Michael Denton
October 1st, 2006
St. Paul’s UCC, Palatine
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
7:1 So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. 7:2 On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, "What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled." 7:3 Then Queen Esther answered, "If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me -- that is my petition -- and the lives of my people -- that is my request. 7:4 For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king." 7:5 Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, "Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?" 7:6 Esther said, "A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!" Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.
7:9 Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, "Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman's house, fifty cubits high." And the king said, "Hang him on that." 7:10 So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated. 9:20 Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, 9:21 enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, 9:22 as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.
For a little more than a year, I worked at group home in Colorado with young women who’d been abused. Our home was the last stop before they turned 18 and were, more or less, out on their own. One of our tasks was to help teach them life skills that would help them once they were out on their own and we’d meet once or twice a week to talk though some specific tasks they were working on as well as some things they pointed out to each other. Now, these kids had lived rough lives, many of them had spent a lot of time on the street and had to struggle with a base thresh hold of anger that was higher than most kids’. A lot of this anger came out in their language. These kids could cuss. They really, really cussed a lot. They cussed in a way that would’ve made the characters from The Sopranos or Deadwood blush. They cussed when they were happy. They cussed when they were sad. They cussed when they were angry or depressed or excited or tired. It just didn’t matter. They cussed.
Well, at one of our weekly meetings, one of the residents decided that, really, there was just too much cussing going on and decided she needed to say something about it. Now, there is no way that, from the pulpit, I’m going to quote the exact interchange that took place because, well, I like your pastors and don’t want to cause them any coronary difficulties and, in addition to that, I’d kind of like to keep my job. So, I’m going to paraphrase. We were sitting around in a circle when one of the young women said something like this: You know what I’ve been thinking? I think we curse too much. We’re just a bunch of people who curse. Now, the irony of this statement was that it took about twice as much time for her to say this, as it did me, because of the shear number of expletives that were in this statement. One of the girls said in reply: No one is going to tell me what I can or can not say. She was offended enough that her reply took about three times as long. But then, one of the other girls piped up and talked about the idea that if they didn’t clean up their language, they might be able to get jobs. Another girl said that, one day, she wanted to have children and that she didn’t want to curse in from of them. Another girl talked about how her mouth embarrassed some boy she went out with, once. My colleague or I didn’t dare try to encourage them to do one thing or another but she did ask them why they though they used the language they did. I don’t remember everything they said but I remember what one of the kids said and, in some ways it was the most honest and brilliant. She simply said, “We’ve been cursed, so we curse.” All the girls kind of nodded in agreement and my colleague and I just kind of sat there, holding our breath. One of the other girls piped in; “I don’t wanna feel cursed any more.” The other girls nodded. Another girl suggested a cursing jar with the idea being that every time someone cussed, you owed the jar a quarter and, at the end of the month, the house would vote on what they wanted to put the money towards. All the girls agreed. They cleaned about a giant, industrial size pretzel container, pealed off the label and stuck a new sign on it that said, “Curse jar.” They never filled it up all of the way but the sound of a quarter being slammed in to the jar was something you heard on a pretty regular basis. My favorite memory was when my favorite residents, walked in to the office, threw a roll of quarters in to the jar and, before I could ask any questions, she put her hand out and closed her eyes in a way that made it really clear I was supposed to be silent for a moment and said, in an expletive laden sentence, something like, “It’s been a bad day. I’m going to curse, a lot. I’m throwing in a roll and we’re just going to call it even, OK.” I was laughing too hard at that point to suggest anything different.
But, sometimes when I looked at that jar, I couldn’t help but to see it as a jar full of curses that these girls felt; that, in most cases, were ways that other people tried to curse them or burden them. In this jar were the curses of abandonment; the curses of physical and sexual abuse; the curses of fear and violence and self-doubt and drug dependency and poverty and homelessness. The jar was heavier than the quarters that filled it. And, at the end of every month, they would take these curses and transform them into something good that they could all share, together. It was never anything huge – usually some kind of food that they’d have delivered – but it was important. It was one tiny part of their life where they made the decision to change things and do something different with what they experienced as curses.
