1.20.08 A Sacred Trust - Rev. Garry Cox
WESTMINSTER PULPIT
The Rev. Dr. Garry Cox
January 20, 2008 “A Sacred Trust”
The Wedding Couple
The other day I met with a young couple who are planning to be married in the church. We talked about how they had met, their love for one another and their plans for the wedding and beyond into their life together. I realized that the vows they were planning to make on that day in June would bring them to a kind of trust agreement; by that I mean they are planning to commit themselves to one another through all of the variety of conditions of life that they encounter, i.e. sickness, health, rich or poor for every condition of life they would be there for one another to comfort, to cheer, to celebrate and fulfill their life’s dreams. These are strong and hopeful promises for a couple who were taking the big step. I wondered after they left what their chances would actually be, considering that our culture only fulfills that commitment about 50% of the time these days. I did have a higher level of confidence in this couples chances of success because I could tell they were firmly committed to their faith in God and had a clear expectation that their life would be centered around God and God’s will for their lives. You see they had made a prior commitment to the God of love and compassion. They had put their trust in God and were already living out a sacred trust in God and in their responsibility in that trust.
The Scripture Lessons
In the Psalm we heard earlier there is the statement that says: “Happy are those who trust in the Lord”. This statement of confidence in God applies to our lives today as much as it did three thousand years ago. Those who trust their lives in the hands of God will thrive in life and experience all of the happiness a person can gain from life, even in the midst of some very challenging life experiences. The Psalmist goes on to recount some of the struggles he is encountering and yet he always comes back to the trust he has in God and his experience of God’s salvation.
In the gospel lesson we hear that God returns the favor and commitment of a human trust by entrusting Peter with the foundations of the Kingdom. Peter is the foundational member of the new covenant formed by Jesus in his sacrificial life and death. The elements of a sacred trust are present when peter realizes that Jesus is the promised Messiah, or savior of human kind, and that in trusting Jesus to guide him he takes on the responsibility of sharing the good news of God’s unconditional love and acceptance. An important thing to remember in this trust relationship that Peter has with Jesus is that even after Peter breaks his part of the trust by denying the Lord three times, Jesus is still faithful to Peter and continues the relationship. God’s commitment to us is unconditional and irrevocable. God’s love and care will never leave us. God will not withhold love, forgiveness, grace, or the abundant resources of God’s life for us.
Geoffrey Canada
An example of how the resources of God’s grace and love are always available came up last Monday night when a group of Westminster members and friends attended a presentation by Geoffrey Canada about creating healthy safe communities. Mr. Canada is the executive director of The Harlem Children’s Zone, a one hundred square block area where the organization focuses on the needs of children from cradle to college; instills hope, changes expectations and helps instill faith in young people to believe in themselves and in their future. Even without being explicitly religious this organization helps youth avoid gangs, become good citizens, and reach for the best they can be in school and in life. Geoffrey believes that kids need to develop faith before they need it so that when things get tough around them they can lean on their faith—trusting God for their future and well being. All of these elements of God’s love resources are available to these young people who can learn how to build these resources into their lives and in doing so become successful. Geoffrey works with parents by teaching them to have both high expectations for their children and high levels of warmth, i.e. love and tenderness expressed consistently and unconditionally to their children. These are the resources of God who makes them available to all who share in this sacred trust of faith and life.
A Sacred Trust
The trust relationship we have with God is not a connection between human being and a remote deity. The trust involves love between the two but is really only realized when other people are brought into the equation. For us to love God alone without a similar loving commitment to others is of no lasting value. The Sacred trust is a responsibility and commitment to express this love and concern to others. Whether it is a stewardship commitment to support our congregation or a commitment to young people in our community, we must see our relationship to God as the starting point in our continuing relationship with others.
Protecting our Young People
When we speak of a trust in relation to God and others we look at the care we take for our young people who come to the church each week. The parents who bring their children to the church trust that we will provide a safe and nurturing environment for our children and youth. We met with a representative from Presbytery last week about protecting our children. She helped us look at our responsibility to insure that all people who work with our young people be not only qualified to work with youth but who are appropriate models around children. We must do background checks on both volunteers and staff who work with children and set forth policies that insure the safety of those who participate in our programs. This implied trust from parents to the church becomes a sacred trust because we are taking responsibility for their children during their time at church. Just as the groups in our community who do programming for youth are making sure that their employees and volunteers are screened we also must share in this community trust. The Scouting programs, after school programs, sports programs for kids and others must assure that no predators are allowed access to vulnerable youth.
Church property as a Trust
In the larger picture of how we take responsibility for others in our fellowship we look at the crisis in our denomination. A growing number of churches in our denomination are considering leaving our denomination and forming an independent New Wineskins association. The primary issue has been with the full acceptance of gay people into our church and the backlash of some conservative churches. The churches are seeking to leave the denomination with their property and go in a more conservative direction. Our Presbytery is engaged in a debate with two conservative churches about their leaving and taking the church property with them.
Our denomination was founded on the belief that we are all bound to one another for the common good and that no individual church has ownership of the property. This trust clause in the constitution of our denomination states that all property is held in trust by the congregation and that they are to use the property on behalf of the PC (USA) for the proclamation of the gospel and furtherance of the kingdom of God. Your pastors and session have objected to the decision of the Presbytery to let the two churches go with their property. We are hoping the Presbytery will reconsider their decision and work to find a more equitable way to further the ministry and mission of the denomination in the cities of Roseville and Fair Oakes. We have a sacred trust to be faithful to our Lord by seeing that God’s good news is shared and lived out among all people. We are bound together by this gospel and must see our individual congregations as fellow trustees in God’s work. It is not about congregations having private property rights to what is understood to be a part of God’s kingdom for all people. The commonwealth of God cannot be divided up among individual interests. The disciples were not given individual congregations and asked to decide how each would be governed or believe, but instead a constant challenge to find the common good, the closest sense of the truth as they had seen in Jesus and a sense of being servants of the larger cause of the Kingdom. Peter was the rock but it was Jesus the Christ who is Lord of all.
A Faithful Trust
This past week we received a wonderful gift for the church and its ministry, and a sign from God that what we are doing has value and meaning for God’s Kingdom. A long time member passed away in quite anonymity, we hardly knew her and yet she was a good and faithful follower of Jesus Christ. She passed on her sacred trust into our care with the gift of $330,000.00 to the church. Her name was Mary Schell. Remember our call in this stewardship drive has been to “ask whatever you need of the Lord and then to act as if you had already received it”. It was in Mary’s mind and in God’s mind as well to provide for the ministry and mission of Westminster Presbyterian Church
We are each a part of this sacred trust with God and one another. We are called to give ourselves into God’s care and to feel part of the larger fellowship of what God is doing in the world. It is an honor, a joy and a miracle to be brought into this kind of relationship with the whole of life. We have meaning for our lives of the highest order; and an abiding trusteeship as well.
Happy are those who put their trust in God, Amen
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