Article 21: Christian Stewardship – a life of seeking God first
May 8, 2011- Mother’s Day
BMC- Matt 6:24-33 & Ps. 24
Introduction: Psalm 24:1
This morning, we come to Article 21: Christian Stewardship. At first glance, this article may seem to have little connection with the fact that this morning is Mother’s Day. And certainly on the surface this is very true, because the article does not literally say anything about mothers in it or within its additional commentary notes.
And yet it seems to me that the lessons about stewardship that we will consider this morning are lessons that often begin with or primarily come from our mothers. That is certainly the case for me, especially given the holistic approach to stewardship that I would like to invite us to consider this morning. After all, one of the primary roles of being a mother and raising children is teaching them about what is important in life and modeling for them how to live their lives. As such, many of our first life lessons are directly or indirectly connected to our mothers and this includes money and so much more.
Yet, often times when we hear the word stewardship, our minds automatically go to principles of the use of our money and more specifically to the offering plate. And that is one part of stewardship and it is a part of stewardship that we will spend more time with in the fall. This morning, however, given our consideration of the topic from the perspective of our article in the confession of faith, I want to invite us to consider stewardship more holistically.
As Psalm 24:1 points out to us, the earth and everything in it is the Lord’s. The world and all of us are God’s. This is significant because not only does it tell us our place, that we are stewards caring for what is actually God’s; but also it tells us that stewardship is a reality that touches every part of our lives, not just our money. If everything is God’s, then stewardship becomes a thread that is woven throughout the very fabric of our lives, a thread that is integrated and shapes the way that we approach life.
Depending how you break that up or subdivide the topic of stewardship, there are at least six areas to stewardship that are worthy of our consideration this morning.
1. Tangible Resources (Money and Possessions)
2. Time
3. Talents and Skills
4. Creation
5. Physical Health
6. Spiritual Health (intake) and Relationships (output)
And for me, each of these began for me from lessons from my mother in one way or another.
Tangible Resources
First, we have our tangible resources, our money and our possessions. Our parent’s model for us how we should approach money and that profoundly shapes the stewardship of our resources. Our mother’s teach us about the importance of sharing what we have as they referee the daily arguments over sharing toys and treats.
My parents taught me to save money and to give money to the church. I remember getting a weekly allowance growing up. It began as 75 cents and I had three banks in which to subdivide it. Savings went in the bunny bank, church went in the Smurf bank, and spending went in the Tootsie roll bank. I had to put a quarter in each of the spending, savings, and church banks. As I got older, they also modeled for me the tithe, even giving 10% of bonus checks my dad received.
As I said, we will come back to this part of Stewardship this fall and we will spend more time with it. For now, I simply want to include it as the obvious part of stewardship that it is and offer one reminder. As we go into the summer months, our schedules tend to be a bit more scattered and our travels sometimes mean that we will not be in worship for several weeks in a row. Yet whether we are here to worship or not, the ministry of our church continues each week throughout the summer. This means that the expenses of doing ministry each week continue as well. Pretty obvious, right?
With that in mind, it seems appropriate to draw your attention to the fact that by going to our church website, you can still make your donation whether or not you are physically here on a Sunday morning or not. The tab on the far right says, “donate.” When you click on it, it takes you to a secure page through MC USA that allows you to use a credit card to make your donation to Bethel. I’m assuming that it also allows for the use of debit cards, but I have only tried it with a credit card.
Once you have made your donation, you can print out a receipt for it. The site also allows you to print out a slip for the offering plate if you like. This way when you are in worship the next time, you can still have something to put in the offering plate even though you have already made your actual donation.
Time
Next we have time. My mother taught me about time, about keeping track of my schedule on a calendar and about prioritizing the use of my time to get things done. She also taught me about making time for church and ministry a priority. Additionally, my parents taught me about taking time to rest by setting my bedtime and by setting aside time for vacations and Saturdays with nothing planned.
In our frantic world in which we try to get so much done in a day and multitask to the extreme, our use of time tends to be about getting things done. And yet as our article points out, much of what scripture tells us about time has to do with the Sabbath and taking time to rest. God did so on the seventh day of creation and God instructs us to do so as well. We are to take a day of rest each week. To neglect the Sabbath is to break one of the Ten Commandments, which puts it right up there with murder and disobeying your parents to put it into perspective.
Talents and Skills
Next we have our talents and skills. Sometimes the talents that we have come directly from our parents, who share those talents. Other times, our talents develop because our parents recognize them and nurture them within us. Many of the skills that we have, we learned from our parents. My mother taught me to cook and to do laundry, skills that my wife deeply appreciates, though she may wish that I used them a bit more.
We must be good stewards of our talents and our skills choosing to use them not only for our own benefit or enjoyment but also for the furthering of the kingdom of God. For instance I enjoy playing soccer and while I’ve never been an all-star athlete, I have developed a certain level of skill and knowledge about playing the game.
Rather than simply use that for my own recreation, I have chosen to use it for the kingdom as well through coaching Elam’s soccer team this last fall. Doing so, gave me opportunities to make new connections in the community and to share the love of Jesus through modeling to the kids I worked with.