The book of Esther is the story of a people who, in many ways, had felt cursed. They were in what is modern day Iran during a time several years after the Exile. Although a large number of people, probably most Jews, had headed back to what is not modern day Israel, many had made their home in other places and decided to stay among a group of people who didn’t always seem to want them there. In the Middle East, during this time, strangers were welcomed warmly as guests but not as warmly if they decided to settle in an area that wasn’t traditionally theirs. Resources were not plentiful. In most cases, their presence was seen as incursion of sorts, they weren’t treated well and, frequently, they were taxed more than the general population. It was unusual for the initial residents to try and physically eliminate the presence of the new stranger.
The story of Esther is a story of a woman who saved her people from genocide in a land away from Israel. Almost as interesting as the story within the Book of Esther is the story about the Book of Esther. If you haven’t read this story before, and it really is a good story, take some time when you head home this afternoon and read through it. It’s not long, at all. One of the things you’ll discover is that there’s no mention of God at all. Sure, you can see where God might be implied but there’s no explicit mention of God. This story also changed some of the practices of Judaism itself. This story was so popular that a new festival, Purim, began to be celebrated. Up until this point, the only festivals that were celebrated were the ones mentioned in the Torah. But, this festival was so popular that the rabbi’s added this one to the previous list of popular festivals. Not only that, Esther was so popular that the rabbinic tradition made her one of seven recognized female prophets.
Now, this is also a story of sex, political intrigue and violence where the bad guy loses. The story ends with “Mordecai the Jew was next in rank to King Ahasuerus, and he was powerful among the Jews and popular with his many kindred, for he sought the good of his people and interceded for the welfare of all his descendants;” which is the biblical equivalent of “And they all lived happily ever after. . .”
Within this story, there is this transformation that takes place. The Jews move from feeling cursed to clearly feeling blessed. After the Jews were saved, there was a moment of great celebration. There is a moment in today’s lectionary reading from Esther where it says: “Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.” As opposed to some sort of fining system in order to correct a behavior or to try to purge some sense of being cursed or seeing giving as taxing, Mordecai is suggesting something very, very different. Mordecai is suggesting that the way to show thankfulness, to celebrate liberation, to celebrate freedom is by sharing gifts with your friends and, then, passing on the gift of liberation to those who are bound.
Within the United Church of Christ, we’ve got a fund we call Our Churches’ Wider Mission or you may hear it referred to by its initials, OCWM. On the first Sunday in October, we also ask for a special offering called Neighbors in Need. Now, I’ve never heard this from you but some of our churches look at the request of these monies as a some sort of burden; that these are requests coming from “the denomination” in order to support some sort of administrative structure that doesn’t seem to be helping them as directly as they’d like or that they focus on some of the more controversial positions The United Church of Christ has taken on this issue or that. These things are sometimes looked upon almost as a tax. But most people who know a lot about OCWM have a very different perspective.
But then, there’s Mordecai: “Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.” I really think that there’s this sense promoted that the reason we give is primarily out of a sense of obligation but, in some ways, that’s theology that comes from a sense of deficit and sacrifice and, although these ideas have a really important place in our beliefs and our theology, it’s incomplete. A sacrificial motivation can be OK but only if it points towards transformation and liberation and transformation and liberation are things to celebrate; these risks we take, these transformations we experience that move us from “sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday.”
I don’t know about you, I don’t know your history, but I grew up in another denomination; The United Methodist Church. I think the United Methodist Church is a great denomination but I also reached a moment within my spiritual life where I couldn’t stay there anymore. I’m not the first generation of ministers in my family. As far as we’ve been able to figure, if I would have stayed within the United Methodist Church I would have been the sixth or seventh generation of Methodist ministers. 10 years ago, when I became part of the United Church of Christ, I wasn’t really leaving the United Methodist Church as much as I felt called to ministry within the United Church of Christ. I felt called to be part of a denomination where a local church, in covenant with other local churches and the wider church, figured out how they could best serve God and God’s people within their local context. I felt called to be part of a denomination that did not set working for social justice apart from a full Christian spiritual practice. I felt called to be part of a denomination where I had the opportunity to invite my friends who were gay and lesbian in to the fullest life of the church, including ordination. I felt called to be part of a denomination that had room for the most liberal of churches as well as the most conservative of churches and everything in between. I felt called to be part of church that recognized both the need to send missionaries to other parts of the world in cooperation not coercion of the Christian communities and also recognized our spiritual need to humbly accept missionaries from other countries to help in our own ongoing conversion. I was called to be part of the United Church of Christ and when I walked in to the doors of Hale United Church of Christ in Dayton, Ohio, I was also welcomed home. Again, I think the United Methodist Church is a great denomination but, for me, to be part of that particular denomination was a spiritual burden and not spiritually honest. I gave my offering with the hope that the denomination would be transformed. Within the United Church of Christ, it’s different for me. Within this denomination, I give my offering because I feel blessed and I want to support the denomination that welcomed me home. There may be many of you who feel the same way.
