you there!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Getting Through a Day

Stress can mount up quickly this time of year.  It seems like an opportune time to share Pastor Dave's Tips for Getting Through a Day.  This is more homespun wisdom than theological assertion, so take it as you will.  This is just how I try to make it through each day with some sense of graciousness as the wolves of worry are nipping at my heels.  I'm not claiming 100% success, but still...

Start Each Day New

In my experience, most stress comes in the form of baggage dragged with us from yesterday.  Failing that, we worry overmuch about tomorrow, as if we knew our future and could control it.  God's baptismal covenant promises that each day we are made new.  As we rise yesterday's burdens are washed away, drowned in the baptismal waters, and we are given new life.

This means every day is a fresh chance.  Old problems may follow us, but they don't have to have the same shape and weight they carried the day before.  If I worry all through the day, carry those problems with me through a restless sleep, and then wake up weighed down just as much as I was before, I haven't given the new day a chance.

Instead I wake up trying my hardest to trust that this day will be new and different.  If familiar problems arise, well, new opportunities will too.  I don't want to miss my calling in this day because I'm still carrying the last one front and center.  Each day when I wake up I say a quick prayer that God will relieve me of my burdens and show me what he wants me to do in this day.  Privately I also ask that he'll relieve me of the folly of forcing  every day to be exactly the same and then wondering why nothing ever changes.

Plan For Big Things

Part of acknowledging the new opportunities God gives us is admitting that they just might matter.  Even if I pretty much know what I'll be doing in a day--for better or worse we live by schedules and tasks--I don't assume that I know how all those things will go.  I'm prepared for them to make a big difference.  I'm ready for something significant to happen.  Maybe I meet a new person.  Maybe I see a person I've met before in a new way.  Maybe I'll say something, or hear something, that will change a life.  Maybe I'll be delighted or disappointed.  Whatever happens, I've never experienced this day before.  

Life is kind of like a board game in this way.  You know the basic forms of Monopoly or Yahtzee just like you know the basic pattern of your life.  You're familiar with the cards and categories.  But you never know how those elements will combine each time you play.  You can't predict how the dice will roll, how landing on a certain space or filling in a certain line on the sheet will change the game.  It's the same way with your life, your job, your relationships.  Each morning is like setting up a new game board.  I may know the rules and I may have seen most of the cards, but I'm going to be interested in how it plays out and I'm going to do my best to play well.  Who knows if this will be the round where something special happens, creating a story that will last a lifetime?

If the Big Things Don't Go Right, Make the Most of Little Things

Sometimes things don't work out like we hope.  Life falls apart.  Hopes go unanswered.  Worries come true.  Stress increases.  We don't always get good days.

When this happens my first thought is, "If I can't have a good day, can I maybe find a good 10 minutes in there somewhere?"  Even one or two things going right can give you something to lean on.  You have a cup of coffee with a friend.  You stop for an ice cream cone.  You hear a song that you love.  Somebody smiles at you unexpectedly or lets you cut ahead of them in a long grocery store line.  Even a small reminder of goodness can be enough to get you through a bad day.  Yucky stuff happening for 23 hours and 30 minutes doesn't rob us of the ability to appreciate the other half-hour.  Given a choice of what to build my life on, I'm going to take the good 10-minute experience over the yucky, day-long drag.  That good event still happened.  Goodness still exists.  If I hang on through the other stuff, even if it's a crushing, inexorable burden today, then eventually I'll find the good again.

If the Little Things Don't Go Right Either, Get a Hug and Pray

Sometimes things just don't go right in a day, not even one little bit.  Overwhelming bad news, unexpected sorrow, a series of unfortunate events, at times it's just too much.

In these situations I need a hug, maybe a pat on the back...just some kind of human contact.  I also need a little divine contact in the form of prayer, even if that prayer is just, "Help! I can't do it!"  Most folks see that as a sign of failure.  That's actually the purest, truest prayer we can offer to God.  "Help! I can't do it!" is the reason Jesus suffered and died on the cross for us.  None of us can do it even though we spend much of our life pretending we can.  When we couldn't do it ourselves, when we were lost beyond hope, Jesus came to us and saved us.  Those moments when we have nothing else end up being the moments we're closest to God.  We don't necessarily feel it, but it's true.

