Human Faces of Stewardship

Human Faces of Stewardship

Texts: I Peter 4:10; Mark 6:35-36; II Samuel 24:21-25

(Gary W. Charles, Cove Presbyterian Church, Covesville, VA, 11-13-2016)

Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received.  I Peter 4:10

          The early church faced so many fears. How to live in faith amid a hostile Roman culture? What should be expected of a member of this new church? How would one church relate to a church in another city? Were there enough gifts in the church to keep it alive and thriving? Into this morass of daunting questions, Peter speaks these challenging words, “Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received” (I Peter 4:10).

          For Peter, stewardship is the foundational reality for the church in any age. Some mistake “stewardship” as a dusty, old word for “church fundraising.” I Peter knows otherwise; it knows that stewardship is a timeless theological word, reminding us of the amazing and expansive grace of God. Therefore, the first response of a “good” steward is sheer awe over having been made “stewards of the manifold grace of God,” coupled with profound thanksgiving for God’s bountiful and undeserved grace.

          Over my years in ministry, I have had the privilege of seeing the human faces of stewardship. Let me tell about a birthday-mate of mine, a person who taught me much about stewardship and who died at the age of 104. I will not use her real name, but will call her Franny for this story.  

          Franny and I celebrated our birthdays together until her death a few years back. She was a remarkable woman, a loyal church person, who lived modestly all her life. When she died, people came out of the woodwork telling me how she and her husband had put them through college, always anonymously, always without fanfare, all from a regional orphanage.

          For 104 years, Franny gave abundantly to the benefit of others, a quietly “good steward” of the manifold grace of God.

In Mark’s Gospel, Jesus and his disciples are trying to have some down time,

but with little success. Mark writes:

“When it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is now very late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy something for themselves to eat." Mark 6:35-36

Jesus leads the disciples to a deserted place, ostensibly for some rest and relaxation, but actually for them to undergo their own bout with temptation. Faced with a hungry mob, the disciples say, “Send them away, Jesus. We don’t have nearly enough food to feed this crowd.” Jesus, then, engages them with the key Kingdom stewardship question:  “How much do you have?”

Jesus does not ask: “How much does your neighbor have?” or “How much do you wish you had?” but “how much do you have?” The clear answer in Mark’s story is that followers of Jesus have enough, with God’s help, have enough to address the human need before them.

As we prepare for our “Stewardship Town Hall” in a few minutes, perhaps that is the key question before Cove, “How much do we have?” When most of us are asked that question, we usually begin where the disciples do in this story:  we point out all that is lacking. “Lord, we’ve got tuition to pay and debt to climb out of and taxes due and family obligations to meet.”

Jesus invites us to enter the stewardship conversation through a different door, not from the door of scarcity, from all that we are lacking, but from the Kingdom door of abundance, as we ask ourselves: “How much do we have?” “How much has God given us to tend and to use liberally and graciously?” When we walk through the door of abundance, God opens our eyes both to resources we often ignore and to human need that awaits our compassion and sacrifice.

If this story from Mark says nothing else, it says that by God’s grace, you and I have enough to make a difference in Covesville, in North Garden, in Charlottesville, in the United States, and across God’s beloved world!

          The most abundant steward I ever knew was surely the most unlikely one as the world measures wealth and the capacity to give. He was a retired railroad man in Wilmington, NC. 

I told you a part of his story soon after arrived. Allow me to tell you the rest of the story. He had severe emphysema and lived in a house that needed considerable repair. At the end of each visit, he would go his desk, gather up all the offering envelopes since our last visit, write a check to the church, then put a rubber band around all the envelopes and check. He would hand them to me to give to the church treasurer.

I felt like a thief, taking from someone who had so much need and so few resources. Finally, after several visits, I suggested that he keep the money because the church was doing just fine and he had so many needs to address. Somehow, he found his breath, looked me in the eyes and said, “Young man, never deny someone the privilege to return to the Lord what the Lord has given.” I took the holy bundle of envelopes and checks and said, “Thank you.”

This retired railroad man knew more about the abundance of God than I and taught me a valuable lesson about what it means to be a “good steward” of the manifold grace of God.

          King David had a proclivity for getting in trouble and the text for today finds him in trouble again, needing to make a sacrifice to appease God’s anger. He goes to visit one of his subjects, Arunah, who insists that David use his threshing floor and animals for a sacrifice at no charge.

 II Samuel 24:24

 ²⁴ But the king said to Araunah, "No, but I will buy them from you for a price; I will not offer burnt offerings to the LORD my God that cost me nothing."

  

David, who so often gets it wrong, in this case, gets it right. He refuses to let someone else make an offering to God on his behalf. He realizes that good stewards give from what they have been given. They give generously and sacrificially and personally.

Fast forward to Manhattan a few years ago and meet Danielle.

Danielle was one of the poorest children in Heidi Neumark’s South Bronx parish. Danielle’s mother was a crack addict and her uncle was physically abusive. Heidi writes:  “One hot day when a swimming trip was planned for the afternoon, Danielle was brought to my office in tears. It turned out that she didn’t have a bathing suit. We decided that it would be all right to skip the morning math lesson and go out to get a suit. The trip took us out over lunchtime, and so we stopped at a nearby McDonald’s, where Danielle ordered a Happy Meal. She got up and came back with some extra napkins. Then she began divvying up the small bag of fries into five little piles, each on its own napkin. I asked her what she was doing. ‘My sisters and brothers will feel sad that I got French fries and they didn’t’, she explained. ‘I’m taking them home to share’. Sitting there in McDonald’s with Danielle, I felt rich” (Breathing Space, p. 124). Even at such a young age, Danielle was a “good steward” of the manifold grace of God?

          Who has taught you about living a gracious life, a hospitable life, a forgiving life, a generous life? Who has helped you know that you and I are recipients of the abundant grace of God and stewards of that abundance?

          In a short period of time with you, my list of abundant Cove stewards is already long. I suspect yours is even longer.

So, as we wake each morning and go to bed each night, may we give thanks to God for the remarkable privilege of being entrusted as “good stewards” of the manifold grace of God.

AMEN