A Good Land, with Flowing Streams
Deut. 8:1-18
I Tim. 6:6-10, 17-19
"The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want."
Do you recognize the source?
And you probably know the lines at the end: "My cup runneth
over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of
my life" (Ps. 23:1, 5f., KJV).
Eugene Peterson's translation, called The Message, is even more vivid:
"GOD, my shepherd! I don't need a thing. .ˇ.ˇ. You serve me a
six-course dinner right in front of my enemies. .ˇ.ˇ. Your beauty and
love chase after me every day of my life."
Try this one: Who said, "I came that they may have life, and have it [more] abundantly" (John 10:10, NRSV)?
You may be less familiar with the words Ephesians uses to describe
God: "Him who . . . is able to do infinitely more than we ever
dare to ask or imagine" (3:20, Phillips).
After the Israelites were freed from slavery in Egypt and were starving
in the desert on their 40-year journey to the promised land, the LORD
told Moses, "I am going to rain bread from heaven for you, and each day
the people shall go out and gather enough for that day. .ˇ.ˇ. At
twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall have your
fill of bread; then you shall know that I am the LORD your God" (Exod.
16:4, 12, NRSV).
And Exodus says that they had just the right amount to meet their needs:
"Those who gathered more had no extra, and those who gathered less weren't short" (16:18, The Message).
Paul puts a new spin on this Exodus passage in his second letter to the
Corinthians, when he appeals to them to share their abundance with the
Christians in Jerusalem who have fallen on hard times:
Those who have much don't have too much, and those who have little
don't have too little, because they share their resources together,
"their surplus matching your deficit" (The Message).
We stand in that same tradition today when we take up a special offering for "One Great Hour of Sharing."
What all these passages share in common is the idea of abundance.
There is enough to go around.
God has taken care of us, and God will take care of us.
Notice how different that is from most church stewardship campaigns.
Typically, they start with an attitude of scarcity, not abundance.
"We would like to give the staff a raise this year, but we can't afford it."
"We really need to repave the parking lot, but we can't afford it."
The mood of most church budgets is fear, not joy.
Sometimes even our evangelism is motivated by fear:
We need more members, or we will die.
We need new members to pledge so we can meet the budget.
Isn't this putting the cart before the horse?
And the irony is that the more affluent we become, the more we fear scarcity.
It is as if we have forgotten all those Biblical promises:
The LORD is my shepherd; I'm going to have enough.
Jesus came to offer us a new life, a more abundant life.
Maybe we don't really believe it when we pray the Lord's Prayer, "Give us this day our daily bread."
Maybe God will forget us tomorrow, and we won't have enough.
No, God will not forget us.
It is much more likely that we will forget God.
This passage from Deuteronomy is a warning against that danger:
God has promised you this wonderful land, with plenty of water, filled
with wheat and barley, vines and fig trees, olive trees and honey, "a
land where you may eat bread without scarcity, where you will lack
nothing" (8:7-9, NRSV).
Then the warning:
"When you have eaten your fill and have built fine houses and live in
them, and when your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver
and gold is multiplied, and all that you have is multiplied, then do
not exalt yourself, forgetting the LORD your God, who brought you out
of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. .ˇ.ˇ. Do not say to
yourself, 'My own power and the might of my hand have gotten me this
wealth.' But remember the LORD your God, for it is he who gives
you power to get wealth" (18:12-14, 17f.).
How easy it is to forget.
So it is that several centuries later, I Timothy must remind us all over again.
The Message has a delightful translation of 6:17: God "piles on all the riches we could ever manage."
Again, that theme of abundance.
We brought nothing into the world, but our needs have been taken care of.
Then, when we accumulate a little extra, it is so easy to become proud of what we have.
Instead, I Tim. challenges us "to do good, to be rich in good works, generous, and ready to share."
And what wonderful benefits we are promised, storing up treasure for the future,
"so that you may take hold of the life that really is life" (6:18f.).
There is nothing here about sacrifice, nothing about depriving ourselves.
There is no guilt trip from the stewardship committee.
Rather, we will be the beneficiaries when we are generous.
"Take hold of the life that really is life."
Verse 10 is often misquoted.
It does not say that "Money is the root of all evil," but that the love of money is the root of all evil.
That is an important difference.
There is nothing wrong with money, nothing wrong with being rich.
The Bible would not promise all these wonderful rewards of rich harvests and prosperity if wealth were sinful.
The sin comes only when we lose perspective,
when we love the riches more than the God who gave them.
Then we risk losing the life that really is life.
Several times, Steve Bacon, the chair of the stewardship committee, has
made the point that giving to the church is not the same as giving to a
charity.
Both may be motivated by our desire to support worthy causes that we believe in,
but church giving is -- or it ought to be -- done out of a sense of gratitude for what God has already done for us,
the God who does infinitely more than we dare to ask or imagine, in the words of Ephesians.
It is like the sign I saw outside a Pentecostal church in rural Georgia a couple years ago:
"Your life is God's gift to you. What you do with your life is your gift to God."
And we can go a step beyond that.
It is not just gratitude.
Church giving is an act of praise.
We are praising God for giving us life and life more abundant.
Praise consists of prizing, valuing, appreciating.
So it is that, after our offering is received, we sing, "Praise God, from whom all blessings flow."