This summer, we will have more opportunities to use our talents and skill to reach out to the children of the community. You’ve received information in your boxes about volunteering to assist with Vacation Bible School this summer in June. Soon Coordinating Council will be talking more about an opportunity to use your talents and skills to reach out to local kids through a soccer camp that we may run in August. Council approved the exploration of the possibility and the West Liberty Soccer Association has expressed excitement about having us do a four evening camp in August. Both of these opportunities require the obvious talents and skills, but they also require a lot of behind the scenes work and organization regardless of whether you are a talented teacher for VBS or a skilled soccer player for the soccer camp.
As these opportunities come up this summer and as the Gifts Discernment Committee continues to invite you to opportunities to serve, please be intentional about considering how you can best be a good steward of the talents and skills that you have. These choices are a matter of stewardship.
Creation:
Next is the stewardship of creation. If the earth and everything in it is God’s, then our care of creation is an important part of our stewardship as well. My mom taught me the value of recycling. My parents were already doing that when I was a child even before there was a citywide program in Marion.
As an adult, we continue to recycle and try to make intentional choices about how we use our resources. We often walk or ride our bikes to get around town, rather than driving our car for short trips. And rather than using a gas powered lawn mower for our small lawn, we use a reel push mower.
Stewardship of creation is about caring for the world that we live in so that it is around for future generations, but it is also about justice in the world. The choices that we make about how we use the planet’s resources also have profound affects on people’s lives today. We see that in the effects of oil spills, the cost to clean them up, and the loss of jobs resulting from that. We see it in the economic ripples of how we purchase food and the wages that the growers receive. Stewardship of creation is about caring for our planet for future generations, but it is also about just practices that share rather than hoard the resources of the earth.
Physical Health
Next, we must be good stewards of our physical health. Beth works at teaching our kids about this, though they seem to pick a up a lot of it from PBS and school as well. Though our bodies are temporary and fragile shells for our eternal souls, scripture also tells us that our bodies are God’s temples. Moreover, good health allows us to be freer to serve God’s purposes than we can be when we are encumbered with the limitations of health difficulties. As such we need to be good stewards of our health; at least as much as it depends on us, knowing that some of this is beyond our control.
Certainly this is an area of growth for many of us including myself as it can be a challenge to take diet, exercise and sleep seriously when it feels like there are so many things vying for our attention. But more than our ability to serve the Lord, our care for our health also becomes an economic justice issue. Now certainly many of you are far more equipped to speak on this aspect of stewardship than I am; but as I understand it, studies show that proactive health care reduces the overall cost of healthcare.
The cost of taking steps to remain healthy is less expensive than the cost of treating a problem when it arises. This has implications for how the health insurance company does business and how we are able to use our financial resources. A significant part of how Beth and I used our income over the almost 11 years of our marriage has been shaped by the percentage that we had to pay to cover our medical expenses. When your health insurance sets you up to have to pay around 15% of your income on medical bills each year, it becomes a challenge for a young married couple with children to maintain tithing let alone be more generous.
Things have certainly gotten better for us since coming here, yet those kind of realities have lasting impacts. And while we have limited control over many of our health difficulties, we are able to make choices that promote better health, longer. The Corinthian Plan, the current denominational health plan for pastors, includes a provision for this. It offers a small financial contribution to one’s H.S.A. for participating in health related accountability and a little more for measured progress in that. It is an encouragement to work at the stewardship of our physical health.
Spiritual Health and Relationships
Finally, we must be good stewards of our spiritual health and relationships. To remain spiritually healthy and to grow spiritually, we must make intentional choices. We must be discerning about what we take in through reading, music and movies and how that affects our spiritual health.
The flip side of this is our relationships. We must be good stewards of the relationships that we have by investing our time and our tangible resources in them; but also in valuing them and choosing how we will treat one another. In this way, our choices about being stewards of our spiritual health have direct implications for our stewardship of our relationships.
After all, what we take in affects what we put out. Jesus himself said in Matthew 12:34-35, “You brood of vipers, how can you who are evil say anything good? For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of. A good man brings good things out of the good stored up in him, and an evil man brings evil things out of the evil stored up in him.”
Moreover, Jesus said that the first commandment is to love the Lord with all of your heart, with all of your soul, with all of your mind, and with all of your strength and the second is like it to love your neighbor as yourself. These are stewardship principles for our spiritual health and for our relationships.
Conclusion: Matt 6:24-33
And so on this day in which we honor mothers and the nurturing women in our lives, I invite us to consider the lessons that they taught us and in particular the connection that many of those lessons make to principles of stewardship when it is considered holistically. The reality is that ultimately stewardship becomes about so much more than our finances.
Since everything is God’s anyhow, stewardship is a holistic reality that encompasses our tangible resources of money & possessions, our time, our talents & skills, our environment, our physical health and our spiritual health & relationships. Thus stewardship becomes a life of seeking God first.
Our Matthew 6 passage for this morning tells us that we can not serve both God and money. It goes on to tell us not to worry about food or clothing, because God will provide them. And then it closes by saying that we should seek first the kingdom of God and all these things will be given to us.
When our lives are about seeking God first, our stewardship of all these aspects of our lives will come together as well. We will have all that we need and we will better know how to care for it as well. May God guide us in being good stewards and may we choose to seek Him first. Amen.
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