Dear Saints,
Our Gospel reading this weekend – containing the Parable of the Talents – is, perhaps, the chief passage on stewardship in all of Scripture. The concept of stewardship is so central to who we are as Christians and so little understood that I’d like to take a look at it in this note.
If the topic has been addressed before, it’s likely you’ve heard that stewardship is about our “giving back to God.” The idea is that we should give of our time, talent, and treasure to help support our parish. That’s good enough for most pastors, but it falls too far short of the Gospel truth that we know as Good News.
The idea of “giving back to God” makes it sound like God gives us possession of what we have (especially our material goods) and we should give back some part to him as an acknowledgment of our riches. The reality, however, is that God retains possession of everything he entrusts to our care – everything is his – and we are to use everything we have and everything we are for his purposes.
Jesus gives flesh to this concept in the Parable of the Talents. Updating it a little for our own understanding and application, we might say that we are God’s money managers.
Does a money manager have a claim to his client’s resources? Would he dare think of them as his own? Take them for his own? Would he fail to consider at every turn and in every detail what his client wants? Absolutely not.
Simply, my friends, this is our task. Faithful stewardship, to which we are being called, makes us God’s money managers in the broadest sense. It isn’t just his money we are managing – although this is a crucial component of our good stewardship – but our whole life: all of our time, talent, and treasure.
I can’t adequately express how much more exciting “my” life has become since I started living this Gospel truth. It might have started with tithing a full 10% of my income, but this revolution in thought and deed has made me more generous in every aspect of my life. As I share more deeply in God’s own life of love – the God who, after all, is pure self-gift – I am more eager to give myself away and advance his purposes with everything I have and am.
I love you, my friends.
Christ’s Peace,
Father Daniel
δοῦλος Χριστοῦ Ἰησοῦ