Stewardship Corner

The season of Epiphany focuses on how God was made manifest in the flesh of Jesus.  The church spends time hearing of the miracles, the signs and wonders, of Jesus in the world. And this made plain to all that Jesus was who He said He was: He was the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the only-begotten Son of the Father, in the flesh.  For “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us” (John 1:14)

It is revealed for all the world to see that Jesus is God in the flesh. It is made manifest by His words and His work, by what He said and by what He did. And these belong together, for “the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”

Jesus is the Word and will of God in the flesh, that is, He is the walking, talking, enactment of God’s Word.  It is no different for us.  We are called not just to believe in God in hearts, but also to trust in God in word and deed.

As James wrote: “But be doers of the word, and not hearers only, deceiving yourselves” (James 1:22), and again, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? … So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead. …  Show me your faith apart from your works, and I will show you my faith by my works. … For as the body apart from the spirit is dead, so also faith apart from works is dead” (James 2:14, 17–18, 26).

Our faith is lived out in works for our neighbor.  Our trust in the Word and will of God is lived out not in word only, but also in deed and in truth.  In other words, the Epiphany of the Lord creates in us an epiphany of our faith in our works of obedience to God who commanded them.  By this, our faith is made manifest to the world.  It is, as Luther wrote of faith:

                        “Faith is a divine work in us. It changes us and makes us to be born anew of God (John 1). It kills the old Adam and makes altogether different people, in heart and spirit and mind and powers, and it brings with it the Holy Spirit.

            “Oh, it is a living, busy, active, mighty thing, this faith. And so it is impossible for it not to do good works incessantly. It does not ask whether there are good works to do, but before the question rises, it has already done them, and is always at the doing of them.

                        “He who does not these works is a faithless man.  He gropes and looks about after faith and good works and knows neither what faith is nor what good works are, though he talks and talks, with many words about faith and good works.

                        “Faith is a living, daring confidence in God’s grace, so sure and certain that a man would stake his life on it a thousand times.  This confidence in God’s grace and knowledge of it makes men glad and bold and happy in dealing with God and all His creatures.

                        “And this is the work of the Holy Spirit in faith. Hence a man is ready and glad, without compulsion, to do good to everyone, to serve everyone, to suffer everything, in love and praise to God, who has shown him this grace.            

“And thus it is impossible to separate works from faith, quite as impossible as to separate burning and shining from fire.  Beware, therefore, of your own false notions and of the idle talkers, who would be wise enough to make decisions about faith and good works, and yet are the greatest fools.”  (Preface to the Book of Romans)

So, then, let our faith be active by God’s power in the Word through the Holy Spirit.  And let then our faith be made manifest to the world by what this faith does: serving our neighbor — in church, in the family, and society — with the works of faith in time, talents, and treasures.

It is no secret that God calls us to be generous with the gifts He has given us. Throughout the Bible, we read that just as God has generously given to us, so are we to give generously one to another. As Jesus said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35) and “Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:36).

But God also calls us to give to Him. And He, who does all things well, presses it into service for the benefit of all the people of God. See for example what God spoke to Moses on Mount Sinai, after he and the people were safely brought out of Egypt across the Red Sea on dry land:

The Lord said to Moses, “Speak to the people of Israel, that they take for me a contribution. From every man whose heart moves him you shall receive the contribution for me. And this is the contribution that you shall receive from them: gold, silver, and bronze, blue and purple and scarlet yarns and fine twined linen, goats’ hair, tanned rams’ skins, goatskins,[a] acacia wood, oil for the lamps, spices for the anointing oil and for the fragrant incense, onyx stones, and stones for setting, for the ephod and for the breastpiece. And let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst. Exactly as I show you concerning the pattern of the tabernacle, and of all its furniture, so you shall make it. (Ex. 25: 1-9)

Notice in verse two that the Lord instructs Moses to tell the Israelites to “take for me a contribution” and that from everyone motivated from gratitude for what God has just accomplished and given to them, Moses is to gather up “the contribution for me.”

Pay attention, though, why the Lord wants the people of Israel to gather up these contributions for Him. God tells Moses precisely why: “let them make me a sanctuary, that I may dwell in their midst.” The purpose for the contribution of the Israelites was so that He may dwell with them, that He would live among them. Through the tabernacle and the priesthood, through their rites and ceremonies, through their feasts and festivals, as through means, the Lord God, who brought them out of the bondage of Egypt would live and dwell among them and be their God, and lead them into the promised land, which flowed with milk and honey.

God dwells among us still. In the fullness of time, God’s son was born of woman, born under the law to redeem those under the law. He brought us out of bondage to sin, death, the devil, and Hell, and He did this by His obedient suffering and death, his resurrection and ascension. But He is not gone. He dwells with us through the means of His Word and His sacraments, through the preaching and the teaching of our pastors, through the rites and ceremonies of our liturgy. He dwells with us in the Church through those means. And He is leading us to the true promised land, to the new heavens and the new earth in the new creation.

