Stewardship Sunday 25/11/07 St. Michael’s: Revd. Julia Boothby

I am not sure if any of you here were present at an evensong service I took in St. Mary’s not long after I arrived here. Being somewhat nervous and not altogether comfortable with the order for evensong I stumbled through the opening sentences nervously and stated quite clearly

“Rend your clothes and not your hearts.”

Instantly realising what I had said I looked up to see Alan studiously looking at the floor, although his shoulders were going up and down as he tried very hard not to laugh, along with a few other who had noticed. As you may imagine I have not lived down that episode and I was reminded of it this week when reading what one parish put on their weekly pew leaflet. The notice read;  “A number of buttons have been found among the coins in the recent collections. Rend your hearts and not your clothes!”

Today we think about stewardship and giving, financially and in terms of service. However, I promise not to be like the preacher who stood up on stewardship Sunday and announced to his congregation;  “I have here in my hands three sermons…a £100 sermon that lasts five minutes, a £50 sermon that lasts fifteen minutes and a £10 sermon that lasts for a full hour. Now we will take the collection and see which one I will deliver!”

Thinking about giving away money in order to get something is what we are constantly bombarded by the world to do. We are encouraged in all sorts of ways to spend, spend, spend…on everything from the latest electrical gadget to the newest designer clothes, to the holiday of a lifetime. We are to spend, in order to have, and…if you believe the advertising, we need to have in order to be happy.

Thankfully the message of the good news is completely and utterly alien to the consumer state in which we live. It offers us a radical alternative, the promise of a free gift, a truly free gift that comes with no strings attached. What God offers us is a gift beyond price, he offers us Christ Jesus. He gives us the very best and the most needed of gifts. In Christ God freely gives us forgiveness, hope, the promise of eternal life and above all LOVE, knowledge of the love of God. It is, as St. Paul exclaims in our reading from Corinthians, an indescribable gift and one that comes at great price, the price of a cross.

This is the simple truth that we can rejoice in today. God loves us and has made known that love to us by sending Christ into the world to die for us and to open the way for us to life abundant and eternal. This gift is ours if we believe and as we gather here week by week so we proclaim our faith in praise and word, in prayer and in sharing. As we do so, as our hearts are opened to God, here and in our daily lives, so we begin to see how precious this gift is. We experience God’s guidance, his hope in times of trouble, his strength when we are weak, his light in our darkness, his peace in our troubles and above all that pure and unconditional love that streams from his heart to ours. We are blessed in so many ways, and we need to count our blessings, to, as the old hymn puts it, to name them one by one. We live in a culture of complaint, of grumbling, of being hard done by. As Christians Christ calls us to radical and transforming thankfulness and praise, something, if you remember that we touched on a little last week as we talked about the psalms. But that thankfulness and praise should not only be expressed in our words and songs but in everyday of our lives in service and in giving. The hymn writer says we should ‘give and give and give again, what God has given thee, to spend ourselves nor count the cost, to serve right gloriously…’

I wonder how true that is of our lives that they overflow with thanks and praise right down to our hearts and our pockets.

Paul called on the people he was writing to be cheerful givers, to sow bountifully. Today we are challenged to ask …do I give, do I give enough and do I give cheerfully and willingly? These are not easy questions, they are ones that we would rather ignore and yet they lie at the very heart of what Christ calls us to. He calls us to deny ourselves, take up our cross and follow him. To live our lives, nor for ourselves but for Christ, and through him for others.

Whoever we are, whatever our circumstances in life, today we are being called to examine our hearts and ask….what would you have me give Lord, what would you have me do?

At the end of our service Tony will come and talk a little about the financial situation here. What I know is that we all need to carefully reconsider our financial giving and what we offer in service. We are called on to give sacrificially…in other words as CS Lewis has put it;

“I do not believe one can settle how much we ought to give. I am afraid the only safe rule is to give more that we can spare.”

Giving sacrificially costs. But, be it our time, our leisure, our money, what ever we have that we cannot give up for Christ is not something we own, but something that owns us.

In a few months time Sue will stand down as Churchwarden after serving this church so faithfully for a long time. At the same time Tony will stand down as our Treasurer. At the right time we will thank them properly for all that they have done, but right now we are faced with two large roles that will become empty and that need to be filled if we are to continue to function properly as Christ’s body here in this place. There are always things that need doing, from small handyman jobs, to delivering leaflets, to making tea to serving at the altar and setting the church up ready for services. What is God asking of you today?

I want to leave you with a story about General Charles Gordon, the 19th century soldier whose service in Khartoum is legendary. He declined both a title and financial reward for his services and only reluctantly accepted a gold medal inscribed with the details of his military career. In time it became his most valued possession and yet after his death it could not be found anywhere. It was only later, when his diaries were found that it was discovered that on hearing of a severe famine he had sent the medal to be melted down and used the money to buy bread for the poor. He had written this in his diary;

“The last earthly thing I had in this world that I valued I have given to the Lord Jesus Christ today.”

Today I pray that we will all bring all that we own, and ourselves, all our talents and time and gifts and sit at the feet of Jesus on the cross. As we look into his face, as we face afresh all that he has give us, may we all ask;
“Lord what would you have me give?”