stewardship

I get two minutes to talk about why I am a member of Travis Park church this Sunday. It is the second week of our stewardship campaign, and I have been drafted to speak to the later service.

I have been thinking about it for a week, and I have a bunch of thoughts swirling in my head, and I need to write them down and see how long it will take and all that. So I am putting them down here, and would appreciate any comments or criticisms. Well, almost any.


Jesus gives us the simplest and most challenging commandment in today's scripture reading: Love one another as I have loved you.

Intimacy is a difficult thing in this world. We are supposed to be perfect in the world's standards. We cannot show any weakness, or else it will be exploited and someone else will get the promotion. Show much emotion and people in the world get shifty. We surely don't want to be around when somebody breaks down and loses it. And so we spend considerable energy maintaining the facade, playing the world's game, accepting the world's values.

But I am broken. I admit it. After my wife was diagnosed with cancer, I found myself questioning the world's values. I don't need a bigger house or nicer car or labels on my clothes. I didn't want to be a tax accountant anymore, when the result of my work was that someone who had so much got a little more. I needed something more meaningful.

What I really needed, above all else, is to be me. What I have found at Travis Park is a community that allows me to be me abundantly. I don't have to be perfect here, which is a relief, cause I ain't perfect. The great benefit that we have here is that because we don't have to spend so much of our energy pretending, we can get down to the business of loving one another. And so I come here every week, and I give of myself, and I make my contribution. Through my eyes, it is so small and so insignificant.

But my gift, mingled with yours, blessed and broken, becomes like the loaves and fishes. I don't know how it happens; that is God's business. But together, with my gift and your gifts, God feeds the multitudes.