Guest Sermon: 'I Call You By Your Name'

This sermon by the Rev. Janet White helped kick off our 2011 Stewardship Campaign:

For the sake of my servant Jacob, and Israel my chosen, I call you by your name, I surname you, though you do not know me.

—Isaiah 45:4

Re-Visiting Silence

From the story of Cyrus, Isaiah puts forth the compelling lesson that God has complete control over human history. God can use anybody to accomplish God’s work, even a powerful emperor who does not acknowledge God. Isaiah affirms that all people of the earth belong to God, whether they know it or not. It seems we each have our own understanding of God. Consequently, folks refer to God as “God”, “Allah”, “Yahweh”, “Divine Energy”, “Holy One”, “My Higher Power, “the Spirit”, etc. God is primarily understood in the daily works of nature by many folks. People are comfortable in a host of different ways in how they experience themselves as being a part of something larger than themselves, and how they choose to name the source of their sacred connection. Importantly, God is what God is to each of us in our own way and made meaningful through each of our unique spiritualities… our life meaning-making.

Thomas Keating, one of my favorite theologians, once said, “Silence is God’s first language; everything else is a poor translation. In order to hear that language, we must learn to be still and to rest in God.” Learning to be still…the language is similar to what we’ve seen printed on our offering envelopes over the past year: “Be still and know that I am [God]” Psalms 46:10a). I wonder if this kind of stillness is quite lively in its own right… like an “active quietude”.

It seems stewardship is at the very heart of active quietude. When we prayerfully pledge our stewardship gift for the year, it hopefully feels good, joyful, and never burdensome, or worrisome. It is not about how much, and it is not about stretching ourselves so far that it causes us to wrestle unmercifully with our budgets. Rather, it is about what feels right…what feels peaceful to each of us within our inner selves.

When we come together in stewardship once a year, each making our own stewardship decision, alongside God, we sustain, enrich, and grow our soul-nurturing church family, including our programs that contribute to our understanding of the Word of God together. When we engage in the fellowship that our church offers and become more increasingly involved over time in the full breadth of what our programs offer, we are stewarding our soul.

Our pledged offerings call upon the heart of a healthy, energizing interdependence with one another, not a dependence on each other. Our stewardship interdependence

is healthy, joyful, meaningful and bonding. It is coming together and growing
with one another, as we experience God working in and through our lives. We each reach our stewardship decisions in our stillness with God, our quietude.

Awakening Stillness

Perhaps we are most intimate with God in our stillness. Perhaps we are closest to our own selves, our souls, in our stillness. Stillness awakens the soul…who we really are. Our soul is how we know ourselves, how we experience ourselves, how others experience us, and how God knows us. It is “us” in our purest form.

In today’s New Testament scripture that Robert read us from the Book of Matthew, the Pharisees, allied with a party following King Herod, posed a question designed to trap Jesus regardless of his answer. If Jesus had responded, “Pay the taxes”, he would have destroyed the support of the independence-minded Jews. If he had quipped, “Don’t pay”, he could be turned in to Rome for not abiding by the law. Perhaps it reminds us of perplexing situations we run across in managing our lives, when we might feel, that however we respond, the outcome is going to be remarkably unhelpful, at best.

It seems when we pull in, prayerfully realign our thinking and way of being in the world with God, answers come. They come to us. They are not always on our personal timeframe, as we all well know. Importantly, it seems we don’t have to feel perplexed or allow ourselves to be catapulted into fear-based havoc – that feeling that we are darned if we do and perhaps even more darned if we don’t – sinking feeling. When we align with God, our lives just work. They just work - even peacefully when there is chaos happening around us, or directly in our own lives.

