We continue in the Season of Creation. Here at St Luke’s and at St John’s we are also taking the opportunity to review our giving to the Church. As a member of the congregation I have received my pack and am invited to return the form next week. This an opportunity for me to decide what I can give to the Church. Together with all the other offerings it will be brought to the altar at our Harvest Festival next week.

The term we use in Church to describe our giving is ‘stewardship’. It’s a good word but it needs a bit of unpacking. It includes money but it’s not all about money. It’s also about the time we can give to support the ministry and mission of the church. It’s also about offering particular skills and talents in the service of the church. All this is stewardship. It’s good regularly to review our stewardship.

But why do we use this word ‘stewardship’? It’s used because it tells us about God and what it means to be a human being. It’s one way of describing in one word the Chistian vision of what it means to live a fulfilled human life. Actually it’s rather radical.

We live in one of the most secular parts of the world: Western Europe. The predominant picture is that we’re born each as individuals onto the world stage and if during our lifetime we can each accumulate as much stuff as possible, do just as much as each of us wants – that’s a fulfilled life. Actually it’s a recipe for disaster not least because it treats the earth as a bottomless pit of goodies to be ransacked for what we want. That has left us in an environment which is prone to flooding, easily set on fire and storm ridden. In a sense the planet will be all right. The deep problem is that it won’t be much good as a home for humans. Our desire to grab what we can while the going is good has brought disaster.

So what’s the Christian way of looking at what it means to live a fulfilled life? And that is what the Christian vision is: a fulfilled life. Jesus says, ‘I have come that you may have life and that you may have it more abundantly.’ The Christian way of looking is that ‘everything is gift’.

‘Everything is gift’. God is a giver, a generous giver.

Think of the parable we heard as our Gospel reading this morning: ‘Are you envious that I am generous?’ asks the vineyard owner. It’s a parable about God’s Kingdom, that is the real Kingdom. The King of this kingdom is generous. The Kingdom of God is not elsewhere, some fantasy land in the sky, merely some hereafter. The Kingdom of God is for here and now and how we live our lives.

Our signature prayer, The Lord’s Prayer, prays, ‘Your Kingdom come on earth as in heaven’. That means: ‘Your Kingdom come, the Kingdom you want, the Kingdom you have shown us is the only true Kingdom, the only true way to live and act, the true environment in which human beings can together live life and live life abundantly. Please god, that Kingdon come!’

Each of our lives is a gift. My body, my brain, my mind, my capacity to feel, this ‘me’ that we each are is a gift, here by the grace and mercy of God, brought into being to live a life as a response to who God is, the giver of my life, the generous creator. The Bible has many phrases to describe who we truly are. ‘Stewards’ is one of them: we hold the gifts of God in our hands to look after them. We are children of God: we have our origin in God. We are, as we hear later on when invited to the receive communion, ‘God’s holy people’.

Learning this vision takes time. We don’t usually learn all at once that God is generous, that all is gift, that abundant living is patiently responding to God in all we do and think. It takes time. That’s why in the prayer at the altar, as the bread and the wine of the Eucharist are laid out there, we shall soon hear this prayer: ‘change us more and more to be like Jesus our Saviour’. The perfect pattern of responding to God is Jesus. That’s why we can pray confidently: ‘change us more and more to be like Jesus our Saviour’.

So, with this Chrisitan vision before us, we can review the stewardship of our money, time and talents, and bring our pledges next week to be presented on the altar. But more important than that, is bringing ourselves, our souls and bodies to the altar with the prayer, ‘change us more and more to be like Jesus our Saviour’

Service: Canon Bill Croft. 24th September 2023. (St John The Baptist Church Peterborough UK)

Readings: Jonah 3.10 – 4 end; Philippians 1.21 – end; Matthew 20.1-16