Here we are, surrounded by pictures of people who have nurtured our faith, the walls bedecked with our ‘Shower of Saints.’

Gordon has made visable for us at least a part of the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ who have gone before and are with us yet.

Frederick Buechner said that “ In God’s on-going flirtation with humanity, occasionally God would drop a handkerchief . . . and we call those hankies ‘saints.’”

We would not have the church – or the faith-- at all were it not for commitment and the stewardship of those who came before us.

Our autumn days are filled with celebrations and opportunities to give thanks and express our gratitude for our many blessings, not the least of which are those who have been a blessing in our lives. And so we celebrate Reformation, All Saints, Blessing of the Beasts, and Thanksgiving as we are invited to commit our lives to being a part of that blessing as stewards of God’s gifts.

A picture of my maternal grandmother is there, along with her sisters, my Great Aunts: Eula, Lydia Belle, and Minnie, as well as my great grandmother.

I learned a lot about stewardship from those women. It was my grandmother, a pediatric nurse, who loved coffee, but gave it up during the season of Lent so that she could send the money she saved to a missionary hospital.

“God’s banquet,” she would say with a smile, “Is a pot luck. If we all bring what we can, there will be plenty for everyone!”

She never let an offering plate pass by without putting something in, no matter how small. Her mother had taught them that money dropped in the offering plate was a little ‘thank you to God.’ As small children, she encouraged our giving from our allowance. “Don’t ever miss an opportunity to thank God. Because no matter how many times we thank God, we will never be able to catch up with all the blessings God has given us.”

It was Aunt Minnie who taught us that ‘found money’ was also destined for the plate. ‘Lucky pennies’ were twice-blessed, as they were opportunities to remember how God’s blessings just seemed to fall around us, often unnoticed. “And what a blessing to be able to give even more!” She would say. (Aunt Min, by the way, died too young. She was only 103. On the day she died, she taught the bible study at her circle meeting, then did volunteer work at the clothes closet  -- to help the ‘old folks,’ she said. Just so you get the full picture: she also had her hair and her nails done.)

Aunt Lydia Belle gave me a letter my great grandmother had written shortly after her house burned down. She was enumerating the things for which she was thankful: no one was injured, their neighbors were helping them out, they had their health and strength, and she had already ‘given her tithe to the church early this month, so it wasn’t lost in the fire.’

My grandmother believed that there are things we humans can do that truly reflect our being created in the image of God. We reflect God’s image when we love, when we are just, when we sing, when we forgive, when we grieve, when we are humble, when we create, when we are joyful, and when we are generous. She taught me that all those things brought us closer to God.

Saints all around us. Saints among us. Saints yet to be. Yes, we are blessed. And like the song says, “And one of these days, God willing, I want to be one too.”

Joseph Campbell, who spent a lifetime studying religions of all kinds, was once asked if he had any regrets. He said, something like this: “Yes. yes, I do. I have loved my life and I have learned much. But I have found that the people who are most grounded, those who are wise and centered and filled with light can be found in all faith traditions.There are holy people.

What they have in common is that they each selected a path, one tradition, and they gave themselves fully to that path; they followed it as far as they could go in their lifetimes. Like rocks, they sank deep into the life-giving waters of their own faith traditions.

 I dabbled. I never committed to one path. I never became a holy person. a wholly loving person. That I regret.”

In our gospel text today, Jesus has an encounter with a scribe, it seems to me, who is seeking to follow the path of his faith.

The exchange is cordial. The scribe is sincere, isn’t out to trap Jesus, there is mutual respect.

As a scribe, one who copies the Torah, he knows the laws and how many there are. And he also knows that it is impossible to keep all of them. Some of them contradict one another. There are times and circumstances that aren’t always clear. He knows that sometimes, one has to prioritize when these laws are in conflict with one another. So, he wants to know how to choose, what the most important commandment is. In other words: “Jesus, can you help me cut to the chase?”

