Stewardship Part 3 – Time and Talents

The LORD is king; let the peoples tremble! He sits enthroned upon the cherubim; let the earth quake!  2 The LORD is great in Zion; he is exalted over all the peoples.  3 Let them praise your great and awesome name. Holy is he!  4 Mighty King, lover of justice, you have established equity; you have executed justice and righteousness in Jacob.  5 Extol the LORD our God; worship at his footstool. Holy is he!  6 Moses and Aaron were among his priests, Samuel also was among those who called on his name. They cried to the LORD, and he answered them.  7 He spoke to them in the pillar of cloud; they kept his decrees, and the statutes that he gave them.  8 O LORD our God, you answered them; you were a forgiving God to them, but an avenger of their wrongdoings.  9 Extol the LORD our God, and worship at his holy mountain; for the LORD our God is holy. – Psalm 99:1-9 

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15 Then the Pharisees went and plotted to entrap him in what he said.  16 So they sent their disciples to him, along with the Herodians, saying, “Teacher, we know that you are sincere, and teach the way of God in accordance with truth, and show deference to no one; for you do not regard people with partiality.  17 Tell us, then, what you think. Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?”  18 But Jesus, aware of their malice, said, “Why are you putting me to the test, you hypocrites?  19 Show me the coin used for the tax.” And they brought him a denarius.  20 Then he said to them, “Whose head is this, and whose title?”  21 They answered, “The emperor’s.” Then he said to them, “Give therefore to the emperor the things that are the emperor’s, and to God the things that are God’s.”  22 When they heard this, they were amazed; and they left him and went away. – Matthew 22:15-22  

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Welcome to Week Three of our month-long series on Stewardship. Just to give a quick recap: last time I was here with you, two weeks ago, I preached on thinking about who it is we’re giving to when we give to God.  We give because we want to give back to God, because God has already done so much for us. In a lot of ways, when we give to God, we are like children giving a gift to a parent: there’s nothing we can give God that God doesn’t already have; but when we give to God, we become more like God – just like our children become more like us as they mature.

Last week, for week two of our series, I was at Hill Top, and we looked at giving to God from what we own.  The scripture reading was from Exodus and it told the story of the golden calf – how when Moses was missing for 40 days on Mount Horeb, the people panicked, and they assumed that God was missing too, and they demanded that Aaron the Priest make them a god to lead them through the wilderness – so Aaron told them to take off all the gold jewelry they were wearing, and made it into a golden calf, and they worshipped this idol – until God and Moses put a stop to it.

We learned a number of things about stewardship in this passage. First, if we ever find ourselves thinking “God has forgotten me” – we need to know this is not true. The prophet Isaiah says:

Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me;
my Lord has forgotten me.”

[but God answers]
15 “Can a woman forget her nursing child
or show no compassion for the child of her womb?
Even these might forget,
yet I will not forget you.
16 See, I have inscribed you on the palms of my hands” – Isaiah 49:14-16

Before we give, we need to know that these words are true. We need to know because – as children of God – when we give, we give from a position of security and strength, not from weakness or fear. We need to know because if we give from fear – like the people around the Golden Calf did – we often end up giving to something that is an idol. (Idols are far from gone in our world today, and there are quite a few out there who would be very happy to take our money.)

So we can be sure that God remembers us.  Secondly, before we give, we need to know who we are giving to, especially in times when God feels far away. I believe we are living in times like that right now. We currently live in a time when, like the Israelites, we are waiting for God. We are waiting for God to renew our churches; we are waiting for God to set things right in our nation and in our communities; we are waiting for God to put an end to the floods and fires and earthquakes and wars that we see all around us. We are living in a time when people are looking at each other and saying “Jesus has to be coming back soon!”  Don’t believe it! In times like these, beware of idols.

In times like these, where it comes to giving, we begin with prayer. We ask God what God wants us to do, and we take time to listen for God’s answers. And when we give, what we give is between us and God – it’s no-one else’s business.

