Stewardship has long been a buzz word in the church.
We use the word stewardship to talk about how we appropriate our gifts, our resources – all that we have from our money in bank to the muscles in our back.
Wikipedia sums up the term and its history nicely:
Stewardship is personal responsibility for taking care of another person's property or financial affairs or in religious orders taking care of finances. Historically, stewardship was the responsibility given to household servants to bring food and drinks to a castle dining hall. The term was then expanded to indicate a household employee's responsibility for managing household or domestic affairs. Stewardship later became the responsibility for taking care of passengers' domestic needs on a ship, train and airplane, or managing the service provided to diners in a restaurant. The term continues to be used in these specific ways, but it is also used in a more general way to refer to a responsibility to take care of something one does not own. "Every person has a responsibility to look after the planet both for themselves and for the future generations. Acting irresponsibly could cause damage such as pollution, the destruction of cultural herritage, etc." [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewardship]
The concept behind stewardship puts us basically in the role of manager and not proprietor.
For me, it’s honestly a psychological ploy or maybe even sly euphemism to get us to let go of what we’ve got. In other words, if we are stewards, we have the “privilege” of serving it up, opening the gates, regulating the flow, deciding the course with everything in an outward direction.
Jesus drove in points about stewardship in his teachings. In the Parable of the Talents in Matthew 25:14-28 he addresses how a wise steward ought to invest the master’s wealth with intent of increasing the principle. The man given five talents of money doubles his money, as does the man given two talents – and the master commends them for this. But the man with one talent buries it in the ground, and receives no appreciation on the money, nor any from his master.
Interestingly, quite the opposite in the Parable of the Shrewd Manager [Luke 16:1-15], Jesus offers up the story of a manager accused of poor stewardship but whom the master in the end commends for his management skills even though it yield a net financial loss. The short story is on the eve of potentially losing his job, the manager strips a debt of 800 gallons of olive oil oiled the master to 400. He reduces another man’s 1000 bushels of wheat owed to 800. Jesus’ makes his teaching point this:
The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
With these and other Biblical passages as backdrop, my language for talking about money has always used the “S” word – Stewardship. And the questions revolving around money and resource issues, challenges…okay, procurement, have prodded conversations about use and management philosophies.
However, I’ve got another problem.
I’ll say it blankly. My struggles with Stewardship—how much, to whom, when, how—are really not so much Stewardship issues but Ownership issues.
I’m struggle not because I am a Steward but because I deep down inside I believe I’m the Owner
Sure, I say all that I have is yours, Lord—but I say it with an attitude of it’s still mine and I’m giving it back to you. Maybe it was yours in the beginning, but I took ownership of it and, honestly, I kind of liked it, and now in good conscious because I know it’s the proper thing to do, I am giving it back to you. Some of it. The part I don’t need. The portion that makes me feel good when I generously give. But not all of it. Only what I can afford to give away, but I’m saving the rest for Me.
I am giving. I have control. I have will. I have choice. I have responsibility. I am making the decision. Someday if I’ve done a good job, I’ll be commended for it. I, I, I.
Why am I so possessive? Why do I want to exact so much control? I wonder if it’s a lack of trust. Or maybe I don’t understand my relationship with God as well as I thought. And maybe I don’t understand my need and my fears.
Maybe I need to just stop thinking of myself as owner.
What would happen if I signed away all my possessions to God? Everything, the small stuff as well as the big: My car, my clothes, the laundry detergent I use to wash my clothes. The hours in the day, my quiet time with God. My skills and education, my work experience. The food I eat, the parties I attend, the music I listen to. The Internet. The tea I bought in China last year, the pants that I say God bought for me. My diamond engagement ring, the old jade passed down to me from my grandmother. The roads and highways, the traffic signal, everything city, county, state, and federal. My creative work, my words, this writing.
And if not owner, what? A tenant, renter, user, borrower? A leech? Or how about a different view altogether
Am I afraid of poverty?
Tonight we had dinner with Rafonzel Fazon, a young woman, 21 years old who came from the poorest of the poor areas in the Philippines. She became a Compassion International sponsored child when she was five, supported, fed, educated, encouraged by a sponsor in the U.S. whom she has never met. She is now working towards her bachelor’s degree in communications and in a special program that pays for her college tuition while continuing to nurture her as a disciple of Jesus Christ.
She said that when she was little she used to be so hungry and would worry every day what she might get to eat. Every day she worried about a meal. But through the Compassion program that works to “release children from poverty in Jesus’ name,” she worries no more.
She says this: Poverty is the fear that you will not have enough. But because I know that Jesus is taking care of all my needs, I do not fear anymore. That, she says is being released from poverty.
I need to reconsider my perspective.
Do I fear that I will not have enough? Do I fear that God will not have enough for me, so I stash some on the side?
In Jesus’ parables mentioned above, the first one talks about multiplication, it demonstrates an investment of resources that yields far way more than the principle: two- and five-fold. That’s a pretty high return. The second one speaks of divestment that wins friends and a place in eternity. In both parables, the stewards use their masters’ money, and in both, except for the servant who makes neither money nor friends, they are rewarded handsomely.
The point? It’s not mine to have, not mine to own and if I try to own things, they will own me. A purchase does not make it mine, only mine to use and pass on.
Jesus says in Mark 8:35-36: For whoever desires to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for My sake and the gospel’s will save it. For what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, and loses his own soul?
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LORD, help me to not make a claim on my own life. Help me to not look for ownership papers that make things “mine.” Help me to see your generosity and your genius and to trust in you. Remake me yet again in your Holy Spirit, and release me from the poverty of fear. In Jesus’ name.
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