Let’s have some fun with stewardship this morning and work backwards. Fun and stewardship may seem oxymoronic, but maybe that’s the problem. People who get too serious about money matters show that money matters to them too much. The first thing that has to happen if you are ever to find the fun of stewardship is to lighten up about it. So let’s start by playing our texts backwards, the way you used to play Beatles’ records to see if Paul was dead or “Stairway to Heaven” to listen for subliminal Satan messages. We’ll start with Jesus’ conclusion, work back to his conditions, and see if he is alive and giving the same message.

Sell your possessions, and give alms. Now from time to time I meet people who are really concerned that we take the Bible literally at every point: they like to talk about how we cannot pick and choose those parts of the Bible we want to believe and leave the rest. They like to say that we don’t need to interpret the Bible; we only need to obey it. So if I’m feeling impish I ask them about this verse. How’s that sale of all your possessions going? And the almsgiving? How’s that coming along?

You read a verse like this and unless you are St. Francis of Assisi and take it as the straightforward word of the Lord, you pass over it thinking it only applies to rich people who can afford it, or Jesus is just exaggerating to make a point. But let’s disavow ourselves of the first point first. Jesus says these words mainly to poor people not to the rich. It is his Sermon on the Plain from Luke that parallels the Sermon on the Mount from Matthew. The crowd is mostly country folk. So that won’t work any more than it works when you sit there in the pew and say, Stewardship is for people who have a lot more than I. God wants them to support the church with their extra money and I will do it through my time and talents. Uh, no.

Almsgiving is for all of us. The word shares the same root as mercy in the New Testament. It is God’s way of caring for the poor and using the church to do it. We help those in need here and around the world. And we help each other, especially in times of unemployment like these days. We have recently used almsgiving to float a number of folk within our own church through difficult times, so that their families don’t come to disaster. If it takes selling possessions to do that, then we are commanded to do that too.

One of the reasons so many people cannot give or give more than they do is because they have already tied up their cash in possessions. Some of you here today are over-housed, over-automobiled, over-furnished, over-hobbied, over-dressed, over-invested, and over-saved. So, do you possess your possessions or do your possessions possess you? When your liquid assets become so frozen they cannot be used to do the will of God with, they have become spiritual liabilities to you and your value to the kingdom of God is declining. And when that happens, Jesus is your broker calling to say, Sell, Sell, Sell, before it’s too late.

If we are going to learn that, we have to back up and see what’s at the root of our inability to give generously – whether alms or tithes or any kind of offerings. Do not be afraid, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the kingdom. That’s it, isn’t it? Fear? We are afraid if we don’t take care of ourselves first, if we don’t see to our needs first, we will somehow be one paycheck from the poorhouse.

Nowadays fear is ruling the marketplace as much as irrational exuberance was ruling it two years ago. Yes, some people are truly suffering due to loss of jobs and mounting debt. I’m not talking about them. I am talking about the fear that has irrationally gripped so many upon seeing their retirement accounts and investment portfolios plummet. No one ever said that 75% growth per year in a mutual fund was ridiculous. We only moan when things go south. And then we use the economy as an excuse for every instinct to board the windows and hoard. It’s like all the businesses that went bad after 9/11. For every one that failed truly because of 9/11, ten more were just badly managed and 9/11 got blamed. Some of us are not hurt by the economy as much as our own bad management.

Jesus says that taking care of our basic needs is God’s responsibility not ours. Do not worry about your life, what you will eat, or about your body, what you will wear. For life is more than food, and the body more than clothing. Is that true? Do you believe that? Do you think God will provide for your needs if you trust God for them? Think about what you spend most of your mental energy thinking about? Do you spend more time calculating how you can afford to buy this or that or more time figuring how to give more to the kingdom of God?

I have a friend who recently shared with me the decision-making process of whether to invest some money, and if so how much. He was concerned that with a capital campaign coming up next year at the church, he didn’t want to have too much of his money tied up, preventing him from giving what he thought he should give. What a difference it would make in the witness of the church to the world if we reasoned that way more as Christians. One thing that undermines our witness is our lack of charity. Across the Muslim world, what discredits our religion is not the Christ we say we believe in but the life we fail to live in his name. We have merged western-style capitalism with the gospel in a way that makes it seem we are only interested in what we can acquire and consume. Muslims resent the way we come after their oil and consider it our right to have it. They accuse us of waging war with Saddam over our desire to control Iraq’s oil reserves. I choose to believe that the root of our concern is nobler, but we don’t help our case with the lifestyles we live.

