"All that I am and all that I have"

“All that I am and All that I have” 

When Cindy and I exchanged rings at our wedding ceremony 39 years ago, we said what the Book of Common Prayer asked us to say; “I give you this ring as a symbol of my vow and with all that I am and all that I have, I honor you, in the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.” (Book of Common Prayer p. 427)

“All that I am and all that I have”. 

We all belong to one another and moreover we belong to God with “all that we are and all that we have.” 

We come to the time when we launch our Membership and Pledge campaign. I ask you to pray about these things. We are members of Christ and of one another. We are Christ’s Body; the Church, as my namesake tells us in Scripture (Romans 12 and I Corinthians 12). As you pray about your Membership and your Pledge, I ask you also to pray about how you may reach out to family, friends, neighbors and to perfect strangers. How indeed are we to fill the earth with the knowledge of God as the waters cover the sea? (Habakkuk 2:14)

How might we reach out and exercise our ministry of Invitation? As “Jesus reached out his loving arms on the hard wood of the cross”, (Book of Common Prayer p. 101),  how might we reach out our loving arms to all? The invitation to belong to Jesus is not just to ourselves when we pledge and renew our church membership, but also to others as we seek to extend Christ’s Reign here on earth.

I needn’t tell you how urgent a matter it is to extend the Reign of God. Recent shootings in a house of worship in Pittsburg and in a night club in California remind us how urgent a matter it is to proclaim the love of God and the power of Jesus to heal us of all our soul’s diseases. 

Too many have turned away from that love. There is too much hate, anger and vitriol in our public discourse. There is too much untreated mental illness. We send our young off to war and when they come home they are left too often to put the pieces of their broken lives together all by themselves. We cannot wash our hands of any of these social ills.

The time for conversation is upon us. The time for invitation is now: a time to love, to forgive, to reconcile. And it is an urgent matter. The idea of Membership in Christ and generosity to the Church’s work is not a trivial matter but central to our core Mission. 

In our families, among our friends, and perfect strangers! All people, by whatever race, ethnicity, gender, orientation, class or language belong to God. 

We do not belong to ourselves. We belong to God. 

The Poor Widow recognized this simple fact. She had two copper coins worth a penny. She gave it all to God. She belongs to God forever in the same way that we all do.

I was pleased to see that a significant number of Native Americans have been added to the House of Representatives in Tuesday’s election. When their land was taken away from them they were presented with a perplexity. In much of Native American culture, the land does not “belong” to anybody. This is why having an address is so foreign to many tribes. The land belongs “The Great Spirit”, the One we call God. We are but sojourners on the land. Anyone therefore who thinks that it “belongs” to them is laboring under an an exaggeration of self importance.

For example, Chief Seattle was asked to give large tracts of land to the White Man. He responded with his famous oration in 1854. It is one of the few statements recorded for posterity which helps us understand how those native to this land viewed “ownership”. Listen to his words;

“Yonder sky has wept tears of compassion upon my people for centuries untold, and to us appears changeless and eternal…Our dead never forget this beautiful world that gave them being. They still love its verdant valleys, its murmuring rivers, its magnificent mountains…Tribe follows tribe, and nation follows nation, like the waves of the sea. It is the order of nature. Your time of decay may be distant, but it will surely come, for even the White Man…cannot be exempt from the common destiny of humankind. We the Red Man and you the White Man may be brothers after all. We will see. Let your Great Chief be just and deal kindly with my people, for the dead are not powerless…To us the ashes of our ancestors are sacred and their resting place is hallowed ground…Dead, did I say? No! There is no death, only a change of worlds.”

Chief Seattle recognized that everything, including our very lives are on loan to us. Furthermore he recognized that all tribes, nations and peoples are under the same God. It is futile for us to think of God as belonging to the White man or to the Red Man to the exclusion of others. God is as universal to the human condition as is the water with which life itself flows within us. 

The Book of Ruth is a Biblical case in point. Ruth is a Moabite woman; a foreigner. But she weds Boaz an Israelite. Their child Obed, became the father of Jesse, Jesse the father of David, and in a long line of ancestors Jesus is born under a Bright beautiful Star in Bethlehem. Jesus is a blend of blood lines, and becomes author of Salvation for ALL PEOPLE. 

The universal work of salvation that the Bible proclaims is true for all. We humans are still having difficulty in figuring out how generous God is to no matter who we are or where we are from.

The Poor Widow understood God’s generosity. Jesus pointed out when she put her copper coins worth but a penny into the treasury, she gave God, all that she was and all that she had.

So then whether we give large sums or two copper coins, we recognize that what we have is not ours to give, but a response to God’s generosity to us in the first place. 

All we are and all that we have belongs to God. 

If you are rich and you can give vast sums, thank you. I suspect that most of you, however are something less than rich. Thank you for your generosity. If you are poor, and you have never pledged before, that’s fine. Begin today with two copper coins. If you don’t have two begin with one. And thank you.

Jesus is watching you place who you are and what you have into God’s treasury. And Jesus alone recognizes how poor we are. Each and every one of us like the poor widow; “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all those who are contributing to the treasury. For all of them have contributed out of their abundance; but she out of her poverty has put in everything she had, all she had to live on.”

With all that I am and all that I have let us therefore render unto God the things that are God’s. 

Today marks 100 years since the Armistice. A moment of Remembrance now for the soldiers who gave all that they were and all that they had for us. 

In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

That mark our place; and in the sky

The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break the faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, thought poppies grow

In Flanders fields.

In the Name of God, the Most Holy, Undivided, and Everlasting Trinity. Amen.

Fr Paul