The Stewardship Sermon

Well, now I've done it. I got up in the middle of the stewardship campaign and said my little piece about stewardship. It's still pending review, but I thought it went well. This is the first sermon I've given this year where I didn't really want to hear people telling me I did a good job, because I knew they would be talking about my performance. This time, I measured success by how it was received, ala Barbara Brown Taylor. Sad thing is, I won't ever know. Some people commented after service about it, but ultimately it is part of a five week stewardship campaign, so it is only a small piece of a larger puzzle. I am confident that I spoke my spin on the text though, and I can live with that.

And so, without further extended introduction, I give to you the stewardship sermon:

When you’re about my age it’s hard to claim that you’re an expert on too many things. You get past that childhood innocence, and dependency on parents, and you’re trying to make a name for yourself as an individual. Only problem is, you got your elders telling you that you’ve got no idea what life experience is, and you’ve got your youngers telling you that the music you listened to is showing up on the classic rock station. In this state of being limbo, I can confidently say that I have found something in which I am an expert. I am an expert at messing things up.
Plans for me are just one more opportunity to share my expertise. But I know I’m not alone in this venture. Because the Bible tells me so.

Jesus gets confronted with the question of divorce as a test, to see if he knows the laws and to try and get him in trouble, but Jesus switches the question. Jesus changes the focus of the topic from whether or not something is permitted, to whether or not something is intended. I have never been through a divorce, but I know people who have, as I’m sure all of you do, if you haven’t experienced one yourself. A divorce is painful, it’s heart wrenching, it seems like the end of life, and in a sense it is. As Jesus reminds us, marriage is a unification of life into one body, creating a relationship between two people so close, they now function as one unit. To pull that apart, is a tragedy, and the bond still remains, even if legally you have papers say that you are not together anymore.

This is not an opportunity to point fingers at someone who has been through a divorce. This is an indictment against all of us. That’s made perfectly clear by the disciples actions regarding the children. They bar the children from seeing Jesus because he is doing “adult things”. Then Jesus gets agitated. The disciples just don’t get it, then Jesus drops the bomb on them, “these are the ones to whom the kingdom of God is given.” The disciples are good at messing up Jesus’ intentions, in a similar fashion we are good at messing up God’s intentions.

Now, I’m looking for round figures here, but how many little children do we have on church council? 0. Well why is that? Why do you have to be 35 to run for president? Why do you have to be 21 to drink alcohol? Why do you have to be 18 to vote? Why? Because of responsibility. These limits are established, because through one form of reasoning or another, we have decided that anything under these limits is not responsible enough to hold these benefits. You don’t let a teenager vote, because they would use their vote irresponsibly and mess up the system we have in place. It makes perfect logical sense.

I wondered for a while why these two passages get lumped together. Why Jesus talking about divorce, get placed in the same reading with Jesus welcoming the children. Then I realize something. We are both the disciples and the children. We are the ones who mess up God’s intentions, we are the ones who take such a gracious gift and squander it, and keep it to ourselves, hiding it from those who need to hear it. At the same time that we squander that gift, Jesus calls us to him, and says you are the ones to whom the kingdom of heaven is given. There hasn’t been a Christian yet who has taken that responsibility and done with it what God intended. Not one no matter how old. We’re experts at taking that gift, and taking God’s intention of redemption and forgiveness, and messing it up, and turning into condemnation, based on people’s lifestyles, based on people’s beliefs, based on people’s actions.

The Psalm lays this out perfectly for us: What are human beings that you are mindful of them? Yet you have given them dominion over the works of your hands, you have put all things under their feet. This precious gift that we have been given, the dominion over all things, the right to choose what we do and don’t do day in and day out, the Kingdom of God is in our hands. What are human beings that you are mindful of them? We are the children. We are the irresponsible ones. We are the ones to whom God keeps returning and saying, your sins are forgiven, now go and live out the Gospel, you are free.

We have been given every good blessing from God, and we have the freedom to decide what to do with it. My brothers and sisters we find ourselves in the middle of a season where we ask ourselves, “what do we do with what God has given us?” We are experts of messing up the gifts that God gives us, squandering them, hiding them. But we are forgiven. We are given the keys to God’s kingdom again and again, even though we are not worthy. We are experts at messing things up. A big part of this stewardship campaign that we are all on together is figuring out what we are going to do with what God has given us. Not figuring out who has given us everything we have, but what is our response to those gifts. I cannot tell you what you have, nor can I tell you what you should do with it, but I can suggest something as you reflect on what you are going to do with what you have. Turn to the giver, ask for direction. You see the disciples get spoken to in an angry manner, when they decide what is best for the children of God. They are experts at messing up God’s intentions. But God is the only expert for declaring what God’s intentions are, and when we understand ourselves as little children, the ones who are irresponsible and completely dependent, then we shall be given the kingdom of God. And we shall hear God’s intentions for us. Pray and ask, then listen. We are the inheritors of all that we see, but the intentions of these gifts can only be discerned by God. We are the little children of God.