Proper 23, Year C

The Rev. G. Hendree Harrison, Jr.

St. Paul's Episcopal Church

God’s Great Estate

I visited the Biltmore Estate in Asheville, N. C. several years ago around Christmas. If you’ve never seen the Biltmore mansion it really is amazing. It has 250 rooms, and it is the epitome of gigantic extravagance. It is a large and ancient home built by George Vanderbilt, and it is surely Asheville’s most popular tourist attraction. People stand in line for hours to get inside and tour the massive house. They file through the place behind a tour guide who tells old stories about all the old stuff that sits behind the velvet ropes just out of reach of the tourists who have come just to look and not to touch.

There is an enormous pool and a bowling alley in the basement of Biltmore. I think in it’s day the pool was the largest indoor pool around, but there’s no water in it now. It is an empty hole in the floor with ropes around it to keep the kids out.

The whole 8000 acre Biltmore Estate really is a site to see. The gardens are gorgeous. The front lawn is vast, good looking and green. The house itself is handsome and towering. But you know funny thing is - as neat as it is to tour through the bountiful Biltmore - I don’t like it as a tourist attraction.

That is I wish it wasn’t kept like a museum. I wish someone lived there. I would like it better if there was water in the pool, and a family bowling in the bowling alley. I would rather there not be ropes up in the rooms so that whoever lived there could sleep in the beds, cook in the kitchen, and bath in the bathtubs.

I’ve always felt that way about the old history filled places I’ve visited. I think all the old castles open for tours in Europe are neat and interesting to walk through, but I would rather someone live in them because then those ancient estates would really live themselves, and not just sit for tour guides to take groups through to look and not touch.

I like the idea that someone lives in a place, and is therefore thankful for it.

If a family (or maybe one hundred families) lived in the Biltmore then there would be someone (or a bunch of people) who are thankful for that giant place. After all doesn’t a place take on real importance, real depth of meaning, when folks are thankful to have it, or live in it?

Take this church house for instance. If it just sat still and empty then it wouldn’t hold much value or interest for anyone. But as it is – it is rarely still and empty. People are all of the time coming and going from this place. This church is like a home to most of us, and it is dynamic, and busy here and we are thankful for this church and it holds deep meaning for us as we worship here, and play here, and eat here, and sing and pray here.

Several years ago I traveled to Northern Uganda to visit with a group of refugees from Sudan. I traveled with a small group to a number of different refugee camps near the Sudanese-Ugandan border. On one trip out to the camps we crossed the Nile river on a ferry. Where we crossed the Nile is wide and surrounded by rich fertile ground. I remember getting off the ferry, and just marveling at the deep green grass and lush plant life on the banks of that holy river. The river plains were vast, and they shimmered in the sun. The ground there looked like it was living, and there was not a single person working the land. The refugee camps were a few miles from the river, and they are not at all like the river banks. There was no water in the camps; no good ground to grow plants in; and the people, thousands of them, were starving, and terrified, and baking under the sun.

I wondered why the refugees couldn’t camp out on the expansive banks of the Nile where they could get water and grow food. Maybe that rich land was part of some great big estate, and it was okay to look at it as we floated by, but it was not land for refugees to touch and live on. But boy I bet they would have been thankful to get near the river, sink their hands in the rich soil, and lay their babies down in the green grass.

Remembering my trip made me think of some friends I made in Uganda. They are grown men and women, and they sleep crowded into small one room mud huts, and thinking of their one room homes made of cooked mud bricks makes me think of my own well built home, and the one room I have in it that I don’t even go into for days and days at a time.

My refugee friends are thankful, quite thankful, just to be alive. In stark contrast I don’t even think much about the guest room in my house that I use only occasionally, and I know I am not sufficiently thankful to have so much more than I need.

Today is Stewardship Sunday.

Stewardship, at it’s core, is about being thankful.

Stewardship is about expressing thanks as a reaction to all the blessings and gifts that God has laid upon our lives.

Before you say to me that God hasn’t given you a mansion in N. Carolina, river property in Africa, or even an extra room in your house, understand that we Christian folks believe that everything is a gift from God. That is all life, all time, all things, all money, all dirt, all animals, even all the air in the atmosphere, and every ray of sunshine and moonlight, even day and night, it’s all from God. Given that- I like to think of all existence as God’s great estate. And aren’t we blessed to be here, and not just looking on from behind the ropes, but living like family in God’s great earthen mansion? But are we thankful, and if yes, then how do we show it? That’s the stewardship question. Are we thankful, if yes then how do we show it?

In this morning’s gospel Jesus heals ten lepers, and he tells them to go and show themselves to the priests (as was the Jewish custom in cases of lepers and healing). So they turned and walked away to do as Jesus told them, and one of the ten upon realizing he had been healed could not contain himself, and he turned and rushed back to Jesus. He threw himself down at Jesus’ feet, and he shouted praises and thanksgiving. And he made a mess of himself worshiping God in a loud voice, so thankful, so thankful. The other nine hurried on to see the priests.

Are we thankful, and if yes then how do we show it?

Do we stay between the lines, and behind the ropes and just follow the flow of traffic like the nine who walked away? Or do we break out of line, and run back to God gushing with praise and thanksgiving?

If every day we live, and every breath we take is a gift from God then are we just tourists traipsing lazily through his great estate, or are we living thankful lives? Lives that reveal our gratitude by what we do with all that has been given to us.

I think it’s just wild to consider even time as a gift from God - a gift that we are called to steward or tend with grace and with generous hearts. What do we do with our time? Do we keep it stored up, saved and kept out of reach, like that precious river land, or do we give it away for the common good? Can the Sunday school children, the outreach committee, the vestry, or the choir, benefit from the time we have which is not ours, but is God’s anway. Or am I wrong - is our time our time and ours to keep?

I don’t know exactly how each of us should show thanks and give gifts to God and each other. I don’t know how much money, how much time, what gifts, what talents. Each one of us will have to ask God to help us find that out for ourselves. So on one level for each of us the offering will be different, but on another level our offering should be the same all the way round.
Because all of us should rush back to God like the one leper and give God our very lives.

If we consider all the world God’s great estate, then we can call this church one of the altars in God’s house. An altar is a place to lay down gifts offered to God. Good friends, God’s great gift to us is life, now may we give our lives back to God. May we lay our lives down in this place in thanksgiving as an offering to God from whom all life springs, and to whom all life will one day return.