Dedication Sunday
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
17 November 2013
Elizabeth M. Deibert
My brother Curt, who lives with my mom, grows roses. He has four rose gardens with about 20-30 bushes each. He tells me that the first set of blooms, the first fruits of spring are by far the most spectacularly beautiful.
We who live in the two season land of
SW Florida, who grow things in the winter and in these modern times of mass
transportation enjoy fruit from all around world in every season, have a hard
time appreciating the notion of first fruits.
But some of us can remember well that it was a real gift to land in
strawberry season or apple season or orange season, or corn season, and enjoy
the first fruits of the long-awaited season.
In the Bible, references to first fruits are almost always associated
with thank-offerings. This notion of giving
one’s first fruits originates in Ancient Israel and Greece with the requirement
of the first tenth of the produce harvested being given to the priest or
sacrificed to God. The leftovers after
the harvest, called the gleanings, were to be left for the poor.
One time on Dedication
Sunday this ten year old kid was at lunch with his parents after church, he
started asking about the tip money left on the table. After they got in the car, the kid says, “So
let me get this straight, God gets 10% and the waiter gets 15 or 20? That doesn’t make sense.” The math for 10% is easy but the giving level
can be daunting. I encourage you to start
with a small percentage. If you are
barely making it, think of growing into a tithe, increasing your pledge each
year. Sometimes the joy of giving can
overwhelm you – like the two guys who walked out of church with just their
boxers on. Standing outside the church,
half-naked, the one guy says to the other – that was the best sermon on giving
I’ve ever heard.
Okay, well, trust me, I want you keep
your clothes on, but just stretch a bit beyond your comfort zone in your
generosity because we can do so much together here at Peace – that we cannot do
separately. Eight years ago, we did not
exist except as an idea. But people
began to give their first fruits of time, talent, and treasure – and Peace
became a church. First fruits – off the
top of our paycheck or monthly income because we know we are likely to spend
what’s left, if we don’t give to God first.
But then in there are opportunities at Peace and in any faith community
to give what’s left (the gleanings) to special offerings for other people. So it’s like a sandwich with top and bottom
going to God and neighbor and the middle of the sandwich is for yourself.
Speaking of special offerings, we are collecting today for the victims of the typhoon in the Philippines. I read yesterday the heart-wrenching story of a twenty-seven year-old family breadwinner who died from complications of a broken leg. I watched a video of two children, whose parents were crushed under rubble while they, the kids huddled together and miraculously lived. What a desperate situation. Let us allow our hearts to be broken for our Filipino brothers and sisters. I also saw the story of a church which is being used for shelter, with people sleeping on the pews, even while continuing to hold services. So we ask for gleanings – leftovers for the most needy today, even on the same day that we ask for a commitment from you about first fruits of next year. With thanksgiving, with gratitude.
As the Israelites were charged to
remember that they were once slaves in Egypt and that it was God who brought
them out and gave them a land. So we as
we make our pledges and offerings each year and each week are challenged to
remember that all we have comes from God.
The reason we are so joyful about having our “promised land” is that we
have been tenants for eight years. The
joy of the congregation over having our own land and building is fresh now, but
we must not forget from where we have come and how God brought us here.
I’d like to ask the early founders of
Peace to stand up. Gary and Junie, and
then everyone else who dreamed early, who met on Sunday nights at Living Lord
Lutheran. Then those who arrived in our
first year of worship at MCC. You
believed God could do this thing, despite looking around and seeing 30-40
people. Please remain standing now,
while I ask all the charter members who came in time to be at Peace on that
great day in October of 2009 when Peace New Church Development became an
official church in the PC(USA). Without
you coming along as the first fruits of our ministry in the college and in our
homes and at the park, we would have fallen in discouragement. But you took the yoke from our shoulders
and plowed the earth, and made us a real church, not just a little group of
people wishing they were a church. Please
continue standing.
About a year later, we moved to this
location for a new season of harvest. Please
stand if you came to Peace after charter, in 2010 or 2011, a surge of new
growth for the church, which made us confident for the first time that we might
one day afford a building to house our ministry. Here we saw the fruit of having 24/7 space
to conduct our ministries. We moved
tables and chairs, but we left nursery and classrooms and offices all week long
– what a joy! Keep standing now as we
add all who have come in 2012 and 2013 to Peace – even those who have not
joined yet but who are coming and thriving and celebrating with us. You are the ones who have made it possible
for us to go to our “promised land.”
You have ridden this year’s roller coaster with us, without screaming or
running away while our plan kept evolving.
Build here – NO! buy this
foreclosed church – NO, moldy! Wait a
minute, here’s the place God is calling us to go and what a perfect plan –only
we did not know until now when God’s time was right. Thank you, everyone. You may be seated.