What is primary for us as God’s people? 

The answer Jesus gives  is one most of us can say from heart: “The first is, ‘Hear O Israel: the Holy One our God, the Holy One is one; you shall love the Holy One your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’

Jesus quoted the Shema, which is sung or said at the beginning of morning and evening prayers in the Jewish tradition:

“Hear, Israel, the Holy One is our God, the Holy One is One.”

Then, even though Jesus was asked “Which commandment is the first of all?” he answers with two commandments: “The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”

The two commandments are a set. Together they are the essence of the faith.

Loving God first.

The total self engaged in the the love of God: commitment

Mark adds the phrase’with all your mind.’ A reminder that we need not ‘check our brains at the door’ in order to be people of faith.

For freedom-loving Americans, this is hard stuff. For those of us who have a hard time even sending in an RSVP card because we have a tough time with commitment, the totality of this commandment may rankle.

Unless of course, we remember to whom such devotion is given: it is the same God who loved us before we were born, who loves us even when we don’t love ourselves, and who has promised never to forsake us. It is the same God who longs for our good, and wants us to live without fear, without worry of having enough. This is the God who has promised that there is enough for everyone and everyone is good enough.

We are commanded to love that God. The verb is ‘love’ instead of ‘serve’ for a reason. Love is more than a feeling. It finds its expression in concrete acts. Love involves passion, and love requires of us commitment. Imagine any relationship making it without commitment

Wholly loving. Every single part of us commited to love. Imagine what our lives might look like if that were truly the case.. .  think of the possibilities!

Once again we see that if stewardship was just about giving money to the church it would be easy.

Because we are asked to give so much more. Hearts, souls, minds, and strength. Not to the church, by the way, but to God.

To give ourselves totally to the church would be to make of the church an idol; while the church is meant to be a community of people who are wholly committed to God.

(This is why together we pray, study scripture, come to worship, practice disciplines that would help us more fully know and love God.)

There is an order to this, as well. We begin by loving to God with our whole being. That leads us to loving our neighbor. We cannot love God without loving our loving our neighbors, There is balance in the two commandments.

By loving God with our whole being, we open ourselves to being the conduits of God’s love into the world.

We channel God’s love into the world much like the Alaska pipeline channels black gold; by being open on both ends.

If we are not loving God first, we will soon burn out. If we are not loving our neighbors, we have failed to understand the God whom we claim to love.

The God who commands us to “love your neighbor as yourself.”

This commandment is from Leviticus, which specifically lists ways in which the poor are to be cared for and the weak are to be protected against exploitation. 

People like Ruth and Naomi.

As thousands are forced out of homes around the globe because of war and genocide, and as our government moves forward with a plan to build 700 miles of fence on the border with Mexico; we find ourselves hearing this story about an immigrant family. 

Famine drove Elimelech and his wife Naomi, with their two sons, to a foreign land. They were immigrants, and I imagine that they were not alone, but traveled amidst a hoard of other immigrants, as often happens in a disaster, puttimg a strain on the resources and inhabitants of the area in which they seek refuge. For the Israelites, Moab would not have been a vacation destination: relations between the two had been tense for a long time.

I imagine this was an awful journey, ending in a somewhat less than cordial welcome. They wouldn’t have made this journey unless they didn’t see any other way.

Hunger is a powerful force.

They do what they have to do and make the best of a bad situation. It is never easy to leave home, family, and everything familiar behind.

Like Abraham and Sarah, it took great faith to make such a change. But Abraham and Sarah left an abundant place and took a lot of treasure with them -- God’s call and promises ringing in their ears.

Naomi and Elimelech, on the other hand, were driven out by need and had only the growling of their bellies to urge them forward. They heard no promises from God; it was desperation that drove them.

They lived among strangers, the sons eventually took Moabite wives, Orpah and Ruth. But the land of Moab was never really home.

