Deut 18:15-20; Psalm 111; 1 Cor 8:1-13; Mark 1:21-28 The Rev. Linda Spiers 4 th Sunday after Epiphany February 1, 2015 Annual Meeting Trinity Episcopal Church Remember the Kingston Trio (1961) or Peter, Paul and Mary (1962) classic Where Have All the Flowers Gone? The lyrics of the first 3 verses were written by Pete Seeger in 1955. Additional verses were added in 1960 by Joe Hickerson, who made it a circular song. The Viet Nam war was going on at the time this song soared. In 2010 the New Statesman listed it as one of the Top 20 Political Songs. Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing? Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago? Where have all the flowers gone? Young girls have picked them everyone. Where have all the young girls gone, long time passing? Where have all the young girls gone, long time ago? Where have all the young girls gone? Gone for husbands everyone. 1
Where have all the husbands gone, long time passing? Where have all the husbands gone, long time ago? Where have all the husbands gone? Gone for soldiers everyone. Where have all the soldiers gone, long time passing? Where have all the soldiers gone, long time ago? Where have all the soldiers gone? Gone to graveyards, everyone. Where have all the graveyards gone, long time passing? Where have all the graveyards gone, long time ago? Where have all the graveyards gone? Gone to flowers, everyone. 2
Where have all the flowers gone, long time passing? Where have all the flowers gone, long time ago? Where have all the flowers gone? Young girls have picked them everyone. 1 In some of my reading this week I was reminded of this song when I saw the question: Where have all the prophets gone? Two weeks ago we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr., who was a prophet. Some that also come to mind are Mother Teresa, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Abraham Heschel, Elie Wiesel, etc. Who are the prophets of our time? Where have all the prophets gone? Frederick Buechner says: Prophet means a spokesperson, not fortuneteller. The one whom in their unfathomable audacity the prophets claimed to speak for was the Lord and Creator of the universe. There is no evidence that 1 www.lyricksfreak.com 3
anyone asked a prophet home for supper more than once No prophet is on record as having asked for the job. 2 In Deuteronomy we hear the prophet Moses telling the people that God will raise up a prophet like Moses an authentic prophet from among them. This would be someone who continually calls the community back to its covenant with God, calls the people to repent and challenges them, one who speaks God s word of hope and promise, a speaker for God s justice and truth, a member of the community who had history and knowledge of the community s life. God would convey what the prophet would communicate, and the people of Israel were called to listen and pay attention to God s word. The prophet was to be one of them. I believe there is a prophet inside each of us. I have the privilege of being your priest and preaching at most of our services. It s an awesome and great privilege to study God s word, to listen for God s word all around me, and to somehow speak that word as I ve experienced it or learned it. You come together in community, hear God s word and interpret it as you hear it, taste of the sacrament of Christ s body and blood, and are sent from this place back into your world to live and speak God s word. As you do that with your lives, the prophet in you emerges. 2 Frederick Buechner, Wishful Thinking: A Seekers ABC (New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 1993), 89, 90. 4
I look back on this year at Trinity as we have our Annual Meeting and rejoice in the amazing and wonderful ways you have lived into God s word. One year ago we began the Nurture Trinity Capital Campaign a process to care for our church home. 76 pledges and a total amount of $308,792 have been promised to care for Trinity s long-overdue maintenance. You now come into the church with pride, seeing the outside of our building restored and made safe for all who enter. People from all around the wider community comment about the difference this work has made. At the same time we embarked on our 2014 stewardship campaign the treasure part, for we are trying to emphasize that stewardship is a year round effort with time, talent and treasure. We went into the new year in faith, trusting that we would receive the stewardship pledges we needed and basing 2014 s budget on the amount of pledges received from the prior year. We budgeted a deficit and lived fully into that deficit this year. In recent months, as many of you heard last Sunday in our Finance presentations, Mary and I met weekly to determine what bills could be paid and which ones would have to wait. We got behind in our diocesan pledge, among other bills, and the Finance Committee recommended to the Vestry that we withdraw 7% from Trinity s endowment for 2014 expenses and will do that again for 2015 if needed. Expenses have been managed well, and yet out revenues are down and less that we expected. These withdrawals from the endowment fund are 5
not cutting into our principal, and yet we must find another way to increase our revenues. During the stewardship Sundays for the 2015 budget year, you heard members of the parish share why Trinity is important to them and why giving is important to them. A challenge that I want to put before you is the question: what is most important to you? When you pray about your pledge, do you look at your checkbook to see how your money is being spent? I often go into Dunkin Doughnuts for a morning coffee, and on the counter is a metal box asking for donations to Children s Hospital. I generally drop my change in that box as I head out. If everyone were to drop his or her change in, I imagine the box would be overflowing regularly, and perhaps it does. We don t use the biblical tithe word very often, and I believe we need to do that. Jesus talked about money more than any other topic. He grew up as a faithful Jew and would have understood deeply the meaning of tithing. There are many references to tithing in the Hebrew Scriptures. In Leviticus 27:30 are the words: All tithes from the land, whether the seed from the ground or the fruit from the tree, are the Lord s, they are holy to the Lord. Tithing is a process toward which I challenge you. It takes years and lots of prayer to see how one can make it work. It took me years to get to the point of tithing, and I ve told you that before not to be self-righteous but to let you know that s my response to God s generosity in my 6
