Sunday Homily - September 2nd, 2018 - Life is Stewardship
St. James Icon
I.
There was a local homeless man.He lives on the streets of Cincinatti, OH.
He is a disabled man,
his legs amputated by a landmine
on the dusty roads of Afghanistan.
He is a little heavy set,
long, black beard,
his big, black arms the size of tree trunks
flinging the wheels of his wheelchair
sending him sailing down the street.
“Speedy” is who the locals call him,
Sammy is his given name.
“Speedy” Sammy with his wheelchair,
speeding off to the local homeless shelter.
But Sammy is not going there just for a night’s sleep.
He is not just going there for a bite to eat.
He is not going there to complain about his lot in life.
Sammy is going there to tell people about Jesus.
And, for Sammy, that had nothing to do
with doing scholarly inquiry about a first-century Jew
named Jesus.
It had everything to do with Sammy sharing
what Jesus was up to in his life that very morning.
He would share stories, like this one:
“Woke up this mornin’ to find Jesus calling me to the Taco Bell.
and I’m like, ‘Jesus, you know I don’t like Taco Bell’
but I went anyway, and wouldn’t you know,
somebody prayed for me and gave me their
quesadilla. And I can’t even pronounce
quesadilla, but Praise Jesus, it may as well
have been Manna from heaven!
Praise the Lord!”
Or maybe something like this,
“Man, Jesus gave me a cool $20 dollars this mornin’,
but I’m lookin’ at it and I know,
yeah, I say, I KNOW Jesus is looking at me and is like,
“You gonna spend that on yo-self,
or you gonna love ya neighbor?”
and I’m like, “Okay, Lord, I gotcha:
Billy’s gotta have that bus ticket to go to his job interview, I gotcha Lord.”
Sammy is probably still speeding around the streets of Cincinnati,
blazing the trail for Jesus by committing himself
to LIVING the Gospel in his actions.
And Sammy does all of this
when it would be so easy to look at his situation
as hopeless.
He is homeless.
Poor.
Unemployed.
His wheelchair is his legs for the rest of his life.
And yet, in spite of all of that,
I think Sammy provides us here,
provides me,
an excellent example
of what stewardship actually is.
Stewardship isn’t primarily about money:
Because God knows Sammy didn’t have any.
No, stewardship, at its very basic meaning,
“is the supervision, or taking care of something
that is entrusted to our care.” [Merriam-Webster]
As Christians,
we believe in a loving Creator God,
who has made all of creation GOOD
and has called it GOOD.
And God then entrusts his GOOD creation to us
as stewards of that which is not our own.
If God entrusts all of creation to humanity as stewards,
then our lives are literally ALL ABOUT stewardship!
II.
about how all encompassing
that this idea of stewardship actually is.
And, in fact, Holy Scripture this morning
gives us two particular insights
how we need to think about stewardship.
The first of these things is the most important:
Stewardship exists only because of God!
Right there in the first verse of our reading from St. James this morning,
James says,
“Every generous act of giving,
with every perfect gift, is from above,
coming down from the Father of lights.”
It is not that we ourselves are generous.
Rather, we have been given that courage to be generous
because God has already given us everything we have!
Our strength to get up in the morning,
the food on our tables,
the clothes on our backs,
the love between us as members of Christ.
All of it is because of God first and foremost.
And when we learn to see everything in life as gift,
every day we have to spend her as gift,
that gives us wonderful reasons
to be good stewards.
Because, the second thing that we must remember
is that we are called to be a people
who actively live the Gospel,
and not just idle hearers of it.
In the most quoted part of the letter of St. James, he says,
"Be doers of the Word and not merely hearers...
Religion that is pure and undefiled before God, the Father, is this:
to care for orphans and widows in their distress,
and to keep oneself unstained by the world.”
To care for the poor,
to provide food and shelter
for the orphans and widows in our community,
THAT IS STEWARDSHIP.
Because all that we have is gift,
because all that we have is not ours to begin with,
but is bestowed upon us for its just and fair use,
will we follow Jesus by using those resources
to serve the poor and needy of the world?
Because guess what?
God calls us to that kind of service in many different ways!
When we have those shirts in the closet
or those coats that you got as a Christmas gift
that we have literally worn twice in our lives,
is God calling us to clothe the naked
with our own clothes?
When the local homeless shelter is underfunded
and you receive an unexpected windfall from your investment,
is God calling you to help house the homeless?
When you are sitting down to dinner
food freshly made and drinks poured
with friends over to enjoy it,
and the kid from the lower class family
that lives down the street is walking home,
is God calling you to feed the hungry?
III.
Because it is easy to sit in our houses,
with our resources of food and shelter and safety,
of money and savings and retirement funds,
and to look at the needs of the world
as a problem that other people fix.
But, friends, that’s not what God calls us to do as Christians.
Instead, God wants you to be doers of the Word,
not just hearers.
Do the work of an evangelist, telling people about Jesus.
Do the work of prayer, recognizing everything as gift.
And do the deeds of Jesus,
who cautions us to not get caught up
with fussiness about ceremonial washing of hands,
but to actually DO what God asks us to do!
Love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind, strength.
Love your neighbor, as you would love yourself.
Actively seek opportunities not just to hear the Gospel,
but to ACTIVELY DO the Gospel.
“Speedy” Sammy doesn’t have a stable source of income,
he doesn’t have his own house,
he has no security for what happens tomorrow morning.
But what Sammy does have
is the recognition that every good thing he had
every kindness shown to him,
every little thing of life
is all inextricably tied to Jesus’s love for us.
He has helped me to recognize that stewardship
means loving God in constant prayer and attention to Providence
and also taking care of everyone who I know needs help
in the particular way that I can
using the particular means that I have.
Stewardship isn’t just about money:
it is the outward manifestation of your faith put into action.
it is living the Christian life with open hands
receiving gratefully, and letting go graciously.
What if, when we think about stewardship,
when we here at Trinity Parish think about tithing this year
we think about three things:
tithing of our Time,
tithing of our Talent,
and tithing of our Treasure, our money?
What would it look like if we here at Trinity Parish
tithed 10% of our Time for the work of the Gospel
right here in Searcy?
What would it look like if we here
tithed 10% of our Talent, our giftedness,
for the sake of Jesus and the Church?
What would it look like here at Trinity Parish,
what kind of exciting new ministries could we support
if we gave the full 10% of our Treasure,
of our money,
for the funding of new ministry
the meeting of real needs
right here in Searcy?
When we think about stewardship,
think about ALL of the things God has blessed you with.
And then, in discernment and prayer,
think about how God is calling you
to USE those blessings
to BE a blessing to others.
Because you don’t have to be rich to be generous.
You don’t have to have a home of your own to care for the homeless.
You don’t have to have legs to walk in faith.
And you don’t have to look far
to discover God’s particular call to service
at THIS time,
in THIS place,
being DOERS of the Gospel
and LIVERS of Christian stewardship.
In the Name of the + Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
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