Saugatuck Congregational Church, UCC
©Bruce Borner
October 25, 2015
Our Giving Season theme this year is ‘Expand Your Reach’ which asks that you make the intent of your pledge go well beyond your personal space to the community and global space. Rev. Patton’s series on why we come to church correlates closely with why we give. Of course you don’t need to give money to benefit from what this church has to offer. There is no demand that you make a contribution. The church is rather unique in that way. However the difference between giving generously and not giving goes much deeper than it appears on the surface.
There are conventional reasons for giving generously and there are spiritual ones, notwithstanding that these concepts might be fungible. Conventional reasons in this context relate to the obvious and tangible reasons for giving, that is, you enjoy the beauty of the setting, the message, the music, the youth program, the friendships, the community involvement, the memories, the coffee hour and so on. You give to keep it beautiful, keep the programs running, keep it healthy and capable.
With a financial commitment you are getting a return on investment. Your children might not be the people they are today had they not participated in our youth program. You would not have made that important decision that changed your life for the better had you not been part of this community. So in a conventional sense those who pledge are getting what they’ve paid for. There are also spiritual reasons people have for giving and that is this. The more we advance in science the closer we come to proving what wise people have been telling us for millennia. That we can tap into this divine God energy by living a life of honor, of valor, of ethics and love. Christ created a template for us. The impact is that kindness and love can affect change in the energy that surrounds us. That commitment, that financial commitment to the better good of all does in fact change the air around us.
If you know anything about Costco, you know it’s a store where in my opinion the people who shop there are those who can afford not to. That is, the people who would truly benefit by shopping there don’t. An understanding of the power of the spirit of God is similarly inaccessible to those who avoid thinking about it and often these people tend to be the ones who need it the most. Making and keeping a connection to God’s energy can be an intellectual exercise requiring conscious effort. To live a life that Jesus would want us to live is no walk in the park. We’re easy to anger, we’re retributive, often find it hard to love our neighbor. But the easiest and most effective of the guides to good Christian living to execute may be financial generosity.
A few years ago the electric companies broke down billing into two parts. Energy on the one hand and delivery of that energy on the other. We now have the option of having our energy delivered by some other company offering a better price. The idea behind this was to create a competitive market that would serve to lower costs. This separation of energy and delivery fees relates in my mind to the division between spirit and religion. Spirit is the energy source, the essence of God. Religion is the delivery system. It is meant to be how we learn about the connection between God and Christ like behavior.
Sometimes as in the case of electricity the deliverer fails us. So for example, once my family’s electrical contract was up with the lower cost deliverer, without notification our delivery rates shot up to well over the competition.
Often due to experiences they’ve had throughout their lifetime, too many people will say they are not religious or that they don’t believe in organized religion. Sadly many of these people, not all, may never have the opportunity to know and trust and benefit from the essence, the spirit of God. They’ve thrown the baby out with the bathwater.
Never before, in our lifetimes anyway, have we needed our church community more. Those who truly understand the scripture from Corinthians that says “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously”, recognize that financial commitment is not just a generous gesture but a means to merge your own energy force with the positive energy forces of God. It demands a willingness to believe the promise made innumerable times in the Bible. Expand your reach asks that you contemplate the truth that sowing and reaping affects not only your personal space but that of the community and world at large. In my life experience, people who are known to be generous are seemingly without exception exceptional people. One wonders was the person generous because she was exceptional or was she exceptional because she was generous.
Sow sparingly and reap sparingly. Sow generously and reap generously. Those who truly understand this understand the energy behind the spirit, the essence of God. Our labyrinth is very much compatible with the concept of giving. In writings to explain our labyrinth we said:
Labryinths are an ancient recognition of spiritual energy. Going back thousands of years labyrinths have independently existed in multiple cultures. Our labyrinth has 7 rings designed to traverse the material world through to the realm of higher consciousness.
Laying out a proper labyrinth requires a dowser. A dowser by definition is one who uses a divining rod to locate water or minerals. In the case of the labyrinth the divining rod is used to locate positive energy which for the building of a labyrinth is the path the labyrinth is to take. The dowser is required to pray to God, the source of all energy, that the answers resulting from dowsing will be for the greater good of all people and things.
The point is, civilizations have understood for thousands of years that God’s positive energy is there for the tapping. By channeling love, kindness, community and understanding we have the ability to influence the energy within our own space and beyond. Those who work with labyrinths say that all things, animate or inanimate, are living. That what separates humans from bricks is the frequency of their vibration. They tell us there are life forces or energy forces that we cannot see because they vibrate outside the range of frequency we are able to see. Not that farfetched when we know there are sounds we cannot hear because they are outside our range of hearing. Science tells us that all matter vibrates. Just as an aside, in order to prove the existence of the Higgs Boson God particle, a focus of studies at the Cern Large Hadron Collider laboratories in Geneva, Switzerland, scientists are expected to discern particle activity between vibrations where the particles under observation are vibrating at a rate of 1 billion times per second.
The effort to hold love in our hearts, the good deeds that we do, the virtues we defend, the tolerance we show our fellow man and woman does indeed influence the spiritual energy around us. But at the core of all that is good, is the call that all people be generous. Generous with our time, our love and very importantly our money. So the bottom line is this. There is no one among us here who has need to throw the baby out with the bath water. Our delivery system here could not be better. The beliefs we hold as Congregationalists are truly incomparable. In less than half a century our denomination has been at the forefront on issues that are reversing thousands of years of injustice.
Our own church physical structure, our ministry, our music, our youth program. They are all rock solid. We are blessed with congregants who are deeply faithful and committed to building community and willing to think outside the box to develop a closer relationship with God.
You now have the opportunity to go home and consider your pledge for 2016. Contemplate it. Walk our new labyrinth which by the way is all but finished. Make an effort to tap into the energy that’s there for the taking. If you’ve never given before or only on occasion, make a pledge today and discover what will become a new world for you. Be generous and tap in. This congregation is capable of filling the offering plate with all that we need. God has made us capable. Listen for God is calling you.
On November 22nd we will officially be celebrating Gratitude Sunday. In the meantime there will be pledge cards available in the sanctuary beginning next Sunday. Soon you will be receiving letters from the Stewardship committee with pledge cards enclosed encouraging you to bring in your pledge November 22nd for the blessing of the gifts. You need not wait until the 22nd to make your pledge.
In the name of Jesus Christ who so elegantly instructed us how to live a God centered life, Amen.