It has been quite a while since I was last with you folks and welcome the opportunity to be with you. Coming to Rotterdam always feels a bit like coming home and while I’m always delighted to see old and familiar faces it’s always a delight to see new faces and meet the more recent brothers and sisters that make up Christ’s family here at Rotterdam.
When Wade invited me to speak he mentioned that today you would be celebrating All Saints Day and that in the near future you’d be engaging in your annual stewardship campaign. So, I thought that we might want to take a look at how both of those themes may work with one another. Now that I’ve said that I might imagine that folks might become a bit more tense or guarded. I can tell by the way women tend to clutch their purses a bit closer and men roll over on one cheek to see if their wallets are where they left them. But, as we take a look at this, I promise I will not pick anyone’s pockets and my hands will never leave my arms! Make of that what you will.
First off, let’s take a look money and our reactions to the topic when we approach the annual stewardship program. On those occasions we tend to get all apologetic and uncomfortable because we Americans tend to treat our income as some kind of big secret. By and large it is not. We all live in a particular area, we tend to know what each does for a living and so we tend to have some general idea about what those professions fetch in our marketplace. So, the secret is out. And for clergy, who have their salaries published for all to see, it is a major non-issue.
More to the point, I’ve never felt embarrassed to ask people to fund the work of God as a priority when I know full well that there is a great deal more that they fund at their own discretion. In a world full of 50” and 60” TVs, why in the world would I shrink from asking you to fund the work of Jesus Christ, which, ostensibly, you already claim to want to be about?!
In that regard, when we become members of the church we vow to support the ministry of Jesus Christ with our presence (God bless you, you ARE here), our prayers, our talents and our gifts. It’s a package deal. Sometimes we’ll hear someone say something to the effect that giving of your time is an adequate substitute for your tithe. Try that with the bank that holds your mortgage. Suggest that you’ll drop by on Wednesday evening after work and trim their hedges instead of making your November mortgage payment. The foreclosure notice will be forthcoming. We all know the practicalities of keeping the lights lit, the heat on, the building maintained and the salaries paid. As much as we might like to believe that the worship of God almighty is free, we can rest well assured that funding the church most certainly is not.
So, what’s the deal? It’s as simple as we all know it to be. Dig deep. And then prayerfully scour your conscience and dig deeper. A member of McKownville, knowing that I would be preaching here today, suggested a possible scripture – more tongue in cheek than not, but it’s a great passage nonetheless. It comes from the prophet Malachi 3: 7 – 10 and I have preached on this passage before. It is simply reminding us that God anticipates our best on behalf of godly work and when we fall short we become an affliction upon God. While that is somewhat blunt, the prophet is more blunt. He says that to withhold from God is to steal from God. Harsh, but to the point.
Matthew’s telling of the parable of the talents is actually in a similar vein. The long and the short of that lesson is this: God provides you with gifts and graces that God expects you to employ for the sake of God. Your efforts, even if not too productive, will be rewarded. But if you are completely unwilling to risk at all on behalf of God, (Oh, that’s where he got the sermon title) what you do have will be taken from you. Not to try is an untenable insult to God. It says you don’t trust God and as you might imagine, God takes offense to that.
It’s really all very straightforward. God knows who he’s dealing with. He doesn’t try to make it complicated for us.
So, hang that on a hook for a while and we’ll come back to it. Let’s look at a little more esoteric notion about stewardship.
There is the story of a city man out for a drive in the country and he came upon a beautiful farm. The fields were green and lush, the cows looked fat and content, neighboring fields were plowed and ready for planting and the farmer was off in the distance on his tractor. The city man pulled over and got out of his car to lean up against it and simply admire the beauty of the day and the scene. The farmer, having seen the man exit his car drove his tractor over to the man to ask if he needed anything. The city man said, “Oh, no. I’m simply awestruck by the beauty of your farm. You and God have done a magnificent job!”
“Harrumph,” snorted the farmer. “I work this farm from dawn to dusk every day! You should have seen it back when God had it all to himself!”
The farmer is the steward of that land.
Stewardship is not a term invented by Greenpeace. The role of the steward is an age old role and one that is appropriately assigned to each of us as stewards of God’s kingdom. God looks to us to tend to this garden, earth. When we read the Genesis story of creation it is given to us there that our primary job is simply to be the stewards of God’s earth and all that is there. Certainly, we cannot tend to the whole of our planet from where we are, but we are commissioned to tend to that part of the world where we are. When we take on that mantle of steward we not only look after the earth, but all else that is within our purview. Looking after one another is a part of our stewardship of relationships. Maintaining our homes, our equipment, our church buildings are all a part of what it means for us to be stewards of the resources we inherit and use.
