Affirmation of Faith on stewardship

At University Church's Sunday service

Good morning, church. I’m Dominic. And today for our Affirmation of Faith, I’ll reflect on stewardship -- by which I mean certainly time and talent. But first I want to talk about treasure. Money.

Now I’m weird in that I love to talk about money. Our tireless, talented, outgoing church treasurer, said I was the first person to join in 20 years and WANT, ASK to get involved in church finances. What’s wrong with me? Well, as with most things, I blame it on my mother. For one thing, she chairs the parish finance council back home.

Speaking of home: I’m from Holland, Michigan. You might have heard of us thanks to my dear neighbor Betsy. If you follow my Michigan home's creek half a mile, you get to a house of hers, which you may have seen on social media -- a window-laden mansion monstrosity almost as grotesque as the capitalism that enabled it. Oh, and Betsy is a DeVos, and Trump’s education secretary.

So I get why we don’t like to look at money. But as with racism, sexism, and all the rest, it strikes me that capitalism’s ugliness is also its strategy, and that to beat capitalism, we will have to stare it down. Not just in its McMansion absurdity, but in our lives, and in our church.

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