When you’re a priest and you say the word ‘stewardship’ people start edging toward the door. Like a family story told too often, it can elicit groans. Soon after I came to Saint Francis, I remember being at a stewardship committee meeting where themes were considered for the upcoming campaign. I cheekily proposed this one: Either life is holy with meaning or life doesn’t mean a damn thing. You pay your money and you take your choice.

Blank stares and furtive glances. I kept a straight face until a committee member said it seemed a little wordy. We ended up that year with Charting Our Future Together in Christ. This lacked punch, I said, but Carol Tutera and Brenda Bell assured me with a knowing wink that it meant the same thing.

Stewardship asks where we are going and how we plan to get there if we get there at all, and what we are going to find if we finally do. Vestries are responsible for that planning, and the only reason for asking yourself what your role — and your checkbook’s role — will be in the life and mission of Saint Francis is that you want to be part of where we’re going and how we plan to get there. Period.

We pay our money every day, to one thing or another. By the way we use what we earn and what we’re given, we show what really matters to us. If you’re a member of my parish then very soon in your mail you’ll receive an envelope from Saint Francis with a pledge card in it. Hmm. You’ll ask: What to do with this? What numbers to scratch there? How much of what I work so blessedly hard for should I give gladly away? If you believe in what we say and do at Saint Francis — if you believe that God is busy in your life here — then when the pledge card comes do this: say your prayers, take your pen, and surprise yourself.

The struggle we have with money is really with Jesus himself. And the truth about Jesus is that if indeed he is everybody’s friend the way the old Jesus hymns proclaim, he is at the same time everybody’s worst enemy. He is the enemy at least of everything in us that keeps us from giving him what he is really after. And what he is really after is our heart’s blood, our treasure, our selves.

On the twenty-third of June, 1993, Victoria, Evan, Gabriel, Gillian and I took a train from Seekonk, Massachusetts to Boston to visit the New England Aquarium. I remember the sea lions as we call them (it would be interesting to know what they call us) racing around in their tank, leaping through hoops, balancing beach balls on their whiskered snouts and delighting us all.

On the train ride home that night, Gabriel and Evan were sitting in front of us on opposite sides of the aisle. At one stop, I looked up and noticed Gabriel patting people on the arm as they passed by him. Victoria saw it, too. She leaned forward and said to him, “Gabriel. What are you doing?” “I’m petting them, Mom,” he said. “What?” she said. You shouldn’t do that, Gabriel.” “I’m only petting them, Mom.”

At the next stop, I overheard Evan encourage Gabriel to pet a steward whom Gabe must have mistaken for the conductor. Gabriel said, “No.” “Why not?” Evan asked. “Because I don’t pet abductors [sic].”

There’s a steward in this story but that’s not why I tell it. I tell it because I ask myself: Why would a boy barely four pat on the arm people he did not know from Adam? And why do I love him for doing it? It was a crazy thing to do. It was a risky thing to do. It ran counter to all standards of New England practicality and prudence. It was debonair. He did it because he saw the people on that train not as strangers but as compagnons de voyage. It was not a level-headed, play-your-cards-close-to-the-vest thing to do, just as giving away your hard-earned cash is not level-headed, not playing your cards close to the vest. But to live this way is to make visible who we are and where we are going together, you and I. It is to see the world lit up as if by lightning on a dark night.

We’re in the offseason for stewardship talk but, just so, a jaft [just a few thoughts]. Stewardship is about the way we live and what we live for. It’s about asking who we are and whose we are. But when you’re a priest as I am and you say the word ‘stewardship’ some people start edging toward the door. Like a family story told too often, it can elicit groans. Soon after I came to Saint Francis, I remember being at a stewardship committee meeting where themes were considered for the upcoming campaign. I cheekily proposed this one: Either life is holy with meaning or life doesn’t mean a damn thing. You pay your money and you take your choice.

Blank stares and furtive glances. I kept a straight face until a committee member said it seemed a little wordy. We ended up that year with Charting Our Future Together in Christ. This lacked punch, I said, but Carol Tutera and Brenda Bell assured me with a knowing wink that it meant the same thing.

Stewardship asks where we are going and how we plan to get there if we get there at all, and what we are going to find if we finally do. Vestries are responsible for that planning, and the only reason for asking yourself what your role — and your checkbook’s role — will be in the life and mission of Saint Francis is that you want to be part of where we’re going and how we plan to get there. Period.

We pay our money every day, to one thing or another. By the way we use what we earn and what we’re given, we show what really matters to us. If you’re a member of my parish then four or five months from now in your mail you’ll receive an envelope from Saint Francis with a pledge card in it. Hmm. You’ll ask: What to do with this? What numbers to scratch there? How much of what I work so blessedly hard for should I give gladly away?

It’s early June. The train’s not in the station, but let me lay some track. If you believe in what we say and do at Saint Francis — if you believe that God is busy in your life here — then when the pledge card comes this fall do this: say your prayers, take your pen, and surprise yourself.

The struggle we have with money is really with Jesus himself. And the truth about Jesus is that if indeed he is everybody’s friend the way the old Jesus hymns proclaim, he is at the same time everybody’s worst enemy. He is the enemy at least of everything in us that keeps us from giving him what he is really after. And what he is really after is our heart’s blood, our treasure, our selves.