We are acknowledging that God is the source of all that we have, and
the portion that we return is our expression of gratitude and praise.
Today is the beginning of our pledge campaign.
Actually, Steve started it last fall with his Wednesday night
discussion series on "Affluence," the way consumer values shape how
Americans live and spend their money.
In the next 5 or 6 weeks, someone will visit you in your home, not only
to deliver a pledge card to you, but also to talk about your thoughts
about the church.
The stewardship committee sees this as a sort of taking of the pulse of the congregation,
an opportunity to get feedback from every single member, including our youth members, about their perceptions of the church:
What has your church meant to you in the past?
Have there been particular turning points in your life when you have felt especially close to God or grateful to God?
What are your hopes and dreams for the future of the church?
In many ways, these conversations are much more important than the
financial pledges, because they will give us a sense of where we are as
a congregation.
However, money is part of the package, too.
It is obvious that a church needs money to pay its bills.
It may not be so obvious that money and budgets tell what our real values are.
Someone has said that you can tell what a person really believes by looking at her checkbook.
It is the same with a church.
We used to say that Congregationalists had the highest per capita income in the country, on average,
but one of the lowest rates of giving.
I don't know if that is still true.
However, I was told recently that across all denominations (by David
Bergman-Hill and Jane Heckles), the average member gives 2% of income
to the church.
The percentage in the UCC is 1.8%.
Steve recently quoted higher numbers, and I am not sure that any of the figures are all that accurate.
However, it is safe to say that we fall far below the Biblical tithe, 10% of income.
Maybe you could adopt a ten-year plan for yourself to try to increase your giving by 1% per year.
If American Christians went just from 2% to 3%, we could begin to change the world;
that would be a 50% increase over present giving.
If our congregation increased its budget by 50%, we would be able to call a second full-time minister,
and increase other important budget items as well.
However, I prefer to talk about the broader definition of stewardship.
Literally, a steward is a person who takes care of someone else's property.
In our present legal terminology, the word trustee is much closer to the original idea.
When money or property is entrusted to a trustee, he is not supposed to spend it for herself;
rather, he or she takes care of it on behalf of someone else.
When a bank is the trustee for a minor child, the bank is supposed to invest for the child's benefit.
Similarly, church trustees take care of the church's property, not their own.
The idea of Christian stewardship is that we have been entrusted to take care of God's property.
In those terms, the cars we drove this morning are not ours.
We bought them with God's resources.
We are leasing them from God, as it were, and we must keep them in good condition.
Whatever we have really belongs to God.
In those terms, stewardship is not about ten per cent of our income;
it is about 100% of our income and 100% of our investments and 100% of our talents.
For that reason, a Time and Talent questionnaire is included along with
the pledge cards, because those are part of stewardship, too.
However, the Time and Talent sheet is only a small part of the
equation, because it only asks about the talents that we can give to
the church.
When we think about stewardship in these larger terms, it means that we need to account to God for all our property,
for the way we spend our time, for the priorities we follow in day-to-day living.
What we give to the church is only a small part of that, and it should be only a small part.
We would not be good stewards if we gave all our money to the church, and ate and slept in Plymouth Hall.
Rather, the point is "What does God want us to do with the gifts we have been given?"
This means that our service to God is much broader than service to the church.
It includes not only ushering, but perhaps donating blood or deciding to run for the school board.
It may include recycling newspapers and plastic, because you believe that God expects you to be a steward of this environment.
For some, it may even mean changing jobs.
For Buddhists, "right livelihood" or "right occupation" is an important part of the 8-fold path that leads to liberation.
The broad definition of stewardship says that, "It is everything I do after I say 'I believe.'"
This kind of stewardship is spiritual discipline.
It is not something we do for the sake of the church; we do it for our own sakes.
In that context, let me suggest that stewardship is really about making choices.
It is about asking questions,
about asking questions of yourself.
Each of us will give different answers; that is not important.
What is important is that we ask the questions.
And not merely questions like, "What percentage of my income does God want me to give to the church?"
Rather, questions like, "How should I spend my time each day?"
That kind of stewardship does not demand that we all make the same choices.
One person may decide to go to a parent club meeting in spite of being tired from a long day at work.
Another may stay home in order to spend time with the children instead of going to another meeting.
Spending less time at church and more time with your family can be a responsible stewardship decision.
Sometimes you just need to rest, and that is stewardship, too, because you are taking care of the body God gave you.
The same kind of logic applies to your financial pledge, as well.
If your family is struggling to survive, and you cannot buy shoes for your children, perhaps you should reduce your pledge.
Good stewardship means that you need to say "no" sometimes.
In each of those decisions, you are using the gifts that God entrusted to you, including the gift of time.
Before buying a car, I might ask, like some evangelical Christians did a couple years ago, "What kind of car would Jesus drive?"
Now, if Jesus married a soccer mom and had five children, he might buy a big SUV.
There are many right answers to each question.
What is important is that we ask them.
5 Real Road (corner of Stockdale & Real)
Bakersfield, CA 93309
Phone: 661-327-1609
FAX: 661-327-4443
Sunday Services & Church School: 10 AM
(Services last about an hour, dress is casual)
Nursery care available
E-mail: firstcong(at)postoffice.igalaxy.net
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