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Probably the best known misquotation of scripture is the saying, “Money is the root of all evil.”  What scripture actually says is, “ The love of money is the root of all evil”  (1 Timothy 6:10).  The love of money is greed, which brought down the world banking system and threw us all into a recession from which we have not yet recovered. 

Money itself is essential in all economies which do not still use barter, and no institution has known this better than the Christian church.  The seriousness with which the church takes money is illustrated in the story of Ananias and Sapphira, a married couple who belonged to the Jerusalem church, which, according to the Book of Acts, practiced a form of communism (2:44; 4:32).  Ananias and Sapphira sold a piece of property and gave part of the proceeds to the church, but since they concealed the part of the proceeds which they had retained, they were cursed by Peter and fell down dead, one after the other (5:1-12).

The earliest writings of the New Testament are the letters of Paul.  Some of the letter attributed to Paul are considered authentic, others are judged to have been written later, under Paul’s name.  But there is one letter about which there is still a good deal of controversy, the Letter to the Colossians.  What is of interest to us here today is one of the reasons which Colossians is thought not  to be by Paul: there is no mention of money in it.  In all the certainly authentic letters money does come up one way or another. 

Today we mark the kick-of of the diocesan fund-raising campaign, and for all the pious rhetoric in which it is couched, it is all about money.  I haven’t used the campaign slogan, “Re-imagine Church,” because for me the challenge is to rediscover the church, the Anglican Church.  That is why, after I moved my Continuing Studies course from the St. George campus to the Good Shepherd, I have been offering  courses on English Church History. 

Last May we read Diarmaid MacCullough’s magisterial biography of Thomas Cranmer, who was, I believe, one of the three most important figures of the English Reformation, the other two being Queen Elizabeth I and the Elizabethan theologian Richard Hooker. 

In May of 2012 the course will be on John Henry Newman, the leader of the Oxford Movement, which changed the Church of England forever.  Newman converted to Rome and was made a cardinal.  For all their theological differences, Cranmer and Newman had one great gift in common: they were both masters of English prose.  Cranmer was the chief architect of the Book of Common Prayer, and next year we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of this classic text.  In our Canadian Prayer Book there is the beautiful prayer at Eventide, which we say here once a month.  Its author, I have been told, was John Henry Newman. 

Some of us here find it ironic that the diocese which declared our parish unsustainable in 1998 is now asking us for money, and, of course, we would much prefer that 60% of the take come back to us, rather than going to the diocese; we need it more than they do.  But $20,000 is still serious money, which we sorely  need. 

The only piece of office equipment which the church possesses is a copier; we don’t even have a fax machine.  Last Sunday, Back to Church Sunday, our preacher was the aboriginal bishop, Mark MacDonald.  He brought with him a TV set for the aboriginal group which uses our facilities.  So they now have a TV, but we don’t!  Our officers need to have a computer here at the church on which they can do their church work, so as not to have to do it where they work. 

Other needs are listed in the parish case statement, which you received with your Thanksgiving letter.  $50,000 is a lot of money for a parish our size to raise, but if we make this drive a team effort and work together, it will boost our morale here exponentially, and when the drive concludes on December 4, we can all savour together the sweet smell of success. 

October 2, 2011

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