It should be mentioned that hugs and prayers are available in plentiful supply from your pastor and most of your friends at church too.

It's also interesting to note how many of those days come when we literally have nothing left but to get a hug and pray versus the number of days we call "bad".  For most people the former situation is far more rare than the latter.  Stress accelerates us down the ladder more quickly than circumstances do, which is why it's important to head back up to the top of the list and start each day fresh and new.

Here's hoping your stress level is low and your contentment-and-love level is off the charts during this holiday season.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Thanks for Singing With Us!

I want to thank everybody from the community who came to our Christmas Song Sing-Along on Sunday.  We had a great time!  Singing with all of you was fun and it was great seeing people from different churches and different families come together in song.  The energy built throughout the event and that ending was unforgettable!  I feel more in the Christmas spirit already!

I'd also like to offer special thanks to our musicians:  Jennifer Parkins, Emmy Parkins, Phoebe Rigg, Phyliis Kanikkeberg, John Marone, Warren Akin, Robert Rigg, and Patrick Adams.  How often do you get to see a multi-generational, multi-gender group of people having so much fun?  Thanks to Chloe and Susan Rigg for preparing the food and to everybody who donated cookies to the event!

We'll almost certainly do this again next year.  It was too much fun not to repeat!  What a great time, and what a blessing to be in Genesee at Christmas!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Get in the Christmas Spirit!

This Sunday at 3:00 we're putting on a community-wide Christmas Song Sing-Along!  Guitar, percussion, keyboard, bass, singers...we've got the whole band in gear.  We'll be doing favorite Christmas songs, everything from Rudolph to Winter Wonderland to Angels We Have Heard on High.  You can sing with us or just enjoy the show!  We'll have Christmas cookies, hot chocolate, and plenty of fun.  What better way to take a break from the stress and get ready for the holidays?  It'll be fun for the whole family so come and enjoy!

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Advent Collage Which Represents Themes of Advent Season

Attached is a short video of Jenifer singing and Rosanna offering her symbolic art to help us better understand this Advent season.

Being Right vs. Being Loving

Last Sunday we read from Matthew, Chapter 3, in which John the Baptist prepared the way for the coming of Jesus.  The key concept from his message:  "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand."

We don't think about it much, but the two clauses of that sentence actually talk about conflicting impulses.

To "repent" means to "walk again", "pent" being the root of the word for walking.  "Repent" is another way of saying, "Turn around, do it over, change direction!"  Something is not quite right here.

This is part of our human story.  Most of us try to be good (especially this time of year with Santa just around the corner!)  Most of us want to do what's right.  But we always seem to mess it up.  Into our noblest, purest acts and intentions creeps some kind of selfishness or blindness.  What we want to do we don't actually end up doing, at least not perfectly.  Desiring the right, we can't manage to get there.

Most people read "repent" as saying, "Stop doing wrong!  Do right instead!"  That's not accurate.  In fact, it's impossible to fulfill that command.  Instead you should read "repent" as, "Give up on the idea that you are right and can be right.  Stop following yourself and your own flawed instincts and pretending that they are The Way."

The reason for this turn-around is simple.  The actual Way is at hand.  Contrary to popular belief, the kingdom of God does not mean just heaven or the afterlife.  That's part of the definition of kingdom, the final flower of it, but it's not the whole story.  The kingdom of God is a living presence, in John's case embodied physically in Jesus Christ.  The kingdom of God is present wherever love, grace, forgiveness, and joy are brought to life among us.  This is what we follow and walk towards, not what is "right" by our own definition but what is loving by God's definition, not our own example but his.

Theoretically "right" and "loving" should be the same thing.  What is loving should be what is right and vice versa.  In practice that only holds true for one being in the whole universe: God.  God is wholly right, completely loving.  There is no distinction between the two in him.

