THIS WAS STEWARDSHIP SUNDAY AND ALLISON HINE AND TOM GRANT PRESENTED PERSONAL TESTIMONIALS DURING THE SERVICE
PRIOR TO THE SERMON.
Allison Hine – This Church is a Compass
Being part of this Church community is invaluable to my family and our success in navigating the world together. The world in which Jack and I find ourselves raising our children is complex and often confusing. The news on any given day can sound sad, scary, divisive, overwhelming, and contradictory. It is hard to know how to approach these topics with our children in a way that helps us, as a family, to make sense of the world and to find a way forward. Attending church together, hearing the children’s sermons, and knowing what topics are covered in Sunday School provides us with a foundation, a touchpoint, from which we work together to understand our place in this world.
Last year, Jack and Leland spent a week in Cuernavaca Mexico learning about the plight of refugees in Central and South America. Leland, Bella, and I spent our spring break with a group of teenagers in Georgia and Alabama, studying the past, present, and future of Civil Rights in our country. I hear echoes of the learning from these trips in the conversations we have at the dinner table around topics like economic disparity, politics, health care, immigration, school violence, friendship, kindness, and countless others.
In my position as a school administrator, I work to develop systems of support for my students. We have Advisory groups to introduce students to another “trusted adult”- a person our students can go to when they need a listening ear. I recognize that many of my students need this adult ally who can provide advice in this world that is increasingly difficult to navigate. My own children, have a large number of trusted adults here at church and I recognize the value of this community for them. I love that Bella quotes Mary Tomasetti and her tenants of responsible shopping when we are at the grocery store, that Leland still carries around a prized, painted rock in our car that he made with Conrad and Eli during JPF, that Kate and Leland look forward to playing bells on Christmas Eve with Gary and Pat Jungkeit and that their friendships with Mohamad, Kambur, and Darin Hamou will forever shape the way they think about different cultures and about friendship.
This church has provided my children with a compass that I know will support their decision making throughout their lives whether they are plotting a course on a quiet afternoon through calm waters or navigating a stormy journey through one of life’s difficulties.
It’s the Fellowship – Tom Grant
My wife, Betsy, and I have been members of 4 churches during our 44 years of marriage. So, one of two things happened during this time of joining different churches. First, we could be on the run!! Well, part of that is true. We moved from Long Island to Guilford in 1978 after I took a new job. The other times we joined different churches was also because of where we lived.
So how did we choose a church? In 1975, we lived in Long Beach, Long Island. The churches around the area were Presbyterian, Baptist, or Methodist. We went to the Baptist Church on Joy Boulevard, and were the only two whites in the service, and it was a rousing service! A little much for us as newlyweds. The Methodists were nice but not that welcoming. The Presbyterians were most welcoming. It was a small church, maybe a couple hundred members. I can’t remember the sermon from the minister now, but at fellowship hour the members were most welcoming! This hit the spot as we were looking for new friends in this new environment for each of us. Today we are still friends with many of the members from when we first joined there. Betsy and I went on to lead the Pilgrim Fellowship group, and I was on the Board of Trustees and Stewardship, and Betsy was a Deacon.
We moved to the east side of Guilford in 1978. It was easier for us to get to the Madison Congregational Church than the Guilford Congregational Church. Also, Betsy had made friends with folks in Madison as she had established a play group for our new daughter and one couple was a member at the Madison Congregational Church. So, we went. I do remember that sermon was boring, but the architecture of the church was beautiful, so I spent much of my time looking at that! The Fellowship hour was great, and we were welcomed again by several we did not know. So, we joined. Soon after I was asked to co-teach Sunday school with the friends that Betsy had made. I didn’t object as I really didn’t care for the sermons of the minister! These friends, by the way, are Nancy and Jon Leckerling. Many of you know them or Nancy at least. We have been close friends with them ever since. I went on to be on the Board of Trustees and Stewardship, and Betsy was on several committees as well.
