Joyful Giving
What happens in your mind when you are asked to fill out a pledge card? I suspect that at least part of your mind approaches it as a consumer would – a religious consumer, but still a consumer. It’s a bill to be paid, and somehow it must be fitted in with all the other bills we pay for goods and services we need or want. Naturally we consider what other ways we could use that money – and naturally we want to minimize the cost (and maximize benefit). That’s what consumers (and bill-payers) do! And there may be a somewhat grudging sense of obligation, but little joy. Yet the Scripture says, “Let every man do according as he is disposed in his heart, not grudgingly, or of necessity; for God loveth a cheerful giver” (2 Cor. 9.7). So what would it take for us to fill out that pledge card with cheerfulness? What will turn us into joyful givers instead of grudging consumers?
That is the spiritual question at the heart of the annual stewardship campaign. Yes there are practical matters of church budgets and finances, and these deserve careful consideration. Not only do we have to meet the cost of our current ministry commitments, but there are ministry investments (notably a third priest position) which we know we should be making but have never been able to afford. Such practical questions deserve our attention – but the state of our souls is also a practical question of even greater importance. If we are grudging consumers of religious services rather than joyful givers in service of God then our whole approach needs to be rethought. And the basis for doing so is in the family of faith, which is the family of God.
Our natural relation to God is that of creature to Creator – of finite to infinite, transitory to everlasting, the barely existent to the inexhaustible plenitude of being. Yet, by a marvel of his grace, he has chosen to bring us into intimate relationship with himself. In Christ he has given himself to us as our Father, and in Christ, the faithful are united to one another as brothers and sisters, the children of God, and inheritors of his kingdom – “with angels and archangels and all the company of heaven”. In ourselves we are nothing; but in Christ we are everything to God. “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God” (1 John 3:1).
The word “children” has different connotations in Scripture. The “little children” of whom Jesus speaks in today’s gospel lesson, are powerless and dependent on the good will of others for every need. Likewise, we are utterly dependent on the grace of our Father for every need – our daily bread, the forgiveness of our trespasses, our deliverance from evil. Yet “children” in Scripture are also full-grown adults working in responsible partnerships with their parents, as active agents of the parental purpose, ready to give and sacrifice much for their sake. Think of Jonathan to Saul, or Ruth to Naomi, or Elisha to Elijah. It as his own children that we are “workers together with the Lord” (2 Cor 6:1), ready to give our all for the hallowing of his name, the coming of his kingdom, and the fulfilment of his will. The two sides of being a child are connected. We are loved beyond all deserving, beloved even when we sin against him, beloved when we turn to him in repentance and hope. Knowing ourselves loved in the very depths of our being, we are freed from anxious self-concern to serve and please him in all things, in fulfilment of his gracious will.
And his will is that we should love one another as he has loved us; and to serve one another with the gifts he has given us for that purpose, “as good stewards of the manifold grace of God” (1 Peter 4:10). When we talk about “stewardship”, therefore, we are talking not just about the church’s financial needs, but our own status and identity in the family of God. That’s why the offering of alms and oblations is an act of worship: it is a thankful response to fatherly love of God, not just in feeling but in action.
Over the next several weeks of St. John’s Stewardship campaign, we will be asking you to thoughtfully and prayerfully consider your call to stewardship, and gently prompting you to make a pledge of your giving for the next calendar year, 2025. It’s easy to think of this as a mere financial transaction, as if we were religious consumers purchasing religious services. We ask that you will think about those very practical financial decisions the light of faith, not as religious consumers but as the family of God, growing to maturity as his own children forever.