Household Stewardship

Deuteronomy 26:1-13, Luke 4:1-13

February 21, 2010

Rochelle A. Stackhouse

An observer of American culture once commented that Americans are more likely to go into intimate detail about their most recent medical procedure than they are to discuss how much money they make or how they decide how to spend it! While the privacy of the inner workings of our bodies seems easy to discuss, the privacy of our checkbooks seems to be sacrosanct.

Part of the reason that it is so often difficult to talk about money in the church is that the assumption of many is that the church or God would expect that if we were truly faithful, then we would divest ourselves of all our possessions and live like Mother Teresa in India. Since most of us are unwilling to do that, we tend to feel guilty when we talk about possessions in a religious context. After all, if we think the expectation is that if we really trusted that God would provide, then we’d go like Jesus did into the wilderness, without food or water or shelter or weapons to fend off dangers, trusting that angels would minister to us. Although if we read the text carefully, we discover that when the Tempter tempts Jesus to throw himself on God’s protection, Jesus refuses to do so; he didn’t go into the wilderness to prove that he trusted that God would take care of him if he gave up everything. He went into the wilderness to take the time to connect with the primary relationship in his life and, without the distraction of things or people, to clarify for himself who he was. The Tempter actually helped him do that by throwing at him all the same sorts of temptations he would face once he entered into his public ministry: the temptations to seize fame and fortune and earthly power. When Jesus turned away from those temptations in the wilderness, he was free to be who he truly was, to live into his role in the world as Beloved, Chosen, Savior, Reconciler, the one to help the rest of us reconnect with the primary relationship of our lives, the relationship with God, and to remember what our story is; who we are beyond the accretions of things and the expectations other people put on us and we accept.

So we begin Lent talking about possessions and what we do with them, not so as to pile on the guilt or increase the offering or send you all off on desert pilgrimages. We begin not by talking mostly about giving up our possessions (like people talk about giving up something for Lent), but about evaluating our acquisition and use of them in light of our primary relationship to God. As the writer Sharon Parks has observed, “For Christians, the move that is faithful is not from the material to the spiritual, but rather from materialism to incarnation.” (Practicing Our Faith, p. 47) That sends us to Deuteronomy.

The theologian of language, Amos Wilder (Yale grad and brother to Thornton), writes that “There is no world for us until we have named and language and storied whatever is.” (“Story and Story-World” Interpretation, 37(1983), p. 361). Our vision of the world and how we interact with it, Wilder claims, is shaped by the foundational story in our lives, whatever that is. The writer of Deuteronomy chooses the moment in the worship service when the offering is given for the foundational story of his people to be recited! It would be as if we accompanied our passing the offering plates not with music, but with each of us reciting what we believe and the story that incorporates those beliefs. When you bring your offering, the writer of Deuteronomy says, you should tell this story, “A wandering Aramean was my ancestor,” and go on to remember how Joseph was taken to Egypt, and how our people became slaves there, and how God heard our cries and rescued us with great power and brought us to a land where we could be secure and prosper. It is a creedal statement for the people of Israel, an affirmation that they have what they offer not by their own power, but by the power and because of the love and generosity of God. The gifts and God’s connection to them is made explicit.

The instructions continue from the verses we read with commands to give a tenth of your possessions as an offering to be given to those who work in service to God, to foreigners who are living among you, to orphans and widows (the poor and powerless of that time), enough so that all these may “eat their fill.” The connection is clear: you have been led to a place where you may prosper not just for yourself, but so that you may share your prosperity with those in need, just as God cared for your ancestors when they were in need. The instruction here is not for those who have prospered to impoverish themselves, but rather to make sure others are not impoverished, because once their people were slaves and poor and God gave freely to them.

The story of God’s love and care for the ancestors is the story that is meant to create the world by which the newly freed and landed people will shape their society. Their identity as children of God, as those for whom God has cared, is meant to be the grounding for how they will construct the identity and daily life of their new nation. As the rest of the scriptural story tells us, this fell apart before very long, as people succumbed to the temptations to claim power over each other and to think that they got their possessions solely by their own work and so did not need to share, the same kinds of temptations offered to Jesus in the wilderness. “You’re hungry,” says the Tempter, “use your power to make bread for yourself.” Remember, Jesus later did a miracle where bread was multiplied, but it was not for himself alone; the power was used to share.

So if we talk openly about possessions and what we do with them in the church, what we need to do is talk about which story creates our worlds, or to put it the other way around, when we look at the values systems of our households or our society, what story seems to be the foundation of how we make decisions about what we do with what we have? That’s an important question upon which to reflect. What story, what primary relationship, seems to be the foundation of how you and I make decisions about what we do with what we have?

Actually when we receive the offering each week, we do make a statement about what we say we believe about what we have: the doxology. During Lent, we sing a different doxology (one without alleluias) which begins “Praise God, from whom all blessings flow.” The first church I attended as a youth had an even more explicit doxology: “We give thee but thine own, whatever the gift may be, all that we have is thine alone, a trust, O Lord, from thee.”

A trust, and that can be understood in both meanings of that word. A trust as in an amount put aside in an account for the benefit of someone, and a trust as in something with which we are entrusted. If the foundational story of our faith and lives is that we, too, are part of the great family whom God has saved and cared for time and again, and that whatever we now have is a trust from God of which we are stewards, and that it is ultimately God and not ourselves and our own power or even our own hard work that is the source of all blessings, then we make decisions differently.

Sharon Parks said that the move for Christians is from materialism to incarnation. What she means is that we are called to incarnate, to make real in our bodies and lives, what we believe about God and what our identity is based on our relationship with God. As another writer put it, “Show me your checkbook (or credit card statement) and I’ll tell you what you believe.”

So here is the spiritual practice I call us to this week. Consider what you have, what you are doing to get what you have, and how you use what you have, whatever that may be. Can you construct a faith statement that would reflect what the answers to those questions indicate about what you believe? That story may be in sync with whom you know yourself to be as a Christian, as a child of God in this world, but if it is not, then ponder what might need to change. It’s probably a lot simpler than getting rid of it all and moving to the wilderness monastery. What story is behind what your world looks like, and what story do you actually want to shape your world? “We give thee but thine own, whatever the gift may be; all that we have is thine, alone, a trust, O Lord, from thee. Amen.