Then Elimelech died and the two sons died, leaving Naomi bereft in this foreign country. The scripture doesn’t try to describe the anguish that Naomi must have been experiencing. I imagine her heart a wasteland, the river of salty tears blown dry by gusts of anguish.

Feelings aside, every ancient reader would have known that Naomi, in the patriarchal society in which she lived, was now adrift. Any woman not attached to a male was at the mercy of economic and social forces that could well overwhelm her. Job had nothing on Naomi.

She had no name, no home, no defenses against danger. I think that like a wounded animal, she instinctively sought the sanctuary of home.

We are told that she had heard that the famine was over in her homeland, she decided to return.

There was nothing to hold her in Moab.

Roots require resources. 

Naomi was driven home by an emotional hunger every bit as strong as the physical hunger that drove her out in the first place. So it is with those on the margin of society. Tossed about by winds of chance and change. Those who live without a safety net.

According to Moabite custom, the daughters-in-law go with their mother-in-law. At some point on the journey, Naomi saw the futility of their situation and released them from any obligation to her. It was a loving thing for her to do,. It speaks volumns about her love for Ruth and Orpah that she encouraged them to leave and hopefully, seek security for themselves. They were young, they at least had the option of marrying again, of finding someone who could provide for her. Orpah turned back to her native land.

But not Ruth.

Ruth instead clung to Naomi and spoke the oft-repeated words (this time read from the poetic King James): 

“Entreat me not to leave thee, or to return from following after thee, for whither thou goest, I will go; and where thou lodgest, I will lodge; thy people shall be my people, and thy God, my God.” 

It is an oath, sworn before God, that Ruth intends to share Naomi’s future. This is a counter-cultural promise, a radical shift in the way things are done; because Ruth steps in to the breach. Ruth, in this promise, commits herself to care for her elderly mother-in-law because no man is there to do the caring. Ruth promises to do all that she can to compensate for the deficiency in the patriarchal system. Ruth loves Naomi.

Ruth makes a profound commitment. Don’t miss for a minute that it is made, from one desperate, poor, homeless widow to another. Women. like so many other refugees and immigrants, who hunger for food and life, and are forced on journeys in search of life’s basics, clinging to one another. Leaning on one another, counting on one another in a world in which they don’t count.

Naomi is not passive, she has not lost her resolve to do what she can. She seems to know the God revealed by the psalm as it evokes Israel’s memory of the acts of God on behalf of the powerless. God upholds the orphan and the widow.

How is God going to do that, if not through God’s people?

Naomi and Ruth and those like them are the neighbors of whom Jesus spoke.

So many who aren’t among us here today. Because they are on the streets, digging in dumpsters, or in tents in some refugee camp, or in a crate being shipped as sex slaves, or hiding in a ravine in South Texas in a desperate run to try to find a job scrubbing toilets and making beds in a motel for less than minimum wage because that is a far better life than they might have where they come from.

The greatest commandments mean that Jesus was a one issue kind of guy. Issue means ‘what comes out, what proceeds from him, flows out.’  The “issue” for Jesus was love. Love God. Love your neighbor. Love yourself. Love. That’s the  “issue.” But that one issue covers the whole. Everything else flows from that love: justice, forgiveness, generosity. Wholly loving. Loving the whole. Loving everyone.

That is what saints do. That is what we are commanded to do.

That is what stewardship is about. An anonymous person once wrote:

“Following Jesus does not mean slavishly copying his life.

It means making his choice of life your own starting from your own potential and in the place where you find yourself.

It means living for the values for which Jesus lived and died.

...

If there is anything in which this life, this way, can be expressed, in which God has been revealed most clearly, it is the reality of love.

You are someone only in as far as you are love, and only what has turned to love in your life will be preserved.”

The question for us is what difference does it all make? The question for us is how committed are we to being the conduits of God’s love right here, right now? The question for us is how wholly loving are we willing to be?