November 9, 2008 Twenty-Sixth Sunday after Pentecost,
Stewardship Sunday
First Congregational Church in Thetford, Vermont, UCC
Proverbs 8; Wisdom of Solomon 6:12-16; Matthew 25: 1-13
Stewardship is the oldest human activity, the first human calling,
according to the Bible. God creates the Garden of Eden, shapes humans out of
the dust of the ground, breathes spirit into them and then says, “Here, this garden
is for you; tend it and keep it.”
Later Cain murders Abel. When God asks where Abel is, Cain asks God,
“Am I my brother’s keeper?” Jesus answers that question, “Yes.” Our two great
commandments and callings from Jesus are to love God and love our neighbor as
our self, and he made very clear that to love means not a feeling, but the act of
taking care of our neighbor’s needs, of being the compassionate keeper of our
neighbor and all God’s works.
The word steward comes from the Old English roots stig and weard. Stig
meant house or hall. Weard meant someone who warded off danger or served as
a warden to watch over the good of something as its keeper. A Stigweard or
steward was the manager and defender of the wellbeing of the house or hall, and
by extension of the land and world around it.
Stewarding is an honorable line of work. In Old England’s kingdoms the
steward was a hereditary position given to the highest of noble families. If you
have read J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings you see an example of this in the
Steward of Gondor who rules in the king’s absence. Stewardship is practical,
earthy work, and it is noble work. It is a sign of the distorted values of our
society to think of stewardship as anything less than the highest calling a human
can have.
In the Lord of the Rings the wizard Gandalf stands before the Steward of
Gondor at a moment when the Dark Lord is rising to crush all the light out of the
world. The Steward is giving up, sinking into the darkness of death and despair,
joining the force of negativity. Gandalf rises before him and says, “The rule of
no realm is mine, neither of Gondor nor any other, great or small. But all worthy
things that are in peril as the world now stands, those are my care. And for my
part, I shall not wholly fail of my task, though Gondor should perish, if anything
passes through this night that can still grow fair or bear fruit and flower again in
the days come. For I also am a steward. Did you not know?”
We can hear some of the essential qualities of stewardship in this speech.
Stewardship is partly a defiant act of holding something together in a world
where things fall apart, a refusal to give up on the light in a world that is turning
toward darkness. It is partly an act of defiance, but stewardship is entirely an act
of love, an act of charity in the old King James sense of the word that means self-
giving, loving care.
Today in our world darkness is rising, great shadows loom over us, and we
must decide whether we will be like the Steward of Gondor and give in to the
negativity of fear, despair and death, or whether we will be like Gandalf and
embrace the role of stewards of the light. Our global civilization is convulsing in
a sickness of greed that has led to both economic and environmental collapse—
we all are painfully aware of that. But we are also struggling as individuals in
ways that not everyone can see. As your pastor, I see, and I am concerned.
Over the twelve years I have been here I have noticed that this
congregation goes through cycles where we as individuals seem to be mostly in
good shape followed by times when all of a sudden many people in the
congregation get hit at once with various kinds of debilitating afflictions.
The other day I went through our church directory for the Nominating
Committee, and person after person that I came to was struggling. Some are in
deep grief over a loss. Some are trying to hold together a life that is way overfull,
strained and stretched almost to the breaking point. Some are dealing with
serious mental or physical illness, their own or of a person they love. Some
families are going through difficult transitions. Some people are feeling burned
out or wounded. Some are facing financial hardship or financial fears.
At times like these everything can feel fragile and vulnerable. The world
seems in danger of falling apart, our individual lives feel in danger of falling
apart, and this church can feel in danger of falling apart. Whether those are true
or simply the way things feel hardly matters, because either way the darkness
threatens to overcome the light.
But this is the good news: there is a light that shines in the darkness that
the darkness can neither comprehend nor overcome. And by birth or by choice
or by miracle, you have found your way to the source of that light. It is burning
here in this church today for you to receive. It is here because countless saints
have stewarded that light through thousands of years and through long nights that
felt to them as dark and dangerous as the one we now face.
The light is here because of the wisdom of those who have gone before us.
We can find that same wisdom today if we will seek it, as the Wisdom of
Solomon says. It will graciously appear to us on our paths and rise to meet us to
inform our every thought. “Happy is the one who listens to me,” wisdom says,
“for whoever finds me finds life” and fills with treasures. This wisdom has
guided people through crises and unmapped wildernesses, through loss and grief,
through sickness and death, through exhaustion and upheaval. It shines a light
were there is no light. It brings insight at the moment of greatest need. It
promises to lead us and help us hold together now. All wisdom asks of us is that
we love her and seek her and trust her.