So now our wandering has ended, our
fear of failure is behind us, we have landed, Peace will settle, but not really
– not in a lazy way. Because you see,
harvest time is every year, and in Florida, all year long, and especially in
winter. Peace has a home, but not to
sit down and rest. Peace has a home
into which we can welcome more workers into God’s field. Peace
has a home from which we can go out to harvest, to serve, to love. Peace has a home to nurture faith, hope, and
love in children, youth, and adults at every stage of life, so they have more
to take with them into the world where others are hurting and need peace. Hear
how God calls the Israelites to enter the land, taking the first fruits and
giving them up and not just giving them up, but recounting the challenging
story of how God lead them to the Promised Land. The gifts and the story are to remind them
to have grateful and generous hearts, especially after they are blessed with a
land and its wealth.
Deuteronomy 26:1-11
When
you have come into the land that the Lord
your God is giving you as an inheritance to possess, and you possess it, and
settle in it, 2 you shall take some of the first of all the
fruit of the ground, which you harvest from the land that the Lord
your God is giving you, and you shall put it in a basket and go to the place
that the Lord
your God will choose as a dwelling for his name. 3 You shall go
to the priest who is in office at that time, and say to him, “Today I declare
to the Lord
your God that I have come into the land that the Lord
swore to our ancestors to give us.” 4 When the priest takes the
basket from your hand and sets it down before the altar of the Lord
your God, 5 you shall make this response before the Lord
your God: “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor; he went down into Egypt and
lived there as an alien, few in number, and there he became a great nation,
mighty and populous. 6 When the Egyptians treated us harshly
and afflicted us, by imposing hard labor on us, 7 we cried to
the Lord,
the God of our ancestors; the Lord
heard our voice and saw our affliction, our toil, and our oppression. 8 The
Lord
brought us out of Egypt with a mighty hand and an outstretched arm, with a
terrifying display of power, and with signs and wonders; 9 and
he brought us into this place and gave us this land, a land flowing with milk
and honey. 10 So now I bring the first of the fruit of the
ground that you, O Lord,
have given me.” You shall set it down before the Lord
your God and bow down before the Lord
your God. 11 Then you, together with the Levites and the aliens
who reside among you, shall celebrate with all the bounty that the Lord
your God has given to you and to your house.
(New Revised Standard Version)
Together
with the Levites and the aliens who reside among you, you shall celebrate with
all the bounty that the Lord your God has given you. So you see, all the bounty that is ours over
at 12705 Highway 64 has been given us for our sharing with others. It is not just for us.
And we
celebrate that so many of you have given so much of yourselves – remembering
that the church is not just here to serve you – but you to serve God in the
church. What a joy to watch you stream
into our new property all week long, tackling tasks! Gia
and I could barely get any worship work done this week the building was so
alive with excited people. I can hardly
wait to see the building and grounds full of you this morning, as we leave this
place and go there.
As those of
old their first fruits brought, so we bring the first fruits of our time, our
talent, and our treasure to God.
Peace would
not be here, apart from each of you and the role you play. When I invited you to consider who needed to
be thanked, most of you named names and honestly there were so many names mentioned
that I cannot begin to name sixty or eight people by name with all that you
have done for Peace. So here’s my
summary of all you said: “Thank the newer
Peace family members who have really contributed to this move.” Others of you said, thank the people who
founded the church and served on three different teams to keep it going. Many of you said, “Thank the people who have
given so generously of their resources so we could afford this property, and
thank those who have given so much time, working on this purchase and the
predecessor decisions, and all who have scrubbed and carried and cleaned – here
at MAR but also at college, and most of all, at our new home, and to all who
will do so today.
Thank the
quiet people who are always here, working behind the scenes to help children,
to make coffee, to set up for worship, help in the office, or take attendance
so we know who might be missing, might be struggling. Thank all the people who are so caring, so
attentive to people and all those who teach any age.
Thank God
for those who were with us previously and have died or moved or moved on to
other callings. Thank the task masters
who organize and lead. Thank the role
models, whose peaceful personalities, whose spirit of gratitude, whose encouraging
love, whose faith and prayer sustains us all.
Thank all the talented people who make music and design artfully and
inspire us all. Thank those who pick up
jobs dropped by others, without hesitation.
Thank those who never said “no” to any job and tell them you will do it
this time so they don’t have to. Thank those who never get discouraged, even in
discouraging times. Thank all people at
Peace for being the people of Peace, loving God, loving one another, loving
beyond the church to the community and world.
Thank you for being gracefully and lovingly determined to fulfill our
mission to make God known by growing as disciples, building a community of
peace, and caring for the needs of others.
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