Trusting in God may include loosening our grip on that somewhat rigid “10 o’clock, 2 o’clock” position on the steering wheel of our lives. Perhaps we can leave wiggle room on that steering wheel – where the spark of divinity in each of us – is able to have a voice of action. Discernment invites us to turn inward with God and feel how God is nudging us – that “tap” on the shoulder – we may feel from time to time. That wiggle room is an invitation to steward our soul. As we begin thinking through our pledge for the 2012 church year, let’s gently guide our process toward one of discernment, providing a gentle pathway for our decision to emerge in the sacred process. In this way, our pledging decision is intertwined with our spiritual truths unique to each of us. It is a peaceful decision that, yes, involves some practical math, but it also allows space for the Sacred in us to mobilize.
Spiritual Truths

In responses from senior adults in one of my assisted living residences I worked with back east for several years as a hospice chaplain, we asked our residents: “What is one thing you have learned in your graciously long life that you would like to pass on to others you will eventually be leaving behind?” Their answers were both simple and profound, and they represent their spiritual truths – their life meaning-making. I share with you their unedited remarks, with their permission:

Do the best you can and have faith that things will work out…they do
Be faithful to yourself, and if that is in check, you’ll be faithful to God and others automatically
Put people first, not your “To Do List”
Treat everyone equally and truthfully
Have more than one interest in life and be passionate about each of them
Be content…not worried, and do that one day at a time
Seek the Lord with all your heart, your mind, and your soul
Don’t tell someone something if you are not going to do it
Give back, be of service to others, and receive graciously from others
Think before you speak, it helps life to stack up better
Feel good, really good, about your life and your body
Enjoy working and enjoy playing…do both
Know and love yourself with clarity. God does.

What an opportunity to have folks share, in a moment’s notice, a one-liner spoken from the soul. Their thoughts are their spiritual truths. Most of these folks have already made their transition to the Eternal, as I’ve lived here on this coast for nearly two years now, and as mentioned, they were each hospice patients of mine. And I’ve started my west coast list, but it’s barely started, as I’ve only been back at work here as a hospice chaplain since last May. Although I had taken a full-time hospice position soon after arriving on this coast, I ended up resigning. I was called to be in hospice in a different way…as a family member.

I can only imagine the wisdom we have in our own congregation that when asked, would be shared amongst others like folks have done with me on hospice. Coffee hour here is sacred, fertile ground for us to enjoy such connections with one another.

Let’s consider doing that more than we already are. It’s church at its best, when God can work in and through us for rich learning. Spiritual truths bubble up…they seem to emerge in the process of such connections between human souls. I think of fellowship as the divine spark in our souls uniting with the divine spark in others’.

Stewardship of the Soul

Enjoying fellowship with one another is part of stewarding our soul. It helps us to discover what our grand will is – that which we love to do/that which each of our calling is. Stewarding our soul is claiming our aliveness – our quietude. When we love God and integrate God in to who we are, we position ourselves, no matter what our age, no matter what our resources, no matter what our physical health status, to claim our aliveness. Claiming our aliveness does not even need a healthy physical body. I have always said in my hospice work, “We can be well, even when we are dying”. Stewarding our soul is done in wellness when we are claiming our aliveness in our eternal soul. This quietude may feel energizing in its own right.

Each of us knows that our physical bodies eventually fail us. Sometimes, if we’re really, really lucky, our bodies retire their job of housing our soul at a reasonably healthy, very old age. We need to check in with our bodies regularly, treat them honorably, and proactively care for them. Our bodies are stewards of our souls.

Stewardship entails the management and accountability for something that ultimately belongs to someone else; especially human stewardship of God’s gifts. Our body is a gift from God, our children are a gift from God, our talents are a gift from God, and our resources are a gift from God. Our very souls are gifts from God.

It is up to each of us to discern how to work with our gifts, how to enjoy our gifts, and how to further develop our gifts, alongside God during all ages and stages of our lives. And many such decisions have the power to alter our lives, to put us on new paths, to re-energize our lives in broadening ways. Discernment is a process of re-visiting silence, awakening that stillness – that quietude within each of us, and developing our spiritual truths from our resulting reflections about our experiences, challenges and relationships. And when we do this, we are stewarding our soul in partnership with God. And in this sacred partnership, it is God who calls us by name. Amen.

—©2011 Janet M. White

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