Well, we moved again to the west side of Guilford and decided it was easier to go to Guilford Congregational Church than commute to Madison. I remember the service we went to. There was a young assistant minister, Kendrick Norris, who played his guitar during the children’s service and ALL the children participated in the song. I was impressed. By this time, we had 3 children and they all went to Sunday School and ultimately became confirmed in the Church. Although we had lived in Guilford for some time, it was nice to meet new people in the community and be socially involved with them. I taught Sunday School again, was on the Board of Trustees and Board of Deacons, Chaired the Human Resource Committee, Chaired Stewardship, and headed the search for a new associate minister when needed. Betsy was not on as many committees as me but was on several.
In 2011 we moved to Old Lyme. It was time to search again. We went to several churches in the area. Most were very friendly but didn’t have the “whole” package. When we went to this church, the fellowship hour was most welcoming. By this time, I had been on so many committees in various churches that I wanted to see an annual report. Hard to believe, I know, but I just didn’t want to be in a church that couldn’t take care of itself. My experience as a Trustee in our three previous churches told me of the problems that a church can have if it not well managed. I was able to see that in other churches in Connecticut as I went to several UCC meetings in the state. Interestingly, FCOOL had similar finances to the Guilford Church both in budget and Endowment. Both churches had a young and vibrant minister that can lead the church to be the Christians we are supposed to be. The assistant ministers are great support and the Christian Ed programs are great. Let me not leave out the music programs. Outstanding! So FCCOL it was for Betsy and me.
So, what can you take from all this? Our own experience started with warm and welcoming people in fellowship hour. Every church we joined had this as a common tread. Minister’s sermons were not the mandatory issue for me as I as able to hide by teaching Sunday School. However, Kendrick Norris and Steve are my two favorites in this area. Finally, the biggest reason for staying at a church are the people. Betsy and I have been so blessed to have met wonderful people at this church. They are so caring and want our church to succeed on every level. It is hard not to be a member when this sharing of community exists. It is the value that the members of this church bring to the success of the church and the community at large.
Steve Jungkeit
Texts: Luke 12: 22-24, 29-34
There Will Your Heart Be
You’ve now heard from Allison about why this place matters to her, and to her family. You’ve heard from Tom about how he and his wife Betsy came to choose FCCOL as their faith community. It falls to me, it seems, to drive it all home.
I can’t be the only person to have Watergate on his mind this week. As I contemplated what to say to you this morning about the topic of stewardship, it was a famous piece of advice offered to Woodward and Bernstein that came to mind. Do you remember what it was? “Follow the money,” they were told. “Follow the money.”
Readers of the Bible should recognize that adage, because Jesus gave voice to those sentiments long before the 1970’s. To follow the money was one of the core messages that Jesus taught throughout his ministry. Jesus, it turns out, had very little to say about sex. He has virtually nothing to say about so called “family values.” Despite what you might think, he doesn’t say much about an afterlife – what he does say occurs in a densely coded language that as often as not is a way of talking about this world, not some other world. He does, however, say a great deal about money, about following the money.
Nearly one fifth of his teachings have to do with money. He warns of problems associated with it: how too much of it can make us greedy, and how too little of it can make us anxious. He warns about how the accumulation of material possessions can interfere with our relationship with God, to say nothing of other people. But he also suggests that money can have enormous potential. It’s clear in many passages that Jesus depends upon the resources of some generous friends in order to further his vision. Not only that, he suggests that the giving of money, out of a spirit of generosity, is to store treasure in heaven. Heaven, in this instance, isn’t about receiving a reward in the hereafter. It’s about life in this world, in this place, where we contribute toward building lives we can be proud of, constructing a world fit to inhabit, one worthy of our children. It’s hard to believe, I know, but money used well can actually, according to Jesus, bring you closer to the source of life, to the compassionate beating heart of the universe that many of us call God. To follow the money is to learn what it is we value most. For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.
That phrase stands at the center of our Scripture lesson this morning. I’ve chosen Eugene Peterson’s translation from The Message, because it captures the punch of Jesus’s words about money and material possessions in Luke’s Gospel. “What I am trying to do here,” he has Jesus say, “is to get you to relax, not be so preoccupied with getting so that you can respond to God’s giving. People who don’t know God and the way he works fuss over these things, but you know both God and how he works. Steep yourself in God. Don’t be afraid of missing out. Your father wants you to have the very kingdom itself.”
