I would have to actually pull out calendars and file folders to determine this number with accuracy, but I know it is safe to estimate, not counting written devotionals, Wednesday night studies, or summer book club lessons, I’ve preached about 300 sermons at St. Charles at this point in my tenure as pastor. That’s about 300 ways of expressing a handful of things I hold to be capital T “True.” For some of you, that’s about 300 cat naps…or resting your eyes very deep in thought for 15-20 minutes. That’s about 300 Sunday mornings of staring at a computer screen and wondering if I’ve pulled together anything meaningful to say. That’s about 300 car rides to church thanking God for showing up in my words even though I feel like the most ridiculous and unlikely vessel to use for any kind of Divine word. And I suspect it’s at least 250 occasions for looking at the scripture text for the week and saying to myself, “How in the world do you say something new when you’ve heard it all before?”

I think about inspiring colleagues like Dick Randels, who pastored in one place for 37 years. The gift of pastoral longevity in relationship of weddings and baptisms and graduations and funerals is astounding. But the real miracle to me might be: how in the world to you find fresh ways to communicate the handful of things you hold to be capital T “True” for 37 years? Just Sunday mornings alone, that’s almost 2000. And Pastor Randels was also working in the decades of Sunday night vesper services and Wednesday night prayer meetings when pastors were expected to generate sermon-length lessons yet again. Thousands of sermons and devotional reflections and meaningful moments. My peer, Richard Easterling, rector at St. George’s Episcopal, doesn’t preach from a manuscript. And he preaches two services every Sunday. The pressure to be poignant and meaningful and a little funny (but not too funny) and challenging by improvisation over a hundred times a year! Daunting! Remarkable!

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The closest we come to understanding kingdoms these days is the drama surrounding Harry and Meghan’s move to Canada and away from their royal titles. To our lives in the United States, we are more likely to associate kingdoms with fairy tales or history or gossip pages than we are with modern reality. For Jesus’ audience, they knew the pressure of a ruling class that wasn’t about which bag she carried with which dress but about how much of an ordinary person’s livelihood would be taken away in taxation to support the lifestyle and the power of the Caesar and his cronies on top. Add to that, some of the religious leaders were finding a way to benefit from this structure, and it had changed temple life. Rabbis like Hillel and Shammai were leading schools of thought and praxis around their interpretations of what their faith should look like in this context. To get to the metaphor, we have to understand the faith story into which Jesus was speaking.

Some of the religious leaders wanted to protect their faith from this encroachment of kingdom and established rules around 1st century Judaism as a framework to protect what was right and good and true. They knew it would take professionals to cross the “T”s and dot the “I”s because there were so many details, and the details mattered because they were the portals to holiness. But as it tends to happen with human people and their institutions, the details took priority. And the professionals became the practitioners of holiness. And the sacred became far too separate from the ordinary. And before too long, the details and the structure were more important than the essence they’d worked so hard to protect. How you make the sacrifice was more important than showing up. Who could make the sacrifice was more important than opening the doors to all. The intention behind the structure was initially to protect the goodness of God and the truth of their faith, but that was getting lost. In his teaching, Jesus began to disentangle their concept of God’s goodness from their relationship to the structure.

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A group of women living in the Carrollton neighborhood had a vision for gathering children together to tell them the sacred stories of their ancient faith. In 1884, Mrs. Crouch, Miss Eddy, Mrs. Haygood, and Mrs. Nelson organized themselves to start a new endeavor. By April of that year, enough folks had gathered for enough weeks in a row that the gatherings took on a name, and ultimately, the St. Charles Ave. Baptist Church was born. Of course, they didn’t call it that yet, and it would be another 27 years before they moved to the corner of St. Charles and Audubon, but a foundation was laid with the words of sacred story.

Mrs. Crouch and Miss Eddy began the Sunday School class at Cherokee and Maple. Mrs. Nelson raised the money and built the first building of 25’ x 40’ on Mrs. Haygood’s property. Miss Eddy took the lead on organizing and implementing programming. These women believed that the words of their faith tradition were meant to be taken into human experience and lived out. These were words to guide children, shape lives, create new ideas, and spark movements that would shape neighborhoods and cities and even the whole world. I imagine them gathered around a kitchen table some 123 years ago, one of them brought the king cake, another snipped fresh azaleas and stuck them in a pretty little jar, and a third made sure the coffee was strong and plentiful. They sat down at the table on the house somewhere at Maple and Cherokee Streets and started to make their plans.

