Sermon by Marjorie Brown on 9^th August 2009

This week we come to a subject that was one of Jesus’ favourite topics for preaching, but strangely enough it is one of the least favourite of preachers nowadays. No, not sex, not death – it’s money. But we shouldn’t be squeamish about it because it runs through the Hebrew scriptures as well as the gospels as a very important subject. In fact one in ten of the verses in the gospels make reference to the poor. Jesus was never shy of talking about basic material needs and the injustice of the rich having too much while the poor have too little.

But we 21st century Christians are nervous of talking about money. Even American-born priests find it difficult! I think one reason is because we are so clear that God’s gift of grace is freely given – it isn’t something that we can buy or earn. We can’t do anything to make God love us any more, just as we can’t do anything to make God love us any less. The people of the Middle Ages who built and endowed gorgeous chapels, like the one filled with Giotto’s frescoes in Padua, in order to buy their sinful relatives a free pass out of Purgatory, were wasting their cash, we can all agree.

But once we are clear that we can’t buy God’s attention or mercy, we do need to think about how we manage our money. How much is enough? How do we follow Jesus’ radical instructions about laying up treasure in heaven rather than on earth? What should we do with the money we have that is over and above the necessities of life?

Another relevant question in the 21st century is who pays for the Church’s mission? I have met otherwise quite well educated people who think that the Church of England is paid for entirely by the state out of our taxes – bit like the NHS!

I am sure no one here thinks that. You will all know that the Church’s work is funded entirely by its members and by the income we can raise from our buildings. Where I come from, in the USA, this is a simple matter to grasp. If you want a church, you raise money, buy land, put up a building, hire a minister, set a budget, and off you go. You are very well aware that you need to keep raising money all the time if the church is going to continue.

My brother, a churchwarden in Minneapolis, told me a story recently about a pastor in America who began a stewardship drive by saying, “There’s good news and there’s bad news. The good news is that we have all the money we need for the church. The bad news is that it is still in your pockets.”

As we say where I come from, the buck stops here. And today I want to explain a little bit about how the local parish church is paid for, and why we need to be concerned about its financial situation. The Church of England is of course an ancient institution with many beautiful buildings. One oddity of history is that the incumbent of a parish is literally the freeholder of the church building. But I can reassure you that I can’t sell St Mary’s and decamp to Barbados. I can’t even move a lectern from one side of the building to the other or put up a new picture without ecclesiastical permission.

The parochial church council, the elected governing body of the parish church, led by the churchwardens, has the legal responsibility to keep the church open and in good repair, and to make sure that decent worship is regularly taking place in it. As I said last week, the clergy have an obligation to say morning and evening prayer, and that happens almost but not quite every day in church here at St Mary’s. We also have to make sure that the eucharist is celebrated at least once every Sunday.

But how does all of this get paid for? There are no historic pots of money. The property assets of the Church Commissioners, who handle the financial affairs of the Church of England, are indeed large, but so are the demands on them. You will all be aware of the dire state of pension funds in today’s Britain. With large numbers of retired clergy, who actuaries tell us tend to live to very ripe old ages, the pension crisis in the Church of England is very serious indeed.

So the money to run the church has to come from present-day parishioners and not the legacies of our long-dead ancestors, and that means stewardship pledges, fundraising events, rent from buildings, and fees for occasional services such as weddings and funerals. Here at St Mary’s we are not blessed with a large property portfolio. We make a little money from renting our space to community groups but by far the biggest part of our income is the gift aided stewardship offerings of the congregation. In 2008 this giving was around £95,000, but sadly the amount has gone down significantly in 2009.

Now £95,000 or even £85,000 may sound a lot, but the first call on that money is the Common Fund. This is our payment to the diocese to cover the costs of ministry. Each parish with one full-time priest is assessed as costing £64,000, with about one-third going to pay the vicar’s stipend, one-third on housing and pension, and one-third in training future clergy and supporting the wider Church. After we have paid that, we don’t have a great deal left to pay all our running costs and bills, do repairs as needed, and support the services and outreach of the church.

Jesus told us that where our treasure is, there will our heart be also. Some people put all their treasure into personal goods and pleasures, and thus show what they value. Other people, whether super-rich like Bill Gates or well below the poverty line like some of the pensioners in my old Hackney parish, put the bulk of their disposable income into the service of others, through church or other charitable giving. I would guess that they are the happier people.

We cannot buy happiness, as everyone knows. What we as Christians need to remember and proclaim is that everything we have is a gift from God – this abundant planet, the health of our bodies and minds, food and drink, loving relationships, life itself. God’s greatest gift, the living and forgiving presence of Jesus Christ among us, is utterly free, a sheer act of grace. The gospel today speaks of the bread of life that comes to us from heaven, and the drink that means we need never be thirsty.

We cannot create any of this for ourselves – we can only work with what God has given us and express our thanks for all our blessings. The very first call on our resources, once we have adequately fed and housed our families, is to offer back to God a share of what we have been given – the first-fruits, to use the Hebrew expression. Not only is it natural to bring a thank-offering to God, but as the Bible reminds us constantly, it is our duty to share what we have been given with those who do not have enough.

We cannot all sell our property and tramp the highways like Francis of Assisi. But every Christian is obliged to prayerfully consider what we should do with the excess we have, beyond our daily need. One rule of thumb is to aim at tithing our discretionary income. The traditional Biblical tithe is ten per cent. If we gave five per cent to the church and another five per cent to other charities, our treasure would be heaping up in the places where we claim our hearts are.

And what might this mean for St Mary’s Church? There is no telling what five per cent of the discretionary income of our congregation might amount to – it is not the parish’s business to know or guess as each person’s income and expenses are a private matter. But with 330 people on the electoral roll, I think it would be far in excess of £95,000. Even if most of us aimed, to begin with, at a far smaller percentage, the situation would be very different from the one we are in now.

What difference would it make? With extra tens of thousands we could fund our youth project securely well into the future and attract long-term match funding from other sources. We could think about taking on more paid staff to carry out pastoral and administrative work. We could provide better educational and recreational opportunities for the children of this parish. We could even increase our Common Fund giving, thus relieving poorer parishes in this diocese of a terrible burden of financial worry – I know, I used to serve in such a parish. And we could give even more generously than we do now to good causes both at home and overseas.

The responsibility, under God, is ours. The Church of England is a huge institution but it is made up of 10,000 parishes like St Mary’s – worshipping congregations who must organise their own communal life and pay for it themselves, most of them with far smaller resources than we have. Only if we all take this responsibility seriously will there continue to be a Church in this nation for generations to come.