For the rest of us, though, sin clouds our vision, makes us short-sighted, causes us to fall short.  We have to choose.  We can either be right or we can be loving.  Every once in a while we're blessed with a great moment when the two impulses come together.  These are gifts from God, moments when we feel in tune with the world, the universe, heaven, and everything therein.  Those brief glimpses aside, we're forced to decide what will be the bedrock of our life: our own righteousness or God.  We cannot follow both.

Part of the reason we can't have both is that love and right require different actions and a different outlook.  Being right makes you stand still.  You've got it!  It's clear.  You are right.  Why move?  Being right causes you to stop your journey, build up walls, protect yourself from anyone who would change you, or even just try to change your mind.  If you're right there's no need to hear, no need to transform, and no need to follow.

Love, on the other hand, requires motion, attention, sacrifice.  Love moves you beyond what you were before, not just for your own sake, but for the sake of the one you are loving.  Love is nothing but hearing, nothing but transformation and growth, nothing but following...following God in dutiful service and following the person you're sharing love with.  After all, how do you know how to love someone if you don't follow them for a while, walk a mile in their shoes?

Being right always causes you to stop.  Loving always causes you to move.  The two cannot happen at the same time.

Scripture is pretty clear about which of these is the correct approach.  You can listen to Paul tell you, "All have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God" or you can listen to John say, "When we say we are without sin we deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us."  Both are telling you the same thing.  You can't stop.  The moment you call a halt to the journey you have to make compromises with the sin that's within yourself and the shortcomings inherent in the place where you stopped to camp.  It would be like the people of Israel stopping in their wilderness journey.  They may find a nice oasis in the desert somewhere but it's not suitable for living forever; it's not the Promised Land.

We are not called to camp in a spot of our own choosing, but to keep journeying towards our ultimate destiny: the kingdom of God, perfect love and grace and forgiveness and joy.  When faced with a choice between right and loving, we choose loving.  Otherwise we miss the kingdom even when it stands right in front of us.

Understanding this, it becomes clear what John was asking his followers to repent of: not just their sins and wrongdoing, but their idea that they already knew what "right" means and that they were capable of achieving it themselves.  This is reinforced a couple verses later in Matthew 3 when John scolds the Pharisees, folks who followed the Law scrupulously but also thought that they knew (and were) right in every matter.  John calls them a "brood of vipers", snakes huddled in their nest, unwilling to come out, likely to bite anyone who tried to roust them.  That's exactly what happened when Jesus met the Pharisees.  They didn't see him as holy, nor did they care about his message.  Instead they plotted to kill him because he had the temerity to tell them that something in the universe was more important than them being right.

Right or love, which will you choose?  Each of us is confronted with this decision every day.  Those who are married know that the #1 rule of married life is that you can be right or you can be in love but you can't have both.  You'll either be right and sleeping on the couch or be loving and have a marriage.  The same holds true in different ways for relationships between parents and children, friends and neighbors, co-workers, and even strangers.

Turn on the radio or TV and you'll hear a host of people trying to convince you that they're right, that a certain point of view is right, that this is all you need in order to prosper in the world.  The ones you already agree with (better: who agree with you) seem quite seductive, quite "right".  Our culture will prod you mercilessly, convincing you that right is the answer: hold the right political opinion, invest in the right stock, buy the right Christmas present for somebody.  Funny, those never provide the answer...at least not the ultimate one.  Whatever happiness and security they bring is only temporary.  For the most part, they give way to more fear, more division.

Love is the way.  The kingdom of God is still at hand.  The problem isn't that it's disappeared, nor that it was only embodied in one person who lived 2000 years ago.  Jesus brought it to the world that it might grow through all of us, transforming our lives and the life of everyone we love.  The problem is, we don't see it.  We're too busy trying to be right.

The opposite of faith is not doubt.  The opposite of faith is certainty.  Every moment we spend being less certain and more loving--every moment we sacrifice our selfish desire to stop the journey at a convenient place and instead walk it in love--is a moment faith becomes more alive in us. This is how we prepare the way of the Lord.

Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand...today, tomorrow, and always.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Giving, Part 2

Last time we talked about the narrative budget, how telling the story of our financial gifts gives us a clearer picture of our stewardship than just listing numbers.  In order to understand the process we need to see our gifts in action, not lying in some column on a page.

But there's a problem with the narrative budget in a church with our size and our spirit.  If you just look at the surface of it, that action appears to amount to one word: salary.  Most of our budget is bare-boned.  People donate nearly everything we use from office supplies to kitchen supplies to communion wine to Sunday School curriculum.  Those things don't show up as spending items in the budget.  If you look at the percentages on the official ledger, salary and benefits dominate, as if most of what's given around here funnels to Pastor Dave.

Treasurer Susan and I were discussing these matters one day and she basically said, "This isn't an accurate picture!"  The numbers don't lie but they don't show the real, dynamic motion of giving in our church.  Our official budget doesn't tell the story.

It quickly became evident that in order to tell the real story of our giving, we were going to have to do something radical.  We couldn't just give a narrative budget based on our church numbers.  We had to give the narrative of where those funds were going after they left the church.  We also had to talk about how much was being given by our church members outside the budget...giving when things were needed like the folks did who bought our new copy machine this year.

Since much of our official budget goes into salary, the first step in describing our community's giving was revealing what happens to that salary.  This meant revealing our spending and giving...the narrative budget of pastor's paycheck.  As you can imagine, this was neither entirely instinctual nor entirely comfortable for me.  We live in a society where finances are private (just like religion, ironically).  We've never broken that barrier.  But without it, the story died on the vine.  So we did it.

I'm not going to go into specific figures here on the internet, but to summarize: approximately 45% of our salary, which amounts to nearly 70% of our take-home pay after taxes are deducted, went back into the church or church work this year.  We re-invest 7 out of every 10 dollars that touch our bank account into helping the church and the community.  Needs include everything from helping people with rent to buying stamps and office supplies, gas for visits and pop for kids.

For perspective, most people consider tithing--the standard goal for giving presented by many churches--as 10%.  Even in pre-tax dollars we're 4.5 times that.  The good folks at the ELCA financial advising and pension department will encourage you to save 10% of your take-home pay, give away 10%, and live on the other 80%.  We're about 7 times beyond in the giving department by that measure.

Numbers aren't the important part of this discussion.  The numbers are there to set up a couple of important points.

First, even though the budget says "salary" many of those dollars are actually going to ministry.  You're not giving to fill a bank account but to support ministry, even in the salary line of that budget.

Second, the amount of giving is less important than the why.  It's less important to understand that we're spending 70% of our take-home pay on the church right now than to understand why that's necessary.

For us, giving is not determined by dollar signs.  The dollar signs follow the need for giving instead of determining it.  Our giving is about three things:

1.  We believe and trust in God and in the people here.

Our community is faithful.  Our community is valuable.  Our community is irreplaceable, as are the people in it.  Without giving we wouldn't get to see our Confirmation students, Olee's tablecloths, Patrick's music, the children coming up for the children's sermon, or have great discussions in Bible Studies and Theology on Tap.  We wouldn't get to eat Mary's caramels or look at Rosanna's pictures or hear Louise play the organ and Jennifer sing.  Our gifts make a thousand other wonderful gifts possible...the lack of which would impoverish our lives greatly.  God is showing us blessings every day through all of you.  We give in response to that, in appreciation for it.  We're not giving to a "church".  We're giving because the things we experience in this community from God and  the people around us are beyond any price tag.

2.  We give because it needs to be done.

This is no different than walking in the kitchen and seeing dishes that need to be done or walking into fellowship and seeing the coffee out but no cups available on the table.  You don't see a need and pass by with it unmet.  When somebody needs rent and has fallen through the cracks of all the other options, you make sure they get rent and keep a roof over their heads.  When the church copier is empty, you get paper.  Find a reason to say "no" once and you'll soon find reasons to say "no" every time.

And speaking of...

