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Well, good morning. My name is Jeff Evans and I serve as Canon to the Ordinary here

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in the Diocese of Alabama, which is the title that no one understands. It's okay. Just means

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I'm the bishop's right-hand man as she executes or leads us in our execution of the vision for

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her episcopate, which is leadership development, congregational vitality, and racial healing.

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Congregational development or parish growth is really my area of focus. I help congregations

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with issues large and small, including recently I helped a congregation deal with a wild boar

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issue. It's quite an education. And in that respect, I'm so glad to be here today because,

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and I hope you guys know this about yourselves. You guys are a thriving and leading congregation

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in the Diocese of Alabama. This congregation has a larger Sunday attendance, larger pledge base,

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and a larger budget than it did before the pandemic. I hope you understand what a beautiful

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thing the Lord is doing here in your midst. You are one of the few churches in North America,

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which is larger with more momentum after the pandemic than before the pandemic. And I cannot

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wait to see what happens with you in the next years. I think the Lord has mighty things prepared

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that are already at work in this congregation. So in many respects, I'm here to learn,

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to replicate what the Lord is doing here in other places, and to celebrate what God is doing in our

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midst. I'm also the stewardship speaker. It's a grand tradition of stewardship to bring in an

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outside speaker to ask your congregation to give toward the mission and ministry of the church.

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So I am that. I love Stewardship Sunday. Particularly, I was wondering like why people

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come to church during the stewardship season. It's only because people don't know it's stewardship

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season until the sermon starts, and then it's like too awkward to leave.

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No, I know that you're here because you know it's important. And I want to talk about stewardship,

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but to do that, I want to explain a little bit more about my story. Jack and I have been the best

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of friends for the better part of a couple decades now. We went to seminary together. We're raising

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kids together. We're doing life together. Our families are very close, and it's so great to see

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what's happening here and the way you guys are supporting his leadership. You guys know you'll

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have a fantastic rector and a fantastic pastor. He knows he has a fantastic church, and that's a

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beautiful thing. And now you add an incredibly talented Emily onto your staff, and I think now

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you've got a pastoral duo that is as strong as any in the diocese. So well done, and thanks be to God

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on that. Also, I've known about y'all and been connected to y'all for a long time. I was the first

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person to live in the Allen house. 14 years ago, I lived in the Allen house for a summer during

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seminary. Jim Busbin came in and helped get things set up. I remember it very well. That was a big

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help to me, and I'm grateful for that. This morning, I want to talk about the lesson that you heard

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from Paul's letter to the Philippians, and I want to tag that text and our time together with this

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idea. Your pledge of love. Your pledge of love. Now to explain that, we got to do a little

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background. What's going on with Paul and the Philippians? So Paul planted a church in Philippi,

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which is in the region of Macedonia in the northern part of Greece. And Paul planted a

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church in the region of Macedonia in the northern part of Greece. And when Paul got to Philippi,

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it was a wild story. He came there with a clergy team, and when he got there, he started doing

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things, preaching the gospel, building churches, casting out demons. In fact, he cast out one demon

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of a slave girl who used to tell people's fortunes somehow connected to her demon, and he cast out

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the demon, and then the person who owned this poor girl was so angry with him that he had him thrown

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in prison. Paul's in prison. God sends an earthquake, opens up the prison. A jailer almost

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kills himself, but then converts to Christianity, and then the town leadership realizes that they

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have beaten up and imprisoned a Roman citizen, and they come to Paul and they say, would you please

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leave our town? That's how this church got started. Don't you love that? It becomes Paul's most

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strong and vibrant and supporting church. The church in Philippi funded a lot of the mission

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that Paul would later do into other parts of the Mediterranean basin, and at this point in the story,

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Paul is languishing in a Roman prison. And the Philippians have just found out that Paul is in

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prison, and so they send a financial gift to him to sustain and to support him, and taken there by

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a man named Epaphroditus, who was a pastor and a co-worker of Paul's. Epaphroditus comes to Paul

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and is with him and prays with him and gives him the financial gift, and in thanksgiving for that,

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Paul writes down a letter and Epaphroditus takes that back to Philippi, and that's Paul's letter

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to the Philippians that we have in our Bible. And actually, I want to focus down on a part of

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Philippians that you didn't actually hear. I have a love-hate relationship with the lectionary,

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sometimes I add to it. What you have in your order of service is from the first half of chapter four

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of Paul's letter to the Philippians. I want to focus a little bit on what you didn't hear in the

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second half of chapter four. I want you to listen to this just for a moment.

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Paul says, I rejoice in the Lord greatly that now at last you Philippians have revived your

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concern for me. Indeed, you were concerned for me but had no opportunity to show it.

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Not that I am referring to being in need, for I have learned to be content with whatever I have.

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I know what it is to have little and I know what it is to have plenty. In any and all circumstances,

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I have learned the secret of being well-fed and of going hungry, of having plenty and of being in

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need. I can do all things through him who strengthens me. In any case, it was kind of you to share my

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distress. That's fascinating. Paul is saying, thanks for sending me the money, but just to be

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clear, I could have got along without it. Now that's rude, except it's not. And the reason it's

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not rude is because Paul is not a 21st century North American like we are. Paul is a person of

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the Greco-Roman world and that world understood friendship really differently than we do. In

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order to understand what Paul is up to, we have to understand a little bit about that world.

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You see, for you and I, friendship is based on proximity and compatibility. We make friends at

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school or at work or in church or on the sideline of soccer games. And then if we have a nice

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chit chat, we have some compatibility, we might hang out some more. And if that goes well, we might

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continue to hang out more. It's all based, like I said, in proximity and compatibility. Now in the

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Greco-Roman world, it was also based on proximity. You were friends with the people who were around

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you, but actually instead of compatibility, it was based on mutuality and reciprocity, meaning

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that very early in the friend making process, there was the giving and receiving of gifts.

