“Lord, To Whom Can We Go?”

by Lisa Meeder Turnbull, Diocesan Missioner for Stewardship and Planned Giving

Sermon preached in Hulls Cove on August 27, 2006

Pray with me that, in my speaking and in your hearing, we will together make known with boldness the mystery of the Gospel.

When I hear today’s Gospel reading (John 6:56-69), I am drawn to the opportunity Jesus gives the disciples to turn back, the chance to bail out. How many of us have faced that same moment in our own faith journeys? I certainly have… In fact, my college years were a fairly rich time of trying other ways of being in the world.

But when you recall a time when you might have turned back, can you also remember that moment in which you were able to say with conviction, “Lord, to whom can we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and know that you are the Christ, the Son of the living God.” Do you remember that “light bulb” moment, when you truly understood that in the feast of his body and blood, Jesus, the Christ, the Son of the living God, lives in you, and you in him? Clearly, each of us has at some point known this beautiful turning point in faith—there are lots of places any one of us could be on this beautiful summer morning. It is our conviction, our ongoing hunger and thirst for the Lord, which brings us back time and time again.

As a relatively new Episcopalian, I also notice in today’s Gospel that it is Peter who answers Jesus on behalf of the disciples. Because we affirm Apostolic Succession, Peter’s words are our words. Peter, the rock on whom the Church is built, speaks for all of us when he commits the twelve to discipleship.

Our discipleship, however, is a little different from that of Peter and the twelve—we can’t follow Jesus around the countryside, listening to his teachings first-hand and having private conversations about the true meaning of his words. Ours is an inherited discipleship. Yet it is no less difficult, nor is it any less demanding in its devotion to a living God. For us, the baptismal covenant is the means by which we declare our discipleship. In it we boldly promise to do some really hard things:

We promise to continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship—a way of life that even the apostles found hard to sustain. We promise to continue in the breaking of bread and in the prayers—again, a constant enactment of a faith so radical that by it we live in him and he lives in us.

We vow to persevere in resisting evil, to repent of our sins and return to the Lord. Not an easy discipline in our self-oriented culture.

We promise to proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ; to seek and serve Christ in all persons, loving our neighbors as ourselves; and to strive for justice and peace, respecting the dignity of every human being.

This is not easy stuff! From time to time it is only natural to find ourselves grumbling with the disciples, “This teaching is difficult. Who can accept it?” And yet, by God’s grace we find the strength to take these vows over and over again. With each Easter Vigil and with every baptism, we stand and affirm:

I believe in God, the Father almighty, creator of heaven and earth.

I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord.

I believe in the Holy Spirit.

This is our beautiful, present-day, Anglican way of saying with Peter, “We have come to believe and know.” We acknowledge that the teaching is hard, yet we embrace the life of discipleship.

The question then becomes, “How?” How does one continue in the apostles’ teaching and fellowship, in the breaking of bread and in the prayers? How does one proclaim by word and example the Good News of God in Christ? How does one seek and serve Christ in all persons, and strive for justice and peace? Those very questions take us to the heart of stewardship. Put simply, stewardship is all that we do, with all that we have, after we say, “I believe.” All that we do…. With all that we have….

As stewards, we understand, not just in our heads, but deeply, in our very beings, that everything is a gift from God. Every single thing that we can taste, touch, smell, feel, or hear…and even those intangibles that lie beyond our senses…are gifts from the very God who made us in his image. And because we are in covenant with that God, and with Jesus Christ his only son, and with the Holy Spirit, we cannot help but live our lives in an attitude of engaged thanksgiving.

I had no idea what I was getting into when I bought my first house. I was just about to turn 25. I had a master’s degree and a job that paid well. I had run a sample monthly budget to be sure I was OK with the mortgage payment…but it was only after those first few months of living in the house that I understood my new reality—the mortgage payment wasn’t the problem; it was the utilities, and the maintenance, and all the trips to the hardware that were killing me! Who knew?

But over time I discovered that I actually enjoyed the responsibility. I enjoyed planning and making careful decisions with my disposable income. I enjoyed a sense of achievement in learning to do the work myself. I learned to live into an attitude of engaged thanksgiving. Through the lens of engaged thanksgiving, paying the bills became a celebration—a celebration of my ability to earn a good living, a celebration of the gift of education, and a much-needed celebration of what my physical body could achieve.

That same sense of celebration and engaged thanksgiving lies at the heart of the tithes and offerings that we bring to the altar each time we continue in the fellowship of the apostles, and in the breaking of the bread. When we understand our gifts and pledges to be celebrations of our abundance, the tithe becomes natural, the gifts become joyful. We become the kind of stewards who want to bring forward the first fruits of our labor.

I invite you this morning, and as you discern your response to the upcoming annual appeal in this congregation, to come…with joy…to meet our Lord...that together we may abide in him, and he in us.

Amen.