3.  We give because we dare not refuse to.

Our society teaches us that the core of our security and happiness is money...that money is the most important treasure we have, to be guarded and used with infinite care lest we end up unfulfilled.  God simply asks us to trust him.  That's above all things, including money.

If we hold back in this one way, we might as well have held back in all of them.  If we can't bring ourselves to trust God here, do we really trust him at all?

Our lives will follow the pattern we set in this decision.  Either trust or fear will guide us.  There's no in-between and no mistaking the two.  Giving one cent less than is needed or called for because we're afraid of running out is a decision based on fear, not on faith.

Giving becomes reminder to us that God and faith are the core of security and happiness...that God is showing us the most important treasures every day in the faces and voices of our neighbors...that we are called to use infinite care in tending to those things, letting the dollar signs fall where they may instead of using infinite care to tend to our dollar signs and letting the gifts fall where they may.

Giving disciplines us and puts a check on the part of us that wants to fear and worry selfishly.  It's our security against idolatry.

Is giving so much a sacrifice?  Yes, it is.  But it is possible.  And that sacrifice pales beside the one our Lord made for us on the cross.

These why statements need to become more a part of our giving, a part of the discussion surrounding stewardship, than they are now.  We need to get our whys straight and let the finances follow rather than starting and ending our stewardship discussion with the finances.  Our success cannot be measured by a line in a budget.  It's measured by how much we all trust in, believe in, and sacrifice for God, each other, and the ministry here.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Giving, Part 1

Before worship last Sunday we had a chance to go over some material in preparation for our Annual Meeting on January 26th.  Since stewardship is our ongoing focus, most of the presentation centered around that topic.

The "Narrative Budget" is one of the recent, and helpful, developments in explaining church stewardship.  Traditional budgets focus around numbers and columns.  They give you information (at least if you're inclined towards spreadsheets) but they don't tell a limited story about a church's financial resources.  They encourage people to think of stewardship as a matter of digits and the church as an institution little different than a bank or investment firm.

A narrative budgets still gives you numbers, but it tells the story of how the church's resources are being used, not just by column and committee but in ministry involving real goals and real faces.  "Worship Committee spent $500 this year" is a far different kind of presentation than, "We hosted a cluster-wide gathering, added large-print hymnals to our pews for those who can't see the normal version, and used a brand new liturgy for our Lenten evening services."  The former just tells you how much.  The latter answers the question, "For what?"

This is an important step in our stewardship journey together.  Coloring an budget line red or black doesn't encompass what we do here.  It's almost like there are two churches: the warm, supportive, and intriguing gathering we know and love and the cold, demanding, bottom-line institutional machine that demands support so it doesn't "fail".  We enjoy the former but when we think of giving, we usually envision the latter.  That disconnect has to be bridged.  The church we give to is the same church we love.  The other image is a false construct.  We don't give money to an institution so we can do the things we enjoy and benefit from.  We give to each other and God as we enjoy the same way we give to family members and friends as we experience our relationship with them.

We all budget in our daily lives for food, shelter, Christmas gifts, and everything else.  But few of us say, "I am feeding you dinner, spouse and children, so that you will remain my family and I can experience a relationship with you."  Instead we share with our family because we love them and they love us, because it's a joy to do so, because that's what we're called to do.  Our giving is intimately and naturally connected with the people we give to and among.

That's exactly the way church giving is supposed to be.  We're like an extended version of your family.  Theoretically people shouldn't be giving just to meet a budget.  The budget sets the bar for what we need, but it's a step in the stewardship journey, not the ultimate goal for it.  Instead we should be giving in the name of God and for the benefit of each other and the world around us.  We give because we trust and believe that God gives blessings more powerful and enduring than money.  We sacrifice so that others might have a chance to experience something good.  We give so that our friends and neighbors can feel secure and confident sharing their gifts as well, not just monetary but investments of time and talent as well.  We don't give to support an institution or viewpoint, we give so that ministry will come alive (and continue to live) among us.