On the twenty-third of June, 1993, Victoria, Evan, Gabriel, Gillian and I took a train from Seekonk, Massachusetts to Boston to visit the New England Aquarium. I remember the sea lions, as we call them (it would be interesting to know what they call us) racing around in their tank, leaping through hoops, balancing beach balls on their whiskered snouts, and delighting us all.

On the train ride home that night, Gabriel and Evan were sitting in front of us on opposite sides of the aisle. At one stop, I looked up and noticed Gabriel patting people on the arm as they passed by him. Victoria saw it, too. She leaned forward and said to him, “Gabriel. What are you doing?” “I’m petting them, Mom,” he said. “What?” she said. You shouldn’t do that, Gabriel.” “I’m only petting them, Mom.”

At the next stop, I overheard Evan encourage Gabriel to pet a steward whom Gabe must have mistaken for the conductor. Gabriel said, “No.” “Why not?” Evan asked. “Because I don’t pet abductors [sic].”

There’s a steward in this story but that’s not why I tell it. I tell it because I ask myself: Why would a boy barely four pat on the arm people he did not know from Adam? And why do I love him for doing it? It was a crazy thing to do. It was a risky thing to do. It ran counter to all standards of New England practicality and prudence.

It was debonair. He did it because he saw the people on that train not as strangers but as compagnons de voyage. It was not a level-headed, play-your-cards-close-to-the-vest thing to do, just as giving away your hard-earned cash is not level-headed, not playing your cards close to the vest. But to live this way, to give this way, is to make visible who we are and where we are going together, you and I. It is to see the world lit up as if by lightning on a dark night.

The Lord Bishop of Winchester, arguing in favor of the second reading of *Intoxicating Liquor (Sale to Travellers) Bill, H.L.* in the House of Parliament, 21 March 1901.

I now pass to the Bill before your Lordships. Perhaps for a moment I may remind the House of what the existing law is on this matter. Throughout England and Wales there is virtually a large measure of Sunday closing obligatory upon licensed houses…. When Parliament enacted that public-houses should be closed to that extent, it was quite obvious that some provision had to be made to meet what might be the legitimate needs of persons traveling, either by road or by rail, or otherwise. Therefore, in the Acts of 1872 and 1874 it is provided specifically, not that a traveler, but—mark the phrase—a bona fide traveler, shall be provided with refreshment if he is more than three miles from home and applies for it, or if he applies for it at a railway station when starting by train or arriving. It is of some importance to notice the actual words. The Act of 1874 provides that its provisions “shall not preclude a licensee from selling liquor at any time to bona fide travelers”—who are defined as having lodged three miles from the place of sale—nor shall they “preclude the sale at any time at a railway station of intoxicating liquors to persons arriving at or departing from such station by railroad.” …

The law is meant to provide for the necessities of those who, from business or pleasure, are traveling on Sundays, but, as a fact, instead of people getting drink because they are traveling, they travel, if you can use the word, to get drink; in other words, they travel in order to evade the law which would otherwise press upon them. That seems to me a travesty and a mockery of the provisions which were laid down by Parliament for the comfort and convenience of those who might be traveling on Sundays…. A solicitor in Brighton, who has acted for the county police for ten years … said—”I think I should abolish the bona fide traveler. I think the law at present operates most undesirably. A great many of those persons who are served as bona fide travelers are in no sense of the term bona fide travelers, but merely loafing about for the purpose of getting Sunday drinks.”

_____

At the end of the 19th and the turn of the 20th century in England, in railway stations across the United Kingdom, signs were posted at the entry of a place that served liquor: “These rooms are open on Sundays only for the use of bona fide travelers.” By order of His Majesty’s government, I could enjoy a beer on Sundays at King’s Cross Station so long as I wanted to be somewhere else.

While in Harbor Springs this summer, Victoria and I, with Evan and Kristin, were guests of Kris’s parents Andy and Robin Torok, who took us down to Tapawingo in Ellsworth, Michigan. (The New York Times has called Tapawingo America’s finest French Country Inn.) Andy ordered for the table bottles of 1989 Château Margaux Premier Grand Cru Classé and 1989 Château Pichon Longueville Comtesse de Lalande Grand Cru Classé, Pauillac.

“The wine and the food in my life aren’t ever going to get much better than this,” I thought. But it wasn’t merely what we were drinking and eating. It was the mise en scènes in which we enjoyed them. I don’t mean just the décor, the garden and the lake. It’s that Andy and Robin aren’t loafing about for drinks. They are bona fide travelers. Whether we’re in the District at Ristorante i Ricchi, in Los Angeles at the Jonathan Club, in Harbor Springs at the New York, or in Ellsworth at Tapawingo—whether we’re consuming a ‘Big C’ at Clyde’s in St. Ignace—they enjoy pleasures as casual accommodations on our homeward journey. As much as they love America, they desire a better country, too. So do I.

Life is not what the Roman poet Juvenal lamented as bread and circuses. So when we raise the wine glass to our lips, let it be a toast to that day when we shall drink with Jesus the fruit of the vine new in our Father’s house. Let us remember our heavenly country.