November 2009 Pastor's Highlander Column

Pastor’s Column
November 2009

Brothers & Sisters,

As I write these words, we as a community, the Body of Christ and the Highland Church family have just come out of an utterly awful week of personal grief, loss and pain.

At the same time we are in the midst of ramping up efforts to send a team to still-devastated parts of Louisiana all while we prepare for our annual stewardship campaign and get ready to celebrate Thanksgiving and the beginning of Lent.

As I looked at all of these competing difficulties, events and needs, I made the decision (hard-fought for me) to take a month away from our discussion of the Ten Commandments. Instead I combed my files and decided to engage in a bit of “literary stewardship and recycling”; I hope you won’t object.

But the message for us in terms of our collective human pain, hope, need, value and Christian duty is such that I think the approach is warranted this month. Toward that end, welcome back to December 2006 . . .

All last week I wracked my brain trying to link two seemingly unrelated intangibles in my head and then in print after Karen Christy reminded me that the deadline for my Highlander column was rapidly approaching, and I noticed that I still have an outstanding column due on the place and function of the Offering and Dedication in Worship at the same time that Christmas is approaching and I should say something about it.

Competing images battled in my brain and gave me a headache. “Great,” I thought, “one more holiday worry to file away! These two things don’t go together, at all!”

Well, I was wrong. They actually go together quite well if you think about them in the right way. First, though, I need to tell you of a holiday memory-flash I had from when I was about 17 years old.
It was after Christmas – the first full Christmas season after I had been working at my first job as a church janitor. I spent what then seemed to me as a lot of money on a Christmas gift for my Dad (I don’t even remember now what I got him). I do recall, however, feeling somewhat disappointed that he never displayed the new gift I’d gotten him — instead he kept some old gift I’d made him from sticks or clothes-pins when I was five or six. It was still on display in the spot in the dining room where to this day he keeps his nick-knacks.

I never said anything to him about it, but I just didn’t understand it. How could he keep up the crappy old piece of “whatever” and blow off the new expensive gift I’d purchased for him?

Well, as a parent now, I think I understand better. And this new understanding gives a certain insight into both the nature of our stewardship and God’s gift to us of Messiah and salvation, which of course is the reason for Christmas.

Over the past 12 years, my kids have given me — as I’m sure most of your kids have given you — certain pieces of their artwork, drawings, wood carvings and small trinkets. They are saved for posterity. Heck, the refrigerator looks like the Romper-Room version of the Louvre!

And I wouldn’t trade a single one of their gifts to Tina and me. They are priceless to us because we know that these items were made in love and “given from the top” of what our children could give to us. With that in mind, how could I desire a more costly replacement that didn’t take account of that all-important component — the heart?

Now then, the Presentation of Gifts, Tithes and Offerings during worship functions in that way for all of us.

Because God has created all of us in His own image; because He has redeemed us at high cost through the sacrificial death and resurrection of His only-begotten Son; because He claims us as His own adopted children through the gift of faith in that Son, we have a direct “heart-connection” that must be expressed.

And in expressing that connection, we are called upon by God to return to Him a portion (the first and best portion) of what He has given to us freely. We are His. We belong to Him and without Him we wouldn’t be here at all to have such conversations.

If this is so, and we genuinely love God and are thankful to Him for the life and gifts He has given to us, then it stands to reason that our gifts of love and thanksgiving should equally come from “the top and best” of what we have and are.

For adults with our practical minds, these gifts of money time and talent form the brick-and-mortar basis for the running of a congregation, the execution of important ministry programs, the maintenance of the Church building, and the care and feeding of the pastor. This is true, and all vitally important, but even more important is the fact that this functions in very tangible ways as the love gifts and offerings of God’s children to Him as Father.

He gives back to us the gifts we give to Him for our good, for learning to know Him better and for further spreading the Good News. And all the while He uses us and the building and ministry of the Church as His refrigerator. We and our love are clearly displayed for all the world to see.

Even the placement of the Presentation of Tithes is significant. It comes after the reading of the Scripture Lesson because it is the visible representation — the portrait, if you will — of our response to the Word of God given to us through Scripture reading and proclamation. This is how God gives Himself to us, and we are given the immediate opportunity to respond directly to Him.

Now, how does all of this tie in with Christmas?

Simply this; God gave us His greatest gift when He became a real flesh-and-blood person and was born of the Virgin Mary.

By doing so, He provided us with the possibility of forgiveness, genuine relationship with Himself and the promise of living as His children and not just as His creations.

Our response then to this act and gift of love on God’s part should be a deeper love, connection and devotion to the one Who is our Shepherd, Lord and Father.

As we enter this season and recall and recount the narratives of the Savior’s birth for each other and the world around us, we should be doing so with such joy and thanksgiving that we become again as children with their devotion and relative innocence. We should make ourselves, the talents God has given to us and the provision He places into our hands the very model of the best refrigerator art in the universe!

Such a re-emphasis on who we are in Christ is a far more fitting gift and display than near riots at high-end toy stores over the latest video games and fluffy stuffed critters that sing, dance and must be changed when tickled! These childish displays of greed, ignorance, ingratitude, spite and temper run 180○ in the wrong direction from everything we are called to be in Christ. They do not represent the love and care God demonstrates for us in the manger or the cross. And they make an evil and hateful mockery of the rightful stewardship we owe to God as creator and parent.

So this Thanksgiving / Advent / Christmas season, let us seriously reflect on the fact that our very lives and the salvation given us through the Holy Infant-become GodMan are a gift to us from a righteous and loving God. Equally, our lives as redeemed and revised by the Cross (everything we have and are) belongs rightly to God. Let us make ourselves and those lives fit gifts of love for the King of kings.

Brothers and sisters, especially in times when we are most distraught and in need of God’s continued and abiding grace and healing, let us remember that He first gave Himself for us and works redemption, healing and reconciliation in us. And in that vein, either we will be God’s blessed refrigerator art, or we will be cosmic graffiti. Good gifts of love are treasured, saved and well-used. Graffiti is an ugly stain that is of no good use; it is rubbed out or covered over as an eyesore and offense.

Remember the beloved holiday classic story based on the song, Little Drummer Boy. No gifts he brought fit for a king — except himself and the gift given to him by God. So, too, are we. We bring our whole selves to the table in thanks for God’s work in us. So which will we be? Are our lives fit gifts for the King to display, or will we become hideous wall-trash?

As the prophet foretold, “For to us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be on his shoulders. And He will be called Wonderful Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there will be no end. He will reign on David's throne and over His kingdom, establishing and upholding it with justice and righteousness from that time on and forever. The zeal of the Lord Almighty will accomplish this.” [Isaiah 9:6-7]

May you all enjoy a blessed and fruitful Thanksgiving and Advent Season!

Grace & Peace,
Pastor Rusty+