That’s a quick summary of what I shared last week.  This week we have a different scripture and a different angle on giving.

To set the scene: Our scripture lesson for this week, from Matthew, takes place during Holy Week. Palm Sunday has already happened, and (unknown to the disciples at this point) the Cross is only a few days away. Jesus is using the time he has left to be in the temple, teaching the people, and they are hanging on every word.

Suddenly there’s a group coming toward Jesus to ask a question. The group is made up of disciples of the Pharisees (I notice the Pharisees themselves didn’t bother to come; they sent the seminarians) and Herodians. This is a strange alliance, because these two groups usually hate each other. They hate each other because the Pharisees oppose Rome: they oppose Roman occupation, Roman officials, everything about Rome. They want control of Israel to be returned to Israel. The Herodians are supporters of Herod, who is the puppet king ruling under Rome’s authority. So they’re total opposites: except they both agree that Jesus is dangerous, so they come together to try to catch him in a question.

The question is this:

“is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor or not?”

The answer to this of course depends on which set of laws one is obedient to: Roman law, or the law of Moses. The Herodians, who support Rome, of course say ‘yes’ to paying the tax; the Pharisees oppose the tax for two reasons:  (1) the tax makes it possible for the Emperor to oppress the people, so basically they’re paying their oppressors to oppress them; and (2) the coin used to pay the tax has a picture of the Emperor on it, and the Emperor thinks he’s a god, so even owning a coin means having a false god in your house. The coin was, as one recent theologian recently put it, “a bite-sized bit of blasphemy…. ”[1]

So if Jesus defends the people and the faith by saying ‘no’ to the Emperor and the Emperor’s tax… that’s treason, and a charge like that could get him crucified.

Jesus’ answer to the question is as deep as it is brilliant. He says: “show me the coin: whose likeness is this?”  “Caesar’s,” they say. Jesus answers: “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s – and give to God what is God’s.”  (If this conversation happened today, Jesus might have said, “give to Washington what is Washington’s and give to God what is God’s.”)

The important point is that we are created in God’s likeness. Human beings – each one of us – are made in the image of God. That’s true no matter where a person is from – America, Europe, Asia, Africa, South America… you get the idea. Every human being is created in God’s likeness. The tragedy of life here on Earth is that people forget that; and as a result there’s a lot of pain in the world, and when we’re hurting we tend to forget who we are and whose we are.

No matter what life brings us – we are made in God’s image.  Not that we look like God, because God is a spirit. But our ability to think, to reason, to feel, to love, to experience empathy: this is what God is like, and we were designed by God to be like God.

Therefore, where it comes to paying taxes – which people in all times and all places have found to be a burden (what is the old saying about nothing being certain in life except death and taxes?) – but if the emperor wants this cheap metallic stuff, let him have it! In the long run it’s worthless. That old coin with Caesar’s face on it, that people fought and died over back then – you couldn’t buy a stick of gum with that today. And 100 years from now this (holding up a quarter) won’t be worth anything either. People will be using crypto and killing each other over nothing – quite literally.

But for eternity we are made in the image of God – and this is worth infinitely more because God has made us for eternity. God’s image – like God – lasts forever.

This also means that people who bear God’s image belong to God. We are God’s to care for, to love, to teach, to lead, as God sees fit – for God’s purposes. God made each one of us unique to fit the times and places in which we live. Not only are all of us different, but the experiences that make up our lives are different, so that no two of us is ever exactly alike, and no two of us ever experiences life exactly the same way. For this reason we are able to work in tandem with one another, to help one another, which is God’s plan.

And this leads us to the third thing to consider about Stewardship: the stewardship of our time, our talents, and our abilities.

One theologian puts it this way: stewardship includes “participating in God’s mission, listening to God’s law, doing justice, loving kindness — [it’s] a way of life that [includes] opposing cruelty, injustice, and arrogance in all their forms.”[2]

The question then becomes: what has God gifted me to do? This may or may not have anything to do with our careers; the question deals with the raw materials that God has put in each one of us. In a sense we grow into self-knowledge throughout our lives – we never stop learning about ourselves.

