“But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able thus to offer willingly? For all things come from thee, and of thy own have we given thee.” (I Chronicles 29:14 RSV)

As the church year comes to a close, it has become the practice of American churches to spend this time reflecting on stewardship, by which we mean our time, talents, and what we can do with them to support the mission of the church. These words of prayer by David remind us that stewardship, whatever we make of it, is a concept that we must apply to every aspect of our lives. To speak of stewardship on any terms other than those of our very selves is to fail to grasp its Biblical meaning. The call to faithful stewardship is a framework for how we understand ourselves before God in Christ Jesus.

As Luther wrote in his On the Freedom of a Christian, “A Christian is a perfectly free lord of all, subject to none. A Christian is a perfectly dutiful servant of all, subject to all..” [ LW 31: 344.] Neither half of this dialectic is stewardship; rather, stewardship is the dialect taken as a whole. Stewardship is the response to grace in faith, that is, the response evoked by an experiential knowledge of the love bourn for us by Christ on the cross and of who God discloses himself to be for us through that love. It cannot be dictated or prescribed, though we would do well to speak of its essential role in the Christian life. The tree of faith yields fruit, fruit that will last.

Often when we think about the fruits that faith bears, we consider the work that we do in the world. Indeed, our faith does draw us to provide relief to those suffering, whether from the acts of humans or nature, and to strive for a just society. We often also think of the work we do in the church together, our worship of God and fellowship with one another. These too are products of our faith.

What often gets ignored, however, in the way we talk about stewardship are those things that take place in our private lives. Stewardship begins with the life of faith, a life of prayer and devotion to Christ. In thinking so much of what goes on around us, we risk losing sight of the foundation in which we are grounded and made capable of caring for the neighbor. To be full and complete stewards of God’s gifts means recognizing that our very selves are gifts from God. Care of the self and of one’s spirit is where the life of stewardship begins. When we recognize that our faith and heart are gifts from God and thus begin to consider how they might be returned to God in faith, from here flows the life of stewardship, with nothing held back in selfishness.

Gracious God, you sent your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, into the world that through him the world might know your merciful love, and you gifted the Church with your Holy Spirit that we would have a perfect Advocate. Grant that we, by the grace of that Spirit, might lift up our hearts to you and learn to be stewards of ourselves, our neighbors and our world. This we pray in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

Contributed by Miles
Monday November 17, 2014
Liturgical Year A: Week 51
Liturgical Color: Green
Sunday Gospel reading: Proper 28
Twenty-sixth Sunday after Pentecost