Jesus Followers,
While “stewardship” is usually the word we use to describe “giving to the church,” I hope you’ve both seen written and heard proclaimed that it’s primarily or even more rightly about how we are called to live, how we are invited to use the gifts God has placed within our reach, and about seeing the Kingdom of God and how we might “fit” as a part of it. Yes. Our money is a part of how we respond to God and a part of how we might “fit” into the work of the Kingdom—but it’s certainly not the only part. Let’s face it. If looking good “with our money” were how this worked, we would simply have people write checks toward their place in heaven. Can you hear all the personal appeals…
“…there could be streets lined with gold, if you join heaven’s pre-payment plan.”
You don’t need me to tell you that this isn’t how it works; you know already that our congregation’s mission and vision operates differently: WE love because God first loved us!
You know already, probably, that stewardship and following Jesus go hand in hand. They’re about living fully and faith-filled lives following Jesus—who is the epitome of how God loves. It’s about incorporating and using all the gifts we’ve been given to “make life on earth as it is in heaven” (to borrow from what Jesus teaches us to pray and do).
But this month in worship, we’re facing some of Jesus’ most challenging stories. You’ve heard about following Jesus. …I wonder if you’d be willing to think about it differently.
In his book, The Jesus Way: A Contemporary Approach to the Teachings of Jesus, Eugene Peterson asks:
What if Jesus' messiahship was about creating a messianic community filled with the Spirit who would join him in turning the world right side up ...getting heaven into us rather than getting us into heaven?
…What if Jesus weren’t just the one we followed, but the one who “gets heaven into us?”
Maybe start with an image like communion—where we literally take Christ in—as a catalyst for transforming us. …Like God, who at the time of creation, took chaos as a building block, transforming it as creation.
What if we’re not just “following Jesus,” but supposed to be transformed into Jesus-ness …being made into little pieces of heaven-ness ourselves? So that we are turning the world into the image that’s resident in each of us—the creator, or just as Jesus teaches us to pray, “on earth as it is in heaven.”
It might mean then, that not just following Jesus, but that we are invited (or CALLED) to use God’s gifts “on earth as it is in heaven.” And “stewardship” is how we manage what we’ve been given.
…Then, it would help if we began to talk about heaven as something we’ve already been given; rather than simply believing, it’s only yet to come.
It is my privilege to remind you that Jesus loves you. So do I. God wants the best for us and is inviting us to fulfill our calling. Out of chaos, into hope and love and light and joy!
