A Reflection on Gratitude and Giving at the 2019 Stewardship Presentation-The Rev. Miles Brandon
The picture on the screen (see below) is of a woman, more specifically a mother, named Vicki, whose is listening to her 14-year-old son’s heart beating inside the woman whose chest her ear is pressed against. Her son, Matthew’s, heart was donated following a tragic accident to Jennifer the other woman in the picture. Though a profound loss that words cannot describe, the gift of Matthew’s heart, now beating within Jennifer, saved her life, as she was suffering from a heart disease that would have certainly taken her life without Matthew’s heart. Vicki, Matthew’s mother, is quoted as saying, “I’m overwhelmed, I’m happy–my son had a good, strong heart and it has kept her alive…I feel like I gained a daughter.”
So, I shared this image and story once before some 5 years ago or so…but wanted to share it again today, as it came strongly back into my mind some weeks ago as I began to think specifically about this brief reflection on gratitude and giving. And I do so in hopes that it might help us together prepare for our In-Gathering Service one week from today. Next week we will, as we have around Thanksgiving for almost a decade now, collect our intended commitments to further God’s mission and ministry in and through St. Julian’s in the year to come. As a reminder, we will do so at one service at 10:30 AM…so about right now…so that we can present those expressions of sharing something of our own heart, with each other and all those we serve together, as one body…that contains within it one great big beating heart.
And, I think this is why this story speaks to me in the context of the generosity shared in this place…for what we commit to share in this place is, indeed, from the heart…if not flesh and blood…at least a reflection of the heart that beats within each of us. Leo Tolstoy writes in Anna Karenina, “I think...if it is true that there are as many minds as there are heads, then there are as many kinds of love as there are hearts.” This family of faith, St. Julian’s, is full of hearts…and all kinds of love…so much love. And, this “Season of Giving Thanks” has been intended, as it really is each year, to connect us to our hearts…to give us the space to root around in the place we call the heart…the seat of our souls…the place from which our connection to God and one another lives and thrives. And, in doing so, I have hoped that we would find that place, our heart space, so full of gratitude and passion and warmth and love and hope…that we simply cannot contain within ourselves that which we discover there…in our hearts. And, further then, that such profound love and gratitude encountered within ourselves could only…can only overflow in all sorts of wonderful and maybe even unexpected life-giving ways.
Such as…a greater willingness to express kindness to the stranger or the people all around us we encounter in need…a greater willingness to say I love you often and with sincerity to those with whom we are blessed to share our lives…a greater willingness to look seriously at our calendars to carve out the time, our hearts really want, to give our physical presence to each other beginning with those closest to us…a greater willingness to look seriously at our budgets to see what we can share from our own abundance, whether that is a little or a lot, with the life of love we share in this place and the other places where we give and serve, as so beautifully stated in the two signs we are creating in the back of our church…and, of course, a week out from In-Gathering, a greater willingness to make a transformative commitment to our church in the year to come…a commitment that begins with prayer…and that look like time and talent given to the life-giving ministry that happens in this place…and a regular, ongoing financial commitment that make up our ministry budgets, that provide and pay for this space from which our ministry to each other and the world around us flows, and that support the salaries, including my own, of those who give generously from their own hearts and expertise to inspire all of the good and Godly worship, learning, prayer and service that we share in together.
You see, though we may not literally give our flesh and blood hearts to one another, I believe, if we listen with the ears of faith, we can, indeed, hear our own hearts beating within each other…as we continue to share generously from our hearts in this place. For, I hear our hearts beating in our children, as they are fed and filled by our children’s chapel program, our Student Ministry called “Journey to Adulthood”, our Sunday School classes, and VBS program. I hear our hearts beating in our friends in Navajoland who we have given so much of ourselves to over the past seven years…beating in our friends and neighbors living on the streets who we have fed with food, clean socks, and our love each time a manna bag is handed out by one our smiling people…beating in our adults as are they challenged and strengthened through worship and the work of our Theologian-in-Residence…truly we are together “Formed by Love”, as Scott’s book that we have been studying together this fall is titled. I hear our hearts beating in those to whom we offer pastoral care, which is the gift of Godly presence, a listening ear, and prayer, as we stand with those in our community who are suffering grief, loss, disease, divorce, job-loss, and all manner of crisis and transitions. Together we have saved lives…we have literally kept hearts beating…as we have moved people great distances to much-needed health care, and as we have manifested God’s hope and love to those experiencing very dark places in life. I hear our hearts beating in these lives and so many more, just beginning in each other, those lives who have been so profoundly blessed through the “works of love” that God in Christ has called us into together…in this, just the first decade, in which, the great big heart we share has beaten.
And, so I invite us with great prayer and intentionality, to once again, look into our hearts this week, as Ashley and I will surely be doing, to consider how God might be calling each of us to share…to share from our hearts…in order to keep the collective heart we embody together in this place beating…to keep, not blood alone, but God’s own love coursing through our veins…and through the lives of all those, both far and near, whose hearts have been and will be conjoined with our own. Amen.