AN INTRODUCTION TO STEWARDSHIP
The bulletins this morning include “Estimate-of-Giving” forms that ask us to consider our monetary gifts to the church and how these gifts fit into our overall stewardship of financial resources. This is important because we need money to keep the church open. And in a few minutes our Treasurer, Tom Schwallenberg, will summarize the financial condition of the church. But there is more to good Christian stewardship than managing money well. In fact, stewardship is so central to faithful Christian living that Pastor MaAn has decided that the sermons for today and the next four Sundays will all deal with aspects of Christian stewardship. Today, I’ll offer a little background on what Christian stewardship means and why it’s so important.
Jesus told us to “strive first for the kingdom of God and his righteousness.” He also taught us to pray that “Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.” And we’re called to support God’s kingdom by following the commandments to love God and love neighbors. God created a world of abundant resources that we can use for loving God and neighbor. But to be good Christian stewards, we need to be diligent in using the gifts God gives us to practice love instead of using them for selfish, wasteful, or destructive purposes.
As John Wesley’s “three simple rules” remind us, love of God and neighbor is simple, in principle—do no harm, do good, and stay in love with God. But in practice, it can be hard to focus on love when there is so much selfishness, indifference, and hatred in the world. So, it is good to have stories like the parable of the Good Samaritan that remind us what love of neighbor means in a highly imperfect world.
In this story, only the Good Samaritan clearly heeds God’s call to love of neighbor. The robbers didn’t even heed Wesley’s advice to do no harm. The priest and the Levite sought to avoid their injured neighbor rather than do the good that love calls for. And while the innkeeper presumably did what the Samaritan paid him to do, the story doesn’t say that he did any more than he was paid to do. So, while the parable offers a clear illustration of love of neighbor, it doesn’t suggest that the world is anywhere near being transformed into God’s kingdom of love.
The Good Samaritan did more than others in the story to practice love of neighbor. But he didn’t make extraordinary sacrifices. He used what he had with him to help the injured man. He took time to help the man, but the story doesn’t say he went far out of his way to take the man to the inn. He was generous, but didn’t seem to be strained financially by his generosity. So, while we’re called to be generous, we’re not usually called to seriously harm ourselves in the process.
Who is my neighbor? That’s the question that led Jesus to tell the parable of the Good Samaritan. The parable suggests that we’re called to be neighborly to anyone we come in contact with. In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus even told us to love our enemies. (And in fact, Jews and Samaritans were generally not on good terms with each other during the time of Jesus.) But most of us could quickly run out of resources if we tried to give indiscriminately to everyone we meet. So, good Christian stewardship requires us to use resources wisely and not waste them on activities that don’t serve God’s kingdom of love. (Or as Jesus said in Matthew 10:16, “See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”)
The parable of the Good Samaritan may be particularly useful for us as we seek to practice love of God and neighbor in Eastport. Our location has a lot in common with the Jericho Road that provided the setting for the Good Samaritan story. The Jericho Road was notorious for its high crime rate. And as some of you may remember, there was a news conference here at our church a few years ago when the governor, mayor, speaker of the house, and other important officials announced the “Capital City Safe Streets” program to deal with crime problems affecting Annapolis in general and our neighborhood in particular. The focus of this program has been on law enforcement, but it takes more than good law enforcement to create good neighbors. So, some of us in our church started working with other churches in the neighborhood and the Eastport Civic Association to see what we can do to help meet needs and improve relationships among the diverse groups in Eastport.
So far, our church has focused our participation in these efforts mainly on a “family night” outreach program at the Eastport Community Center and on a homework and reading ministry that we offer here in our fellowship hall. At present, we’re serving mainly children of elementary school age. But it’s also important to reach other children and get parents more involved in trying to help make the neighborhood a safer and better place to raise families. And our Administrative Council is working on possibilities for expanded outreach, particularly to the growing Hispanic population in the neighborhood. To do this, we will all need to take seriously God’s commandment to love our neighbors, no matter what their race, class, ethnic heritage, and other circumstances may be.
In the fifth century St. Augustine offered an allegorical interpretation of the parable of the Good Samaritan. In his interpretation, the Good Samaritan represents Jesus, who reaches out to save folks overwhelmed by the world. The inn represents the church, which Jesus asks to help care for those he seeks to save. And churches located in places like ours can expect to encounter a lot of people needing a lot of help. But God gives us many resources we can use to love God and neighbor here in Eastport. May God help us be faithful and loving stewards of his gifts!
Amen.
