stewardship letter

Our church asked me to write a letter to the congregation--a reflection on possessions and giving--as part of our fall program.  I was grateful for the opportunity to think through my convictions on the subject in such a short space, and I realized how much I have been influenced by my friend and colleague Mirosalv Volf.  If you have read Free of Charge, you'll hear echoes of it here.  But we also both are deeply shaped by Martin Luther and his interpretation of St. Paul as a way of understanding the Christian life.  So that common ground makes for good conversation on such issues. Here's the letter, and as I said to the members of the congregation, I say to you: let me know your thoughts!
+anon.

October 19, 2007

Dear friends,

I invite you to save this letter till you have a moment to sit in quiet, perhaps early in the morning with a steaming cup of coffee or tea, or perhaps at night curled up with a blanket in your favorite comfy chair.  Why not read this now, standing wherever it is you open mail?  Because it is intended to be a meditation, a spiritual reflection, and such writing is best read with leisure, rather than at a rush.   Not that the writing is so good!  Not at all—but the importance of the substance is what deserves our pause, me in the writing, and you in the reading.  Thank you for your care in advance.

Our stewardship committee asked me to write a reflection letter on how Christian faith relates to possessions, and to giving.  These are my thoughts, oriented around a couple of core convictions.  I hope you’ll be provoked to reflect on your own core convictions, and if you do, I hope you’ll share them with me.  Because I understand these ideas to be those of our tradition, I use plural pronouns, but it is, in the end, my personal testimony to this common way of life we share.

Our lives are not our own.  Such a conviction is counter-intuitive in the face of the American ideal that my life, and by extension my stuff, belongs to me.  The American dream promises that if we work hard and play by the rules, we’ll have a chance to have our little piece of heaven on earth.   The pursuit of happiness is not, in fact, a Christian virtue.  As the singer Bob Dylan once put it, “happy is a yuppie word.” Our tradition is full of warnings for those who merely pursue ‘happiness’ (Luke 12:13-21).  Jesus promises the life that really is life, life abundant, but not happiness (John 10:10).

We are, in the archaic language of the Bible, enslaved either to sin or to Jesus Christ.  Such language is not our typical everyday framing of the issue.  But the 16th century reformers used the image of humans as horses, either ridden by the devil or by Christ.  They did not, in other words, believe as many do today in freedom of the will.  Rather they were concerned with the question of the bondage of the will.  As with Jesus and Paul, they asked not if we were free or slaves, but which master we serve. (Luke 16:13; Romans 7:15)

In baptism, we are claimed as God’s beloved.  We die to sin and rise to life ‘in Christ.’  Such baptismal claiming has two senses.  God has claimed us for good.  Yet while we live, we struggle to die to sin and open ourselves to the life Christ desires to live through us.  “It is not I who live,” says Paul, “but Christ who lives in me.” (Galatians 2:20)

Our lives, then, are Christ’s (and Christs).  Because God has graciously judged our sin, forgiven us in mercy, and offered us new life ‘in Christ’ our lives belong to him.  Our lives take on the shape of his life, becoming if you will ‘little Christs’ in the world.  We are, all of us, his body.  The shape of Christ’s life could be described in many ways, but I am most drawn to a poetic summary in Philippians (2:5-8) that likely served as an early church hymn:

Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus:
Who, being in the form of God,
      did not consider equality with God something to be grasped,
but made himself nothing,
      taking on the form of a servant,
      being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man,
      he humbled himself
      and became obedient to death—
         even death on a cross!

I take this to mean that those things that are “mine” are not mine but rather belong to those who don’t have them and need them.  Everything I am and have is a gift from God and nothing is for me alone, as an individual, but for those in need of that very thing I have been given.  I love the interpretation Martin Luther gives of this passage. He doesn’t pull any punches.

“If there is anything in us, it is not our own; it is a gift of God.  But if it is a gift of God, then it is entirely a debt one owes to love, that is, to the law of Christ.  And if it is a debt owed to love, then I must serve others with it, not myself.  Thus my learning is not my own; it belongs to the unlearned and it is a debt I own to them.  My wisdom belongs to the foolish, my power to the oppressed.  Thus my wealth belongs to the poor, my righteousness to the sinners.  For these are the forms of God which we must empty ourselves, in order that forms of a servant may be in us (Phil. 2:6).”

Stewardship, then, is the gift and task of living ‘in Christ’.  It is a life of joy and of suffering.  It is a communal life, full of being blessed in order to be a blessing.  It encompasses everything.  Living thus is not simple; we need each other, in other words, and we know that in our bones.   

Here is the bottom line.  Whatever we have that our congregation needs already belongs to it.  We give our presence, our attention and prayer and singing, as we gather for worship.  That is primary.  Along with our presence in worship we give our money.  As much as we can give will be put to good use in support of program and staff and mission.  We give our distinctive skills in service of our common life, teaching, singing, sorting, counting, stuffing, serving, welcoming, ushering, justice-making, listening, sorrow-bearing, and so many others.  When we know we have it, we seek a way, a place, where it is needed.  And sometimes, the community knows we have it and calls us to give it up for the sake of a common need.  There is a divine economy in this, and it is driven not by selfish desire but holy giving, out of an abundance we ourselves did not earn but received out of the open hand of God. 

May stewardship be the flourishing of this divine economy of holy giving and receiving, and may it be a sign to all the world of the God who, for our sake, took the form of a servant.

Peace to you,

Chris Scharen 

Comments

[Tiaan]

I can't imagine that it was easy to write that letter/ mini sermon to your congregation. Money is such a sensitive issue in (post)modern society today and people hate being told what to do, especially what they have to do with their hard-earned bucks. But when people see what positive things happen with their money, their attitude might change...