Loading...This is a stewardship sermon — about God’s stewardship: how God manages God’s household. To sum it up, God gets to do what God wants with God’s resources.
If you listened to the parable from Matthew 25 describing how the kingdom of heaven is . Was if a man, going on a journey, summoned his slaves and entrusted his property to them; to one he gave five talents, to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away - you might want to talk about that. If the man is to be regarded as God then I feel curious about God’s household management. It ends with weeping and gnashing of teeth!
The way God manages God’s property is about multiplication, prosperity, and risk. God doesn’t give ten percent or wrestle with gross and net earnings or think of snazzy slogans.
For the record I like St James Annual Campaign slogan, “You are the Light of the World.” Matthew 5:14-16 That is a slogan originally belonging to Jesus and which we co-opt in helpful ways like connecting our material wealth to ministries which support material efforts on behalf of immaterial Love. But this is about God’s math, not ours.
God gives one hundred percent. Since God made one hundred percent of the world, then whatever God gives away is technically still in God’s possession. With me so far? Only the most tenacious friends of mine study economics. Economics requires a person to pay attention for a long long time.
Don’t worry this sermon will be over soon. ;)
To review: Since God made one hundred percent of the world, then whatever God gives away is technically still in God’s possession. Then the thoughtful person, like you, will immediately send your mind to Calvary. There on the cross Jesus, the Son, belonging to God, gives his life as a sacrifice for the sins of the whole world. It was an arrangement he and God had made to ruin all the fungibility you and I like to fight over —
Fungibility about rights and wrongs, sins and salvation.
On the cross there’s a mutual exchange of what is not mutually interchangeable. God gives God’s life for ours. Poof. We no longer have any argument to make about who is more or less valuable. The final entry in the register of salvation is not, “Your debts are discharged” — though all sins are forgiven.
Forgiveness is the currency by which we receive ALL God’s resources.
There’s no such thing as reconciling accounts evenly. We can never pay back to Jesus what he paid for us. Can we pay it forward? God’s son dies on behalf of God’s mission. The suffering that an innocent Jesus bears doesn’t belong to him, the suffering Jesus bears belongs to guilty humanity.
Jesus takes on the debt of people who don’t even know they owe, people who don’t want to pay, people who aren’t even grateful for the life they have.
When I manage my household, I don’t give it all away. I have a budget. I cut up every resource into tiny bits. A little bit goes here, a large load of bits go there. Rarely, but every so often, I sneak a bit over to the nail salon for a pedicure but shhhh — don’t tell anyone. I pay in cash so it’s a secret.
When I give I make sure there is a record for the IRS and I want to celebrate the community of givers we belong to here at St James, so I let my name be put up on the wall. I want to celebrate our common mission.
There are giving opportunities when I have blown the wad, bet it all, hook-line- and-sinker into whatever the enterprise might be. And not for one single minute have I regretted it. I only wish I could give more. But I have never given my life.
God designed God’s household for giving, and for being given over. Over to the same life as Jesus...who gives his entire life -blown the wad, bet it all, hook-line- and-sinker to the children of God. For the salvation story, Jesus’ final entry in God’s register is “I love you.”