Mordecai talked about celebrating by sending “gifts of food to one another” out of celebration when the Jewish people found a home within the Persian Empire. Your church’s gifts to Our Churches Wider Mission are like celebratory gifts of food to your sisters and brothers in the United Church of Christ where we’ve all been able to find a home. There’s this line in the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” at the moment when there’s the run on the banks. One of the town’s people is asking to withdraw their money and George has to explain to them that it’s not like that; that their money isn’t just put away in some safe where it can be easily withdrawn. He tells them, “Your money is in his house and her house.” The money you give to Our Churches’ Wider Mission isn’t just in one place either. A good piece of your OCWM offerings is a gift that stays within the Illinois Conference and helps open new churches, helps restart churches that have been struggling, and helps churches through other moments of transition. Your OCWM offerings also support the staff of the Illinois Conference, including me. Among other things, we’re working with churches to find new pastors when their pastors have left; we help churches as they struggle with conflict; we help local churches realize the opportunities there are for mission within the denomination; we’re available for pastors who need pastoral care; we officiate at ordinations and installations on behalf of you; we’re present with churches when they enter into their own moments of crisis. Your gifts help support your camps, conference wide gatherings for pastors and laity and is helping to establish conference wide programming for youth. Within the Chicago Metropolitan Association my colleague Rev. Edward Goode and our office support staff - Russell Barefield and Bertha Condra - work with 108 congregations; almost 350 pastors; seven major UCC related institutions; and 74 students considering ordination to ministry.
Your celebratory gifts to OCWM also help support the work of your church nationally and internationally. Your OCWM monies help provide the staff that develop educational materials for Sunday School classes; supplement the pensions of retired pastors who were in small and poor churches through their careers; help support mission programs in 85 different countries; support 190 missionaries throughout the world; support interfaith dialogue, human rights advocacy, promotion of health ministries; international social and economic development programs; disaster preparedness; refugee advocacy and resettlement and much, much, much more. Only 7.4% of the monies received through OCWM go towards administrative costs; a number below most non-profit organizations. Your gifts and the gifts of your sibling churches aren’t gifts to some wider structure that has nothing to do with local church ministry. In fact, it’s the very opposite. The celebratory gifts local churches give to Our Churches Wider Missions are gifts we give to each other out of the recognition of gratitude to all God has given us through the Church. The Neighbors in Need offering that UCC churches are receiving today is specifically a “gift to the poor” that helps with direct, hand on services as well as advocacy to address those factors that cause people to be poor in the first place. It also helps address other areas of social justice such as violence prevention; works against the wide variety of prejudicial policies and behaviors that we humans find ourselves caught up in; and advocates for a world that is fairer and safer for all God’s people. Our gifts that come from gratitude for our blessings, are helping transform the lives of people whose lives sometimes feel cursed.
Sisters and brothers, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for those gifts of celebration, those gifts of blessing, that your congregation already gives to Our Churches’ Wider Mission and the special offerings that you participate in throughout the year. We are so, so blessed to be part of the United Church of Christ. How can we help but to celebrate? How can we help but to give?
October 1st, 2006
St. Paul’s UCC, Palatine
Esther 7:1-6, 9-10; 9:20-22
7:1 So the king and Haman went in to feast with Queen Esther. 7:2 On the second day, as they were drinking wine, the king again said to Esther, "What is your petition, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to the half of my kingdom, it shall be fulfilled." 7:3 Then Queen Esther answered, "If I have won your favor, O king, and if it pleases the king, let my life be given me -- that is my petition -- and the lives of my people -- that is my request. 7:4 For we have been sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be killed, and to be annihilated. If we had been sold merely as slaves, men and women, I would have held my peace; but no enemy can compensate for this damage to the king." 7:5 Then King Ahasuerus said to Queen Esther, "Who is he, and where is he, who has presumed to do this?" 7:6 Esther said, "A foe and enemy, this wicked Haman!" Then Haman was terrified before the king and the queen.