But there are usually a few things that usually remain constant. What I’m talking about, to some extent, is like the old book What Color Is Your Parachute? (if anyone remembers that; BTW it’s still being published!). The book is designed to help people plan their careers, but it does far more than that. It asks questions not only about what we did in school, but about things like: do we work better in large groups or in small groups or on our own? Do we prefer a lot of direction from our bosses or do we prefer working independently? Do we learn well from books or do we prefer to hear people explain things verbally? Answers to these questions – and others like them – tell us a lot about what God has created in each one of us. There are no right or wrong answers – just an amazing variety of combinations – which is exactly what God intended.

As we get to know ourselves – during adolescence and beyond –  we discover our purpose (or maybe a handful of purposes) for our life. We begin to learn – with joy – who we are and why we’re here.  The lectionary book we’re working from says, “God has marked every human with a role, an image, an identity that comes with challenge, joy, and fulfillment.”[3]

So as we learn about ourselves, and who God created in us, we also learn about what we have that we can offer to others.  The question, then, is: what is God calling us to offer to the body of Christ and/or to the community around us? If we know what God has given us, then we know what we have to offer. And like any type of giving, giving from our time and talents begins with prayer. We talk to God, and we ask what God would have us share from the many gifts God has given us?

Some of the gifts we might discover in ourselves might include things like:

1. The ability to empathize
2. The ability to comfort others
3. The ability to welcome strangers
4. The ability to advise and/or offer wisdom
5. The ability to see through nonsense (I like that one!)
6. The ability to have faith in others
7. The ability to heal
8. The ability to teach

This is just a tiny sampling of all the gifts God gives. We can pray about this, and we can ask others who know us what they see in us that could be of help to others.

The answer to this prayer, and God’s direction for how we share, will be different for each one of us. Keep asking God, and keep listening for answers. May God bless our efforts to discover what God has created in us, and to discover the joy of living into God’s plan. AMEN.

[1] SALT Blog

[2] SALT, https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog

[3] A Preacher’s Guide to Lectionary Sermon Series Vol 2, many authors

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Stewardship Series Part 1: Who Is It We’re Giving To?

Then God spoke all these words:  ² I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;  ³ you shall have no other gods before me.  ⁴ You shall not make for yourself an idol, whether in the form of anything that is in heaven above, or that is on the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth.  ⁷ You shall not make wrongful use of the name of the LORD your God, for the LORD will not acquit anyone who misuses his name.  ⁸ Remember the sabbath day, and keep it holy.  ⁹ Six days you shall labor and do all your work.  ¹² Honor your father and your mother, so that your days may be long in the land that the LORD your God is giving you.  ¹³ You shall not murder.  ¹⁴ You shall not commit adultery.  ¹⁵ You shall not steal.  ¹⁶ You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor.  ¹⁷ You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or male or female slave, or ox, or donkey, or anything that belongs to your neighbor.  ¹⁸ When all the people witnessed the thunder and lightning, the sound of the trumpet, and the mountain smoking, they were afraid and trembled and stood at a distance,  ¹⁹ and said to Moses, “You speak to us, and we will listen; but do not let God speak to us, or we will die.”  ²⁰ Moses said to the people, “Do not be afraid; for God has come only to test you and to put the fear of him upon you so that you do not sin.” – Exodus 20:1-20  

