For Our Love and Money: A Canvass Sermon

The Twenty-First Sunday after Pentecost (RCL, Year A, Proper 22)
October 5, 2008

The Reverend Paul R. Abernathy, Rector

When I think of a love song, I imagine poetic words, perhaps set to music that extol the virtues of the object of the lover’s attention. Words of praise proclaiming the heights and depths of the lover’s intention to will the best for the one loved.

We hear such echoes this morning. “Let me sing for my beloved a love-song.”^[1] A poet, on behalf of a friend, sings a love song to a vineyard. Speaking in glorious terms of the character, the virtues of the land – fertile and high on a hill. Telling of the care of the lover for the land – ridding it of stones, planting the choicest vines, building a protective tower, hewing out a vat – all in anticipation of a harvest of grapes and vessels overflowing with wine.

But the more we listen, something’s gone terribly awry. Much has been done for the land, but the harvest fails. The grapes are bitter. The wine, sour. The love song becomes a dirge. Words of judgment supplant those of praise. The vineyard will become wasteland.

This sudden, violent turn is unfair. How can the vineyard be held responsible for a poor crop? Landowners and vintners, having done the best they could, have always had to wait for the capricious work of the weather and fate. So, why blame the vineyard and why destroy it before trying something else – a different fertilizer or another kind of grape?

Yet, the more we listen we discover that this isn’t about grapes – of mirth or of wrath – for the poet is a prophet named Isaiah. The beloved for whom the prophet sings is God and God’s beloved, the vineyard, is God’s people. A people expected to produce the fruit of righteousness – love and justice. They have fallen short, forsaking God’s purposes for their own selfish interests. And God’s judgment is that of a disappointed lover.

Today is Canvass Sunday. Today we inaugurate our annual solicitation for our financial pledges to fund St. Mark’s mission and ministry in the coming year.

But today perhaps isn’t the best day for a Canvass. Today comes at a difficult historical moment for our nation, verily, for the world. The mortgage meltdown, credit crunch, Wall Street’s woes, and speculations about the success of a Washington bailout have turned many a love song of present possibility regarding things people want to do and future hope of security about where people want to be into cries of uncertainty and worry. We know that America suffers from an inequitable distribution of wealth, the distance between poor and rich long being an established measure to determine the relative health of our society. However, with the calamity in our financial markets, we experience a far more evenhanded allocation of fear, stress, skepticism, and loss of trust. Misery not only loves, but apparently makes company.

This isn’t the best day for a Canvass. Nevertheless, today is Canvass Sunday and I am privileged to make a case for our offering of our hard earned dollars to St. Mark’s. I say “privileged” because as a characteristically pessimistic “glass half empty” person (truth to tell, even less, for if you ask me, “Paul, is the glass half full or half empty?” generally, I am tempted to reply, “What glass!”) and as a person who views money as the quintessential symbol of security, not freedom, in hard times, I tend to withhold, not give. Close, not open my hands. So, as George Meng, our able Canvass chair, has generously granted me the opportunity to preach on Canvass Sunday, I am challenged to think, to feel, and to act less like my real existential self and more like my true spiritual self, that greater part of me less given to fear and more to hope.

So, my friends, I make a case for our giving by reflecting on Isaiah, which has, at its heart, a two-party transaction of giving and receiving – a transaction that is the lens through which I want us to look at our Canvass.

This is a strange text! The primary actor is God, whose supernatural being is above our very natural human, never purely altruistic doing. God, the cosmic embodiment of agape love, wanting nothing for itself, but only willing the best for the beloved. However, here this supremely magnanimous God is decidedly not disinterested, but rather, with the judgment of love, desires, even demands a return on love’s investment. How strange! God, the ultimate Giver, longs to receive and the receiver, the people, learn that in receiving something is required – grateful giving.

In this necessity of God to give and to receive and Israel to receive and to give, I see both the tension and the resolution between Christian stewardship and philanthropy. Customarily, Christian stewardship is rooted in gratitude. We need salvation. God has saved us in Jesus. We are grateful. So, we give. Philanthropy, literally, love for humankind, is predicated on generosity. One has. Another needs. One gives so the other may have. In both cases, one, whether God or a person of greater means, is the giver and another, whether Israel or a person of lesser means, is the receiver. Yet, in Isaiah, I behold a greater truth. We – God, you, and I – are always both giver and receiver because we – God, you, and I – are always interested lovers, yearning to give and having a stake in the outcome.

So, friends, let’s get real! I invite us to give our dollars to St. Mark’s based on our consideration of two principles. One, our individual ability to give, therefore, not based on any comparison to anyone else. What are you, I able to do? That is the ground of your and my giving. Two, our need to give, being mindful of what we desire to receive. None of us ever gives without hope of gain. So, let us each be clear about what we want.

Believing that in this is love – our need to give and to receive, I ask you to ask what you can give to St. Mark’s and what St. Mark’s can give to you. In that open and honest calculus, I ask that you, with a lover’s judgment, determine your pledge.

[1] The appointed Hebrew Scripture text is Isaiah 5.1-7.