20th Sunday after Pentecost
Psalm 84
How lovely is your dwelling place, O God of hosts!
My soul longs, indeed it faints for God’s courts; my heart and my flesh sing for joy to the living God.
Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O God of hosts, my Sovereign and my God.
Happy are those who live in your house, ever singing your praise. Selah
Happy are those whose strength is in you, in whose heart are the highways to Zion.
As they go through the valley of Baca they make it a place of springs; the early rain also covers it with pools.
They go from strength to strength; the God of gods will be seen in Zion.
May God bless us with understanding for these readings of our sacred text.
Offering & Sacrifice
Every Sunday, when I was a kid going to church with my family, my dad would take out a single dollar bill for the offering. He would fold the bill in half, and then fold it in half again, and again, and again, until it was this tiny green wad that he would drop into the offering plate as it went by. I didn’t know it at the time, but that dollar was a symbolic offering. My parents were members of the church, so their pledge was much higher than one dollar a week.
But, seeing my dad put this dollar into the offering plate every week instilled me with the idea that giving was important. Of course, the church always needs money to operate, but it was more than that. Participating in the offering in this ritualistic way, as part of the worship service, held a deeper significance. My dad was taking part in the communal ritual of offering, and the family, by proxy, through him. The offering was something that congregation did together, as a worshipping community. So, by putting that dollar bill in the offering plate, my dad was claiming a place for us, as a part of that community, and was showing our love and dedication to that community.
This is why when we pass the offering plate here, that we invite those who give of their time and talent, or those who give of their treasure outside of the worship time, to press their thumbs into the bowl of the offering plate as a symbol of their gift to the church. This way, everyone who gives, in all of the different ways that you give, gets to participate together in this integral part of the worship experience.
Giving an offering is a joyful act of showing our love for God. And, it’s also a sacrifice, which is why I always place the offering on the altar. An altar, by definition, is a table or platform where a ritual sacrifice is performed. Most of us could always use a little more money, so sacrificing a portion of what we’ve earned isn’t always easy.
I grew up in the Presbyterian tradition, where you don’t really see altars. The table is always in a more central location, instead of being pushed up against the wall at the front of the sanctuary. Presbyterians refer to it as the communion table, whether or not communion is happening that day. It all comes down to what your beliefs about communion are. If, like the Catholics, you believe that the Eucharist is a representation of Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross, then it makes sense to consecrate the bread and the wine on an altar. If, like the Presbyterians, you believe that the Eucharist represents the covenant that Jesus made through his sacrifice on the cross, then it makes sense to serve communion from a communion table.
Verse 3 of Psalm 84 makes reference to God’s altars. This psalm has been used many times as the basis for different songs, including the song that we’re using as our closing hymn, today. The song, Better is One Day, starts with the first line of Psalm 84, “How lovely is your dwelling place, O God almighty…” When I read that line, all of these memories came flooding back to me of all of the times that I sang that song. We sang it the first time I went to winter camp as a sophomore in high school. Three-thousand of us sang it under the stars at night in Mexico, all of these different church groups from across the country congregating in a field just outside of Mexicali for our mission trips. When I was in seminary, I would help to put the weekly praise service together, and Better is One Day was one of the songs we would use in the rotation.
Because an altar is a place of sacrifice, I was surprised, and a little uncomfortable, when I read verse 3 of Psalm 84: “Even the sparrow finds a home, and the swallow a nest for herself, where she may lay her young, at your altars, O God of hosts, my Sovereign and my God.” My immediate thought was that the birds were perhaps unwittingly offering their helpless offspring as sacrifice on the altars. I couldn’t help but draw comparisons to the story of Abraham being ordered to sacrifice his son Isaac in Genesis, chapter twenty-two. Abraham, of course, did not actually have to sacrifice Isaac, just as in this psalm, the birds are not sacrificing their offspring. The first part of verse three is, “Even the sparrow finds a home..”, and verse four starts with, “Happy are those who live in your house…” The writer here is taking the idea of an altar, and turning it into something else. God’s altar here is a place of shelter and safety. God’s altar is a place of happiness and warmth. God’s altar is home.
As we move into our stewardship season, we have to think about what we are putting on the altar, and what it means to put something on the altar. Yes, it is a sacrifice, but what kind of sacrifice is it? Is it a sacrifice fearfully made to appease an angry God? Is it some kind of transaction, in which we expect to get back a blessing or a wish of equal or greater value? Or, is it a gift, joyfully given, with no strings attached, to someone we love?
My hope is that we are placing our gifts on the altar in order to build our spiritual home. Giving isn’t about guilt or fear, or even obligation or responsibility. It’s about joy. It’s about love. When we give gifts to other people, we don’t do it so that they will give us gifts in return. We don’t do it because we feel obligated to. We give gifts as an expression of love and appreciation. Gift-giving is about building relationship. When we give to God, it’s an expression of love and joy, an expression of our desire to be in relationship with the person who knows us best in this world, the person who loves us the most, the person who made us and breathed life into us.
It is no coincidence that our season of stewardship falls on our season of thanksgiving. Stewardship is a way of giving thanks. We are giving thanks for those who built this church, who came together and broke ground here 60 years ago. Who made Plymouth a part of this community. We give thanks for everyone who keeps the church running now, everyone on the board and all of the committees, everyone who represents us through all of the mission projects that Plymouth is involved with. We give thanks for the loving community that gathers here every week, for the joy that we find with each other, and the support that is always there when we need it. We give thanks for God, and for everything that God gives to us and does for us.
Our stewardship theme this year is, “Stewardship is what we do with what we have.” It’s pretty straightforward, but a lot of common sense is like that. It feels profound when you take a step back and really look at it. What kind of stewards are we going to be? How will we steward what God has given to us? God is calling us to give. God is calling us to give joyfully. God is calling us to build community and to do the work of the church. Stewardship is what we do with what we have. What kind of stewards are we going to be? Amen.
~ Rev. Charles Wei
