First Stewardship sermon for 2013
in a series of three.
By The Rev’d
Susanne Chambers
4th August, 2013
Luke 12:13-21
Today I will speak in
broad terms of our response to money, to each other and to God.
Next week, Jonathan will
enlarge on our Mission here at St Paul’s and what finances are needed for us to
be financially self-sufficient.
And then the following
Sunday the 18th August, Commitment Sunday we will have a guest
speaker: Alison Preston who is the Middle East Program Manager for Anglican
Overseas Aid.
I hope you will find each
of these Sundays helpful in your reflections and prayers as we each consider
our time, talent and our treasures all which come from God.
For those of you who have been
fortunate to have lived or visited developing countries, you may like me, find
it incredible that the people are so generous with the little they have.
When we first arrived in
Malawi, the four of us women were given a single rose and then I, as the
priest, was given a bunch of roses.
Roses are not seen very much in Malawi! This was indeed a generous gift
to welcome us!
The meals that were
provided on the two Sundays after church in our honour, were all the foods one
could get in Malawi…at least in Zomba…vegetables, n-seema, chicken, meat and
fish.
Chicken, the meat and fish
are becoming too expensive for most to be able to buy. One night, one of the women was going home
for her dinner which was a corn cob.
It wasn’t just the food
that was so generously given. Each day, someone had to come and pick us up and
drive us home at the end of the day.
This could take up to one
hour depending on how busy the village markets were as we passed through.
When greeted, there would
be big smiles, a hand ready to take yours in theirs and a genuine delight that
we were with them.
To quote just a small
portion of a letter from the Mothers’ Union of St Georges’ in Zomba.
“Dear Rev’d Susanne,
We greet you in the name
of our Lord Jesus Christ. We write on
behalf of all the Christians and more specifically on behalf of the mother’s
union guild at St George’s Anglican Church to thank you most sincerely for the
visit that you and the other charming ladies, Jennifer, Rose and Lizzie
accorded our church. The Christians at
St George looked at the visit as a spiritual revival and wish they did not end
here…”
And from the first letter
when we arrived “we are therefore very grateful and we will never take this
support for granted and please receive our ZIKOMO KWAMBIRI from the sweet and
warm hearts of St George’s mothers.”
It is moments like these
in life, that being part of a parish community and a worldwide church community
show the reason why we are here. We are here not just for ourselves, but for
one another and to give thanks to God that this is so.
In today’s gospel what
caught my attention was the response Jesus gave to the person in the crowd who
wanted Jesus to fix a problem about money.
In broad terms Jesus answered his question. ‘Take care! Be on your guard
against all kinds of greed; for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of
possessions.”
In the parable that Jesus
then tells them and in life as well, he basically says: ‘it’s not all about
money’.
He warns against greed,
about the insatiable feeling of never having enough. And the parable he tells illustrates
this. The farmer’s problem isn’t that he’s
had a great harvest, or that he’s rich, or that he wants to plan for the
future. The farmer’s problem is that his good fortune has curved his vision so
that everything he sees starts and ends with himself.
Listen again to the
conversation he has with, not a spouse or friend or parent or neighbour, but
only with himself. “I will do this: I will pull down my barns and build larger ones and these I will store all my grain
and my goods. And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years: relax,
eat, drink, be merry.”
Do you see what I mean? It
is an absolutely egocentric conversation, even including a conversation with
himself inside the conversation he is already having with himself! This is why he is a fool.
The rich man’s land has
produced abundantly, yet he expresses no sense of gratitude to God or to the
workers who have helped him plant and harvest this bumper crop. He has more grain and goods in storage than
he could ever hope to use, yet seems to have no thought of sharing it with
others, and no thought of what God might require of him. He is blind to the fact that his life is not
his own to secure, that his life belongs to God.
The rich man learns the
hard way what the writer of Ecclesiastes realized- quite simply, that you can’t
take it with you. All that we work so
hard for in life will end up in someone else’s hands, and as Ecclesiastes puts
it, ‘who knows whether they will be wise or foolish? Yet, they will be master
of all for which I toiled and used my wisdom under the sun. This also is vanity.” (2:19)
Like the rich farmer, we
are tempted to think that having large amounts of money and possessions stored
up will make us secure. Sooner or later,
however, we learn that no amount of wealth or property can secure our lives. No amount of wealth can protect us from cancer,
or from a genetically inherited disease, or from a tragic accident.
No amount of wealth can
keep our relationships healthy and our families from falling apart. In fact,
wealth and property can easily drive a wedge between family members, as in the
case of the brothers fighting over their inheritance at the beginning of this
text.
Most importantly, no
amount of wealth, can secure our lives with God. In fact, Jesus repeatedly warns that wealth
can get in the way of our relationship with God.
It is not that God doesn’t
want us to save for retirement or future needs.
It is not that God doesn’t want us to eat, drink and be merry and enjoy
what God has given us. We know from the
Gospels that Jesus spent time eating and drinking with people and enjoying
life. But he was also clear about where
his true security lay.
It is all about
priorities. It is about who is truly God
in our lives. It is about how we invest
our lives and the gifts that God has given us.
It is about how our lives are fundamentally aligned: toward ourselves
and our passing desires, or toward God and our neighbour, towards God’s mission
to bless and redeem the world.
Our lives and possessions
are not our own. They belong to
God. We are merely stewards of them for
the time God has given us on this earth.
We rebel against this truth because we want to be in charge of our lives
and our stuff.
Archbishop Philip said in
last month’s TMA “we know the importance
of money and how we use it as a consumer. The trouble with all of this is that
it puts us in a place where it is easy to act as if it is our money, not God’s
money that we are dealing with. We are so used to being in the middle of the
decision that we naturally ask questions about benefit and most easily answer
them from our own perspective.
This fact distorts many of
the discussions that Christians have about money.” Archbishop Philip also said “what we are
dealing with (when looking at parish finances) is foremost a gift of God’s
generous provisions for us to apply to the work we continue to Jesus’ name.” TMA July 2013
I wonder if we sometimes
forget that all this belongs to God here at St Paul’s. We are merely stewards
to care for the spiritual nurture of people through worship and groups that
meet here, through the continual maintenance of the buildings, in looking
beyond ourselves to other people in our community and the wider community, to
continue God’s mission to bless and redeem the world. We are stewards of all of
this.
This truth that all
belongs to God is good news. Because all that we are and all that we have
belong to God, our future is secure beyond all measure. So Jesus tells us, “Do
not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you
the kingdom.” (12:32)
Money isn’t the problem;
St Augustine once said that God gave us people to love and things to use, and
sin, in short, is the confusion of these two things.
St Paul’s community of
faith is a place where we enjoy worshipping God together, we enjoy each other’s
company, and we contribute to the needs of the wider community at home and
abroad.
This is a great place to
be! A place to grow spiritually, to be confronted personally when reflecting on
how other’s live in God’s world(like in Malawi) and the challenge also for each
of us to radiate the compassion and love of God in all we do and say. None of
this is done in isolation…we need community…we need each other.
I give thanks that we all
belong to God! [i]
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