On Sunday - Past Sermon

Sermon Title: "From Centerfold to Chief Janitor "
Date: October 16, 2005
Minister: Rev. Charles E. Ensley, Jr.

Lesson:  Matthew 22:15-22

In an issue of Playboy magazine appearing in the early ‘80s, a beautiful young woman named Susie Scott was the centerfold girl.  Now, lest you wonder, I need to assure you at this point that I did not see her centerfold!  I read about her much later.  She spent the next 10 years after that pictorial doing modeling, acting and promotional work for the magazine, making a good living and enjoying the kind of celebrity that often attaches itself to that lifestyle.  In 1988, after one failed marriage, she married attorney Joe Krabacher of Aspen, Colorado, and settled down to enjoy a life of comfortable wealth.  For a time Susie was a partner in an antique store and a sushi bar.

But then, a little over 11 years ago, Susie happened to see a TV documentary on orphans in Mongolia, and she felt that she ought to do something to help.  That’s when a friend of hers said she ought to consider Haiti, because it was much poorer than Mongolia and almost in the back yard of the United States.  Soon, she sold her other businesses and traveled to Haiti, where she asked a taxi driver to take her to where “the poor people are.”  He drove her to a shantytown and then quickly sped off.  There, a family of 17 took her in for the night, and Susie learned firsthand the plight of many people in that country, which is one of the world’s worst basket cases.

Of that first visit, Susie later told a reporter, “I knew I had been born that day.”  She went on to say that she completely committed herself to Christ when she started working in Haiti.  Since then, with her husband as a partner, Susie launched the Mercy and Sharing Foundation, an organization dedicated to serving the children of Haiti.  The foundation now operates six schools, five orphanages and a hospital ward for abandoned children.  Susie’s group feeds, clothes, educates and nurses close to 2,000 children on an ongoing basis.

Susie has not merely set all this up.  She likes to say she’s “everything from president to chief janitor.”  She spends up to half of each year there herself, nursing sick children, and helping in every way she can.  Along the way, she has contracted lice, scabies and mange, and has been treated for encephalitis.  She has also been threatened by gangs and troubled by bureaucrats, but she has stuck it out, and has won the respect of the local people of Haiti and of the Haitian government.

At this time of year, we talk of stewardship.  All our church members received a letter in the mail last week with a pledge card to declare their intent to support Bay Shore Church in 2006.  In the church, we often use the word stewardship to refer to how much money we give the congregation’s budget.  But the biblical sense of stewardship is larger than that.  It involves how we use everything God has provided for us, including our planet and environment, our talents, our time, our ability to think and to feel and even our lives themselves.  And it is based on gratitude for God’s gifts.

The word “stewardship” comes from an Old English expression, “Sty ward,” that meant “keeper of the pigs.”  Eventually it came to refer to anyone who had responsibility for the estates or properties of another.  Is it not appropriate that our church’s board is known as the Board of Stewards?  Some of their meeting are concerned with money, but more of them are spent talking about the care of our property, our programs, and who operates them and how.  “Stewardship”, then, is not just about money.

Surely Susie’s story is about stewardship.  In terms of money, Susie and Joe fund the administration, publicity and travel expenses of the foundation out of their own pockets.  The operating expenses come from donations, some of which come because of Susie’s unique personal story and the Playboy background — which shows that in God’s economy, nothing is wasted.  But it is also a stewardship story in that Susie was able to see that not only her money, but her position of privilege, her celebrity and her life experience itself were treasures on loan from God, and she put them to use in a way that honors Christ.

I heard a news report on TV yesterday about a Los Angeles dentist who gave up his practice of twenty years in order to utilize his dental skills for the AIDS Project LA.  He spends his days traveling around in a dental office in a trailer, donating his dental expertise to the needs of patients with HIV and AIDS.  That’s a story of the stewardship of his time and talents.

In the past month, we’ve heard news of Habitat for Humanity providing preassembled walls for new homes in the areas hardest hit by Hurricane Katrina.  It’s called Operation Home Delivery.  The walls were framed in different places—New York City, Jackson, Mississippi and Burbank—and trucked to the site where they will be assembled on a foundation.  Our church donated $10,000 for this project.  That’s our stewardship donation of money.  But others are donating their time and hands and tools to pounding together those walls and roof trusses, just as some of our church members help build Habitat homes locally.

In Sunday’s (10/16/05) L.A. Times Travel section, there was an article about vacations combined with work trips.  One option was the Habitat build I just mentioned.  Habitat has registered 25,500 volunteers since Katrina struck, and donations have topped $42.5 million.  Habitat is going to be there for the long haul, and there are many opportunities for people to spend some time helping others get back into a safe, dry, well-built home.

None of us has the same exact resources Susie Krabacher does, or that Los Angeles dentist, or a Habitat volunteer, but all of us have all the talents and treasures God has given us.  The worst error we can make is to think they are only for our personal use.  But it is a correctable situation, and one we can start in motion by acknowledging that everything we have comes from God’s hand.  What we choose to do with it will make all the difference.

Sources:

De Cordoba, Jose.  “Why Susie Krabacher sold the sushi bar to buy an orphanage.”  The Wall Street Journal, March 1, 2004, A1.

Richardson, Valerie.  “From cover girl to ‘Mama Blanche’”.  The Philanthropy Roundtable, May 2004, www.haitichildren.com

(NOTE:  Rev. Ensley will next be preaching November 6, 2005

That sermon will be posted the following week.)