But what of our stewardship attitudes towards our money?
Your purses and wallets are safe. See, my hands have not yet left my arms! For a moment, let’s look at our attitudes towards money. Irrespective of what your financial position may be, most of our attitudes about the cash in our wallets is pretty casual. The evidence of that is seen in virtually every retail store where “the impulse items” are placed very near to the cash register. Suddenly that diet magazine is in the basket or the flashlight we didn’t know we wanted is about to light our way. We pick up the item and spend the money almost without thinking. But, consider this…
If you have a job, you report for work each day for a number of hours and at the end of a certain amount of time, a week, two weeks, a month, you receive a paycheck. What has happened? You have exchanged so many hours, typically 40 hours in a week, for your pay. Now, let me change the phrasing a little. You have sold 40 hours of your very life for that pay. That amount of life is forever gone. There is no refund. You cannot get it back…ever.
I’m not suggesting that’s a bad thing. It’s how we all earn our living. And if you have a pension, it’s the same thing, you are receiving a late payment upon your earlier exchange of life.
Now why do I put it to you this way? Simply this. Let’s say for the sake of argument that you earn $10.00 per hour. Now let’s consider the possibility of putting a $10.00 flashlight in your shopping cart as you pass by the impulse display at the cashier. What I invite you to ask yourself is this, “Is that flashlight worth an hour of your life?” It is a simple exchange of money for an item. But it is also a not so simple exchange of a portion of your life…for that thing.
Is that good stewardship of your life? And if you are in a family unit with shared household income, is that expenditure or any expenditure good stewardship of all of your lives?
This is what I believe God is calling us to when he calls us to be good stewards. We are responsible for all of what falls under our purview. Consider where you want to invest your life rather than where you might fritter it away.
Shall I complicate this a bit further?
When we purchase a product or a service, bearing in mind that in a very real way we exchange a portion of our very lives for that product or service, are we being intentional about what we are supporting with our lives? For instance, if we go to Dick’s Sporting Goods (or Wal-Mart for that matter) and purchase a pair of running shoes manufactured in Communist China, do we want our life in exchange for that product to be supporting a system where the eight year old child stitching the sole on that sneaker is paid 25 cents a day? I ask it that way because, in our world today, that does indeed become a part of our responsible stewardship. Every expenditure of every dollar has consequences – social, political and economic consequences – far beyond our merely receiving a product or a service. When you buy your clothing, purchase your appliances, drive off in your new car your money for which you have exchanged your very lives, supports the political system behind the product, the union or lack of union labor behind the product, the adult wage or child labor behind the product. Why, depending upon the brand of gasoline you use you may be supporting domestic jobs or funding the next terrorist attack. All of that is part and parcel of your every stewardship decision.
Gentlemen…can you feel your wallet? Ladies, do you know where your purse is? My hands have still not left my arms. All is safe.
We have a list of this congregation’s saints in our worship bulletin today. Some of these names are familiar to me and others not so much. Presumably, these folks are familiar to you or at least to some of you. You have seen, over the years how they have acted as stewards of their lives and how they have or have not contributed to the life of this congregation. In every instance, call them to mind and ask yourselves a simple question: “What of their lives would I like to emulate?” The “saints” continue to teach us even after their passing if we allow them. What of their lives do we not wish to replicate and what of their lives would we like to incorporate into our own? That is probably the real value of celebrating “All Saints’ Day.” We can still learn what they have to teach.
A little while ago I asked you to hang on a hook for a while our notion of funding the church when you celebrate your Stewardship Sunday. Now that we’ve placed stewardship in as large a context as I believe we are called to embrace, and we have the opportunity to learn from the example of the saints who have gone on before us, let me ask the following question: In a world of innumerable stewardship decisions and consequences, how much of your life are you willing to invest in the work of Jesus Christ who gave his all for you? What shall we risk?
The Rev. Dr. Terrence O’Neill began his married life to Barbara (Penn) O’Neill in 1973 with the Rev. Dr. James Lavery performing the service. Terry and Barbara shortly thereafter became youth advisors for the church for three years. At the time, Terry was employed as an accountant with the General Electric Company and Barbara was employed by the NYS Department of Health. Under Dr. Lavery’s persuasion, Terry answered God’s call into the ordained ministry and the congregation of Fisher United Methodist graciously agreed to sponsor him in seminary in 1977. He has served congregations in the Adirondacks and Albany since 1980, including a 6.5 year period as a chaplain at St. Peter’s hospital. He and Barbara retired in 2012.
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