7:9 Then Harbona, one of the eunuchs in attendance on the king, said, "Look, the very gallows that Haman has prepared for Mordecai, whose word saved the king, stands at Haman's house, fifty cubits high." And the king said, "Hang him on that." 7:10 So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai. Then the anger of the king abated. 9:20 Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, 9:21 enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, 9:22 as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.
For a little more than a year, I worked at group home in Colorado with young women who’d been abused. Our home was the last stop before they turned 18 and were, more or less, out on their own. One of our tasks was to help teach them life skills that would help them once they were out on their own and we’d meet once or twice a week to talk though some specific tasks they were working on as well as some things they pointed out to each other. Now, these kids had lived rough lives, many of them had spent a lot of time on the street and had to struggle with a base thresh hold of anger that was higher than most kids’. A lot of this anger came out in their language. These kids could cuss. They really, really cussed a lot. They cussed in a way that would’ve made the characters from The Sopranos or Deadwood blush. They cussed when they were happy. They cussed when they were sad. They cussed when they were angry or depressed or excited or tired. It just didn’t matter. They cussed.
Well, at one of our weekly meetings, one of the residents decided that, really, there was just too much cussing going on and decided she needed to say something about it. Now, there is no way that, from the pulpit, I’m going to quote the exact interchange that took place because, well, I like your pastors and don’t want to cause them any coronary difficulties and, in addition to that, I’d kind of like to keep my job. So, I’m going to paraphrase. We were sitting around in a circle when one of the young women said something like this: You know what I’ve been thinking? I think we curse too much. We’re just a bunch of people who curse. Now, the irony of this statement was that it took about twice as much time for her to say this, as it did me, because of the shear number of expletives that were in this statement. One of the girls said in reply: No one is going to tell me what I can or can not say. She was offended enough that her reply took about three times as long. But then, one of the other girls piped up and talked about the idea that if they didn’t clean up their language, they might be able to get jobs. Another girl said that, one day, she wanted to have children and that she didn’t want to curse in from of them. Another girl talked about how her mouth embarrassed some boy she went out with, once. My colleague or I didn’t dare try to encourage them to do one thing or another but she did ask them why they though they used the language they did. I don’t remember everything they said but I remember what one of the kids said and, in some ways it was the most honest and brilliant. She simply said, “We’ve been cursed, so we curse.” All the girls kind of nodded in agreement and my colleague and I just kind of sat there, holding our breath. One of the other girls piped in; “I don’t wanna feel cursed any more.” The other girls nodded. Another girl suggested a cursing jar with the idea being that every time someone cussed, you owed the jar a quarter and, at the end of the month, the house would vote on what they wanted to put the money towards. All the girls agreed. They cleaned about a giant, industrial size pretzel container, pealed off the label and stuck a new sign on it that said, “Curse jar.” They never filled it up all of the way but the sound of a quarter being slammed in to the jar was something you heard on a pretty regular basis. My favorite memory was when my favorite residents, walked in to the office, threw a roll of quarters in to the jar and, before I could ask any questions, she put her hand out and closed her eyes in a way that made it really clear I was supposed to be silent for a moment and said, in an expletive laden sentence, something like, “It’s been a bad day. I’m going to curse, a lot. I’m throwing in a roll and we’re just going to call it even, OK.” I was laughing too hard at that point to suggest anything different.
But, sometimes when I looked at that jar, I couldn’t help but to see it as a jar full of curses that these girls felt; that, in most cases, were ways that other people tried to curse them or burden them. In this jar were the curses of abandonment; the curses of physical and sexual abuse; the curses of fear and violence and self-doubt and drug dependency and poverty and homelessness. The jar was heavier than the quarters that filled it. And, at the end of every month, they would take these curses and transform them into something good that they could all share, together. It was never anything huge – usually some kind of food that they’d have delivered – but it was important. It was one tiny part of their life where they made the decision to change things and do something different with what they experienced as curses.
