During Eastertide (April 20-June 8), we are discerning how God wants each of us to work and serve in the world AND discerning our pledges of time, talent, and money that we will make to serve and contribute to our collective ministry in the year ahead.
Here is our mantra for the season:
• God has given me a gift of my own.
• I don’t have to do it all.
• We have what we need.
• Using our gifts is filled with joy.
“You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime you’ll find, you get what you need.”
And so goes the chorus of the 1969 Rolling Stones musical hit. It’s a bit ironic that rich rock stars would sing about not getting what they want, but these lyrics do hold some value and truth.
We may not always get what we want, but if we look closely, we can see that God is giving us what we need. That’s our theme for this fourth Stewardship Sunday: “We Have What We Need.”
In Paul’s letter to the church in Ephesus, we hear Paul writing (again!) about how God has given every community an abundance of gifts that are needed to fulfill the ministry to which it is called.
It can be hard to trust that we have what we need, right? We live in a postmodern, consumerist culture that tells us we do NOT have what we need: not enough time, money, bandwidth, or natural resources. The engines of economic production, political propaganda, and even some of our well-intentioned social movements send the message that there is NOT enough.
We are used to hearing the story of scarcity, so it can be hard to hear anything else. But God does not want us to feel fatalistic, disempowered, or disengaged. In fact, Paul reminds us that God is with us AND has given us an ABUNDANCE of gifts. We have what we need to do the work we are called to do. We also have each other (remember Kent’s sermon last week: “I don’t have to do it all”).
As people of faith, we are called — challenged even — to hear Paul’s words to early church as if it were written to us today. We are called to trust that God has given us an abundance of gifts.
We DO HAVE what we need, in order to fulfill the ministry to which we are called.
We GET to do that which we are called to do.
We have what we need to do it.
I look forward to discerning more deeply together on Sunday!
In faith,
Anna
P.S. Here are some questions for you to consider this week in your discernment.
What do you enjoy?
What are you good at?
Where in your life do you feel abundance?
Where in United Parish do you experience abundance?
Eastertide & Stewardship Season Themes:
May 4th – Intro to Discernment, 2 Corinthians 8:1-15
May 11th – God has given me a gift of my own, 1 Corinthians 12: 4-11
May 18th – I don’t have to do it all, Romans 12:6-8, 1 Corinthians 12:12-31
May 25th – We have what we need, Ephesians 4: 11-14
June 1st – Celebrating our high school seniors, church school teachers
June 8th – Using my gifts is filled with joy, Galatians 5:22-23
Image credit: “Our Calling” by Ricardo Levins Morales. https://www.
