I had the privilege of giving the sermon at my church today.

Readings are available at these links:

Amos 5:6-7,10-15
Psalm 90:12-17
Hebrews 4:12-16
Mark 10:17-31

Hear the sermon here.

Mark Conrad asked me to talk to you today about our Stewardship in support of St John’s.  It is that time of year once again, when we talk about how we can support our church; the gifts of our talents, our treasure, and our time in the service of our God and Creator and our brothers and sisters in the living body of Christ, here in our beautiful and historic church building. 

I had not planned on talking about the lessons this morning.  However, our old testament reading is from the book of Amos. Of all the prophets, Amos is my favorite, because both he and I are pessimists. We both see half a glass of water as half empty. We both experience all that is wrong in the world around us, where we ourselves have fallen short, and how we need to improve. 

There is an epidemic of loneliness in our world. We Americans like to think of ourselves as self-reliant, that we do not depend on anyone or anything but ourselves. This American belief, is in direct opposition to our Christian belief that we have all sinned against our God and each other. That we all depend on God to forgive us, to save and help us every day, and to inspire us in His work. This American belief also belies our own experiences living in this world, how much we depend on our brothers and sisters in Christ, our friends and neighbors in our community, everyone around us who contibutes to our well-being, everyone who contributes to making Lancaster a great place to work and live. 

I have noticed in my own life, that both my work and my family has determined where I have lived, the communities I have been a part of. I have moved from one home to another 10 times in the 40 years of my working life.  From San Diego, to Pittsburgh, to Chicago and finally back to this my home state of Ohio. It is difficult to maintain relationships to the people we have met along the way. Our children who live with us, grow up, and start moving themselves, to go to college, and to chase their own careers. We get older, and lose track of people. Our world of friends, and relations gets smaller over time. 

This natural process has been exploited as a business opportunity in the new social media environment in which we find ourselves. This electronic world of social media delivered to our smart phone computers is captivating. Here in this new world we can upload the best version of ourselves, what we are eating, what we are doing, what we are thinking about, where we are traveling. All these super positive postings, can make everyone reading them feel that they are falling behind in life. It’s like being jealous of your neighbor except that now your neighbor is every person on Earth who is on a social media platform. We also are exposed to all the hurt and violence in our world through social media. It is called doom-scrolling, an endless series of terrible things happening in our world. It is like driving past every car accident occurring everywhere in the world. It can leave us depressed and in despair. What is even worse, is that many of these stories presented to us are false. Exaggerated out of all porportion or completely fake – to manipulate our emotions; to feel anger and rage about some issue to get us to act out, or to feel apathy and hopelessness to discourage us from doing anything.

I have spoken of the harm of social media – but the glass is also half full – there can also be great good in these social media platforms. Social media makes it easier to keep track of those relatives, friends and neighbors who live far away from us. I believe the healthy benefits of social media can be realized when we use it to enhance the relationships we have with the people we have known in person. When we express our true selves, rather than that best version of ourselves to live up to the expectations of other people. I encourage you all to reach out to loved ones that you have not spoken to in a while. Whether in the old fashioned way of writing a letter, calling them on the phone, or the newer ways of email, or social media postings. The important thing is – those relationships to other people. That we share our attention in being present to our loved ones, our friends, our neighbors. Talking with them, listening to them, being with them. For me, this sort of pastoral attention to each other is the greatest and best gift of our time, and every one of us, can offer this gift, one to another. 

Our church uses social media in this positive way. Social media is our opportunity to post some genuine community reality to social media. To share our worship experience via social media, about the good news of Jesus Christ. That there is a wonderful and real, community of people here at St John’s, who come together in worship.

In our pledges of our talents, time, and treasure for next year, let us not forget the use of that time in the pasteral gift of listening, talking, and just being there for each other. 

Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.