Sitting Under Trees We Didn't Plant

St. Mary’s Episcopal Church

Just in case your mind went on a little walk-about during the reading of the Gospel, let me read a bit back to you again. “The land of a rich man produced abundantly. And he thought to himself, `What should I do, for I have no place to store my crops?' Then he said, `I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods. And I will say to my soul, `Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.' But God said to him, `You fool! This very night your life is being demanded of you. And the things you have prepared, whose will they be?”

And for all you Book of Common Prayer nerds who were busy studying your Prayer Books while waiting for communion, page 445 has this rubric for the Thanksgiving of a Child:

The Minister of the Congregation is directed to instruct the people, from time to time, about the duty of Christian parents to make prudent provision for the well-being of their families, and of all persons to make wills, while they are in health, arranging for the disposal of their temporal gods, not neglecting, if they are able, to leave bequests for religious and charitable uses.

To go on, let me do a little test here. How many of you have a will or estate plan? How many of you have the church in that will or plan? Enough said. I will be literally eternally grateful that when my parents died they left current wills, clean and simple. I have three brothers and I promise you that we have no sibling rivalry whatsoever among us. But just in case, it really helped to have that will. My parents also had funeral plans, not completely filled out, but enough that we could work with it. And, of course, the Book of Common Prayer was part of that. It helped a lot to have those things.

Now there was one part of the will that disappointed me: there was nothing given away to church or charity. My parents met at Willamette University, my mother had a Bachelor of Arts in Nursing from the University of Oregon. They were the fourth generation family at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Salem, Oregon, and----- nothing. All of us brothers are doing fine. We would not have missed it if there had been, for example, ten percent of the total given to charity. That was my one disappointment.

Dorothy and I have wills and have sketched out our funeral plans. We have provided for our children and we have also provided for church and at least one other charity. We all sit under trees we didn’t plant. We all drink from wells that other people dug. It was the faithful Christian Episcopalians in Salem who provided the structure so that as I grew up I would learn and have my faith strengthened. It is thanks to the giving and work and faithfulness of previous members of St. Mary’s going back 170 years that there is a structure here for a faithful community to strengthen my faith, and uphold and support me, Dorothy, our children and our grandchildren in their faith. For all of that I am most grateful.

Lastly, why? What is the basic point? The basic point is that it is all about love. God loves me, God loves you, and has given us all many, many gifts, including the lives of our children. In the time we have had them, thanks be to God, our children and grandchildren have been an abundance, an overflowing cornucopia of love. It is our love towards God and our families and our faithful institutions that we show by doing this. So, I bid you to remember God’s love.

AMEN.