We worry about what we will eat, what we will put on. And all the while Jesus has promised us that that is God’s concern. We are robbing God of the good pleasure of giving us the kingdom by taking it upon ourselves to earn everything we have. And we do this partially because we live out of a theology of scarcity rather than a theology of abundance. We think there is only so much to go round and we make sure we get ours and more, regardless of whether anyone else has any. It’s like sitting down at the dinner table and grabbing all you can when the plates are passed, because you are afraid you won’t get enough to eat your fill. What you don’t know is that Mama has another tray of lasagna in the oven and another loaf of bread baking. That’s the way God wants us to think: God never gets out of the kitchen making our next meal. God never leaves the Singer sewing machine, making our next shirt. God knows we need these things and God wants us to think about more important things than that.

Now I’m going to break my own rule and for once tell you story in which I did something right. Most of time it’s best for me to tell you where I messed up, and you strangely seem to enjoy that. Makes us fellow soul pilgrims, I guess. Well, a few years ago I had bought the 1999 Toyota Avalon I still drive. I like the car as much today as I did when I bought it. But about two weeks off the show room floor, it was parked in my pastor’s spot here at church. The UPS truck rolled up and tried to maneuver the tight turn in our lot. It failed and ended up rear-ending me, christening my car with its first dent. When the front desk called me downstairs, the New Yorker in me was shifting into high gear faster than you can say The Big Apple. I met the young man who was driving Big Brown. He was very nice and apologetic. And then he went into this story about how he could not have the accident reported or he would lose his job; oh, and by the way, he and his wife have their first child on the way. So, I’m thinking, why couldn’t a rich person run into my car? What am I supposed to do about this? It’s a brand new car, for heaven’s sake. And then I thought about heaven’s sake and remembered we were in church and I was a preacher. I hate when I do that, don’t you know?! Well, I agreed to look into the thing. I am always amazed at how much it costs to fix something that doesn’t seem so bad. To do the thing right would have cost several thousand dollars. But after talking it over with Kim and praying about it, we took a cheaper way that didn’t do the job like new but wasn’t bad either. And when the time came, my dad went to the body shop with me to pick it up. I told him we had decided to pay for it ourselves, that the man had a baby on the way and his job in the balance, it just seemed the thing to do. My dad reached for his checkbook and tried to pay for it for me, but I couldn’t let him or I wouldn’t have felt the same about it. When I told the young man about our decision, tears came his eyes and he and his wife expressed more gratitude than I have ever known. About three months later we got a picture of their new baby in the mail. It was like we had become part of their family, because of a simple act of almsgiving.

Many of us miss out on those experiences because we are afraid of losing what we have and therefore too afraid to give. But we also miss out because we proceed from the wrong assumption: we think what we have is ours, that we have earned it and we can do with it what we want. That’s not what the Bible says. The Greek word for steward is better translated “trustee.” In other words, what we have is not ours at all: it all belongs to God and is given to us to serve as trustees of. That’s why Moses can tell Israel: Do not say to yourself, “My power and the might of my own hand have gotten me this wealth.”

Kyle Brown grew up on a farm in west Texas, about 40 miles outside of Amarillo. Three years ago he was home for the funeral of his mother. His father, Davis, was about to bury his wife of more than thirty years, after she had suffered through a battle with colon cancer and finally succumbed. The night before the service, they were sitting in the house with friends when a major storm kicked up. It was only about a week away from harvest time, and the wheat was still green and tender. When you farm in west Texas, every crop is a miracle, but it is also your annual income. Davis looked out the window and soon they all saw something to dread: hail began to beat down on the earth. Davis sat in his chair serenely and others wondered how much more he could bear. Soon someone said, Davis, you look like you are taking this pretty well. How can you be at such peace? This could be a disaster. He paused and then said confidently: It’s not my crop!

Davis Brown understands the one thing that enables him to have courage in the face of loss: he knows that all he has comes from the hand of a God of abundance who never tires of giving good gifts to his children. When we give alms or tithes, when we give as God calls us to, we give God room to show us God’s power and generosity. Anyone want to miss out on that?