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[Jesus said] “Listen to another parable. There was a landowner who planted a vineyard, put a fence around it, dug a wine press in it, and built a watchtower. Then he leased it to tenants and went to another country.  34 When the harvest time had come, he sent his slaves to the tenants to collect his produce.  35 But the tenants seized his slaves and beat one, killed another, and stoned another.  36 Again he sent other slaves, more than the first; and they treated them in the same way.  37 Finally he sent his son to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’  38 But when the tenants saw the son, they said to themselves, ‘This is the heir; come, let us kill him and get his inheritance.’  39 So they seized him, threw him out of the vineyard, and killed him.  40 Now when the owner of the vineyard comes, what will he do to those tenants?”  41 They said to him, “He will put those wretches to a miserable death, and lease the vineyard to other tenants who will give him the produce at the harvest time.”  42 Jesus said to them, “Have you never read in the scriptures: ‘The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is amazing in our eyes’?  43 Therefore I tell you, the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people that produces the fruits of the kingdom.  44 The one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and it will crush anyone on whom it falls.”  45 When the chief priests and the Pharisees heard his parables, they realized that he was speaking about them.  46 They wanted to arrest him, but they feared the crowds, because they regarded him as a prophet. – Matthew 21:33-46 

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The month of October is traditionally the time of year when many churches focus on the subject of Stewardship.  It’s odd to me that I’ve been with the Partnership as long as I have, and I have never preached a sermon on giving – or heard one for that matter. And I will get to it one day, but not today!  As Pastor Dylan said in an email earlier this week, “God trusts us to use what God has given us in God’s service” – and this can be done in a lot of different ways.

Before I begin, I want to start by focusing on God.  When we talk about giving – in any context – we need to start with who we are giving to. Think for a moment about how we Christmas shop: we think about the person or people, we are shopping for: what do they like? What do they enjoy? This involves thinking about that person or those people.

So before we start thinking about giving to God, let’s spend a moment thinking about God. God is our heavenly parent; our creator; our designer; our provider; our teacher; our Saviour. God is the One who loves us more than anyone else. When we stand in God’s presence we stand like children, wanting to say ‘thank you’ to God who has given us more than we can imagine.

At the same time, when we think about giving to God, it’s like the old question, “what do you get for the One who has everything?” because God really does have everything! God created everything, and if God needed something, God could create that too.

So we begin by letting God be God. What is it our heavenly Parent might want from us? What is it that any parent wants? Love, of course, and respect. That’s what every parent treasures most from their children. What a child has, or what a child does, may please a parent but that’s not what the relationship is about.

More than anything, like a parent, God wants to hear from us. God loves to hear our voices. When we pray, when we sing, when we read God’s word, we are being God’s children. Above all, God wants us to hear God saying to each one of us: “You are my beloved son or my beloved daughter and I love you.” That’s where it all begins.

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This morning in our scriptures we heard only two lessons – the Psalm and the Gospel – but as you know, every Sunday we have four scripture readings: Old Testament, Psalm, New Testament, and Gospel. Today I’d like to set a foundation for the subject of stewardship in what would have been our Old Testament reading.

The Old Testament reading for this Sunday is Exodus 20:1-20. I won’t read the whole thing, because I don’t need to: you all know it! The passage begins:

“I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery;  you shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself an idol… you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain… remember the Sabbath day to keep it holy… honor your father and your mother…”

Does this sound familiar?  Today’s Old Testament reading is the Ten Commandments: words that most of us have known most of our lives. Just to finish out the ten, God also said:

“You shall not murder; you shall not commit adultery; you shall not steal; you shall not bear false witness against your neighbor; you shall not covet… anything that belongs to your neighbor.”

So what does this have to do with Stewardship? Quite a lot actually. Stewardship, at its foundation, is making good use, wise use, of what God has given us. And God’s word is one of the greatest gifts God has given us. That’s why I really appreciate the message on Fairhaven’s church sign this week:

Read the Bible. It’s user-friendly, plus we offer tech support on Sundays at 9:30 A.M.

I love that!  That’s exactly what we’re here for! We approach God’s word today with an intention to be good stewards of it by reading it, understanding it, explaining it to others, sharing it, living it.

God’s word in the Bible is the greatest resource we have for living. In the Bible we learn about how God called the people of Israel to be God’s chosen people, and how God set them free from slavery and guided them through the wilderness and into the Promised Land.

And we learn all these things are true for us also: God has set us free from slavery to sin; God has set us free to be God’s people; God is guiding us through the wilderness of this life and into the Promised Land of God’s Kingdom.