Giving is an intimate, joyous experience.  We miss out on all of that joy when we disconnect it from the faces, talents, and loving generosity around us and make it just about numbers and columns.  Can you put a price on hearing the girls sing on Sunday morning?  I can't.  Which column should that get filed under in the budget?  Or should we instead agree that God is showing us reasons to trust, reasons to celebrate, and reasons to give all the time?  And perhaps we should also agree that fencing away a part of our life--in particular our financial life--from this process is a less than ideal response to the grace he has shown us.

Tomorrow:  Soul-baring on my part.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

The Blank Slate

In this morning's Women's Bible Study we got a chance to read the second chapter of Mark.  The 18th-22nd verses made us think particularly hard:

Mark 2: 18-22

18 Now John’s disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, “How is it that John’s disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?”
19 Jesus answered, “How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. 20 But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.
21 “No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. Otherwise, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse. 22 And no one pours new wine into old wineskins. Otherwise, the wine will burst the skins, and both the wine and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins.”

In these passages Jesus chastises people who mistake outward signs of piety for true faith.  Folks assumed that since the Pharisees and the disciples of John fasted while Jesus' followers did not, the Pharisees and John were holier, more reverent, closer to God.  Jesus reminded them all that God can't be contained in any ritual or sign.  Rituals like fasting are meant to point to God, but they are not God.  God is with people who fast and people who don't.

Jesus follows this up with an interesting paragraph about not trying to repair old garments with new cloth, nor putting new wine in old wineskins.  Fasting (or the lack thereof) wasn't really the issue here.  The real problem was that people thought they already knew who God was and what he wanted so they weren't prepared to see or hear him when he showed up in a way they didn't expect.  They shoved God in a box too small for him.  When he slipped out and tapped them on the shoulder to say hello they wouldn't believe it was him because the were sure he was still in their box.

This short paragraph reminds us that we are supposed to approach God as a blank slate, ready to be written upon.  Our rituals, habits, and preconceptions can be useful in pointing us to God.  Ritual and habit remind us to go to church every Sunday, for instance.  But once we're actually together with God we have to be ready to change.  God transforms us.  He makes us new every day.  Refusing to be made new is the same as refusing God.  We cannot come before him saying, "It's good to see you but don't touch this, don't change this, and don't transform any of these six things."  When we do that, we're not really ready for God.  We already have one: all those things we're protecting.

When we approach God in the words of the Bible we should be prepared to read them new and fresh even if the words are familiar to us.  We don't open the Bible already knowing what it says, but asking what it's going to say to us today.  Each sermon should be an opportunity to think new things, to open new avenues of understanding and service.  Each time we come to the altar for communion we should regard that as a transformation, a fresh start.  We do all these things out of habit, but the substance of them is so much more.

This extends to our daily lives as well.  We shouldn't wake up each morning already knowing what we're going to do.  Even if we have a schedule and it's the same as it has been for as long as we can remember, we should be ready for God to touch us in new ways through familiar tasks.  We shouldn't assume we already know the people God sends into our lives, even those we are closest to.  We need to open our eyes, be prepared to see some new facet of them in this day.  We should not allow our relationships to get in ruts even if they're comfortable ones for all involved.  Here, too, refusing to be transformed is refusing to hear God's voice.

Each day is a new opportunity.  God calls us to see it that way and act accordingly.  The new wine is ours and the old, familiar wineskin of our lives won't hold it without bursting.  Maybe it's time to get a new skin, a little roomier, and take a fresh look at the world God has given us and the people therein as well.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)

Important Announcements!

Some important announcements for this week:

Thursday Night marks our final Lutheran Basics class for this session!

Saturday Night is Theology on Tap at Rich and Jennifer Parkins' place.

Sunday is the last morning to take tags for the Christmas for Kids program, helping out families in need of Christmas gifts.  Those gifts are due back in church on the 15th, the Sunday following.

We also need adult helpers for the Christmas Pageant this year.  Come at 9:00 on Sunday morning to see how you can help us out!  It won't be hard but it will be fun!

The final rehearsal for our Christmas Sing-a-Long on the 15th is this Sunday at 5:00 p.m.

--Pastor Dave (pastordave@geneseelutheranparish.org)