Reflection by Parishioner Paul Reis
Shared at the 10:00am service on December 1st, 2019.
Good morning. I’m here to speak with you about the stewardship campaign and share the reasons my family supports St. Matthew’s. Perhaps part of it is upbringing. This story will give you an idea of how old I am. When I was five, my parents decided to give me a weekly allowance. They set the rate at six cents per week, a nickel and a penny – with the explicit instruction that I could spend the nickel on whatever I wanted – which in those days was always a Hershey’s candy bar – but the penny had to go into the Sunday collection plate. That training became a practice, but now one that is maintained through conscious choice.
We moved to Wilton from the Chicago area in 2010 when I came here for a new job. We initially worshipped at another church but over time sought a community that was more intimate and which also held a broader vision of who were full members of the Kingdom of God. In 2017 we began worshipping at St. Matthew’s. At first we – my wife Mary Jane and daughter Anna-Kate and I – were frequent attendees at the 8:00 a.m. service when Rev. Alon was here. We liked the warm welcome, the thoughtful preaching, and the chance to gather around the alter as a community for the Eucharistic prayer. Later, as Anna-Kate became more active in church school, we attended the 10:00 service and found it had many of the same qualities we liked about the 8:00 service – plus rich and beautiful music.
When Tim Jarvis asked me if I would be willing to talk about stewardship, he suggested I look over Rev. Marissa’s letter from November 1st., in which she compares our community to a sturdy tree whose branches provide shelter, nourishment, and a place for healing. That image came in part from the role a tree played in the gospel story of Zacchaeus, the short tax collector who climbed a sycamore tree in order to see Jesus. I like that image – and that way of thinking about church. Like the tree provided for Zacchaeus, a church provides a platform – a structure – that helps us to see God – to see and understand how the divine is expressing itself in our lives and our time.
Thinking about trees in the gospel brought to mind another story from Luke, that of the barren fig tree. In that parable, Jesus tells of a property owner who sees a barren fig tree on his land and orders his gardener to chop it down. The gardener intervenes for the tree, asking the owner to give him a year to care for it, to fertilize and cultivate it to see if it will then produce fruit.
While the tree that is our community is not barren, it does need tending.
That tending takes many forms, including participating in worship, supporting St. Matthew’s outreach efforts, and thoughtfully living out our understanding of the Gospel in daily life. Another form of tending to our communal tree is financial support.I’ve come to value the structure and community St. Matthew’s provides me. Like the gardener in the parable who wants the tree to survive and thrive, I want St. Matthew’s to thrive and recognize I need to commit time, effort, and money for it to do so.
Unlike the Gospel story, our tree relies not on the efforts of a single gardener. Its health requires a communal effort.
So, I ask for your help.If you have not already done so, please pledge generously and join me in tending this tree which is St. Matthew’s.
Thank you for your attention this morning and your commitment to St. Matthew’s.