What great fun. Sunday at the 9:15 Family Worship service was about as full as a service could be.

We had four baptisms. Three girls: one screamer, one in elementary school, and one preschooler. One little boy, Zachariah Lawrence, who got so excited he spit his pacifier into the baptismal font.

The Children's Drama Team enacted the gospel reading of Zacchaeus – you know, the wee little man in the sycamore tree. Director, Edith Reed designed a sycamore tree prop using an a-frame ladder with tree-attachment. The chorus included a band of mean-girls who mocked poor Zacchaeus for his lack of stature.

But the best part of all were the children gathered around the altar to make their Candy Tithe. Every year we invite children to return 10% of their Halloween haul to the Lord. It is a little exercise in the challenge of faithful stewardship.

Bags and bags and bags of Halloween candy kept coming forward. Candy was spilling all over the floor. The altar was so completely covered that we had to make a hole in the pile of candy to get to the Paten and the Chalice for the celebration of the Eucharist.

Would Jesus mind being surrounded by the generous offerings of grateful children? You decide.

I asked several children how they felt about returning 10% of “their candy” to the Lord in this offering of thanksgiving.

My son Jonathan experienced a bit of a challenge.

After coming in from his nocturnal tour of the neighborhood, he dumped his Halloween windfall on the kitchen table. The pile of Snickers, Butterfingers, and Sourballs towered above his head. His six year old eyes glowed like the gaze of Dracula gazing down a unsuspecting neck. His mouth watered like the Wolf-man.

“Well, Jonathan, are you ready to make your tithe to the Lord.”

Jonathan gives his father a side-wise glance. His eyes narrow. His nostrils flare. His breath grows shallow. They don’t teach percentages in Kindergarten, but something in his father’s voice seems ominous.

“Jonathan, how about we count your candy? For every ten pieces you count out, well set aside one for the Lord.”

He’s okay with that. He starts to count. For every ten, out comes one. He has almost 100 pieces of candy. Not a bad night’s work.

Before him now towers a pile of almost 90 pieces of candy, still well above his head. To one side sits nine pitiful pieces of candy. It looks miniscule. It won’t even pile. Nine pieces of candy lie casually to one side of a confectioner’s Mt. Everest.

“See Jonathan. This is 10% of your Halloween candy. Would you like to give this to the Lord in a spirit of Thanksgiving for the great abundance the Lord pours into your life every day?”

Jonathan’s face takes on a demonic cast. Greed shines through his small eyes. His lip curls. His knuckles whiten as he tightens his fist.

“What do you think, Jonathan? Would you like to express you gratitude for God’s Blessing?”

A short pause, and then it comes.

Not rage exactly. It is something between a self-righteous exclamation and a plea for mercy expressed with the energy of a man who feels trapped between a higher truth he feels deeply in his heart, and a falsehood he wants very much to embrace with his stomach.

It comes with the purity and the ambiguity of a confession that lacks the surrender of contrition.

“I don’t won’t to give 10% to the Lord!”

“I understand, Jonathan. Trust me, I’ve been there.”

“It’s my candy. I went from house to house. I rang the door bells. I brought it home. This candy belongs to me!”

“Yeah, that sounds reasonable. I suppose there is some truth to that. But let me ask a you a question. Did you build the houses in our neighborhood?”

No.

“Did you make the candy and give it to our neighbors?”

No.

“Did you invent Halloween?”

No.

“Well, it seems to me that Halloween is much, much bigger than you. Aren’t you thankful for the opportunity to go Trick-or-Treating tonight?”

Silence.

Jonathan finds a Sourball and pops it in his mouth. His face screws up and his eyes squint. His tongue works the offending yet pleasant blast that activates his taste buds and concentrates his mind in a way only a sour ball can.

After about five minutes I notice a Three Musketeers Bar has fallen between Jonathan’s Mt. Everest, and his modest offering to the Lord.

“Hey Jonathan,” I say as I pick up the wayward piece of candy.

“Does this belong to you or to the Lord?”

“Oh, that’s the Lord’s,” Jonathan says with a generous flip of the wrist.

This time he reaches for a Snickers Bar as he enjoys the generous providential bounty of the Lord secure in the knowledge that he is, at long last, a faithful steward of all God’s gifts.