The scripture reading this morning comes from the book of Acts, chapter 6, verses 1-6.  Two weeks ago, at the start of our stewardship season (the season when we plan our financial pledges to the church for next year), Molly preached on an earlier text in the narrative of Acts.  The book of Acts is basically the Gospel of Luke part II.  In the gospel Luke tells us all about Jesus’ conception, birth, life, death, and resurrection.  In Acts Luke picks up with the early Church’s conception, birth, and life in the first few decades after Jesus’ resurrection.

Last week in worship I pointed out this chest sitting here on the chancel, the chest emblazoned with the mysterious phrase “Chest of Joash.”  At the time I said it was a treasure chest—and so it is—to guide us through Stewardship season, the time of year when we think and pray about giving to our church and commit an amount of money for the year to come.

Uh oh. Here it comes. The sermon on Giving. Because it’s stewardship season again! The time of year when we are planning our 2015 budget, and trying to figure out how much we can spend. The time of year when YOU good people take real, tangible, physical responsibility for your church and all the lives it touches in its ever-widening trajectory. The time of year when we talk a lot about the god we usually fall silent before, MONEY. Appropriate that stewardship season always seems to come around Halloween because it is scarrrrrry….Moohahahahahaha!

Before we read to you the scripture for the day, I want to give you a little context for hear it: the story of Job. Good old Job. Loveable, hardworking, humble Job, who put up with everything. What a loser! No, really! Job lost everything! He had 3,000 camels! And he had 10 adult children. And they all died.

Theologian Karl Barth said that preachers should preach with the Bible in one hand and the newspaper in the other. Here’s my newspaper (hold up iPhone).

Sabbath for Everyone

Church, I want to tell you how my day started yesterday. I went for a drive in my little car with an exuberant third grader, a lesbian environmental consultant, a straight doula and her former community organizer boyfriend who has a lot of facial hair. They are known to you as Carmen, Andrea, Bonnie and Rev. Jeff. I came by Carmen biologically, but the other three—well, let’s just say that I am continually amazed by the people who have ended up in my life because I followed Jesus, and because this church was one of the places I have followed him to.

When I was in college, I joined a fraternity, a co-ed fraternity. It was called The Tabard, after the pub in Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, from which a motley band of pilgrims set out on their journey.