life, and I invite you to consider a journey toward tithing. That s what God calls us to do, just as God called the Israelites and God s people throughout time. In your prayer think about God s generosity in your life all the many ways for which you are thankful and how you might respond. All tithes from the land, whether the seed from the ground or the fruit from the tree, are the Lord s, they are holy to the Lord. As I think about 2014 there are endless ways to be thankful here. Our children s and youth programs are thriving with dedicated teachers and young people teaching us all the time. They come into our worship to be fed at this Table, eager to be with their parents and excited hopefully excited about what they ve learned. They bring the light of Christ into our lives in untold ways. Many of you are here because of Trinity s solid Christian formation programs that are organized/overseen by Theresa and her faithfulness to developmentally appropriate offerings. You have continued to be a generous community by the many and varied ways you give of yourselves and reach out to those in need. The new wooden cabinet in the Memorial Room to house donations for Hartford s struggling poor and homeless overflows regularly, and it s full again. Those donations go to Church Street Eats, where Trinity s young people serve several times a year. Lunches are provided for the homeless and poor in Bushnell Park every quarter, 7
even in the midst of snow and sleet people are hungry regardless of the weather, and you have responded faithfully. You made it possible for teens to enjoy Heads Up! Hartford, especially when the camp was struggling to survive last year. Your generous donations to that camp and to Camp Hispaniola reached many teens and children near and far. Quality Street proceeds of $7,610 were again shared between the Canton Food Bank and the Canton Fuel Bank given outside of our doors to help our Canton neighbors, even when we were struggling financially. Seeing the parish s total outreach is a clear statement about how we live generously in this place. What a blessing we had when Alan came into our midst in February 2014! Trinity again welcomed a person called to ordained ministry and became part of his formation. We learned from him while Alan learned from our giving him the opportunity to live fully into his diaconal ministry. You have much to teach about parish life and have been generous with Alan this past year and have now celebrated his becoming priest blessing upon blessing. We ll soon send him out from this place to be priest to others. You have found all sorts of ways to have fun in community with soup suppers, Lenten programs, Mardi Gras celebrations, potluck suppers, Nurture Trinity campaign celebration, Open Mics. You have helped raise much-needed monies through fundraisers with a Taste of Trinity and the Holy Smoke BBQ. With 8
warm hospitality you welcomed many into our midst while working incredibly hard to make these events fun and fruitful, and so they were! Our worship and our music have been glorious gifts to God with so many of you offering yourselves abundantly and faithfully and tirelessly and generously. Your ministries of serving at this Altar, whether behind the scenes or in vestment, and making our liturgy be a precious offering to God have been gifts to us all. You have made our story known through communication and website and word of mouth. Read the pages of the Annual Report and see the many ways we are Trinity Episcopal Church in Collinsville on God s mission. I am grateful for each and every one of you for all that you do and all that you are. And I challenge you to think about how we can be different, how we can reimagine ourselves to reach out in new ways. We are filled with joy on this Annual Meeting day and we we re in the midst of struggle. We are out in the Canton community, and we are called to find new ways to go out and discover the needs, meeting people where they are. Our challenge isn t only about getting more people. It s also about being creative in the ways we are prophets in our time being bold in bringing God s word to those who aren t here. I don t have all the answers, your vestry doesn t have all the answers, and yet all of us together can work in community to form a path in search 9
of answers, because of prophets like Moses that pointed to God s way of living and being. Where have all the prophets gone? I think many of them are right here just waiting to break forth, and I give thanks for the blessing of being with you in that discovery to be serving with you and our faithful staff, Theresa, Kenny, Mary, and Norman. It is gift beyond gift. Tithe: Deut 14:22 Set apart a tithe of all the yield of your seed that is brought in yearly from the field. Lev 27:30 All tithes from the land, whether the seed from the ground or the fruit from the tree, are the Lord s, they are holy to the Lord. Num 18:25-31 Then the Lord spoke to Moses, saying: You shall speak to the Levites saying: When you receive from the Israelites the tithe that I have given you from them for your portion, you shall set apart an offering from it to the Lord, a tithe of the tithe. 10