Jesus was a wisdom teacher, and we can do no better than to seek wisdom
through him. Today’s parable is all about the wisdom of being stewards of the
light. The wise bridesmaids have done the stewarding work required to have oil
for their lamps. The foolish ones have not. The stewardship of the oil represents
the stewardship of the soul that we need to do in order to be full of God’s light:
nurturing our faith, hope and love, devoting time to prayer and spiritual reading
and coming to church—whatever work or rest we can do to strengthen our spirit
and get to know God. When the night deepens and the moment of crisis comes
with both danger and opportunity, the wise are prepared. Jesus says, “Keep
awake, for you know neither the day nor the hour.” The wise prepare themselves
to stay awake with their lamps trimmed and burning because they know the door
can open in any moment that leads into greater light, especially when the night
looks its darkest.
As we face new crises in our lives, again the question rises that has been
asked by preachers in sermons on this text for almost two thousand years: will
we be the wise bridesmaids or the foolish? Will we have done the stewarding of
our souls? Will we have done the spiritual work needed to pass through into
greater love and light? Or will we be caught spiritually unprepared? Will we be
caught asleep or burned out, and give in to negativity, despair and the shadow of
death?
My father found out two years ago that his kidneys were failing. I was
with him when his doctor told him that as weak as he was at age 87 he might want
to let kidney failure run its course and die rather than go through the torture of
dialysis three times a week for the rest of his life. I took my father to his first day
of dialysis and saw the pain, humiliation and exhaustion that he suffered, and I
thought maybe that doctor was right. But my father discovered that he loved life
too much to give up. He has looked at dialysis at times as torture, but recently he
has come to accept it as his job. The dialysis chair is his office. Enduring it is his
work. In his spare time he has just written and published a four hundred page
book of family memories, a treasure that would have been lost if he had given in
to fear, despair or death.
Last winter my neighbor’s barn collapsed under the deep snow. It was an
old Vermont homestead barn. Many of us in the neighborhood loved it as a
reminder of a Vermont that is passing. My neighbor loved it as a hope that he
might bring the homestead and the animals and way of life back. After it
collapsed he got advice and offers to bulldoze it but he decided he loved it too
much. He is rebuilding it now, and the community around him is grateful,
stopping by to participate or cheer him on. His love is filling him with light, and
that light is filling the old barn with new life and the neighborhood with joy.
That is what wisdom says will happen if we seek her and find her. Our
love will lead to life and joy, even as the world collapses, even as we pass
through the valley of the shadow of death.
In this time of crisis, we face a choice, and given the seriousness of the
times, it is one of the most important decisions of our lives. Are we going to let
the darkness of the world overcome us? Are we going to let negativity seduce
us? Are we going to let fear or despair or the shadow of death make us fall apart
or give up? Or are we going to rise as defiant stewards of the light, and do the
spiritual work we need to do to fill with love?
There will come a time when death will be the right choice to make, when
the way of love and light will lead through death to the greater light beyond,
when death will open before us in the night as a door to new life. But for most of
us, now is not that time.
Dylan Thomas wrote to his dying father,
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
Rise, rise, as loving stewards of the light. If you are among the hurting and
tired, then your stewardship is to come here and be filled and lifted by this loving
community until you are healed and can again give to others. If you are among
those who have some light to share, if you have some time to give, if you have
some money to spare, then your stewardship is to come and contribute all you
can. This world and community and all our hurting friends here need this church,
and this church needs your gifts of love and life and light.
Let us pray in silence, seeking for the light, listening for wisdom to
graciously appear within our heart. Let us ask how we can be stewards of the
light in our soul, in this church and in this world. Let us pray in silence…
Postscript
It is natural to ask, what will the church do with the gifts I give? The truth
is that even though we have a new church plan, the world is changing around us
and we may find ourselves needing to adapt our plans to new realities. But some
things will not change. As long as this church is here it will be serving as a
source of wisdom to those who are seeking guidance, a source of calm to those in
turmoil, a source of comfort to those in pain, a source of material assistance to
those in need, a source of courage to those in fear and a source of light to us all in
our darkest nights. Let us offer the church our gifts in that faith, with gratitude
and hope.
Sermon 11/09/2008