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The Rev. Carol S. Wedell
November 11, 2007
One of the joys and challenges of being a pastor is knowing that each fall at this time, I'll have the responsibility of preaching on stewardship. The joy is found in inviting each of us to an abundant, generous life. What could be better than that?
The challenge can be summed up in the classic Jack Benny sketch. A robber comes up to Benny, points a gun at him and demands, "Your money or your life!" Benny just stands there, staring into space. Again the robber says, "You heard me - your money or your life!" After a very long, deliberate pause that was his trademark, Benny replies, "I'm thinking! I'm thinking!" When it comes to parting with money, most of us do a great deal of thinking!
To be sure, stewardship involves so much more than merely what we choose to give financially. It has been said that stewardship is everything we do after we say, "I believe" - it's about how we live our lives. Stewardship is about how we use all that has been entrusted to us - all of our resources of time and ability and money. In that respect, virtually every sermon I preach is about stewardship - how we live out our Christian faith in the every day, tangible areas of our life.
While stewardship should never be reduced to an annual pledge drive in the fall, neither should it avoid the topic of money. Churches (and especially pastors) are often accused of talking about money all the time. The reality is most of us don't talk about it half as much as Jesus did! Almost no topic in the gospels receives more attention. That's because what we do with our money is an expression of our deepest beliefs and values. What we do with the financial resources at our disposal is one of the most significant statements of faith we'll ever make. It's literally a case of putting your money where you mouth is.
Yet you and I don't like talking about money - not our money, anyway! It's almost more personal and private than our politics or sex lives. I would suggest that by relegating money to a topic that is not brought up in polite conversation, we actually have given it more power than it deserves. I read recently that "Christian stewardship is more than the management of things; it is the refusal to let things manage us." (James A. Lollis). When money is in the "off-limits" area, it has far too much control in our lives.
I need to tell you that I find faithful stewardship of money as challenging as any one else. I don't find it easy to talk about money - especially about the decisions that our family makes about where our money is spent. I want to be able to model for you what it means to follow Christ in the financial arena. In that respect, being the one who stands up here and talks about what the Bible says about our relationship with money has been a helpful motivator. I can't ask you to do what I'm not trying to do.
In the nearly three years that I have been your pastor, Mark and I have made large increases each year in our pledge to the church, moving toward the Biblical goal of a tenth of our income going toward God's work in the world. We're not there yet - and so again this year, we'll look to make another leap of faith toward tithing. We'll do that not to meet the church budget (although it will help in that area) - but to seek to follow Jesus with our money as well as our mouths. We'll do so as a way of living out our faith in ways that make a difference. It's one way we have of not letting money rule our lives.
I've been asked how other charitable giving fits into the picture. I've heard a variety of approaches -- from giving 5% to the church and 5% elsewhere, to viewing a gift of 10% of our income to the church as merely a starting point, so that other giving is beyond that. To be very sure, God's work can and is done beyond the institutional church. Percentages aren't magic. It's all about priorities - and about shaking loose from the attachment to money and things that is destroying us.
Today's lectionary reading from the Hebrew Scriptures is from a tiny book in the Bible, the prophet Haggai. I'm guessing that many of you have never heard this passage - and I can guarantee you I've never preached on it! Yet as I was choosing passages for preaching for the month of November, knowing that our annual pledge campaign would be upon us, I quickly zeroed in on these words: "The silver is mine and the gold is mine, says the Lord of hosts." That sums it up, doesn't it? That's what we are so tempted to forget - that everything we have is actually God's anyway.
All of us work hard for the money in our bank accounts and feel a great deal of ownership. Yet repeatedly, throughout the Bible, we are reminded that everything - our life, our health, our material possessions - everything we have is a gift from God. As Leonard Sweet has said, "The rich are not blessed with money; they are entrusted with money. Whether it becomes a blessing depends on how the rich manage their trust."
Haggai is one of three prophets who arose after the Hebrew people returned from exile in Babylon. He ministered to the small and demoralized remnant of folks who returned to Jerusalem. Prior to this morning's reading, we learn that those Israelites who came back to Jerusalem from Babylon "hunkered down" and focused their energies on taking care of themselves. Their attention had turned inward. They rebuilt their own houses. But the Temple was still in ruins.
