Whose Cadillac Is It, Anyway?

November 8, 1992

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Scripture: Exodus 17:8-13; Matthew 25:14-30

I ask your indulgence this morning; indeed, I beseech it ardently, because I need to do something I don’t like to do. Really, there are 2 things, which makes it doubly tough. ONE is to preach a sermon which contains a number of personal references.... Too much of that is not only bad homiletical practice and bad psychology, it’s also pretty boring, but what I want to say this morning is largely a personal matter, and I really don’t know another way, a better way to get into it. I want to talk about OWNERSHIP,I want to talk about the CHURCH....

And the second thing---I guess I might as well go ahead and use the word...I know I’m not going to fool you---I need to talk about STEWARDSHIP, and the way we as Christians are called to relate to what is placed at our disposal. If you think you’re not up to handling either of those topics, or the combination thereof, you may leave now or forever hereafter hold your peace.

There are 2 Scripture reading, 2 passages, 2 Biblical selections, one from the Old Testament, one from the New. I’m going to get them, in time, I hope, and with reasonable luck and an element of divine fortuitousness they’ll fall into place, but I want to start with a story, a personal experience, which I share with you as a confession of embarrassment.

I remember it as if it were yesterday, the whole sordid episode. Even now, after all these intervening years, I can close my eyes and see the scene, smell the accompanying smells, and recapture the feeling. In memory it all comes flooding back....

I was a student at the University...2nd year, probably, 18 or 19...wonderfully impressed with my potential, and frightened to death at the prospect of having to use it... old enough to harbor illusions of grandeur, and young enough not to have any idea what to do with them.... I WAS THE EMBODIMENT OF EAGER, IMPETUOUS INEPTITUDE.

One day in that condition of burgeoning development, I was walking along the street,

near the center of town, or actually on the sidewalk next to the street, when, lo, right up

ahead, approaching with devastating sensuality, flowed a stunningly beautiful young woman.

My eyes instinctively widened as I saw her coming....She was walking straight toward me, this luminous, shimmering apparition.

Now, I’m not talking about your ordinary, everyday, run of the mill, basically nice-looking female type person of the opposite gender...I am talking about a KNOCKOUT. She was dressed to the hilt, in a flowered, spring dress, with dangling earrings, rakishly positioned hemline, and spiked shoes with pointed toes.

She might have been a little older than I, but not by much---she couldn’t have been, and there was clearly no wedding ring on her finger. My heart raced, my pulses pounded.... adrenalin and hormones clattered together noisily. I had no idea whatsoever who she was or where she had come from, though my suspicions centered on the probability that she had dropped down straight from heaven itself.

What could I do to attract her attention? What could I do to make her notice me? How could I impress her quickly, this vision now looming into my orbit, and into my life.... maybe, for all I knew, into my destiny?

Parked nearby on the street, just alongside, I noticed, was a white, new, shiny Cadillac,

a Coupe de Ville, with gleaming whitewalls, freshly washed and resplendent in the sunlight. Moving quickly into character, I assumed my Joe Cool demeanor, adjusted my sunglasses, shrugged my shoulders nonchalantly and sauntered over to the Cadillac with a proprietary air.

I reached into my pocket and extracted a nickel---those were the days when a nickel would purchase a lot of parking time---- With studied arrogance, I popped that nickel into the meter, and then confidently leaned against the car. Don’t you love that Jack Palance After Shave Lotion commercial: “Confidence is very sexy, don’t you think?”

I exuded confidence and smiled. To my frank astonishment, and infinite joy, she responded. She actually smiled and continued coming closer. My contrived ploy had worked. I had attracted her interest. It was clearly the prelude to the rest of my life. She paused right in front of me. Then very sweetly, she said, “Thank you”....went around and got into her Cadillac and drove away.

Do you know what I learned form that episode? Do you know what lesson I picked up. Well, for one thing, that some investments don’t pay a very high rate of return. That nickel was gone, dude, along with any remaining semblance of self-esteem.

But that’s not the real lesson, I’m happy to say. All was not loss in that debacle. I learned something MORE, because NOW, as I look back on it, I realized that here, in a way,

is a parable of ministry. Preachers will find homiletical material in very strange placed.

I didn’t get it at the time, but now, I realize, in retrospect, that that painful, embarrassing experience was a kind of foreshadowing of a deeper insight about the Church and my relationship to it. THE CHURCH IS NOT MY CADILLAC.

