Grace Notes

This week’s message has a musical theme. Even to a person untrained in music, it’s clear that good music has more than one part. Music has melody and harmony. In our hymns, the congregation usually sings the melody, while the organ provides the harmony in its accompaniment. When the choir sings a song, one of the parts (usually the sopranos) sings the melody while the rest harmonize around it. The melody has to be there for the song to sound right, and to carry the core message of the music; the harmony or accompaniment adds to the melody, making it more beautiful, more interesting, more meaningful.

In church, we have two kinds of music: special music and hymns. Special music is offered as part of worship by people who are specially gifted with talents for music. Our organists, our worship band, our youth band, our choir – these musicians have received musical gifts from God, and they share those gifts to lead and beautify worship. We all know that God has gifted each of us differently. Where God has given us more, He asks us to use that gift more. These musically gifted people do that in the special music.

But there are also things that God expects each of us to do, whether we are especially gifted or not. Hymns are like that. This joyful expression by the whole congregation is part of the wonder of our communion as the Body of Christ. Most of us are familiar with the King James translation of several Psalms, which encourage us to “Make a Joyful Noise” to the Lord. It doesn’t matter whether the joy you show sounds like the choir of angels, or more like a concrete mixer or whistling teapot, God wants your joyful sounds.

The hymns, then, are analogous to how God expects us to treat the stewardship of our worldly goods. He wants a joyful gift from each and every one of us. This gift, this tithe, is to be the first and best of what he has given us. We are to joyfully give. Whether God has blessed us with a lot or a little, He still wants something – something that shows our appreciation for everything in our lives, since it all comes to us from Him. This kind of giving is like the melody of a song, or the hymns in our service. It is the core music of our stewardship.

Yet, while all of us give something, there are some in the congregation who have been specially gifted – with unusually large measures of generosity, with an abundance of material goods, or with a strong desire to help others by sharing what we have. You might be one of them. Those people are the “choir of givers”. They are the harmony of our stewardship, for it is they who step up and encourage the entire congregation’s generosity by giving above and beyond their tithe so that the work of the congregation can grow.

Melody and harmony; hymns and special music – both exist to glorify God and make our worship meaningful. We can’t and shouldn’t count on the choir and organist to provide all the music in a worship service. If we did, it would be like hearing that organ music without the melody. God’s work thrives when the whole of His people participate, so the congregation needs to sing the hymns, to provide the melody. In the same way, it is important for each of us to do our joyful regular stewardship, and be thankful for the “choir” of givers who encourage us by giving offerings to bless God’s work. If we do, the blessings on our congregation will overflow onto others as our music blesses those who are with us in worship, whether they are members or visitors.

So remember, make a joyful noise – with your voices and with your giving.

If you are a certain age, you are likely to know the story “Stone Soup.” For those of you who might not be familiar with it, here’s a quick summary:

A soldier comes into a village, needing a place to stay and food to eat. The villagers are frightened of the soldier, because he is a stranger, so they lock themselves in their houses. The soldier, very hungry but having no food of his own, starts making Stone Soup in the center of the village. He takes a stone out of his backpack and proclaims loudly that this is a special stone that makes the most wonderful stone soup in the world. He gets a pot of water boiling and puts the stone in and after it simmers a while, tastes it and says “Oh, this is delicious, but it would be even better with a few potatoes.” The wary villagers are curious, and one of them dares to bring some potatoes to the soldier, who thanks his benefactor and cuts the potatoes into the soup. Again, tasting it, he praises the soup and says it would be even better with some carrots. And someone brings him carrots. And so on. Before long, a wonderful soup has been created because all of the villagers have contributed, and the soup is enough to feed the soldier and his new friends.

In some ways, this is very much like what we do here at Grace frequently – the Stone Soup meal is really a potluck! No one person brings an entire meal, but with all of us contributing a little, we have more than enough for a meal for everyone.

Just before Easter, we started a special project at Grace. We needed to raise $40,000 by the middle to end of May in order to reach our goal of being able to pre-pay our commitment to our school ministry, while still maintaining all of our other bills and commitments. In the bulletin today you can see how far along we are in reaching that goal. When we started, the pot of soup had nothing but a special stone – the promise of results when all of us get involved. Today we have some potatoes and carrots. Over the next few weeks, we can continue to make a very special soup, a potluck. When we kicked off this special project, I remarked that this congregation is very generous when it comes to special projects, such as the roof repair or the sprinklers or sending the Youth to National Gatherings. Another thing at which this congregation excels is potlucks!

You can continue to give to the special project by putting an offering – a monetary gift above and beyond your normal weekly tithe – in an envelope marked “RCLS Commitment” and putting your envelope number on it. In this way, you can help our Stone Soup, our Grace Potluck, become a most pleasing feast for God’s work here at Grace.

For those of you who have been at Grace for a while, you know that our recent tradition is to have our Stewardship emphasis begin in Lent, As we were considering what sort of message to use this year, we decided to mix it up a little bit. We realize that people are individuals. We know that different people learn from and react to different messages. With that in mind, rather than having one theme, we’re going to have several, and we hope you will find one of them particularly helpful as you consider your Stewardship response to God’s Great Grace.

And so, today, we begin with a message we call “Let Me Put it This Way.”

When Pastor Heidorn has collected the offering each week, he speaks these words that are so familiar to us now: “We give Thee but Thine own, whate’er the gift might be. All we have is Thine alone, a trust, O Lord, from Thee.” I really like those words. They’re very poetic, memorable and meaningful.

Sometimes, words we hear over and over get lost, though, as they become routine. So, to help us focus on their meanings, I offer a few new ways to say much the same thing.

• Hey, God, I know you gave this to me, but I’m sure you can use it better than I can. Don’t worry, I have enough for me.
• Wow, thanks for giving me all this, God! Here! I brought you a gift to show you my thanks. Use it however you think best.
• God, you promised me my daily bread, and you gave me that and more! Let me give some back so other people can learn to be as thankful as I am.
• Father, I know you gave me this, but some of my brothers could really use it. Would you mind getting it to them?
• God, you trusted me to hold onto this for a while. With what you gave me, I was able to make even more, and I want you to have some of it.

I’m sure there are many more ways we could rephrase that meaningful prayer. I thought about trying to do it in different dialects. You know, Surfer Dude (Whoa! Awesome!), Five-year-old (Thanks, Daddy), or Rocky Balboa (Yo, Adrian, um, I mean, Holy Father) but I’m not a Surfer Dude, or a Five-year-old, or Rocky, and I don’t think many of you are, so I hope you get the point and I hope one of those helps you focus on the meaning of “We Give Thee but Thine Own…”

We’ve all been given so much, but it is, after all, God’s. He owns it all. As good stewards of His things, it’s important to realize it, and give Him thanks, however we say it.