In our readings today, I was struck by Paul’s declaration in 2 Timothy: “I am already being poured out as a libation”… a libation is an offering, a drink offering that is poured out as a gift to a god… Paul is saying here that his life, his very being is an offering to God…
When you and I gather at this table… we offer many things to God. We offer our money, the fruits of our labor… It is important to me that our offerings of money stay on the altar during the Eucharist with the rest of the offerings that we bring… bread, wine, money, sometimes water, sometimes gifts of food for others… all gifts that we receive from God that we offer back to God in thanksgiving…
And, all of those are incredibly important gifts… without them our life could not continue. When we worship God, it is important for us to give thanks, to show our gratitude for the earth and all of its gifts; Eucharist, the very center of our worship means Thanksgiving… and when we begin the prayers around the table, we say, “Let us give thanks to the Lord our God… it is right to give HIm thanks and praise…” And then we proceed to hear the story of the salvation of the world and the saving acts of God in history…One of the reasons I love Eucharistic Prayer D that we are currently using, is because it is so rich in telling our story woven in to God’s story.
There is something in the prayers that we might miss if we aren’t listening, and it’s not as clear in some of the prayers…it concerns a very important offering… the offering is us… when we come together to give thanks and praise, we offer to God ourselves; poured out as a libation, as a gift to God… We are the most important gift we give to God because we are the most loved by God. What does it mean to be a gift to God?
It means that we are all worthy of respect and love because we are all given back to God… our sense of self ought to come from the fact that God loves us, and invites us into the life of the Trinity every time we gather together. Pouring our life out as a libation, as an offering, means that we give our best to God, not our scraps. Our relationship to Jesus is not one where we see if we have time for; rather it’s a relationship that needs to be at the center of everything we do. It needs to be the first relationship of our lives, not the last… Being an offering, means that everything that you and I do ought to be informed by our relationship to Jesus… We know that we cannot hide who we are from him… and our relationship to him affects everything about who we are and what we do; or at least it should…. It should also affect all our other relationships. When we take sacred vows, whether baptismal, marriage, or ordination vows… those vows have Jesus at the center, because we cannot possibly fulfill those vows without him.
Being an offering, also means that we are Jesus’ hands and feet and heart in the world… Paul worked hard to get the gospel to reach others, especially gentiles who were not part of the original covenant. He worked so hard that he found himself in prison or rejected by others… most of us won’t have to give our lives in that kind of offering… However, there might be ways that in our daily lives we can be an offering to God and to God’s world… how would our lives change if we truly saw them as an offering, as a way to give thanks to God for the love that we receive from God?
I would like to think that first, we would all spend more time in prayer and reflection. It’s hard to have a loving relationship unless we spend time nurturing that relationship. Spending time in quiet… real quiet, where we actually listen to what God might have to say is important for our prayer life; we all want answers but we spend so much time with noise that we can’t hear the answers. Sometimes, we ARE the noise that disrupts our prayer life. Nurturing our relationship with God would also mean that we spend some time reading scripture; we need to know the story of God’s breaking into human history and we need to hear how our own story connects so we can see where God breaks into our own story and how we are related to each other… maybe, as we nurture our relationship with God, we will also begin to nurture and heal our relationships with God’s people… people who like us are lovingly created by a God who desires to love us… other people whose lives are also an offering… maybe, if we saw others as an offering to be given back to God, we would see them as the best we each have to offer… how might we see others differently, if we saw them as a gift to be given back to God ? Mission, loving service given to God, pouring out ourselves as offerings to our gracious God is something that we must take seriously… God can certainly use us for good even if we don’t take it seriously… but how much more good can we be to God and to each other if we can be intentional about seeing ourselves and others as an offering, as a gift to be given and maybe even as a gift to be received? When we come together we are an offering for each other as well… an offering to be celebrated, enjoyed, learned from…
It is that time of year when we ask you to financially support St. Michael’s next year. People here have been so very generous with their time, their talents AND their money. I thank you all for making much of my job easy. The love and care that you all bestow upon this church and its people is really a pleasure to watch and experience. I have certainly been on the receiving end of your love and care this year as I have navigated my knee surgeries, and I thank you all so much. I know in my heart that God wants a church right here at 909 Reel Road, and I feel it so deeply that I do not worry about money much at all. What I ask each of you to do, is to pray and consider the financial gift you will give to St. Micheal’s next year; and, I ask that knowing that the rising cost of everything is making life hard for many. I also ask that knowing that some way, somehow, we will figure it out.
Today may we be poured out… given to God as God poured himself out in the life of Jesus… may we spend time nurturing relationships with each other and with God… may we listen to the stories of scripture and to each other’s stories so that we might find ourselves in those stories… may we always take time to pray and to listen… we are God’s beloved and most special offering… may we always give thanks to God from whom all blessing flow.