That’s been kind of hard for me to learn as a minister.... I don’t own it; I don’t control it... I don’t determine its standards, or its priorities, or its agenda.... I don’t decide what its admission policy should be, or to whom it should be in service.... Those things aren’t submitted to me for personal approval.

As a called and ordained clergyman in the Church, I am set apart as a “steward of the mysteries of God”, as Paul put it in First Corinthians, and that’s a big responsibility, but it’s a supportive relationship, not a proprietary relationship. The Church is not mine in any ownership sense at all.

THE CHURCH BELONGS TO GOD, and God in his infinite wisdom and grace has entrusted it primarily, not to the “cleros”, the clergy, the “hired hands”, but to the LAOS, God’s people, for maintenance, and strengthening, and upbuilding. It’s taken me a while to learn that.

The first sermon I ever preached....I mean, that first sermon, on my first appointment, right after graduation from seminary, when I was sent to the Micanopy Circuit, up in Alachua County in the Gainesville District....out at old Shiloh Church, which was where the first service of the day was held on the 3rd Sunday of the month.... that hallowed schedule probably prevails to this day.... Anyway, for that first sermon out at old Shiloh, I used this passage of Scripture from Exodus that I read a moment ago----Moses and the Hebrew chillin’ out in the wilderness, fighting against the Amalekites. I’m embarrassed to tell you. In a way I relived the Cadillac experience.

I waxed eloquent, or thought I did, setting the stage about Moses there on the hill,

leading the battle against the pagan Amalekite army..... I portrayed the fray ebbing and flowing.... the armies clashing on the field...it’s a vivid story. I described Moses, how he held up his arm, and as long as his arm was upraised, God’s people prevailed, but when he let it slump in fatigue, the battle went the other way.

And, God forgive me, I identified myself, the new preacher, with Moses, and I urged the laity, the people of the Church, like Aaron and Hur, to hold high the hand of their leader so he could triumph in the battle with the Amalekites of life, and the enemy could be driven from the field.

I really said that, leaning on that Cadillac as if it were mine. I called on them to support me. It’s a wonder those good people didn’t rout me before the next Sunday.

 You see, if you want to spiritualize that story---which in itself is a questionably homiletical practice----that’s another issue.... but if you want to spiritualize that story and make it harmonize with the New Testament understanding of ministry, you let the LAITY, the people, the whole Church be Moses, and you let the CLERGY be Aaron and Hur, the helpers, the supporters, the uplifters.... a 2 to 1 ratio is probably about right, anyway. I had it all backward. The preacher isn’t the only one in ministry, not even the primary one. We’re all in

this fight.

I saw a Church bulletin some time ago, from another state, and on the masthead, or the directory, or whatever you call it, it listed the names of the members of the staff. It began, Bishop...and the name. District Superintendent...and the name. Then came MINISTERS...and it said, EVERY MEMBER OF THE CHURCH. You see, in our understanding of the Christian ministry and discipleship, you were ordained when you were baptized. Isn’t that exciting? When you signed up, or were signed up for, you were placed in the active militia. In the Church, there is no Reserve.

Now, frankly, (this is confession time), it hasn’t been an easy thing for most of us preachers to come to grips with this.... Oh, we pay lip service to it.... We honor it at Reformation time when we talk about “the priesthood of all believers”, Martin Luther’s startingly radical insight....

We pay tribute to it on Laity Sunday.... We sing “Rise Up, O Men of God”, and now with greater gender sensitivity, we broaden it to say, “Rise up, Ye Saints of God”---more inclusive, that’s good--- (notice that we get to the final hymn)....all of it speaks of shared ministry, but there’s still a tendency among us clergy somehow to regard the institution, the Body, the “ecclesia” as OUR Cadillac. We may be equal, but we’re more equal than you. AFTER ALL, WE WERE “set apart”, to tend the flame, weren’t we, which puts us in a special category.... WE were programmed to oil the machinery, weren’t we, to push things, to make things happen, and to get our validation when they do.

Please don’t hear this wrong. I’m talking about my own profession and the attendant

temptations that are attached to its practice. I suspect there may be a wider application

into other professions, but, if so, you’ll need to make your own transition.... I’m bleeding

for my own here now.

We went to seminary and learned about such esoteric matters as the Graf-Welhausen Documentary hypothesis, and hermeneutics, and realized eschatology, and now act as if those things are the source of real ministry; they’re in our possession. We really do often subscribe to the “trickle down” theory of discipling technique, as if we, the professionals, were the upper crust, the real Christians, the enlightened ones, whose job is to drop nuggets of insight and spiritual value into the hands of grateful lay folk beneath.