The book of Esther is the story of a people who, in many ways, had felt cursed. They were in what is modern day Iran during a time several years after the Exile. Although a large number of people, probably most Jews, had headed back to what is not modern day Israel, many had made their home in other places and decided to stay among a group of people who didn’t always seem to want them there. In the Middle East, during this time, strangers were welcomed warmly as guests but not as warmly if they decided to settle in an area that wasn’t traditionally theirs. Resources were not plentiful. In most cases, their presence was seen as incursion of sorts, they weren’t treated well and, frequently, they were taxed more than the general population. It was unusual for the initial residents to try and physically eliminate the presence of the new stranger.
The story of Esther is a story of a woman who saved her people from genocide in a land away from Israel. Almost as interesting as the story within the Book of Esther is the story about the Book of Esther. If you haven’t read this story before, and it really is a good story, take some time when you head home this afternoon and read through it. It’s not long, at all. One of the things you’ll discover is that there’s no mention of God at all. Sure, you can see where God might be implied but there’s no explicit mention of God. This story also changed some of the practices of Judaism itself. This story was so popular that a new festival, Purim, began to be celebrated. Up until this point, the only festivals that were celebrated were the ones mentioned in the Torah. But, this festival was so popular that the rabbi’s added this one to the previous list of popular festivals. Not only that, Esther was so popular that the rabbinic tradition made her one of seven recognized female prophets.
Now, this is also a story of sex, political intrigue and violence where the bad guy loses. The story ends with “Mordecai the Jew was next in rank to King Ahasuerus, and he was powerful among the Jews and popular with his many kindred, for he sought the good of his people and interceded for the welfare of all his descendants;” which is the biblical equivalent of “And they all lived happily ever after. . .”
Within this story, there is this transformation that takes place. The Jews move from feeling cursed to clearly feeling blessed. After the Jews were saved, there was a moment of great celebration. There is a moment in today’s lectionary reading from Esther where it says: “Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.” As opposed to some sort of fining system in order to correct a behavior or to try to purge some sense of being cursed or seeing giving as taxing, Mordecai is suggesting something very, very different. Mordecai is suggesting that the way to show thankfulness, to celebrate liberation, to celebrate freedom is by sharing gifts with your friends and, then, passing on the gift of liberation to those who are bound.
Within the United Church of Christ, we’ve got a fund we call Our Churches’ Wider Mission or you may hear it referred to by its initials, OCWM. On the first Sunday in October, we also ask for a special offering called Neighbors in Need. Now, I’ve never heard this from you but some of our churches look at the request of these monies as a some sort of burden; that these are requests coming from “the denomination” in order to support some sort of administrative structure that doesn’t seem to be helping them as directly as they’d like or that they focus on some of the more controversial positions The United Church of Christ has taken on this issue or that. These things are sometimes looked upon almost as a tax. But most people who know a lot about OCWM have a very different perspective.
But then, there’s Mordecai: “Mordecai recorded these things, and sent letters to all the Jews who were in all the provinces of King Ahasuerus, both near and far, enjoining them that they should keep the fourteenth day of the month Adar and also the fifteenth day of the same month, year by year, as the days on which the Jews gained relief from their enemies, and as the month that had been turned for them from sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday; that they should make them days of feasting and gladness, days for sending gifts of food to one another and presents to the poor.” I really think that there’s this sense promoted that the reason we give is primarily out of a sense of obligation but, in some ways, that’s theology that comes from a sense of deficit and sacrifice and, although these ideas have a really important place in our beliefs and our theology, it’s incomplete. A sacrificial motivation can be OK but only if it points towards transformation and liberation and transformation and liberation are things to celebrate; these risks we take, these transformations we experience that move us from “sorrow into gladness and from mourning into a holiday.”
