Speaking of Stewardship Season, here's a nice nugget of wisdom from our Presbyterian tradition:
"Those who follow the discipline of Christian stewardship will find themselves called to lives of simplicity, generosity, honesty, hospitality, compassion, receptivity, and concern for the earth and God’s creatures."
What a list. This week I'm struck by the word RECEPTIVITY; not the first term one might associate with an emphasis on stewardship giving, inside or outside our congregation. But I think it fits. If one starts with the spiritually cascading truths that all is God's and all is on loan from God and all is offered back to God as worship and gratitude — and that Jesus is our leader is no doubt the exemplar steward — then good stewardship invites us to learn again and again a supple posture of receptivity.
Openness. Nimbleness. Readiness. After all, one never knows what is next in this way of walking.
What opportunities for good giving will present themselves? Where will I sense the divine Holy Spirit nudge? When a moment of extra giving comes along, how can I trust that giving away more of the gifts of God will be good for my soul, thereby flipping the script on the tendency to grasp and cling? Maybe you have a talent: Are you open to new and surprising ways that our Providential God might put it to use for blessing others? And given that we serve a Resurrecting God, full of Easter Surprises and Pentecost Interruptions, how can we each pay attention for the prompting of that same Spirit in the nooks and crannies of ordinary days? and in the week to week of this congregation we love?
Sunday's gospel teaching is again from Luke, again it is Jesus teaching us in simple parable, and again is about a posture toward God and God's world around us that could rightly be called stewardship. Luke 12:35-48. Read ahead, and “be dressed for action. Have your lamps lit!" Jesus-receptivity and Jesus-readiness apparently call for a smart source of light. After all, a follower of Jesus never quite knows what the morrow will bring.
That is the blessing of this stewardship business, not a curse.
