Good morning, Gethsemane, it is great to be with you. Thank you, Dean Strobel, for sharing this space, and to all of you for the warm welcome. The last time I preached here, I brought you greetings on behalf of the Eastern North Dakota Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. At that time, I was serving as the synod’s bishop. Today, I bring you greetings on behalf of Concordia College where I serve as one of the Vice Presidents. Concordia College is a college with a big, bold mission, “to influence the affairs of the world by sending into society thoughtful and informed men and women dedicated to the Christian life.”
I am grateful to be with you on this Consecration Sunday with the theme, “more than enough”. I am also grateful to be here on this second weekend of Advent and to lean into its four themes of hope, peace, joy, and love. I’m excited to dwell some with God’s word for us today, to point to the promises we have in God in Christ that grounds us, anchors us, and calls us together, and that same hope which propels us into lives of stewardship and discipleship.
Before I dig into today’s story, it might be helpful to name I am aware of the recent visit and preaching of Presiding Bishop Michael Curry. If following him wasn’t a high enough bar, I was on your Facebook Page and heard the stewardship messages of Stephen, Julia, and Brad. Hearing their honest and powerful words raised the bar even more. Stephen, Julia, and Brad, in multiple ways, shared how they think about giving and contributing to this community of faith. Stewardship is way more inclusive, expansive, and wonderful than just something about money or budgets. It starts with an understanding that all that we have, and all that we are, is God’s and stewardship is a spiritual practice of responding to God’s graces through a life of generosity.
Of course, they were right. God has entrusted us with all that we have: our lives, health, bodies, souls, hearts, minds, and relationships; our time, talents, gifts, passions, strengths, and vocations; our ideas, dreams, questions, and stories; our finances, money, treasures, and assets of all kinds; and all of creation that surrounds us and that we are a part of. God entrusts us with all of this so that we might live abundantly and have abundant life. What this means though isn’t that we just get to sit back and relax. It’s an invitation to a life of deep meaning and purpose as a steward and disciple. One that’s not always easy and certainly has its challenges. There’s a cross at its center after all. It’s a life where we recognize that God entrusts us with what we have because God calls us to notice and be in a relationship with our neighbors- God’s children just like us, all created in the image of God. All are created, beloved, and known by God. And through whom, some of God’s kingdom-building work is done.
Now keep that in mind as we dig into today’s story, please. Today’s gospel text might seem kind of dark, out of place, not very grace-filled and maybe even a little scary… “His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.” If you are a little frightened by hearing this story, you are not alone. But if you dig a little deeper, I think there’s a message of hope, stewardship, and grounding for all of us as God’s people in this story. Here is the gospel message, we are told “the kingdom of heaven has come near.” Contrary to John the Baptist, Isiah speaks which are much more comforting as we contemplate the kingdom of heaven. Hear the words once again:
The wolf will live with the lamb,
the leopard will lie down with the goat,
the calf and the lion and the yearling[a] together;
and a little child will lead them.
7 The cow will feed with the bear,
their young will lie down together,
and the lion will eat straw like the ox.
8 The infant will play near the cobra’s den,
and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest.
9 They will neither harm nor destroy
on all my holy mountain,
for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the LORD
as the waters cover the sea.
Well, here’s where stewardship comes in friends. God calls us all to this “kingdom” work. God entrusts us with it. God chooses to use us to do some of God’s work in the world, and through us, in us, around us, and even for us, God’s kingdom breaks into the world bit by bit. And God gives us more than enough for this work.
Stephen, Brad, and Julia’s willingness to speak from the heart and tell their stories have inspired me to do the same. So here is a very honest message about my stewardship journey. I grew up in a small town in southern Minnesota, Elmore. My parents were very active in our small Lutheran congregation, Shiloh Lutheran. Each Sunday morning, while I was eating my bowl of cereal before going to Sunday School, my father would place two quarters on the table. One quarter was to place in the Sunday School offering plate, and the other was to place in the offering plate during worship. He never spoke to me about those two quarters. He didn’t talk to me about stewardship, yet in some way, I knew those two coins were not for me, and somehow, I knew they were part of something much bigger than me.
Fast forward, to serving in my first call, my wife and I had a mountain of seminary debt, plus medical bills as a result of our first child being born prematurely. We weren’t even close to a tithe, yet here I was, called to be leading this congregation in stewardship. I remember my stewardship sermons quickly moving from talking about money only to remind people stewardship is also about offering time and talents. This was true, but my motivation for focusing on time and talents was to avoid the guilt and shame of not giving the way my wife and I desire. If I did talk about money, it was more about the need to meet the budget rather than a spiritual practice.
Fast forward to serving in my second call. The good people of Clarkfield Lutheran Church in Clarkfield taught this pastor good theology around stewardship. They were a congregation that removed the word “budget” and replaced it with “mission plan”. You see, they saw every dollar as supporting the mission they believed God was calling them to. They also believed giving wasn’t only about supporting the mission, it was a spiritual practice of responding to God’s grace. They focused on the need of the giver to give. And, like you, they challenged the community to grow one step in their giving towards a tithe.
My wife and I grew in our giving and found great joy. We soon reached a tithe. I would love to tell you we have grown each year way past a tithe, but that would not be true. But we do, continue to increase our giving each year. It is all a response to the Grace of God and a commitment to share the gospel message that the Kingdom of God is near. It is all about saying, “thank you.”
Of course, we can never thank God enough. But that’s the beauty of it, we never could. We could never earn God’s grace, it’s a pure gift. That is why we call it grace. God’s love for us. But we do get to respond to it. So, I suppose the appropriate questions for this sound something like this:
• Do we share this Good News of the promises of God with God’s people?
• Do we serve our neighbors as God calls us to?
• Do we believe that with God we have enough?
I hope that we respond joyfully as stewards of all that God entrusts. And when we do this, I believe we just might glimpse the Kingdom of God breaking into the world in our midst, not only in our individual and family lives but amid this community of faith. Please know, I see the Kingdom of God breaking in through you, here through your support of:
• Churches United for the Homeless
• Episcopal Relief and Development
• Alcoholics Anonymous
• Boy & Girl Scouts
• Through your willingness to share this beautiful and sacred space with the community
• Through weekly worship of word and sacrament.
Members of Gethsemane, you are bearers of hope. Did you hear the last verse of today’s text from Romans? It stated, “may the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace in believing, so that you may abound in hope by the power of the Holy Spirit.” God has called each of you to be a bearer of hope through the way that you live and serve. Your hope and love that you share are grounded in the hope of God’s promises being fulfilled. In the hope and assurance of God’s presence. And you are bearers of God’s hope and promises for restoration, reconciliation, welcome, and justice amid a beautifully created and loved, yet, terribly hurting, fearful and broken world, that often seems captive to sin.
I for one, see it and feel it in you. May you dwell in that hope, and may it not only ground you this Advent season, but may it lead you to share Christ’s peace, joy, and love through all that you do and say always. That my friends are living a life of a faithful steward. Thanks be to God for you, and thanks be to God for all that God has done, continues to do, and promises to do for and through you as individuals and as a community of faith.
Amen.
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