Acts 4:32 to 5:11
 1 Corinthians 12:12-31

Today I want to talk to you about stewardship.  Oh, no, you say.  She’s going to talk about money and how we should give more to the church.  No, I’m not.  Well, maybe a little bit.  But if we think that stewardship is only about how much money we give to the church, then we have lost the true meaning of the word.  Stewardship is about so much more than just money.  Stewardship is really about our whole lives, how we see ourselves in relationship to God and all of God’s creation—including ourselves.

 

I can see why you would think I was going to talk about money when you heard the first scripture reading this morning.  The story of Ananias and Sapphira has often been used to say some version of, “If you don’t give all your money to the church, you are going to die.”  And we react out of fear by giving more or by giving nothing at all because, after all, who can believe in a God who would kill people just because they didn’t give the church every penny they got from selling their property?  That’s not the God Jesus preached.  And that’s not what the story is about, anyway.

 

The story is about faith in God contrasted with faith in ourselves—about trust in God, not trust in ourselves.  It starts with a description of how things were in the very earliest communities of believers—the people who gathered together to remember Jesus and his life, death and resurrection, to support one another as they learned how to live in the way he lived, the way he taught.

 

And part of that, we’re told, was that they were “of one heart and soul,” and so “no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in common.”  The result of this way of living together was that “there was not a needy person among them.”  In fact, they went as far as to sell their lands and houses and give the money to the church leaders to distribute “as any had need.”

 

And one man was held up as an example—Joseph from Cyprus.  He gave the church all the money he received from selling a field.  And his generosity changed him and gave him a new name, Barnabas, which means “son of encouragement.”  This is the same Barnabas who worked with Paul at Antioch and accompanied Paul on his first missionary journey to Ephesusand Philippi and Corinthand back, and continued to serve as a missionary even when he and Paul parted ways.

 

But then there was another man in the church, Ananias, who set out to do the same thing.  He sold a piece of property.  But instead of taking the money and giving it to the apostles as Barnabas and others had done, Ananias sat down and looked at the pile of cash and decided that he could use some of it for himself.  His wife, Sapphira, agreed with him—after all, they had expenses, too and, if they gave everything away, the church would have to take care of them—so, in a sense, they were only keeping what would have to come back to them in the end anyway.  Good logic here.  Besides, who was to guarantee that they would be cared for in the way that they could care for themselves?  They probably believed the truism that we often think is from the Bible, “The Lord helps those who help themselves.”  It doesn’t come from the Bible.  In fact, what the whole Bible says totally contradicts this.

 

So they held some of the money back.  And they died.  Oops!  No one told them that would happen.  Now God doesn’t strike us dead if we don’t give God all our money and other possessions—we’re living proof of that—but the truth is that what Ananias and Sapphira did can kill us bit by bit, and often does, if not physically then certainly spiritually. 

 

For the problem is that Ananias and Sapphira trusted themselves more than they did God.  That’s what this story is about.  Keeping some for themselves because they didn’t trust their faith community to care for them is just saying that they didn’t trust God as much as they did themselves.  And, as we lose trust in God, bit by bit, we lose bits of ourselves and as we lose bits of ourselves, we lose, bit by bit, the ability to care about others, to care about God’s world.

 

And that’s what stewardship is all about.  God gives us the field we can sell so that we can be a part of God’s loving intention for the world that was created out of love, for love.  But far too often, in our time and culture, maybe in every time and culture, we see the field as ours for onlyour use.  We hoard our gift and then spend our other gifts protecting it.  And our eyes and spirits turn in on ourselves and we cannot see or believe in anything but ourselves—and our self-concern grows like a cancer.  And this self doesn’t just need to be our own individuality—it can encompass our families and friends, our own way of life, our own way of worshipping, our own definition of what it means to be faithful—which often has nothing to do with faith and everything to do with self.  Protecting and preserving only what serves us.

 

But that’s not what we’re called to do or be.  In his first letter to the church at Corinth, part of which Tom read this morning, Paul talks about gifts.  Paul is telling the church at Corinth to stop fighting among themselves and seeing some members as more important than others.  But the underlying meaning is that we are all gifted in some way to serve one another—and not just those who think and live like us, but all people.  He ends his words by saying that he is going to show them a “still more excellent way” to live, better even than respecting one another’s gifts.  And that way is discussed in the next chapter, 1 Corinthians 13, one of the best-known chapters in the Bible, the love chapter.

