Give or Give Back
October 28, 2007
Stewardship Sunday
by Rev. Dr. Donna Schaper

Apparently there is a TV Guide way of writing things, which I am just learning. It is to be ever so brief and pointed. The Titanic movie is to be described as "Love Story in which Boat Sinks." If this sermon were to go that direction, it would be reduced to "Give Money to Judson." Simple, straightforward, to the point. No embroidery. No hemming or hawing. Because I have little regard for the unembellished, today I want to talk you into giving money to Judson in a roundabout way. Money is just a thing. Many of you have already given your hearts here - the money piece is secondary. Still others would like to find a place where they might give their hearts - and for you and for those who are total newcomers, my apologies. This message is about giving and about the gifted. And we only do it once a year so cut me a little slack. I happen to love asking people for money - so don't leave yet. Checkbooks join date books and Blackberries in being the most holy objects in our lives. They are both holy and important. Knowing what to do with them is the sign of a fully alive, God or ultimate driven, person - and that goes straight to the heart of spirituality.

Most people miss the beauty of the spiritual life by imagining it ethereal and otherworldly. These are people who just don't get the Jesus story. God came down. Heaven joined earth. Eternity caressed time. Spirit costumed itself in matter. Incarnation - in the Spanish, Encarnación - is in the meat. God is in the meat. Chili con Christ. Christ con carne. If you are even slightly curious about the Jesus story, you find yourself talking about money all the time. What's the beef? Where's the meat? What is the heart of a person's life? Often it is the rent. Today we are talking about paying the rent at Judson. Yes, we do own the building. Imagine that: a couple hundred of us own this building, these windows, that sound system, this legacy. As usual when we get to incarnational theology, we find ourselves asking, "What was God thinking about???" Trusting us with this? Trusting earth to us? Trusting heaven to us? Oh, my.

I have already said I am not going to TV Guide this. What's wrong with the TV Guide form of writing is that people usually miss the color of the story. You all have many other good causes to which you could contribute. You have debts. You have families. You have colleges and universities with high-paid development people who know just how and when to knock on your door. Why Judson? I want to give you five reasons. I present them in order to embellish your giving back to Judson for what it has given you.

The reasons all stem from the scriptural text, "From those to whom much is given, much is expected."

The first reason is that we are gifted. We are gifted in that oppressive way that a child is gifted. Most children enjoy the first chapter of being gifted and hate the rest. We love it when an adult in our system declares that we are gifted. And then we get to worry about what that means the rest of our lives.

I was lucky enough to have in my family system a woman named Mary Hocken. Some of you know her. She is British - not just English, but British. When our twins were born, she showed up with a large pram that would fit all three of the children. She is fussy, funny, and rarely misses the chance to give advice. She is a fine soprano and actress - and that adds to the unusual gravitas the British get by just opening their mouths. She overheard people telling our children that they were gifted. She assured them that they were not - and that if they were, they should do everything in their power to forget about it. Plus, as my eldest's Godmother, she got to make a speech at Isaac's Bar Mitzvah (our family is both Jewish and Christian). She launched into quite a speech, assuring Isaac that he was not gifted at all, that he was not the offspring of gifted parents, and that the best thing he could do with his life was to do poorly on his upcoming SATs.

Then she winked.

By the way, Isaac complied on the SATs. Actually all three of my children did rather poorly at their SATs and all three got into what might be described as their "safety schools." I want to underscore that notion of safety schools. I'd like this to be a high-performing safety church, one that has Mary's wisdom about our gifts and understands its paradox.

From those to whom much is given, much is expected. From those to whom much is given, much is required. I wish I knew Greek well enough (I did not perform that well in seminary) to tell you what the verb in this mysterious text actually is. Expected? Required? Demanded? Who knows? Whatever the verb, gifted is problematic.

The pressure, once gifted, is ridiculous. Mary is right: the very best thing we can do is to forget about it.

So, reason one to give money to Judson: we are gifted. We are gifted with the legacy of off-Broadway, of great dance and art, of abortion rights secured, of ministry to prostitutes, of drinking water to Italian immigrants. When I say that I am the pastor of Judson Memorial Church in New York City, I rarely have to say anything more. People usually just say wow, and then they say wow again, and I work very hard not to let it go to my head. Being an underachiever, I usually fail.