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At St. Charles, we have entered a season of fundraising. If you’re visiting with us for the first time or haven’t been around here in awhile, the short version is: we’re raising another $90,000 to fully fund the St. Charles Center for Faith + Action, our new nonprofit working at the intersection of sacred story and social justice. We’re also looking toward 100 years in this historic building and raising at least $2 million toward its preservation and continued use for the common good. And next week we will officially make our pledges toward both of these projects in addition to the 2020 operating budget.

Whatever brought you here today, I suspect you’re not here to talk about money—either gathering it up or giving it away; asking for it or being asked for it. Most likely, it’s not the talk of old buildings and their adaptive reuse that has your heart aching right now. Of all the things burdening your mind, fairly low on the list are dwindling congregations in historic sanctuaries designed to seat 1000. And that’s not exactly what we’re talking about today, but it’s on the feasting table before us. See, there’s a central role money plays in the life and work of any organization, and in an organization like ours, money is more than just a necessary, behind-the-scenes afterthought that makes the rest of life possible. The way we talk about and think about finances brings with it a central invitation to a particular way of life. The posture of sharing, hoarding, grasping for, or seeking money will extend to you a perspective of scarcity or abundance, of possibility or of fear. What we are considering, especially this week and next, is how the way we talk about money and fundraising and gathering and spending is an act of faith—is embodying our spirituality—is living out the very things we hold most deeply and claim to believe.

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Growing up on the Gulf Coast means everything is connected to water—the food we eat and the months in which we eat it, the direction we drive, the way we spend our free time, the way some of us make our livelihood. As a pastor in New Orleans, some of the congregation lives on the West Bank and others on the North Shore. Too much fog on a bridge, and folks aren’t coming to church because crossing the water can feel vulnerable, even treacherous. Going into parade season, we know people will give their directions to meet up with friends based on the lake or the river as well as the neutral ground or the sidewalk side. In Mobile, it’s the Bay. And to live “over the bay” might sometimes get the same reaction that folks here have in being asked to go over the river or across the lake. I heard a friend just last week describe *passionately* why she did not attend a funeral—because she’s not crossing the river for anybody. The vastness of that water is great.

But I love being in it or over it or beside it. I always liked going over the bay or up to the 21st floor of the Mobile Bank Building where my father had his offices for decades. I loved the view from that high above everything; watching the shipping activity along the Mobile River, and spying all the way “over the bay” with binoculars. At some point, my father bought a Stauter boat, the good, old kind made of beautiful wood. And we would take it out into the Delta and look for all kinds of wildlife. Even on trips home in recent years, my brothers and I have discovered a large, family-friendly boating crew that can take out 20-30 people at a time. If you’re particularly ambitious, they even rent out platform tents in trees only accessible by canoe. My brothers and I have returned to that water, now with our spouses and children, to look for water birds, identify plants, show the patterns of alligators through marshy areas, and simply breathe in that different air. 

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They didn't quite know what they were looking for, but they knew it was something big. The star was bigger and brighter than the others, and it was steadily moving across the sky. They spent their evenings looking up, making notes on their charts, and tracking the changes and patterns they saw. No one was better at reading the skies, and no one more trusted. That’s why they spent their mornings advising the powerful ruling class of possible outcomes based on their studies. The advice ranged from best and worst time to make personal decisions to predictions of war and threats to the empire. The kings always tended to grab onto these advisors because their counsel came with a boost of confidence in a leadership governed by the heavens. If the very stars themselves were for you, it seemed, then who could be against you? The powerful ruling class has always been keenly sensitive to such matters.

The magi waited days before they collaborated on the report. They needed to be certain that this star really was moving and not fixed in place. They consulted charts from previous years and couldn’t find one that matched it anywhere, so not only was it moving but it was new. Given its size, pace, and placement, they came to the unanimous decision that something tremendous was taking place. Everything within their bodies vibrated with a knowing. Before they spoke the words to one another, each man knew that something was being ushered in by the universe itself that would change everything. Even the skies were marking the birth of this cosmic shift, and it was happening to the west. At last, they met to discuss their theories and all agreed: a new king was being born, and this king would eventually replace one who had the answers they sought. 

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