In the Old Testament, we see the people of Israel becoming a nation, not just in the political sense, but in the sense that they were (and are) God’s people.

The promises given in the Old Testament to the people of Israel talk about a Messiah who will come one day and call God’s people back to God.  Here are just a few of those promises from Old Testament:

Numbers 24:17,19: “I see him, but not now; I behold him, but not near. A star will come out of Jacob; a scepter will rise out of Israel . . .”

Isaiah 42:1,4: “Here is my servant, whom I uphold, my chosen one in whom I delight; I will put my Spirit on him and he will bring justice to the nations . . .”

Isaiah 60: 2-3: “For behold, darkness shall cover the earth, and gross darkness the people; but the Lord shall arise upon thee, and His glory shall be seen upon thee. And the Gentiles shall come to thy light, and kings to the brightness of thy rising.”

All of these passages – and many more – come to us from Jewish prophets and Jewish kings. We build on their foundation.

So the first thing we need to be good stewards of, is God’s word – in all its fullness, in all its history, with all of its foundation, in all that God has done for God’s people for thousands of years.

Where it comes to the Ten Commandments specifically, in the words of the SALT commentary, the Commandments are “not arbitrary prohibitions, but rather loving limits that guide human beings toward living with justice, grace, and dignity with both God and neighbor. […] [The Commandments] transform “doing the right thing” into a calling… something we do because we are devoted to God.”[1]

Following these commandments comes from the heart, not just from a sense of duty. We do what we do because we love God; and we love God because God first loved us.

At this point I need to stop just for a second and talk about the word stewardship itself.  One dictionary defines stewardship as “the job of supervising or taking care of something”. Another dictionary says stewardship is “the careful and responsible management of something entrusted to one’s care.” (I like the second one better.)

But there’s an older meaning, an historic one, that I think is closer to what God is talking about. In the old days – and even today in some very wealthy places – a ‘steward’ is someone employed in a large household to manage domestic concerns such as the supervision of servants, collection of rents, and keeping of accounts. In other words, it’s a position with a very high level of trust: to care for, and manage, a large household – including the financials – on behalf of the owner. That’s what a steward does.

For those of you who enjoyed watching Downton Abbey – Mr. Carson, even though he was the butler by title, was for all intents and purposes the steward of the household: he was the one everyone trusted; he was the ultimate in being discreet; and he was the right-hand man of the Earl of Grantham – who he served with all his heart, out of love.

This is the role we are called to as stewards – each one of us. We are called to be stewards of what God has placed in our hands, whatever that may be; and to hold for God, and preserve for God, and use for the benefit of God, everything that we have and everything that we are, and everything that we have the ability to influence.

Thinking along these lines: John Wesley, the founder of the Methodist Church, considered stewardship to be absolutely essential to the Christian faith. Wesley’s teachings usually centered around money, but not for the reasons we might think. As the Methodist movement grew, and as people got better at earning money (by using the gifts and skills God has given), and began to be more deliberate about managing money, what happened – really quite naturally – was that Methodists began to be wealthy people! The Methodist movement had started out with ministry to the poor, and to those in need of justice; but toward the end of his long life, John Wesley became concerned. He said, “wealth and the failure to give [are] the most serious threats to the Methodist movement in particular and Christianity in general”[2].  Wealth and the failure to give are the greatest threats to Christian faith.

Food for thought.

Wesley’s teaching on stewardship was simple and direct. You’ve probably heard it before. He said: “Gain all you can. Save all you can. Give all you can.[3]” Three points he drilled home with the early Methodists. “Gain all you can” – of course, by working for it. “Save all you can” – not just by stashing money in the bank, but also by limiting spending and not buying things we don’t need; and “Give all you can” – doing our part to distribute God’s resources fairly. Wesley said doing the first two (gaining and saving) without doing the third (giving) would be worse than never having been Christian in the first place.