We are gifted with a legacy of accomplishment. Our task is to preserve, expand, and maintain that legacy - while not letting it go to our heads. We are, paradoxically, gifted. To do well with any gift, one must figure out how to give it back. We don't just give because it is not ours in the first place. I love to remind congregations on Stewardship Sunday that we do not own this building, could not own it, but instead inherited it and are simply stewards of it. We do have responsibility for it. But we do not own it. We carry it through a part of a century and pass it on. I knew a church in Newark that was so alive and so poor that it put a mortgage on its building. That's right. They got the bank to give them a mortgage on a building they already owned. With the money, they built a Youth Center. The congregation liked the practice of paying for its building in real time so much that when the mortgage was paid off, they re-mortgaged it. Now, that is stewardship.

I met a malapropping 14-year-old this week who told me I didn't have to worry about her taking drugs because she is a "Preservative." Judson may not be conservative, but it is preservative. When we give money to Judson, we are preserving it. My 14-year-old friend is Mexican and English is not her first language. She also told me that "Anglos have always compressed the rest of us," and that one of our friends got in so much trouble he had to do "customer service." Her mother told me later that she also thinks that the father of psychology is "Fred." This delightful - utterly delightful - young woman is the reason we preserve this place that keeps people from compressing each other. Money has to do with the future as well as the present.

The first reason you should give money to Judson is that we are gifted. We are gifted that young women like this even come to us. Such marvels, young and old, fill up our building all day and all week long. We are gifted to be able to be as open as we are. We are gifted. From whom much is given, much is asked.

The second reason is almost the opposite of the first. While you don't own your gifts or your church, you do want to own it. You both do and should want to own your church. My last congregation was one with a very large endowment. The congregation didn't own the church; the endowment owned the church. I know some of you are thinking that our recent fundraising success gets you off the hook. It doesn't. If anything, if you were smart, you'd be very careful not to let soft money run this institution. You'd want to make sure that the magnificent democracy we have here, comprised of a couple hundred of us own this place, will be deeply realized in our polity and our practice. I exult in the fact that the bread on my table comes from your pocket. You pay me directly. I work for you. I like that. I like that a lot. You don't own me, but you and I together own this place and - back to giftedness - it is our job to govern our little part of the 21st century with excellence, vigor, and strategic sense. We are stewards of great gifts. We don't own them but we do own them.

Let me just tell you a little story about our neighbor to the north. Riverside Church is in negotiations with Columbia University to rent out a fairly large part of its space. Ah. I wonder who will own Riverside if that goes through. St. Mark's in the Bowery, our neighbor to the East, has been approached many times to sell its air rights. I wonder who will own the congregation if that happens. I do not have a blanket perspective on air rights or on rentals to universities; yes, indeed, we do rent to the NYU dance department here. I do have a blanket perspective, however, on being owned by outsiders, whether they are endowments from the past or rentals in the present. Congregations, especially urban congregations, have to be very careful about who owns them.

A small Seventh Day Adventist college, Columbia Union, has just rejected a lucrative offer from Minnesota Public Radio, backing out of negations with WGTS, their religious radio station. It might have been a 25 million dollar deal. The college thought they might be able to use their station for their own Core mission. Congregations, especially little congregations with big legacies that live on hot real estate, need to be especially mindful about their own governance, their own systems, their own Core. We are Davids, and there are Goliaths out there. Again, getting money to do ministry is a very fine thing, but soft money is not a fine thing for little institutions. Hard money, which is to say pledges, which is to say you, is what matters.

Hard money buys freedom, and freedom is what places with missions like ours need. We need to be able to say to the federal government, "Sorry, you will just not negate due process and pick up immigrants willy-nilly. You won't raid people's homes at dawn." We need to be able to say that queers and LGBT people have rights that our own Christian friends deny. We need to be able to say these things out loud, without fear of being shut down or run over. The second reason you should give to Judson is that you need to own this place.

The third reason you need to give to Judson is that we flip the script. We are pebbles in the gears and wheels of global greed. We at least have freedom of speech and can say that greed is getting greedier. When we hear the news about how terrible it is that some children have lead in their toys, we wonder what is happening to the Chinese workers who are standing next to the machines producing those toys all day long. We care that there is one inspector for every 37,000 workers in Chinese factories. Cancer is growing in these factories at a rapid rate. Very few care that the machines that make the plastic bags we use all day long are made by Chinese workers who often lose arms in the process. We are a congregation, a church, a meeting room, and a sanctuary that flips the script. We are urgent about what is happening to the last, the least, the lost, the hidden, the armless, the unprotected. We are urgent in the name of Jesus, the one in the meat of things. When you give to Judson, you give, in a pebble-like way, voice to the voiceless, educating others and showing that lead is not just a problem for American children but also for Chinese workers. Here you learn to flip the script. Here you learn to see the whole picture. We are here in order to show others and ourselves the whole picture. That, as Master Card would tell you, is priceless.