Please pardon the exaggeration. It’s not that big of an exaggeration. Pretty arrogant

is what it is. In the history of Christian heresy, that’s known as Gnosticism, a disease that nearly polluted the Church in its very first decade.....the leaning on a Cadillac that doesn’t belong to you. The worst part, of course, is to think we’re the only ones who can DO ministry. The very practice of ministry often reinforces the feeling.....

It wasn’t until my 3rd appointment, after 8 years, that I finally got to the place where I was no longer the only full time person working on the local church staff. I was IT. Whatever was done, I did. I don’t mean that boastfully....Well, I probably do, too. I griped, but inwardly, I congratulated myself on my indispensability.

I cut the stencil and ran the mimeograph machine for the bulletin---got black ink all over everything....I still have some of that ink under my fingernails.... I kept the membership roll, made out the certificates of transfer, mowed the grass, and changed the light bulbs. If the youth needed leading, I led them. There wasn’t anybody else, or I thought there couldn’t be anybody else. I better do it, I told myself. It’s MY Church.

I went back to one of those churches later, after moving on, and somebody said to me,

“You know, when you were here, we had a good, strong, active youth program. But after you left, it just died.” Stupid as I was, I took it as a compliment. I realize now it was an insult, though, of course, it wasn’t intended to be. It was that old Cadillac again, another misinterpretation of the identity of Moses.

Bishop James Henley said a thing one time that struck me, and that I’ve never forgotten.

He said, “A preacher has not had a successful pastorate until he has been successfully

Succeeded.” I think that’s right. It means laughing at any notion of person in-expendability It means not confusing yourself with your work. It means being able to celebrate the ministry triumphs of others. Preachers have significance only as the means through which God commandeers the people of God. Our job is not to do all the work. It can’t be done anyway.

Our job is not to think of the ministry as our possession. Paul had it right. Our job is to “equip the saints”, not to take their God-given ministry from them. THE CHURCH IS NOT OUR CADILLAC. Thank you for letting me get that out of my system. Thank you for overhearing my sermon to myself. THE SERMON’S NOT OVER, THOUGH. What is the pertinence of all this? What is its relevance for stewardship and our approaching campaign for 1993?

Friends, for all of us, GET THE OWNERSHIP QUESTION STRAIGHT, AND THE STEWARDSHIP QUESTION WITH RESPECT TO THE CHURCH TAKES CARE OF ITSELF.

If this Cadillac of a church isn’t the preacher’s, WHOSE IS IT? It’s God’s Church, of course, just as the earth’s is the Lord’s, but He’s entrusted it, lock, stock and barrel to His people to tone up and use for the implementation of His purpose.

You’re the Church. Your hands are on the steering wheel. You can park it, you can wreck it, you can take it off the highway down some irrelevant detour. What I hope and pray you’ll do is to recognize the value of this sacred vehicle. We’ve tried to say this year about our Church that THERE’S MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE, and all our publicity, all our promotional material has emphasized the variety of programs, the quality of ministries, opportunities that are here for study, for fellowship, for service, for growth...I’m proud of it. I’m proud to have my name associated with it.

Now, there’s more to do...of course there’s more to do. There are more programs to add;

there are more people to reach. We’re only really just starting, we’re not there yet, but what we have going here is something good. I want you to claim it, to identify with it, to take responsibility for it, to see it as your BABY, your LOANER, if you will, through which your investment in God’s work can pay rich dividends.

You’re all on the Board of Directors of this corporation---for a term of office---the

corporation is going to go on after your term of office expires, remember....and the real

Owner is going to want an accounting of what you did.

Were the programs supported? Were the utilities paid? Were the people served? Was the product shared? That’s the point of Jesus’ vivid parable of the talents, isn’t it? WHAT DID YOU DO WITH WHAT YOU WERE GIVEN? (we finally got to the 2nd story)

Notice! Equality of output wasn’t required, or even expected. The 3 stewards in the story weren’t evaluated on the basis of the quantity of their return. They were evaluated on the basis of their willingness to risk what had been invested in them. The faithful stewards claimed their challenge, assumed responsibility for using their patrimony, took charge of the opportunity the Owner placed in their hands responded to their call to ministry, AND NOT ONE OF THEM WAS AN ORDAINED CLERGYMAN. “Well done,” said the Owner. “You have been trustworthy in a few things. I’ll put you in charge of many things.” That’s how it multiplies.

