20 Nov 2009 - "The abundant generosity of God"

Stephen Fielding - St Mary's
John 2:1-11

Introduction

My theme for this Stewardship Sunday is the abundant generosity of God. That's the starting point, that we have a fabulously generous God. I want to go on to say that we have the power of God to help us in our everyday lives. And I will then speak about the response of the generous heart.  It's going to be a slightly longer sermon than usual because I want to share with you some of the financial challenges that this church faces and to make three specific appeals to you for your consideration, reflection and action.

The abundance of God

I wonder what goes through your mind - I wonder what you hear - when the great miracle at the wedding feast at Cana is read as the gospel reading for the day. Maybe you think about your own wedding - or a wedding that you have recently been to - and you think of the happiness and joy that weddings and wedding receptions so often bring.  One of the great pleasures of being a clergyman is that you get to officiate at a number of weddings and sometimes you go to the reception afterwards. They are very happy occasions and so they should be.

When I hear the story of the miracle at Cana, what St John calls a ‘sign’, my mind goes straight to the reality of the abundance of God - and it goes to the reality of the abundance of God when the wine runs out. It's interesting, isn't it, to remember that they'd already been partying at this reception for some time and only when the wine ran out did Jesus perform a miracle. And he produced not just a bit more wine, a postscript to keep the wedding feast going to midnight or something like that. Consider the quantity of water that was turned into wine. 180 gallons. 180 gallons. I haven't calculated how many cases of wine you’d need in the back of your car if you brought it from across the Channel but it’s about a 1000 bottles and you'd probably need a van not an estate car. It's a huge quantity of wine - a huge quantity of water that Jesus takes and turns into the finest wine. It is a picture, a story and a sign of incredible abundance.

The wine of our human endeavour always runs out, does it not? And it is in situations like this the God of abundance is there to transform things with incredible abundance, we might even call it superabundance. He did it. He does it. He will do it. I would like us to keep in our minds the picture of a God of unbelievable superabundance, Grace abounding. It is not an abundance that just happens out there. It is always to be found where there is a human need. The memorable passage that we heard from St Paul's second letter to the Corinthians tells of St Paul's own experience of hardship and difficulty. He says the burdens that fell upon them were so great that they even despaired of life. Indeed he says ‘we felt in our hearts that we'd received a death sentence.’ But this was ‘meant to teach us to place reliance not on ourselves but on the God who raises the dead’.

The God who raises the dead. I can hardly read those words without a tingle going up my spine or the hair standing on the back of my neck. The God who raises the dead.  The God who can turn water into wine. The God who provides abundantly for our needs…. and particularly when the chips are down.

The incomparable power of God

Consider now another picture. As we've seen before each sign of Jesus in John’s Gospel corresponds to a saying of Jesus beginning with the words ‘I am’. What is the ‘I am’ saying that corresponds to the wedding feast at Cana? It is ‘I am the vine and you are the branches’. Everything that I have, says Jesus, you have. ‘I in you, and you in me’. Bound together in the closest possible relationship. ‘The power I have, you have’.

Just think what this adds up to - an abundant God whose son performs miracles when they’re needed and who says to you and me - you have the same power as I have if you're linked to me, just as the branches of a vine are linked to the vine itself. It's a marvellous picture, is it not, of the privilege of being Christians because we have an abundant God who helps us when we need it and who helps us with the power of Jesus himself.

The response of the generous heart

Let me say straightaway that we can struggle with the idea of an abundant God. We can think very easily in terms only of scarcity, we can think that resources are scarce, with incomes under pressure, that interest rates and dividends are very low, that unemployment has hit…and when we're in the middle of these difficulties it can be sometimes hard to step out of them with imagination and determination.

The church here has to deal with the realities of life, the financial realities of life, just as you do and I do as individuals. We are not immune from these, any more than you are. And I must mention that even with the most careful stewardship of our resources - and believe me it is immensely careful- we are projecting a deficit of some £22,000 next year. We have falling interest income because bank deposits yield much less and we have much higher utilities costs.  I know, and we all acknowledge, the great generosity of the congregation here - providing the funds to build our flagship, New Church House, to provide pew cushions, to provide generously to the Bishops harvest appeal, to give to the Whitechapel Centre and in many other ways. It is a story of generosity and we're very grateful indeed for it.

What then of the Christian response today to this superabundant God who gives us enormous power? On this Stewardship Sunday I want to urge each and every one of you to consider the nature of your financial giving to the church, and I want to make three specific appeals to you.

The first is that I would like to invite all of you who attend church but do not make a regular standing order gift to consider becoming a regular giver. You might like to know that there are 118 people or units who provide regular giving to the church. And the average giving of those 118 people is £10 a week. So please, if you come regularly but don't give on a regular basis, please consider giving by standing order and bear in mind that the average regular gift is about £10 a week. Of course some give less and some give a great deal more but that's a useful yardstick - the average of those who give regularly.

Secondly I turn to the people who do give regularly – the 118 of you who give regularly to the church. Thank you so much for your regular gifts. My request to you is to consider how much you give, to think of what the church means to you, to think of the other expenditure that you make and to consider increasing what you do give. It may be that when you have made that full consideration you will see that it is at the limits of what you're capable of giving. But if you think that it's been some time since you reviewed it and you're able to increase it significantly then please do so - that's my request to you.

And thirdly I would like to invite those of you who feel yourself to be really blessed by God, and blessed financially as well, to consider making a one-off gift to the church - that could be an immediate gift or it could be by way of legacy.  Would you do that for us?

So here then are three explicit appeals in the face of a deficit that the church faces in its own income and expenditure, three requests to you. There are some forms at the back for you to fill in. I plan to write to each of the members of the electoral roll and to each of the regular givers along the lines that I've indicated this morning.

I hope that I have succeeded in setting our response as Christians within the context of a generous God who empowers us richly in our lives.  I would love to see our parish blessed with the extraordinary abundance of giving such as I have described - a response to the abundant goodness and generosity of God.

Will you help us please?  Thank you.

Amen