Sunday, October 9, 2022

Give What is Needed

PROPERS:          PROPER 22, YEAR C  

TEXT:                HABAKKUK 1:1-4, 2:1-4

PREACHED AT ST. PAUL’S CHAPEL, MAGNOLIA SPRINGS, ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2022.

 

ONE SENTENCE:        The principle of giving is to “to give what is needed, and not what you need to give.”       

 

            I remember with great clarity Monday morning, August 29, 2005.

 

            I was Canon to the Ordinary in Mississippi then, and had been scheduled to supply at Christ Church, Bay St. Louis, the day before.  It was not to be. A storm was looming off the coast. Hurricane Katrina was threatening the area. Reluctantly but wisely, we cancelled our travel plans. We were not going to race a hurricane.

 

            Nora and I were in our home at 901 Gillespie Street in Jackson that morning.  We were 160 miles north of the coast.  The winds and rain came – as you know, sideways.  The lights flickered and then went off. Branches, trash, and debris flew past our house in the 100 mile per hour winds. A neighbor’s ancient oak tree crashed down on our house, piercing the roof over our dining room.  Another neighbor, a few blocks away, died in her bed when a pine tree cut her home in-two.

 

            I was able to look around and say, “It could have been worse.”

 

            Then three days later Bishop Duncan Gray and I traveled to the coast.  I could not believe what I saw.  The first word that came to mind for me as we looked at the wreckage that was the beachfront was “Hiroshima.”

 

            Six Episcopal Churches along the Mississippi Coast had been destroyed – including a beautiful white wood-frame church we had built 12 years before when I was vicar of that congregation.

 

            To this day I cannot adequately describe the destruction I saw.

 

+ + + 

 

            Quickly, very quickly, aid began to arrive. It was meant to assist our recovery.

 

            Some was very helpful. Some posed challenges to us.

 

            Within days of the storm, a tractor-trailer truck arrived at a recovery site we had established. It was full to the brim with unsorted, used clothing. Clothing that people no longer wanted.

 

            Many churches sent Books of Common Prayer, though most were missing pages 355 through 365.  They had been discarded by the congregations and sent to us because the pages of the Holy Eucharist were no longer there.

 

            Two women from Virginia offered to finance the building of a home for the headmaster of an Episcopal School in Long Beach.  But weeks of discussion and time-consuming haggling about specifics led to their not funding the project.

 

            But those instances were the exceptions rather than the rule.

 

            A prosperous Mississippi businessman made an offer to Bishop Gray.  He would give $750,000 to assure that all coastal Episcopal clergy remained employed for six months.  That generous gift allowed those destroyed congregations to continue ministry to their flocks.  Pastoral care was assured. Not a single priest left a cure.

 

            People around the country began to send the most fungible of all donations – cash. Many thousands sent generous checks of various amounts. Others sent gift cards to Walmart or Home Depot.  Truckloads of bottled or potable water were sent to thirsty communities.  Free-standing kitchens popped-up on the coast to feed hungry and homeless people.

 

            The Church Pension Group, six months later, funded a conference in Orlando for all the impacted clergy and their families, to assist in their recovery. The pension group also funded a full-time pastor to represent the bishop to all the communities on the Gulf Coast.  The problems he would help those congregations solve were several years in arising.

 

            One of my colleagues and I were asked to address a national conference about lessons we had learned from the bitter experience.  My thoughts congealed around a basic motto: “Give what is needed, not what you need to give.”

 

+ + + 

 

The first lesson today was selections from the Book of Habakkuk.  Habakkuk is the eighth of the minor prophets in the Hebrew Scriptures. You can easily tell that his days were not easy:         

 

O Lord, how long shall I cry for help,
and you will not listen? 

Or cry to you "Violence!"
and you will not save? 

Why do you make me see wrong-doing
and look at trouble? 

Destruction and violence are before me;
strife and contention arise.

 

Habakkuk lived and prophesied in difficult times – in the years just before brutal armies from Babylon – modern-day Iraq – conquered Judea and laid waste to the Holy City of Jerusalem.  The Jewish people had to learn through those traumatic experiences that their gifts, their perseverance, and the grace of God – God moving in their midst – would bring about better days.

 

            So, it was.

 

+ + +

 

            Last year at this time, we, as a parish, faced a fork in the road.  For months the parish had languished with unhealthy finances. We were without a permanent rector.  Covid still cast a dark shadow over us.

 

            But you gave what is needed, and not what you needed to give. The parish has been revitalized and blessed. The ministries are lively. Outreach is at our heart. Education, fellowship, and worship abound.  Attendance is very good.

 

            But we are still in the midst of we might describe as “interesting times”.  The challenges are not fully abated. And your response is vitally important.  In the days ahead, remember how the Mississippi Coast was rebuilt… How Judea came back from captivity in Babylon: Give what is needed and not what you need to give.