In the meantime, as God, even now, continues to call us to give to Him, let us, who have been saved from slavery to sin and death, the devil and hell, be so moved in our hearts as to give generously to Him so that the means of grace, the means of His gracious dwelling among us, would continue now and into the future. For just as He did then so does He do now. He presses the gifts given to Him into service for the benefit of all His people. He puts it to use so that we may have Him with us always, even unto the end of the age.

Throughout his epistles and his preaching recorded in the Book of Acts, St. Paul refers, in one way or another, to thanksgiving and thankfulness nearly 50 times.  Whether vertically toward God, or horizontally toward the neighbor, thanksgiving is a major theme within St. Paul’s body of work.

 

What does this mean?  It means thankfulness is intrinsic to the life of those baptized into Christ. In other words, giving thanks is what Christians do as they live out their lives in this world.

 

The problem is that we often forget this.  Consider your average, run-of-the-mill, normal day. When you get home, and your parents, your spouse or your children ask about your day, what first comes to your mind?  After 99 percent of things went right, went exactly as planned, were enjoyable and blessings, we tend to focus on and remember the 1 percent of things that went poorly, that didn’t go as planned, and that were nuisances.

 

We remember the bad things.  We focus on discontent.  And we fail to give thanks in all circumstances for everything (Eph. 5:20) and to rejoice in the Lord always (Phil. 4:4).

 

Thankfulness and contentment go together.  We are content with things for which we are thankful.  St. Paul could be content with having plenty or when in need because He gave thanks to the Lord for all things.  He thanked the Lord for those who had prayed for him and listened to his proclamation of the Gospel.  He gave thanks for their good works in and for the Church of Christ. He gave thanks for the grace of God in Christ Jesus and found that God’s grace was sufficient for him.

 

So, give thanks for all things and in all circumstances dear brothers and sisters in Christ.  For you have been saved from sin, death, and hell by the death and resurrection of our Lord, Jesus Christ. You have been added to the very family of God in an adoption of grace through Holy Baptism. God is your Father.  Our Lord, Jesus Christ is your brother.

 

But He not only provides for your spiritual well-being, He cares also for this body and life.  Your Father in heaven provides food and clothes, house and home, husband, wife, and children.  He gives you reason and all your senses.  He has given you the raw talents that you have developed into careers.  Everything you are and everything that you have is a gift from His fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in you.

 

Give thanks for these things.  Make a list – every morning if you must.  Say them out loud.  Sing about them within the congregation of the saints.  And remember this: God has given you these things so that you may be of service to those around you – your family, your neighbors, your brothers and sisters in Christ.  For to whom much is given; much shall be required (Luke 12:48).

Why do we give?  Is it simply because God commands us to?  Or is there more to it?  To be sure, the instruction and Word of God in the Bible says we should give, and this is sufficient to encourage us to give (Luke 6:38; Acts 20:35; 1 Cor. 16:2; 2 Cor. 8:7; Gal 6:6).

But there’s more to it than just obligation.  We’re not just trying to fulfill a work of the Law. We are bearing fruits of the Spirit given to us by our Father in heaven through His Son our Lord Jesus Christ. In other words, we’re not just doing what our Father said, we’re also doing what He did.

Children emulate their parents.  When they grow up they often carry many of the same mannerisms and characteristics as their parents, but there is more to it than that.  Children copy their parents even on a more mundane level. They watch how their parents cross their legs, how they fold their hands, how they stand and sit and walk, how they do and say most everything.

And children try to copy it, which can be quite humorous when parents wish they wouldn’t.  It can be uncomfortable and embarrassing if a child copies or repeats something less than polite that they learned from a parent.  Sitcoms thrive on these situations.  It only happens because children emulate their parents because they want to be like them.

We are the children of God, by grace, through faith. In Holy Baptism, God the Father declares of us what He declared of Jesus at His Baptism in the Jordan: “You are my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”  God the Father claims us as His own.  He takes away all our sins, and in exchange He gives us His righteousness, His purity, His holiness, and His Spirit, by which we cry out, “Abba, Father.”

We are born again, born from above, born of water and the Spirit, to a new life in Christ as His children.  We are sons of God in Christ, through Baptism.  And since we are sons, we are heirs – heirs who share in the glory of the Son of God.  The inheritance is ours because of the Father’s grace and mercy, His generosity in sending His Son in time to save us for all eternity.

And this is why we give generously of our income to the work of the church.  We want to be like our heavenly Father.  We want to emulate His generosity by being generous ourselves.  We give to the work of the Church because we have witnessed the generous giving of our Father in heaven.

More than that, we are recipients of it.  It is because we have received God our Father’s gifts that we desire to give ourselves.  And His gifts are not just spiritual.  They are temporal and earthly as well.  As the Small Catechism teaches in the Fourth Petition of the Lord’s Prayer:

“Give us this day our daily bread.”  What does this mean?  God certainly gives daily bread to everyone without our prayers, even to all evil people, but we pray in this petition that God would lead us to realize this and to receive our daily bread with thanksgiving.  What is meant by daily bread?  Daily bread includes everything that has to do with the support and needs of the body, such as food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like.”

