This fall, Sowing Holy Question will explore questions of stewardship, reflecting theologically on practical decisions about money, possessions, ecology and our connection to God’s creation.
Fall is “stewardship season” for many congregations – and when we say “stewardship” at church in September, we’re usually talking about pledging and fundraising. We’re usually, for a few anxious weeks, talking about money.
What else could we be talking about?
Before we talk about money, we could talk about economy.
Nowadays, we use the word economy to refer to our big system of banks and corporations and jobs and trade, but the Greek root refers to the way people care for each other in community. The word oikos means household; it presumes relationship.
Our capitalist economy links us with other people through markets. Prices signal where our talents are useful, where we can earn rewards by satisfying the desires of anonymous others. Shopping online, we get stuff (and status) without the hassle of relationship. To paraphrase Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow: the market efficiently satisfies our desires without requiring much love.
But what if love is really what we want?
And what if we forget what we really want because someone is always telling us to be afraid – fearful that we won’t have enough, that our needs won’t be met, that we’re not OK? What if we’re so distracted by Madison Avenue’s endless reminders of our vulnerability and promises of salvation through material consumption that we stop seeing other people, except as means to our own urgent ends?
And what if the point of life actually is love? How would we as a community provide for our material needs if our real goal was to be connected, to enjoy each other? If we required less stuff, we might manage to have lots more fun.
At some level, we know this. That’s why we lean in when Jesus talks about the Kingdom of Heaven — an alternative economy, one grounded in love, in the communion that is the nature of our Triune God. In God’s economy, we enjoy rich fellowship at the same time as we meet one another’s needs.
That’s why we wince when he says: “You cannot serve God and Mammon.”
Because if I’m oriented to getting stuff instead of loving my neighbor, then money is my god – and it’s not that I’m a bad person (although our participation in the anonymous market economy can implicate us in monstrous evil), but rather that I’m not really alive.
It is God’s nature to give. As God’s creatures, our deepest desire is to give. Giving freely, cheerfully, without expectation, even anonymously, is what Jesus shows us and asks of us. In the church, we get to practice this lively economy, to bear witness to a way of Being together made possible in Jesus Christ. Free from fear, our desire is reordered. Very real needs become promising opportunities for work and play and being together – and as we practice this way, communion becomes more satisfying than stuff.
We come to church because we aspire to wholeness – to wholehearted connection with others, to giving our whole selves to something worthy of our lives. We come to church hoping to find a better god than money.
If that’s what we want, we must test Mammon’s fearful claims about life – about scarcity and competition and what makes us worthy and lovable. We must tune in to needs around us. We must make little experimental sacrifices, playfully giving up stuff to see what happens. And if we practice loving as we go, joining the little dances God is inviting us to, we discover what we’re after:
We discover gifts we didn’t know we had and didn’t know others needed.
We discover capacity for letting go and the joyful freedom of having enough.
We discover ways to accept and make beautiful the gifts of others.
And as we discover God’s economy, we discern our places in it, our unique vocations. For while capitalism is a machine that grinds us up as it grants our wishes, God’s economy is a friendship with God’s Spirit that heals our malformed desire so it might find fulfillment in loving others.
God’s economy is what stewardship is all about. If our conversations at church refresh this vision — of a community where we can give all of ourselves, where all our gifts are needed and made beautiful, and where genuine material needs are satisfied in fellowship — we will raise the money we need. We will most likely discover the challenge of faithfully investing a surplus.
More important, we’ll find ourselves asking “What else can I give?” because we see what happens to our offerings. For while Mammon converts everything into the universal currency of insulation and distraction, in God’s economy Jesus returns to us, transformed and nourishing, whatever we lay on the altar.
Of course, the real challenge of stewardship is always hospitality. What people desire most is to pass on what God has given them, and unshared gifts burden the soul. To practice God’s economy, we must be ready to receive what others are willing and able to give – for our receptivity allows others the “more blessed” experience of giving, of becoming “living sacrifices.”
How would conversation about stewardship be different if we started with these questions?
What gifts is our congregation able to receive?
What are people offering us that we don’t know what to do with?
How might we discover fruitful ways to invest more of what people are trying to give us?
