Veterans and stewards

Christian Century, Oct 29, 1997 by Peter J. Gomes

I REMEMBER the solemnities of Armistice Day when I was a young boy. Who could forget that on the 11th day of the 11th month at 11 o'clock in the morning, the armistice to end the "war to end all wars" was sounded? The carnage of a foreign conflict fought "to make the world safe for democracy" was stopped. We didn't always know where Flanders Field was, but we were moved by the poppies and the crosses which grew out of its soil. We were not altogether certain what the issues were that drove the most civilized nations of the world to the barbarities of bayonet, gas and trench, but we all knew somebody who knew somebody who went and fought "over there," and some of these men, now quite. long in the tooth, would have places of honor at the head of our little morning parade. Wreaths would he laid for fallen comrades, taps would sound and flags would remain at half staff until noon.

I serve a church built as a memorial to the dead of that war. Hardly a decade passed after the dedication of the Memorial Church to this noble purpose before World War II burst upon us. The names of those dead adorn the walls, now joined by the dead of Korea and Vietnam.

For some, this place is a monument to the waste of youth and human life, a rebuke to the folly of those who, while they should know better, construct a world in which only violence answers violence. For others, this is a place consecrated by noble sacrifice and high ideals. November makes us all anxious about the quick and easy answers we are inclined to give to the question, "Well, which is it?" We know that the worship of country is nothing less than idolatry, and we know that our citizenship is in heaven. We also know that we must fight evil where we find it, and that in St. Augustine's words, earth--or our corner of it--is but a colony of heaven.

Thus we must do what we must where we are with what we have. In an age that too much worships "clarity," perhaps a healthy dose of divine ambiguity is not a had thing. It may not serve to keep us honest, but it certainly will help keep us humble.

One thing about which scripture is not ambiguous is the subject of money, and most of us turn, w th some anxiety, to considerations of money on November Sundays traditionally devoted to stewardship. I have never quite understood why we have scheduled this concern in the penultimate month of the year. Is it because of Thanksgiving and the sense of bounty and gratitude that is nearby? Is it because it is the last month that we can cast accounts and provide for the incoming year without the inevitable distractions that December brings? Or is it simply that we postpone the consideration of mammon to the last possible moment? Whatever the reason, November confronts us w th the material necessity of the church, and hard as it may he to accept, the Bible makes clear that giving is sacrifice, not surplus generosity.

The widow in 1 Kings 17:8-16 experiences the endless bounty of the cruse of oil and the jar of meal only after she gives what she cannot afford to feed the hungry prophet. The widow of St. Mark's Gospel is praised, not because she practiced a prudential form of proportionate giving, but because she gave everything she had: she contributed her whole being. We praise her example, although most of us would not dare to follow it, and yet giving--not saving--is at the heart of the gospel. Financial prudery is no credit to the Christian church. We must break the conspiracy of discreet silence sustained by both clergy and laity on money matters if stewardship is to he more than a form of furtive extortion. Money matters and money talks, and we should talk about it and our relationship to it for the sake of the kingdom of God.

We are told that people do not like to be grateful, and gratitude is the coldest of the virtues: it implies an obligation. We who reap the benefits of peace are of necessity grateful for those who risked their lives on our behalf, but there is always an ambiguity in our remembrance of what we owe them. Stewardship, rightly understood, proceeds not from what we give to God but from what God has given to us. We are embarrassed and a little nervous at the thought that what we "have" is not ours to "keep" but only to give. These are necessary if destabilizing truths, truths which require a certain courage and candor to confront. Together we can and we must do it in November.

The author is Peter J. Gomes, professor at Harvard Divinity School and minister in Harvard's Memorial Church.