 

Love is the best way.  That’s why we have been created.  Not just to love ourselves but to love one another, to love all of creation.  That’s why we have been given gifts, all of us, so that we can offer those gifts in God’s service of love.  Jesus knew this.  In the gospel reading for this week he is in the synagogue on the Sabbath and he reads from Isaiah:

 

“The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor.  He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favour.”

 

He reads this and then sits down and says, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing.”  And it has been fulfilled becausehe goes about living that scripture out and teaching and preaching that message to everyone he encounters.  Our salvation comes through our service of others, through living so that others may live, through using everything that God has given us to care for the world God has made and all its creatures.

 

But much of this is counter-cultural.  Before I watched the two Haiticoncerts on Friday night, I was watching something else and one of the commercials was the one for the Heart and Stroke Foundation Lottery.  It shows a man looking through a rolled-up lottery brochure—using it as a lens.  First he looks at his house—a nice house, looking very homey and attractive and fairly spacious.  But then he moves the lens a little bit and the house becomes a mansion with nice sports car in the driveway.  Next his lens looks on two people sitting in comfortable Adirondackchairs in a pleasant back yard.  A slight movement of the lens shows the same two people sitting on a beach.  And the voice-over for all this says, “Your life, only better.”  Really?  A bigger house and a luxury car and a beach will make his life better?  That’s what we seem to believe these days.

 

With this in my mind, I watched the Haiticoncerts.  And saw the destruction and chaos these people were living in—not that it was a whole lot better before, Haiti being extremely poor.  What a contrast to the man in the ad!!  Everyone who spoke in both the concerts stressed, in one way or another, the interdependence of humanity.  Our Governor General, Michaelle Jean, said that the solution has to be all of us, working together, because “what Haitihas experienced has touched everyone on the planet.”  And, while she was talking about this particular devastation, it is true that we live, more than ever before, together, and, if we do not care for one another, we will die together—in one way or another—if not physically, then for certain spiritually.

 

I was heartened by the result of the evening.  In the two Canadian events, one in Toronto and one in Montreal, by Saturday noon, over 16 million had been raised.  And this will be matched by government funds. 

 

But, while this generosity is something to rejoice in, it isn’t really stewardship.  Because stewardship is not just a one-time giving; stewardship is a daily offering of everything we have received from a generous God for the use of God’s world.  It isn’t just about giving to disaster relief, although it will include that.  It’s about making sure that the daily lives of the people who are affected by the disaster are abundant and able to withstand disaster.  It’s about caring for the planet so that the air we breathe and the water we drink and the food we eat contribute to health, not disease.  It’s about offering our talents and abilities to bring beauty and hope and well-being to all people.  It’s about taking time to work for justice and wholeness in whatever ways we can.  It’s about remembering that we are not alone, that we live in God’s world. 

 

Stewardship’s about not being caught up in preserving for ourselves, but being caught up in spending for others, not just our money but our whole lives.  Jesus told us that those who save their lives lose them and those who lose their lives will gain them.  “For what will it profit them,” Jesus asks, “if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life?”

 

But mostly stewardship is about saying “Thank you” to the God we worship and serve by giving ourselves and all we have back to that God.  It is living, to use what has become a cliché, “an attitude of gratitude.”

 

And one of the ways we can do this is through our church.  Many of you have already contributed to the Haiti relief effort by the outreach bodies of both denominations.  Many of you reach out through regular donations to the UnitedChurch’s Mission and Service Fund or the Presbyterian World Service and Development.  Many of you make regular financial contributions to your local church so that it can continue the work of Christ in worshipping God, helping one another and reaching out to the world around us in programs such as the Saturday Community Breakfasts and help for people who come into the church.  Many of you also give generously of your time and talents to sing in the choir, to work at the Breakfasts, to lead in worship, to serve on committees and in other leadership, to prepare congregational celebrations and in other ways to build a community of love.

 

In all this and in many other ways, you are being good stewards.  In all this and many other ways you are living lives of gratitude because you know that the only way we can show how much we love God is by loving and caring for one another.