The fourth reason you need to give to Judson is that we are a bargain. Because of our legacy and a judicious use of it to raise more money this year, what you get for your pledge is much more than what you would get for it if we hadn't raised some outside money for community ministers. Eleven of them. They are working for you and being paid for by others. Think of NPR and the 2-for-1 deal. You are getting a bargain in ministry this year, so give generously to keep the base alive and alert for the next bargain.

The fifth and final reason is that Judson has hidden in its large self a little bit of your heart's desire. You need a safety school, a place where you can go and not be on stage, worrying about whether you are still "box office." You need a place where someone will visit you in the hospital, pray for you, give a damn about whether you don't show up. OK, I have to say it: a place where everybody knows your name.

We are that place. We are simultaneously a gifted, high-achieving organization and a safety school.

Now, that is real bargain. In fundraising, we are taught to line up the giver with their heart's highest desire and then say we are it. Drunk drivers stopped: we can do that. Peace in the Middle East: we can do that. A place of safety that is not self-satisfied: we can do that. You already do it.

I wish all of you could have my vantage point on what happened just this week at Judson. A posse of people took care of a woman with a botched abortion - we even got her boss involved, paying for the antibiotics. Another posse took care of one of our members in the hospital. She couldn't get any rest, so frequent were the phone calls. Jean Murai was buried from here in a service that allowed the "old" village and its walkers, canes, hearing aids, and old hippie clothes to limp in and sing songs and be glad that they were alive. Several of you went up to the Bronx to partner with a church there on sanctuary. Another group held a demonstration at a fancy restaurant on behalf of restaurant workers there. Still another Community Minster met again with the Board of the TransMasculine Community Network and hosted them with grace and hospitality, at Judson. Michael Conley's concert series kicked off on Friday night to great acclaim. And I could go on. I call this the little meeting room that could, and I thank each and every one of you for being one of the most high-achieving safety schools/churches in the nation.

Of course there are a few good reasons not to give to Judson. You don't have any money. That's always a good one. So give us time. Give us energy. Give us enthusiasm. Pray for us. Plus, when I brag that we flip the script and pebble the machine and offer a little kindness and own ourselves, I know that it is not always completely true. It is, however, true enough, enough of the time, to warrant mention. Bragging we don't really need. As we always said in Florida, "It's not the heat, it's the humility." When you are gifted, the most important thing of all is to forget about it.

So, I was in Sarasota this weekend, watching my son play in the national club Frisbee tournament. You will be glad to know that he quite thoroughly underachieved. Which is to say he lost most of his games and made a lot of errors. I have watched him star for so long in this particular game that it is very hard on me to watch him lose. Plus, he needs a knee operation and is out of shape as a result of it. Congregations that are gifted are not always gifted, just like athletes who are gifted are not always gifted.

What helps us be as gifted and as giving-back of those gifts as we can is, of course, money and time, judiciously spent. You have to train. You have to put out.

Anyway, while staying in my usual fleabag of a hotel in Sarasota, a frog jumped out of my toilet. Yes, a frog. I flipped out and called the woman from the front desk, who came in and spoke to the frog in a mellifluous Spanish, the kind she thought I didn't understand, about the stupid Anglo woman who couldn't catch a frog herself. I defended myself and said that I happened to be quite afraid of frogs, and she said, in a refined English, "It could have been worse. It could have been an alligator."

So Judson, hear this: it could be worse. You could not be gifted. You could have been an alligator. Instead of being a congregation that others watch with way too much attention, you could be like most other Protestant Churches: in a despair about the despair, immersed in a desultoriness about the desultoriness. You could be bored and be sitting around whining about where the young people are.

Permit me a footnoted word from the nitty-gritty: we have raised our budget by around 20% this year. We are easily doing that much more ministry, if not thrice that. If you want to pledge for the first time, great. If you want to make an increase, even better: think 20%. If you wonder what a pledge is, let me give you one woman's interpretation: it is a version of the tithe, or 10% of your income after taxes. Figure you give 5% to other causes to which you are committed. Judson would love to see 5% of your income after taxes. If you can't do anything even close to that, don't let perfection get in your way. We appreciate all gifts of money, time, and energy. Just do me one favor: don't come here and enjoy this place and not give some of your heart to it. Plate gifts are wonderful, but they don't allow us to plan. Pledging allows planning, and that is always a better use of institutional money than wondering.

Why give to Judson? Because you are gifted. Because you own the place. Because you want to continue to open the place so you can be a larger pebble in the greed machine's gears. Because you want to keep on flipping the script. Because you want a place where you yourself can be safe and known. I know that TV Guide would have said it better - but they have a lot more money than I do. Amen.