Of course Wesley was speaking of money here, but his teaching applies to other areas of life as well. We should never, for example, stop gaining in knowledge or in understanding or in compassion; we should never stop saving knowledge (in order to share it) or compassion (in order to offer it). If we have knowledge, but we never speak what we know, our knowledge is wasted. If we feel kindness and compassion, but never express it, the people we care for will never know. So it needs to be all three: gaining, saving, and giving.

With all of this said as background, I’d like to turn our attention now to our scripture reading for today. At this point in the reading from Matthew, Jesus is in the temple. The events of Palm Sunday have just happened a day or two before, and Jesus is sitting in the temple and teaching – and the crowds love to listen to him!  But not so much the Pharisees and religious authorities, who are standing around in the background waiting for Jesus to make a mistake so they can pounce.

So Jesus tells a story.  He talks about a man who planted a vineyard.

Immediately the people listening to Jesus knew that he was talking about the nation of Israel, because Israel is often referred to in the Old Testament as a vineyard, as God’s vineyard.  God, as the owner of the vineyard, has done everything to raise healthy vines: he has protected it, he has built a watchtower so guards can watch over it. Then he leases it to tenants and goes away for a while; and the tenants represent the nation of Israel’s kings and priests and religious leaders – the people in power.

When it comes time for the harvest – which should be a time of celebration, like Thanksgiving – tragedy happens. The landowner sends a message to the tenants to bring some grapes to the celebration, but the tenants mistreat and murder the messenger. The owner tries a second time, and the same thing happens. Then the owner sends his son, saying to himself, ‘they will respect my son’… but the tenants say to each other: ‘this is the heir – let’s kill him and the vineyard will be ours.’

What Jesus hasn’t told them yet is that he himself is the son, and the religious leaders are the murderers. At this point in the story Jesus asks the religious leaders point-blank: “What will the owner of the vineyard do to those tenants?” And they answer, “he will put them to a miserable death”.

Jesus said, “have you not read in the scriptures: ‘the stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone’… therefore the kingdom of God will be taken away from you and given to a people who produce the fruits of the kingdom.”

Then they realized he was talking about them – and they went away to make plans to do the very thing Jesus had said they were going to do: kill the Son.

This particular passage doesn’t have a whole lot to do with stewardship, at least not in the main point; the main point of the story is not directed at the vines. Jesus is speaking to the evil tenants. The parable is actually a word of warning to those of us who preach, to be certain that we are doing it with loyalty and accuracy and love for God and God’s people.

But this parable does have a secondary meaning for all of us, which is: as vines, we were created to grow and be healthy and produce fruit. One commentator put it this way: “Let us be challenged by this parable to speak into our culture words of life and hope and… blessing.”

Some of the fruits we bear include justice, mercy, and humility, and we are not limited to these. But if we don’t see fruits in our lives, we can turn to God and ask for God’s help, because God is the ultimate vine grower, and God knows what we need to be fruitful.

I would also add, from my own life experience, that we bear fruit when we use the gifts and talents God has given us. For example, I have known all my life that I have gifts in teaching and in music, so I use them as often as I can. The great joy of this of course is that, when we use the gifts God has given us, it’s a pleasure to do it – because it’s what we’re designed to do!  The artist takes joy in painting; the sportsman takes joy in sports; the cook takes joy in cooking; and all of these gifts and so many more can be shared with God’s people and offered to God’s glory.

So the Ten Commandments that God gives us in Exodus… and the words of warning Jesus gives us in Matthew… guide us to think about what’s “in here” (in our hearts)… what has God created “in here” that God wants to share with the world? Each one of us has something unique and beautiful to share, given to us by God.

Using those gifts is what stewardship is all about. It is our calling, our joy, and our privilege, to be stewards of everything God has given us. To God’s glory, AMEN.

[1] https://www.saltproject.org/progressive-christian-blog/2020/9/29/amazing-grace-salts-lectionary-commentary-eighteenth-week-after-pentecost

[2] https://www.resourceumc.org/en/content/john-wesley-on-giving

[3] Ibid.

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