God is not happy with this turn of events. The Israelites have been living self-indulgent lives, taking care of me and mine. Clearly, their priorities have made little room for God. On the surface, it may look as if their lives are going pretty well. But listen to what the prophet observed, "Consider how you have fared. You have sown much, and harvested little; you eat, but you never have enough; you drink, but you never have your fill, you clothe yourselves, but no one is warm; and you that earn wages earn wages to put them into a bag with holes." (Haggai 1:5-6)
That description may have been written 2500 years ago, but it has a ring of truth in it today, doesn't it? It sounds a whole lot like 21st century North America to me, where a consumerist culture has tried to convince us that buying more, having more, doing more is what it's all about. How many of us get up too early each morning to rush to work, staying there too long, before we rush back home, if we're lucky eat dinner with our family, rush around with errands or the kids before falling into bed exhausted, sleeping too little and getting up the next day to start all over again?
And yet like the returning exiles, our hungers are not satisfied, we still thirst for more. We're looking for something that will satisfy cravings that are deeper than the latest car or I-phone or outfit.
The prophet Haggai communicates God's irritation. Why have you have been caught up in pursuing such an empty lifestyle, while ignoring God's call on your lives? But the words of judgment are not the final words. God will not abandon them - nor us. "Take courage...work, for I am with you.... My spirit abides among you; do not fear." Haggai urges them to rebuild the Temple - to turn their priorities toward the God who has always been with them.
Haggai asks them if they remember what the Temple used to look like, "Who is left among you that saw this house in its former glory? How does it look to you now?" The answer is clear - it doesn't look so great. It seems "as nothing." Once again, the startling relevance to our contemporary situation strikes home.
Those of you who have been with Church of the Western Reserve since its early beginnings at Orange High School sometimes tell stories of how full the chapel was, how the Sunday School classes could not contain the number of children who were here. While our halls are delightfully full of the sounds of busy and active children, we clearly are not in the "glory days" of the church in terms of numbers.
The same could be said of the vast majority of mainline churches in the United States. Sanctuaries that were bursting at the seams in the 1950's and ‘60's are doing well to be half-full on a Sunday morning. We don't live in the "good ‘ole days" any more. The world around us has changed.
To us, then, the words of the prophet Haggai are spoken: "Take courage - I am with you. Work to build a place where God can be worshipped and God's work can be done." This congregation, the Presbyterian Church USA and virtually every other church in North America will not look like it did 50 years ago. But the body of Christ is still very much alive! Our task is not to give up or look only after ourselves, but to give ourselves to the job of letting God's love through Christ be made known.
The rebuilding of the Temple was not about having a fancy place to gather for worship. God's claim on the silver and gold was not about opulence in religious structures. The Temple represented God's presence with the people. Rebuilding the Temple was a symbolic action that the people were able to turn from their own concerns to be in relationship with God. Were they willing to be the people of God - to acknowledge in their actions that they belonged to God? Are we? Are you and I willing to commit ourselves to building this "house" into a place that brings people into the transforming presence of Christ?
It turns out that this wonderful text about silver and gold is about much more than financial stewardship. As is usually the case, any time the Bible asks us to consider money it really is asking us to examine our relationship with God. It's an invitation to look at the places of spiritual hunger - where we are truly hungry. It's an invitation to turn our backs on the lure of success and prosperity for their own sake and consider God's prosperity - giving up that which gets in the way of the abundant life God so very much wants to give us - a life that is full of true value.
The story has been told of a very old woman who approached a wise man named Jacob and said, "I want to ask you something. I am going to die soon. I have a great deal of money. If you are so smart, why not tell me how I can take it with me?"
"Well? Well? What can be carried on the other side?"
"Everything of value," answered Jacob as if this insight was common knowledge.
Her greed excited, the old woman shouted, "How? How?"
Jacob drew calmer. "In your memory," he answered.
"Memory?" said the woman, dumbstruck at the suggestion. "Memory can't carry wealth!" Jacob's focus seized the woman's eye. "That's only because you have already forgotten what is of value." (Adapted by Carlos Wilton from Jacob the Baker: Gentle Wisdom for a Complicated World by Noah ben-Shea, p. 54-55)
The prophet concludes, "The latter splendor of this house shall be greater than the former...and in this place I will give prosperity, says the Lord." God's prosperity, God's abundant, joyful life is waiting for us. We just have to remember what really matters.
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