Do you realize---I do now, finally, after bumping along in the wrong direction for too long---the days of greatest vitality and life in the history of the Church have been those days characterized by the release, or explosion of LAY RENEWAL when the people of God, the LAOS got caught up in who they were and what they could do.

For a long time in early Methodism, John Wesley was very protective of ordination

rights. He was a high churchman and very restrictive in what he thought lay people ought to be able to do......his Cadillac, you know. It was his own mother, the redoubtable Susannah, who helped shake him free. “Go listen to some of those laymen preach and serve, John”, she told him. “They can do it as well as you.”

He listened to his mother, thank God, and that’s when the movement erupted. It was when he turned those lay folk loose to claim the fullness of their calling as full participants in the ministry of the Church that the Methodist revival swept across England, and into the New World.

It’s happened over and over. WHY SHOULDN’T IT HAPPEN AGAIN? It CAN, and it can

build, and expand, and muscle its way outward as you and I, clergy and laity alike,

hired hands and Board of Directors alike, the whole people of God seize the wheel of this special vehicle God is letting us drive and give it the gas up the highway.

Where do we start? I apologize if I sound like Ross Perot[1]. It’s very simply. No, it is not very simply. Most profound things are not usually simple. But a resounding beginning can be made on a very practical level. It can begin when we all determine that we’re going to take care of this car. Let me give you some specifics about the maintenance of a 1993 Cadillac. For this coming year, we have a big challenge to do the job as we’ve ever faced. There are more of us, but the task is larger, the numbers are larger--over a million dollars.

The biggest hunk of that, $864,000, is for the operating budget.....salaries, utilities,

Bibles, Kid’s Klub supplies, ...it all comes out of that. Give there first. If the operating foundation is not solid, everything else tumbles.

The Capital and Maintenance budget takes care of the facilities, this Cadillac of a

building, all these buildings. We want a good house to work in. That’s a separate item, and for 1993, it’s actually less than this year.

Now, after those 2, for 1993, we have 2 more “extra mile” giving challenges---- The Asbury Building back here still isn’t paid for. How did we ever get along without it? More than 400 different children use that building every week, plus a bunch of adults. When we had the first campaign only about 200 families pledged to it. A lot of new families have come into the Church since then, and didn’t have much of a chance to participate in paying for the building THEIR children have been enjoying.

So from now until we finish, maybe 3 more years, we’re going to pledge annually, year

by year, and we’ll need $75,000 this coming year to make the payments. What you pledge there, up to $75,000 will be matched dollar for dollar by the Marcy Trust, so your giving will be worth DOUBLE.

The same is true for the Conference capital funds program---“Claim the Flame”, it’s

called. It’s used for a Children’s Camp at Leesburg, a desperately needed Chapel at the Life Enrichment Center, improvements at our Wesley Foundations, and 6 more worthy projects. Our share is $16,000 this year, which will also be matched 1 for 1 by the Marcy Trust. That’s double your gift.

Should you pledge to all four categories? Well, yes you should. And if you appreciate

this Cadillac, you won’t just take that total amount you’ve been giving and divide it

4 ways.

You’ll let your giving to God be commensurate with what God has given you. You’ll start there, and realize that “extra mile” giving really means above and beyond, the “what do ye more than others?” giving toward which goal Jesus was constantly luring His followers to come.

No one can tell another what he or she ought to pledge to the Church. I know I must

tithe, because I think it’s right and because I think it’s a privilege. It’s the money under my control that I am happiest about spending. I wish I could give more, and I’m trying to.

I don’t own this Church---I just work here. And YOU don’t own this Church. It’s God’s Church. But God is letting us take care of it for Him, and is counting on us, all of us, to act responsibly and generously, to shine up this old Cadillac, to get it in tip top running order, and then to drive it to victory in His name.

There’s an old legend, I don’t even know the origin of it, that when Jesus returned to

heaven after the Ascension, He was talking to a group of angels about His Church down on earth.

He had left it, He told them, in the hands of eleven disciples. They were human, they were frail, they easily misunderstood Him.....But He believed in the, He said, and He believed they could do the job. The angels said, “That’s so dangerous, such a thin margin... You’re taking such a chance. What if they don’t respond as you want them to? What is your backup plan? And Jesus said, “I have no backup plan....I’m counting on them.”

He’s counting on us, friend. Let’s fill up the tank and take this Baby for a spin.

--

[1] Ross Perot was billionaire who ran an independent campaign for President in1992.