I appreciate the vibrant leadership that Greg and Sarah King are giving to our Stewardship emphasis, Building Life Together: Reminding, Reassessing, and Renewing. I especially liked Sarah’s word that we are declaring a vision that is amazing and exciting.
Thank you, Cheryl, for sharing a challenging and affirming word. We stand at this end of a long line of faithful and gifted sisters and brothers. We do not take their stories for granted. They have blessed us. Their contribution to our lives is vitally important, and to whom much is given much is required. Craig Dykstra says, “God uses community as a ‘means of grace.’ Faith communities have formative power in the lives of people, nurturing faith and giving shape to the quality and character of their spirits. Spirituality deepens in community, rather than in individualistic isolation.”[1] Thus, today we are reminding our beloved community that we are building life together.
We are reminded looking back through the years that Royal Lane has been blessed by so many good souls.
We are called to be good stewards of their stories and ours. I’m hopeful that this story in Matthew will encourage our sense of stewardship.
The story begins with the Pharisees and the Herodians looking for ways to discredit Jesus. They came to Jesus to trap him, to sell him out cheap, to sell him up the river. But He wasn’t theirs to sell.
After our honeymoon Jennifer and I were loading up the few things we owned to move to Hereford, Texas, in Deaf Smith County. I went to the Short House where I had lived with four friends and backed up to the garage to get my green 10 speed bike; only to discover that the bike wasn’t there.
I asked around. No one seemed to know much. Someone said, “I think Tom may have sold your bike. “
“He sold my bike?”
What kind of friend would take my bike and then take money from one of his other friends?
I asked Judge Henry for some advice. He told me to go get my bike, “You can’t buy stolen property.”
I can’t imagine what possessed him to do that, but over the years I guess I’ve grown to be more empathetic. I realize my own propensity to put on the market that which really isn’t mine.
I realize I have wasted things that were not mine to waste—my time, my attention, even my anxiety. My time can so quickly get overloaded; schedules can leave no time found for what really counts. My attention can be so easily raffled off. My anxiety mounts over the smallest things. I lose my composure to the lowest bidder. I rob myself.
The Pharisees and Herodians are such strange bed fellows. They conspire to sell Jesus on the market of social criticism by asking loaded questions. His answer infers a better question. “If Caesar’s image (the Greek word is eikon, from which we get the English word, icon) If Caesar’s icon is stamped upon the coin, it must be his. Therefore, if God’s image is impressed upon your life, it must be God’s. Then, render that, “give what is due by obligation” to Caesar and to God!
I am reminded of the story of the Good Samaritan and the man who was robbed. The thieves said, “What’s yours is mine and I’ll take it.” They took that which belonged to another.
Equally reprehensible were those who kept what they might have given. They had grace to share but did not. The priest and the Levite said, “What’s mine is mine, and I’ll keep it.” A strategy that fails to recognize the deep pockets of grace that have been given.
However, there is another posture. The good Samaritan said, “What’s mine is God’s, and I’ll share it.”
We are a community that shares the Biblical story recalling the God who gives orders over creation out of chaos, the God who gives birth to barren mothers, the God who frees slaves from the brutality of slavery, the God who multiplies bread in the face of hunger. We are reminded that we have been given much.
This season of stewardship is then a gift to us. It is a gift that raises good questions. It is not offensive for us to seek clarity, specificity about what we give back from what we have been given.
“What percentage of my income have I given for Kingdom work in the last year? What percentage of my income is God leading me to give in the coming year?” These questions can encourage me to “keep on growing in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ” II Peter 3:18. I want to belong to a community of faith that encourages me to listen to what God has to say about sharing my life and my gifts.
Not everyone has someone helping them hear and address the kind of questions that make a good life! Who encourages you to know that what is yours is God’s, and that you can share it?
I am reminded of a ski trip a long time ago in the spring before we moved to Royal Lane. A remarkable young rancher, Mack Cansler, and his beautiful wife, Ruth Ann, went as adult sponsors. Their calling was to love kids, and the kids loved them. Climbing onto the bus he told me they had brought some money to buy everyone’s breakfast on the drive home.
At lunch one day on the slopes Mack came to me, “’I’m embarrassed. I can’t tell you how I did it, but I’ve lost the money for breakfast.”
That evening one of the kids rushed over with his friend, Johnny, to tell us Johnny had found the money.
Johnny said, “Yeah, I found some money in the ski lodge. It’s in my room. I’ll bring it to you.”
The next morning, he told Mack, “I forgot and packed the money in my suitcase. It’s under the bus. I’ll get it for you when we get back.”
When we arrived at the church, Johnny’s dad was there to meet him. They got his suitcase and quickly left for home.
I called later, and his dad said to me, “Who’s this Mack guy, anyway? How do we know the money belongs to Mack”?
I tried too hard and overreached, “Well, my daddy has always said, if somebody lost a dime, and I found a dime, the dime was theirs. If one person hurts, we all hurt.”
To this day, I am reminded of Mack’s compassionate response. His insight has been my teacher. He said, “Johnny’s not getting much encouragement to make the best decision.”
We know what it is to live in a world that would sell you down the river and fill you with suspicion. “Who’s this God anyway? How do we know that we belong to God?”
I can get stuck wondering, “Why’d Tom sell the bike? Why did Johnny keep the money?” But I am reminded: Those aren’t the right questions.
It’s not about yours and mine. Thank you, Royal Lane for being a “community of conviction”[2] and reminding us to ask a good question, “What am I doing with that which is Gods?”
[1] Craig Dykstra, Growing in the Life of Faith (Louisville: Geneva Press, 1999), 83.
[2] Craig Dykstra, Growing in the Life of Faith (Louisville: Geneva Press,1999), 133.