We Need All of Us

The Rev. Sara Warfield

Scriptures: Acts 2:42-47; John 10:1-10

I hope you’ve seen in our newsletter that Holy Cross/Santa Cruz Episcopal Church here in Gresham has called The Rev. Joshua Stromberg-Wojcik as their new vicar, the first non-interim priest they’ve had in several years. I hope you’ll attend his installation on May 5th. I’ll be there.

Now, why is he called a vicar and I’m called a rector? To be honest, it simply has to do with time and money. Joshua’s call is half-time, 20 hours a week. You see, Santa Cruz is what is called a mission rather than a parish. A parish, which is what St. Luke’s is, is a financially self-sustaining community while a mission is supported financially, at least in part, by the diocese. In general, a mission doesn’t have the resources to support a full-time priest.

Oh they must be tiny, you might assume. Last year, our average in-person Sunday attendance was 58. Santa Cruz’s was 57 (per their 2025 Parochial Report). Well, maybe their people just aren’t very generous then. From my conversations with Joshua and Beto, the interim that served there for a few years, they’re an exceedingly generous community. Not only that, they’re deeply involved with supporting the immigrant community in Gresham. They’re doing some amazing things.

So if Santa Cruz’s community is roughly the same size as ours, and if they’re generous and dynamic and living Jesus’ call in their community, why can’t they afford a full-time priest? Well, they’re a majority Latino congregation. Here in Multnomah County, there are more Latino families who are unable to afford the basic costs of living—rent, groceries, utilities, childcare, transportation—than those who can. There are a variety of reasons for this, but almost all of them boil down to less access to quality education, which translates into less access to higher income jobs. And Latinos who have recently immigrated here are even more likely to work minimum or less-than-minimum wage jobs.

Now I know that some of us here are in a similar situation, either working lower-wage jobs or living on a very limited income. I know that some of us pledge $50 or $100 per month, and that’s a generous stretch for you. And we also have people here who pledge $500 or $1000 per month because they have the means to do so. On behalf of this community I am so grateful for all the gifts we receive to keep this parish thriving and vibrant. You all know that during our pledge campaign, I invite you to give at a sliding scale according to your income, and while I don’t know anyone’s income, I suspect that most people here give at or above that sliding scale.

So I don’t know but I suspect the difference between St. Luke’s and Santa Cruz is that while their people also give to the church at or even above their means, like we do, in general their means, their income across the congregation, is lower than ours.

So I guess my question is: Does that mean they deserve half the priest, in terms of time and energy, that we have?

—

“I came that you may have life, and have it abundantly,” Jesus, our good shepherd, tells us in John today.

What does abundance mean? Well, if we look at the passage from the Acts today, it seems to imply that abundance, for those of us who believe in and follow Jesus, means that there is enough for you and for me and for the person holding a sign at the intersection and for everyone. “All who believed were together and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need.”

Poverty doesn’t arise out of a scarcity of resources, this passage says. It arises out of the uneven distribution of those resources.

So abundance isn’t about one person having enough for themselves, it’s about all of us having enough at the same time, all the time.

Now whether the first Christians actually lived this way or not doesn’t really matter. What matters is that people “selling their possessions and goods so that everyone has enough according to their need” is set up as the ideal from the very beginning of the Christian Church. No one having too much and everyone having enough is our Christian ideal.

I wish our reading from John had gone on to verses 11 through 15, because the good shepherd also demonstrates this ideal:

‘I am the good shepherd,’ Jesus says. ‘The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep. The hired hand, who is not the shepherd and does not own the sheep, sees the wolf coming and leaves the sheep and runs away—and the wolf snatches them and scatters them. The hired hand runs away because a hired hand does not care for the sheep. I am the good shepherd. I know my own and my own know me, just as the Father knows me and I know the Father. And I lay down my life for the sheep.’

Jesus is the model for caring so much about the entire flock that he is willing to give of himself, of his resources, indeed of his life, so that his flock may thrive. And even when he did lay down his life, forgiving our sin, it wasn’t according to who deserved what, it was according to each person’s need. And not even death could hold back the abundance of God. Jesus came back, resurrected, and gave his disciples his power to heal and love, and sent us the Spirit.

Laying down our life for the flock is not what our world teaches us. We’re taught to go it alone, that needing a flock, needing help, is weakness. Do it yourself. Hustle. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. We’ve been isolated into nuclear families with the expectation that we should be able to work enough to afford groceries and pay the mortgage, and also make the time to raise children with great love and attention. Many of us, especially those of us who grew up in lower income families, know how that works out. Meanwhile, our public schools, where we tend to the flock of our children, are losing more and more funding, which means that those who can afford to send their children to private schools have a much greater advantage in getting into college and earning higher incomes.

Our culture teaches us to be the hired hand, the person who, when the wolf comes, only looks out for me and my own, who will run to save our own life, our own property, our own well-being, leaving the flock behind.

This is a profoundly un-Jesus idea. Our culture has turned us into lost sheep, no longer held and supported by the flock, no longer guided by the ideals of the shepherd who we claim to be our teacher and savior.

But that’s why we’re part of this church community. Here we learn and practice what abundance looks like, which is “To each is given a manifestation of the Spirit for the common good.” You know I love me some First Corinthians 12:7. This scripture tells us that every single one of you has something essential to offer this whole community, that without you this parish would not know its full abundance. But it also tells us that no single one of us has all the gifts or resources to keep this community thriving. We need all of us. That’s what abundance means.

After service when you go downstairs to our Welcome Coffee Hour, you will see that our Parish Hall Renewal is now in full swing. Yes, Susan and Katie have brought their gifts of leadership and organization to this project, but they are not going it alone. I know how many others of you were here painting yesterday and Friday. I know who went out to research bathroom updates. I know that different vendors have come in and offered their expertise on new flooring. I know that the Lunch Bunch AA group helped clear the room so that our painters could do their thing. I know that Ali in the office has helped coordinate those vendors and the new lighting we’re getting.

I don’t know, but I suspect, that many of you will step up to help fund this project, which is what those envelopes in the Narthex or in your hand are asking you to do. Because we need all of us.

Our diocese, which is our greater Episcopal community in Western Oregon, needs all of us—not each parish or mission community going it alone, not St. Luke’s or Trinity Cathedral or Santa Cruz looking out only for me and my own, my property, my well-being, but guided by the ideals of the shepherd who we claim to be our teacher and savior, guided by the abundance he modeled in both his life and death.

Trusting the psalm which tells us, “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not be in want.”

Amen.