October 7, 2007; The 19th Sunday after Pentecost Readings: Habakkuk 1:1-6, 12-13; 2:1-4; 2 Timothy 1:6-14; Luke 17:5-10; Psalm 37:3-10.   The Rev. Dr. Hilary B. Smith Responding to Our Values "Increase our faith," the apostles say to Jesus. The exchange between Jesus and the apostles that comes immediately before their request for an increase of faith deals with forgiveness. Jesus has just told his friends that if a person has asked them for forgiveness, they must forgive even if such a request comes from the same person on numerous occasions. Forgiveness is one of the core values of the Christian faith, and yet even those closest to Jesus knew that they would need his help to fulfill this basic expectation of their new life with him. This value was familiar to them, but Jesus took them to the a new level; being with Jesus and learning from him changed the way people thought about and approached their lives. Increase our faith they cry, knowing that much of what they have learned from their experience of life, much of what they feel-self-righteous anger, fear of scarcity, the need to control-does not help them with the values they want to uphold. They need Jesus to help them, and they need encouragement from each other. Stewardship is our response to that which we value. We are stewards of our resources every minute of the day. We make choices constantly about how we use our time, our talent, and our money. Stewardship is something that we are engaged in all year. The leadership of this church attempts to keep the topic of stewardship in front of us throughout the year. If you have been coming to church for a year or more, however, you will have noticed that in the fall we focus on stewardship. October is the usual time when the church focuses on the topic as we prepare to pledge our time, talent and treasure to God through the ministry of the church for the coming year. This year's Stewardship program is based on the theme of "We live in a time and place of abundance not scarcity." Today we are focusing on our values and how we spend our time and our money. What do we value? The insert in your bulletin today asks you to name five things that you value. Please take the time to consider prayerfully your answer to these questions. The next part of the exercise is to state how you spend your time and your financial resources. Do our choices about how we use our time, our talent and money, have any relationship to what we say we value? What is the relationship of our choices to what we value? I imagine that most of us will see a direct relationship between what we value and how we use our resources-at least to some extent. Maybe we will be surprised by some of our thoughts on these matters. What we value most may not be what we spend the most time on because of other obligations that are necessary for good reasons. But, maybe, through this exercise, we can identify a few things we can do to show forth more fully in our lives what we value in our hearts. Our Christian faith calls us to grow in our commitment to what we value. It is not always easy to follow our hearts in a world that values, for example, success so much so that honesty can become an inconvenience. Just this week and many times in the past, we have seen honesty sacrificed in favor of success in the sports world, in business, and in schools. As described in the gospel reading, Jesus' friends knew that they needed him to help them stay true to their values. As a Christian community, we also support each other in our effort to be true to our values. Bishop Johnston stated in his letter to us on the occasion of our 40th anniversary: "The cornerstone of your congregational life will surely be your corporate worship each Sunday. So, it is my fervent hope that you will be able to take a lead in the Diocese in showing that attendance at church for worship is the first priority in Christian life. Please support each other in this! How true it is that when someone is away from you as you gather around the table something irreplaceable is missing." Bishop Johnston is naming a core value of the Christian life that has a lot to do with the stewardship of our time. The fact that he is encouraging us in this, and asking us to support each other, shows that it is not always easy to act based on this value. Time itself can become our master; with so much to be done, some find it difficult to attend church. Studies have determined that in the average Episcopal Church only one-third of the members attend on any given Sunday. Our average attendance is higher than that…but we too could do better. I believe that taking the time to come to church each week will help you with issues of time-receiving the grace of God here through worship and fellowship has always made the rest of my time seem more manageable and less chaotic. But of course we do not attend church for our personal benefit alone. A core value of the Christian faith is that of being together in community. That value can be in direct conflict with our sense of ourselves as individuals and what we want or how we feel on any given day. I really appreciate Bishop Johnston's comment that when one of us is away, as we gather around the table, something irreplaceable is missing. His comment gets to the heart of the value we place on Christian community-it is so important that it leads us to forgo individual preferences for the good of the community, which is also for the good of our mission as the body of Christ. I have mentioned just a few things that have been core values of Christians over the centuries such as forgiveness, honesty, corporate worship and community. How will you fill out the Stewardship exercise on what you value? What will you learn about your stewardship of your time and money? Please do take the time to consider the exercise prayerfully. It could be interesting to compare what you put down with that of others in your family. Now, from our understanding of the Bible as a whole and our experience of God in life, we know that God always seeks to meet us where we are and that God has compassion for us. I say this because scholars note that many have not liked today's gospel reading because Jesus is not gentle with the apostles. By stating that if they had faith the size of even a mustard seed they could do amazing things implies that they have no faith at all-that it is not an increase of faith that is the issue but rather the need for a complete change of heart. Like a slave who is not rewarded for doing what is expected, Jesus tells the apostles that they will not be praised for doing what they ought to do. God has given us so much. We do live in a time and place of abundance and not scarcity-be it material or spiritual resources we are considering. God has given us everything that we have. We are called to be stewards of all that we have to the glory of God and for the benefit of our world. Amen.