There are reminders of opportunities for sainthood all around us here, for there are refugees from Sudan, as well as 20 & 50 & 60-something Americans lost in the midst of promising careers with too much money and not enough heart…and those of us moving beyond middle age wondering if life has left us behind, a bit afraid of growing older and what that means.  One of the newcomers I met a couple of weeks ago, who found the courage to attend one of our services, confessed to me, “I moved to DC with a great job, more money than I thought I’d ever make—but my life is shallow—and I knew what I was missing.  So I came, and I left quietly and quickly after services and then came back again, and again, and now I’m telling my friends, ‘You don’t need a raise or a better job, you don’t need more to drink or different drugs or better opera seats—you need to come with me to St. Thomas’.”  This is someone ready for the vocation of sainthood, which is nothing more or less than the calling to transform hearts, our own and those we encounter, and then to nurture and support the lives connected to those hearts as they begin to be Christ’s hands and feet to do God’s work everyday, whatever job they have to make a living.

We began our life together as rector and parish 4 years ago November 1st.  Over time the stories of who you have been, as well as the stories of who you currently are, have emerged.  In staying in the district after the fire that burned our original worship space, then opening our doors wide to the gay and lesbian community that was growing around Dupont Circle, and then in walking the hard road of suffering with those who succumbed on the front lines of the AIDS epidemic, St. Thomas’ already has been a hero when the call comes.  St. Thomas’ Parish has been learning all these years that sainthood isn’t one, or even a series, of dramatic gestures, but a million small steps, and hugs, and challenges, and words of forgiveness, that have the summary effect of taking us where God needed us to be.  Sainthood, we have been discovering anew in my time with you is about loving the world like God longs for it to be loved, not on the basis of what someone else thinks people deserve, but on the basis of what we have learned that we need in order to be fully the people God has created us to be.   People of transformed hearts and unclenched fists!

And yet our story together, as revealed today, is the story of the arrival at this tipping point, where we need to decide, who we will be, what face our community will wear, if we step up to the challenges of sainthood that our past has prepared us to assume.  What does God need from our faithfulness now?  And what do you need from God’s faithfulness to you, to serve this world?   An individual or community cannot live forever on the tipping point; yet only we can decide --either forward in faithfulness or backwards in fear.  

These are questions about stewardship not just of what God has given us from the gifts of creation, but what gifts we are willing to share for those who most need our ministries of hospitality and community and formation and service.   Stewardship campaigns are about bridging the tension between ‘maintenance of the status quos’ and investing ourselves in future generations so that they can BE even more than we can to serve the needs of Christ’s body, the living community of the church.