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Proper 28

2 Corinthians 9

6Remember this saying, "A few seeds make a small harvest, but a lot of seeds make a big harvest."

7Each of you must make up your own mind about how much to give. But don't feel sorry that you must give and don't feel that you are forced to give. God loves people who love to give. 8God can bless you with everything you need, and you will always have more than enough to do all kinds of good things for others. 9The Scriptures say, "God freely gives his gifts to the poor, and always does right."

10God gives seed to farmers and provides everyone with food. He will increase what you have, so that you can give even more to those in need. 11You will be blessed in every way, and you will be able to keep on being generous. Then many people will thank God when we deliver your gift.

12What you are doing is much more than a service that supplies God's people with what they need. It is something that will make many others thank God. 13The way in which you have proved yourselves by this service will bring honor and praise to God. You believed the message about Christ, and you obeyed it by sharing generously with God's people and with everyone else. 14Now they are praying for you and want to see you, because God used you to bless them so very much. 15Thank God for his gift that is too wonderful for words!



The challenge is called 'name that movie.' Here are your clues:

Holds record for most weeks at top of the movie charts: 15

2nd most total of number 1 weekends: 15 (ET: The Extra-Terrestrial holds the record with 16 weeks)

Fastest movie to $500m gross: 98 days

Fastest movie to $600m gross: 252 days

All-Time Box Office Rank: 1

Academy Award Winner, 1997 Best Picture

Last clue: The film ends badly

(www.the-numbers.com/movies/1997/TITAN.html)

If you guessed Titanic, you are correct. If you can explain this success, I'm all ears. It's not that I didn't like the film, because I did. The special effects were remarkable, the attention to detail was admirable, and the acting...well. Let's just say that something else was going on. Something else that led teenage girls to the theatre ten times and led some of the same girls to stake out a solitary grave in a Halifax cemetery and imagine that it belonged to a fictional character in the film.

I know of at least one scholar who has a theory, and her name is Kenda Creasy Dean. She wrote:

True love, as every teenager knows, is always worth dying for. Passion is the truest love there is, a love worthy of sacrifice, a love so rare, so life-changing that it is the stuff of legends. It is Jack and Rose in the Titanic.

Dr. Dean spoke recently at the Queen's Alumni Conference to the theme "In Search of the Passionate Church." Through PowerPoint and video clips, as well as impassioned preaching, she made a case for the kind of church that would speak to young people and help them remain in our midst.

On the Titanic, everything was big. The boat was big, the legend of it's indestructibility was big, the iceberg was big (a tenth of it was big, anyway), Rose's choice was big, even the stone on the necklace was big. And biggest of all was the love between two young people, a young man and a young woman trying to find their way in the world and trying to find that love 'worth dying for' that Dr. Dean describes. They find it, of course, and young Jack sacrifices himself so that Rose can live. And live she does, choosing to leave one life behind to pursue another because of her life-altering experience of love.

***

13The way in which you have proved yourselves by this service will bring honor and praise to God. You believed the message about Christ, and you obeyed it by sharing generously with God's people and with everyone else. 14Now they are praying for you and want to see you, because God used you to bless them so very much. 15Thank God for his gift that is too wonderful for words!

"I'm gonna live so, God can use me" goes the African-American spiritual, "anywhere, Lord, anytime." Paul says it too: 'God used you to bless them so much.' It is a gift too wonderful for words that so many make themselves open to God in such a way that God can use them to further the work of the Kingdom. The rest of the verses to the spiritual bring us a complete picture of the Christian life, in the simplest way possible: I'm gonna live, I'm gonna work, I'm gonna pray and I'm gonna sing.

Paul presents his 'stewardship' message in the context of bringing honour to God. His formula is simple: you heard the message, you responded in love, and you brought glory to God. The message of Jesus Christ took form in your response, allowing God to use you to bless others. "Now they want to see you," Paul says, "and they are praying for you," because of this very blessing. They want to remain connected because of all the love that was shown.

***

I went looking for something "official" that could describe what stewardship means and I found this on the United Church website:

More simply said, stewardship is how we use God's stuff for God's world. God the Creator owns everything. It's God's stuff. It's God's world. The "bottom line" in stewardship is not about balancing church budgets. It IS about lives in balance. It's about personal and family and congregational...lives that flow from what God is calling us to be, living out a Spirit-empowered vision of what God's world could be.

I think this description draws us closer to the work of Kenda Creasy Dean, insofar as it puts the emphasis on the quality of our life with God and the extent to which we are talking about "lives in the balance." I'm not sure we can understate the importance of this question. Stewardship is about individual choices and the ways in which those choices touch the lives around us. It is a decision to work and pray and sing and live "so God can use me, anywhere, Lord, anytime." And it is so much more.

I want you to hear Dr. Dean's quote again:

True love, as every teenager knows, is always worth dying for. Passion is the truest love there is, a love worthy of sacrifice, a love so rare, so life-changing that it is the stuff of legends. It is Jack and Rose in the Titanic.

And where do teens go to find true love, a love 'worth dying for,' the stuff of legends? Where do they go to experience passion and a love 'worthy of sacrifice?' Where is all that youthful passion embraced and channeled into meaningful activities? Sadly, I don't think the answer is in church.

This week I was invited to join a group of 30-45 year-olds to solve the puzzle of the missing 30-45 year-olds. The United Church has begun a program called the "Emerging Spirit." It is a program designed to respond to the almost complete disappearance of the 30-45 age group. It will involve advertising, and the creation of a congregational welcoming program. And it will cost a lot of money.

So where are they? Where are the missing "not-quite-middle-age-but-no-longer-young-adults"? Beats me. I'm one of them and I don't have a hot clue. But I am willing to guess, and I would guess that the missing 30-45 year-olds are really no different from the missing teens who are looking for passion and are not finding it in church.

I want to briefly share with you Dr. Dean's research on the meaning of passion and how it can be made manifest in the church. I do this not in an effort to lure teens or those not-quite-middle-age people to the church, but in an effort to highlight what we already do well and what we can work on to be the best stewards we can be.

For Dr. Dean, passion has three dimensions: Fidelity, transcendence and communion. She calls them a revelation of God's passion and she grounds them in developmental theories regarding what young people need to become healthy individuals. Again, I would argue that these needs never end and speak to every age group.

Fidelity is "being there" for someone, being steadfast in the face of life's challenges. She cites teens who turn to their friends in the absence of parents as a danger here, because the need for someone to be 'steadfast' is very powerful.

Transcendence is the second dimension of passion. "Did it move me" is the implied question people will ask, and if the answer is no, they will move on. The need to be moved, stretched, challenged, 'rocked' as teens would say, is also powerful.

Finally, communion is a dimension of passion because it involves belonging and intimacy and the need for community. It means "being known" and feeling connected when modern life leaves us (so often) feeling disconnected.

These dimensions, fidelity, transcendence and communion are also at the heart of God's desire toward us. God is with us, God seeks to move us, and God longs for a relationship with us. Thank God for his gift that is too wonderful for words! God set out the template and we follow, living in such a way that we too express fidelity, transcendence and communion. At our best we are steadfast and moving and connected and willing to give our lives for the sake of others.

To be faithful stewards we need to focus on the parts of our life together that are 'to die for.' We need to build on the things that we already do well and look for find ways to improve. We need to love each other in the truest sense, "a love worthy of sacrifice, a love so rare, so life-changing that it is the stuff of legends." May we continue to be led, and continue to be challenged, through Christ, Amen.

posted by michael jacob kooiman @ 10:59 AM