How might we understand the kingdom that Jesus speaks about? It’s not a promise of material prosperity or of physical health and well being, as the army of self-help savants across their podcast platforms and TED talk stages would have it. To be given the kingdom of God is to know you are loved by One nearer to you than you realize. It means the assurance that there is no place you can go, and no predicament you can get into, where grace and mercy cannot meet you. It means knowing, as the Apostle Paul puts it, that whether you live or whether you die, you belong to God. You belong to the Merciful One who loves you without why.
Once you’ve got that, once you understand that your life consists not in the abundance of what you have, but in the goodness and grace of God, once you’ve figured that out, the question of giving and generosity is no longer a problem. You can afford to be generous, you can give freely and with an open hand, because you know you are and always will be the recipient of God’s generosity. Once you’ve got that, all the stuff that we each of us acquire, all of the things we each of us spend our days chasing, diminishes in importance. We’re freed simply to be, and to bask in the freedom that has been bestowed upon us, to love and be loved.
But that phrase, having the kingdom, has another connotation as well. It has to do with the kind of world that we create around us. It has to do with the values we uphold, the truths we proclaim, the work that we undertake. To live into the kingdom of God is to foster connections among people, especially across vast chasms of difference. It is to establish a culture of trust, in which facts, and established research, matter. It is to maintain basic levels of civility and regard, in which we honor those with whom we disagree. It has to do, sometimes, with speaking hard truths, in love, even when telling the truth has become unfashionable. And it has to do with cherishing those among us who, for one reason or another, find their lives becoming precarious – because of officially sanctioned persecution or because of resource inequality, because of climate disasters or because of an inability to procure adequate healthcare, or food, or shelter. That’s what it means to be a part of the kingdom of God. It means we all have a role in creating such a world.
Over the last several years, much of what we value as a community, and as individuals, has been challenged because of a crisis in political leadership both here and abroad. It is a crisis that has left many institutions, among them governments, businesses, and churches, reeling over how best to respond. That’s certainly been true around here. I haven’t always known what this moment requires. At times, it has seemed best to speak boldly. In other instances, it’s been necessary to move gingerly across the sharp landscape of the present, using restraint. What I’ve endeavored to say and do through it all, what each of us as ministers have endeavored to say and do, is to keep on reminding you of what it is we most value, and who it is we’re called to be – in all times, not only this one.
That refrain has gone something like this: We are a people of spiritual and emotional depth who endeavor to connect the life of faith to all the other features of our lives. We are a people of intellect and public engagement, who aren’t content to bury our heads in the sand – we wish both to know the world around us, and to respond. We are a people who know the value of hard work, of integrity and of consistency, in our personal and collective lives. We’re a people who sometimes fail, and who know how to keep moving, how to trust in the future, and how to forgive the harms of the past. And we are a people of gentle kindness who know what it is to reach out, simply to say, are you all right. And we’re not content simply to speak or to think. Faith, for us, means getting our hands dirty, enacting what it is that we say and believe on Sundays.
Later this week, the Florence Griswold Museum will be opening an exhibition that details the work we’ve accomplished together as a congregation these last few years. It’s entitled “Nothing More American,” and it will run for almost a full calendar year, so that as many people as possible can consider the message we’ve been proclaiming in this place. In photographs and paintings, the exhibit tells the story of this iconic New England Meetinghouse, and how it has been a place of sanctuary and refuge for so many people. Malik and Zahida and Roniya will be featured. The Hamous are a part of it. The Kazadis are there. The Colon family tells their story of sanctuary. The Torres family does as well. The exhibit is about all of them. But in a very real way, it’s also about all of you.
That’s because this has been a place of sanctuary and refuge for all of us as well. It has been for me. I know it has been for many of you. You don’t have to have a story as dramatic as some of our immigrant and refugee friends to have experienced the sanctuary of this place. I hope that in time, all of you will be able to see that exhibit, and I hope you’ll feel a sense of accomplishment and pride. Whether you know it or not, you’ve been the ones who have created this space of refuge. And it’s been your generosity, your gifts, your understanding of how grace works in this world, that have allowed that to happen.
In the years that I have been your minister, I have often asked you to give, and I make no apologies for doing so. I do it because Jesus did it. I do it because it is one of the ways that you stand a chance of growing in your spiritual life. I do it because following the money is a clear indication of what it is each of us values most. And I do it because I believe, with Jesus, that where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