In other words, God gives us everything we need for the care of both body and soul. His generosity knows no bounds.  Therefore, we sit down at the beginning of the year, the beginning of the month, or the beginning of the week to set aside a generous portion of God’s daily bread for His work in the Church. We don’t do this simply because He has commanded us so to do; it is because we, as His children by grace, want to emulate His generosity in our own lives. He is our Father; we are His children. And children want to be like their parents.

It’s September, and everything is in full swing again: back to school and back to church attendance after vacations and weekends away.  And since everything is back into full swing, it’s a perfect time to get back to basics, back to the foundation.

At the end of the first of his chapters on the virtue of faith in Mere Christianity, C.S. Lewis provides a helpful reminder, by way of analogy, for the foundation of stewardship.  He wrote:

Every faculty you have, your power of thinking or of moving your limbs from moment to moment, is given you by God.  If you devoted every moment of your whole life exclusively to His service you could not give Him anything that was not in a sense His own already.  So then, when we talk of a man doing anything for God or giving anything to God, I will tell you what it is really like. It is like a small child going to its father and saying, “Daddy, give me six pence to buy you a birthday present.”  Of course, the father does, and he is pleased with the child’s present. It is all very nice and proper, but only an idiot would think that the father is six-pence to the good on the transaction.  When a man has made these two discoveries God can really get to work. It is after this that real life begins. (128–129).

This is the first thing we are given to confess about stewardship, and it has to do with ownership. God owns everything, and we are simply managers — stewards — acting on His behalf.  This is true not only of all that we have in this life (Deuteronomy 8:17–18), but also all that we are in this life (1 Corinthians 6:20).

The rest flows from here.  Since we are stewards, or managers, of what belongs to God, entrusted to make use of it according to His will, there is an expectation of responsibility and accountability.

For the Lord said, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more” (Luke 12:48b).

And from this comes blessing and reward: “Well done, good and faithful servant.  You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much.  Enter into the joy of your master” (Matthew 25:21).

We have everything we need to support this body and life from our God’s fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in us.  We have everything we need for our spiritual life also from His merciful hands.

On account of the sacrifice of His Son, our Lord Jesus, through the preaching of the gospel and the administration of the sacraments, we have the forgiveness of sins, eternal life, and everlasting salvation delivered to us with absolute certainty that it is ours — not as stewards but as sons (Galatians 4:1–7).

Let us then, as His own sons, press all that He gives to us into the service of His church and to His glory.

When it comes to stewardship, a favorite Bible verse is the account of the widow’s mite (Luke 21:1–4).  It’s a moving account.  Our Lord praises the seemingly small gift of two copper coins given by a poor widow above the abundance of gifts given by the rich, saying, “Truly, I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them” (Luke 21:3).

And that is usually where we stop.  But the text goes on. “For they all contributed out of their abundance, but she out of her poverty put in all she had to live on” (Luke 21:4).

“She … put in all she had to live on.”  She gave everything.  She held nothing back.  She trusted that the Lord who made her and all creatures, who gave her everything she had, who redeemed her from her own sin, from death, and the power of the devil, who called her by the Gospel and enlightened her with His gifts of Word and Sacrament, would continue to do this.  He would provide her with all that she needed for this body and life because that is the character of the God she had.

But this is not why we give small gifts.  Her gift, though it appeared small, was actually large.  When we are tempted to give small gifts it is precisely because we want them to be small!  We don’t trust the Lord to provide for us.

We give small gifts because we lack faith in the One who created us, redeemed us, sanctifies and keeps us in the one true faith.  We give small gifts because we doubt that God will really give us what we need and desire. We give small gifts because we are not content with what God has already given.

We are not slaves, children of the slave woman, under the Old Covenant (Gal. 4).  We are adopted sons of the free woman.  And since we are sons, we are also heirs.  And heirs receive the inheritance.  For everything is already ours in Christ.  And thus, moved by the willing spirit of adoption, we do the will of God in financial matters far beyond all that done by those under the Old Covenant who were forced by legal demands.

So what have you decided to give?  How do I decide what to give?  Let the Scriptures be your guide.

We are to give proportionally to what we have received from God’s giving to us (Luke 12:48; 1 Cor. 16:1-2, 2 Cor. 8:12).  But you have not been set free to give nothing.  See that you excel in the grace of giving (2 Cor. 8:7).

We are not free to live selfishly outside the Gospel, without regard for God who gives us all good gifts, without generosity for our neighbor who needs us and our gifts, without supporting the community of faith in which we live, without care for our spiritual fathers and those who teach and help raise our children in the faith, without resources for the poor and needy – in short, we are not free to live unto ourselves, hoarding what God has given us only for us.

For love is the fulfillment of the law (Romans 13:10).  And the sum of the law is this:  Love God and love your neighbor (Matt. 22:34-.40).  We love because He first loved us.  We give because He has given to us.

Luther once said, “Possessions belong in your hands, not in your heart” (LW 14:240).  There is a reason your 10 fingers spread apart.  With your hands you catch God’s gifts for what you need and let the rest fall through your fingers to your neighbors – your family, your friends, your community, your church.