I don’t know about you, I don’t know your history, but I grew up in another denomination; The United Methodist Church. I think the United Methodist Church is a great denomination but I also reached a moment within my spiritual life where I couldn’t stay there anymore. I’m not the first generation of ministers in my family. As far as we’ve been able to figure, if I would have stayed within the United Methodist Church I would have been the sixth or seventh generation of Methodist ministers. 10 years ago, when I became part of the United Church of Christ, I wasn’t really leaving the United Methodist Church as much as I felt called to ministry within the United Church of Christ. I felt called to be part of a denomination where a local church, in covenant with other local churches and the wider church, figured out how they could best serve God and God’s people within their local context. I felt called to be part of a denomination that did not set working for social justice apart from a full Christian spiritual practice. I felt called to be part of a denomination where I had the opportunity to invite my friends who were gay and lesbian in to the fullest life of the church, including ordination. I felt called to be part of a denomination that had room for the most liberal of churches as well as the most conservative of churches and everything in between. I felt called to be part of church that recognized both the need to send missionaries to other parts of the world in cooperation not coercion of the Christian communities and also recognized our spiritual need to humbly accept missionaries from other countries to help in our own ongoing conversion. I was called to be part of the United Church of Christ and when I walked in to the doors of Hale United Church of Christ in Dayton, Ohio, I was also welcomed home. Again, I think the United Methodist Church is a great denomination but, for me, to be part of that particular denomination was a spiritual burden and not spiritually honest. I gave my offering with the hope that the denomination would be transformed. Within the United Church of Christ, it’s different for me. Within this denomination, I give my offering because I feel blessed and I want to support the denomination that welcomed me home. There may be many of you who feel the same way.
Mordecai talked about celebrating by sending “gifts of food to one another” out of celebration when the Jewish people found a home within the Persian Empire. Your church’s gifts to Our Churches Wider Mission are like celebratory gifts of food to your sisters and brothers in the United Church of Christ where we’ve all been able to find a home. There’s this line in the movie “It’s A Wonderful Life” at the moment when there’s the run on the banks. One of the town’s people is asking to withdraw their money and George has to explain to them that it’s not like that; that their money isn’t just put away in some safe where it can be easily withdrawn. He tells them, “Your money is in his house and her house.” The money you give to Our Churches’ Wider Mission isn’t just in one place either. A good piece of your OCWM offerings is a gift that stays within the Illinois Conference and helps open new churches, helps restart churches that have been struggling, and helps churches through other moments of transition. Your OCWM offerings also support the staff of the Illinois Conference, including me. Among other things, we’re working with churches to find new pastors when their pastors have left; we help churches as they struggle with conflict; we help local churches realize the opportunities there are for mission within the denomination; we’re available for pastors who need pastoral care; we officiate at ordinations and installations on behalf of you; we’re present with churches when they enter into their own moments of crisis. Your gifts help support your camps, conference wide gatherings for pastors and laity and is helping to establish conference wide programming for youth. Within the Chicago Metropolitan Association my colleague Rev. Edward Goode and our office support staff - Russell Barefield and Bertha Condra - work with 108 congregations; almost 350 pastors; seven major UCC related institutions; and 74 students considering ordination to ministry.
Your celebratory gifts to OCWM also help support the work of your church nationally and internationally. Your OCWM monies help provide the staff that develop educational materials for Sunday School classes; supplement the pensions of retired pastors who were in small and poor churches through their careers; help support mission programs in 85 different countries; support 190 missionaries throughout the world; support interfaith dialogue, human rights advocacy, promotion of health ministries; international social and economic development programs; disaster preparedness; refugee advocacy and resettlement and much, much, much more. Only 7.4% of the monies received through OCWM go towards administrative costs; a number below most non-profit organizations. Your gifts and the gifts of your sibling churches aren’t gifts to some wider structure that has nothing to do with local church ministry. In fact, it’s the very opposite. The celebratory gifts local churches give to Our Churches Wider Missions are gifts we give to each other out of the recognition of gratitude to all God has given us through the Church. The Neighbors in Need offering that UCC churches are receiving today is specifically a “gift to the poor” that helps with direct, hand on services as well as advocacy to address those factors that cause people to be poor in the first place. It also helps address other areas of social justice such as violence prevention; works against the wide variety of prejudicial policies and behaviors that we humans find ourselves caught up in; and advocates for a world that is fairer and safer for all God’s people. Our gifts that come from gratitude for our blessings, are helping transform the lives of people whose lives sometimes feel cursed.
Sisters and brothers, thank you, thank you, thank you. Thank you for those gifts of celebration, those gifts of blessing, that your congregation already gives to Our Churches’ Wider Mission and the special offerings that you participate in throughout the year. We are so, so blessed to be part of the United Church of Christ. How can we help but to celebrate? How can we help but to give?
posted by Rev. Michael Denton at 11:59 AM
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