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At the very beginning and throughout friendship that would blossom into financial support of one

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another in more difficult economic times. It's interesting, Asian cultures are more similar to

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the Greco-Roman world than our world is. In seminary, I got to go to Burma for the better

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part of a month and everywhere we went in Burma, we would give gifts and we would receive gifts.

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Right? In a way, from a Western person, kind of feels a little bit tiresome, but it was the

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culture of the interaction, except one time we went to meet with the archbishop of Burma

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and we didn't receive a gift. And it was very clear something was going on and are not receiving

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a gift. Turns out we were being hosted on our trip by another bishop who came in second in the election

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for the archbishop in Burma. The gift giving meant something. Now, we retain some of this

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in our own culture, right? I married a wonderful woman from Jackson, Mississippi. I'm from North

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Alabama, the New South, and so the old South ways of Jackson to me are sometimes very confusing,

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but always charming. And one of the rules and customs in Jackson, Mississippi is that if you

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are invited into someone's home for the first, second, maybe even third time, you must bring

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something with you when you go to that home. Some kind of gift. But it's not called a gift.

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That would be embarrassingly direct. It's referred to as a happy or a little happy.

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It's almost always a little happy when it's described. I'm not sure why that is. You just

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bring a little happy. And the little happy is a nice kind of something. Bonus points if it's from

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a local artist. Extra credit if that local artist is your own cousin who is living in self-imposed

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poverty in the depths of the Mississippi Delta. In fact, if you go to someone's home and you

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don't have a little happy, you have to apologize for not having a little happy and then the host

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has to say, oh, don't worry about it. You didn't need to bring a thing. Which is true, but they

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have registered that you didn't bring a happy. It might tell somebody else that you neglected

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to bring a happy. But here's the thing. Again, I'm from the New South. I find it a little strange

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but deeply charming. And the charming part about it is that little happy says,

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I'm honored to be in your home. I'm honored to be in your home. And it also recognizes

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the sometimes not insignificant sacrifice that you make to have people over, be it the cooking

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or the vacuum cleaning or the cleaning of floorboards or throwing toys into a closet.

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It acknowledges that you've sacrificed some of your time and your effort to include us in your

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life. That's actually a really lovely thing. And it's a little bit of a shame that you're

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not able to do this thing. That's a little bit what was going on in the Greco-Roman world.

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So what's fascinating to me is that what St. Paul is saying is that he is playing within the

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cultural scheme of his day. He's acknowledging the gift as part and parcel of the friendship,

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but he's pushing beyond it because Paul is in the world, but the gospel leads him beyond the world.

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And he's saying thank you for your gift, but you know what? The most important thing to me is what

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your gift represents, which is that you love me and that you care for me and that you're in my

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distress, that you are suffering with me. It's a beautiful acknowledgement of the love that their

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gift represents. It's interesting to me, I write a lot of thank you notes. We do a lot of thank you

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notes as pastors. We become PhDs in thank you notes. And often when I write a thank you note,

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I say thank you for your gift. Here's how I'm going to use it to support the ministry of Calvary

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and Aniana or St. Luke's in Scottsboro or Trinity in Demopolis or whatever it is. And that's good.

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And also according to the practices of nonprofit management. But if I like St. Paul, we're going

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to embrace my culture, but let the gospel take me to a higher sense, to beyond my culture. What I

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would say is thank you for your love for me and your love for this church and your love for our

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Lord Jesus Christ. Doesn't that sound a little bit too intimate for a thank you note? A little bit

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too vulnerable? That's a good sign that we've now moved into Jesus' territory. We've moved into

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the heart. We followed the gospel into actually what deeply and most profoundly matters.

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So this morning, I want you to think about your giving to your church, your pledge

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to Church of the Ascension. I want it to be a fragrant offering unto God.

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And I want you to think about your gift as an expression of your love. Your pledge is

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deeply important to the life of this church. It is important on so many levels, but one of those

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levels is that it is an expression of your love. It's an expression of your love for this church.

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It's an expression of your love for this community who sees this place as a beacon of hope of all

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order of friendship of love in the world. It's an expression of love to your pastors

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and to your staff. It's an expression of love to your fellow parishioners and it's an expression

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of love to the God who has given us every blessing that we enjoy in our lives.

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My wife Emily and I have been on a long journey when it comes to our giving. We've been at 1%.

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We've been up to 10%. We've been back down, working our way again to 10%. But by God's grace,

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we've always had a sense that our giving is deeply important to our spiritual lives.

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It's an anchor in the chaos and the worries and the difficulties of our financial lives, yours and mine.

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It's a way of expressing our deep commitments to each other, to God, and to our community.

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So I hope everybody in this church makes a pledge this year and I hope you think about it prayerfully.

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Go ahead and turn it in before the deadline day. Wouldn't that be amazing?

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Think about it in terms of your love and what it expresses. Let me leave you with this.

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When I was pastoring Holy Trinity in Auburn, I was talking to a guy in my church

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and he told me about a time when he had a business fail right out from under him.

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A business completely fail. His life was painful and chaotic and he told me with tears in his eyes,

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Jeff, but we honored our pledge. We went without, but we honored our pledge.

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He didn't say it with anger. He didn't say it with regret. He said it with godly pride

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because in a dehumanizing, painful, anxiety-ridden season in his life,

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his gift to his church was a port in the storm. It was an instance of humanity

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and it was his expression of love. So beloved, this year as you consider your gift,

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think about all that God has given you and all that God is working through you

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as you make your pledge of love. Thanks be to God.