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Today is our Commitment Sunday in our stewardship campaign, and this is the third and last in a series on stewardship.  I hope you’re prepared to put your commitment card into the offering plate as it goes by after the sermon.  But “stewardship” is a bit of an awkward word, I’ll admit.  “Stewardship” may even be an archaic word.  What does it mean, anyway?  Maybe the best way for me to answer that is to tell a story.

You might remember that last week I began my sermon by telling you about our visit to San Francisco, and my conversation with Michael, the coin collector.  I told how he also collects tokens, which are like coins, except that tokens are made out of non-precious metals.  Factories, mines, or retail businesses made tokens for the convenience of their workers or customers.  Tokens benefited workers in the 18^th and 19^th centuries by allowing them to divide their wages into increments, rather than having to “liquidate” them and spending a week’s wage in one place (often a pub) at one sitting.  I suggested last week that we, too, see the importance of dividing our income into increments, and that incremental, or proportional giving is helpful both to the church and to each of us individually.

In that same conversation about the tokens, Michael said something else that fascinated me almost as much as his explanation of “liquid assets.”  As we talked about his collection, Michael said that he had an entire set of tokens produced.  They were the whole range of tokens of various values made by one business over a few years’ time.  I remarked that amassing what amounts to a complete set of these tokens was quite a feat, probably taking years to accomplish.

Michael said that actually, the tokens had come to him as a complete set, and that sets of tokens, while not especially common, are not that rare, either.  The reason, he said, is that when they were first produced, collectors immediately saw their value as an oddity in the coin world.  As they were produced, some coin collectors assembled sets of these tokens immediately as they were produced, much like some of us did with the 50 state quarters that were minted by our government over several years recently.  And he actually acquired the set of tokens, as a set, from another collector some time ago.  That collector received them from another, who inherited them from another, all the way to the one who initially assembled the set as they were made.

 Michael said that as he showed his set of tokens to another coin collector, his friend said something interesting. His friend told Michael to enjoy the set of tokens, but not to get too attached to them.  Simply take care of them, but never should he believe that they were actually his, alone.  These treasures would outlast them both, and that they would belong to someone else in the not-too-distant future.  Therefore, he doesn’t really possess them.  Michael is merely their caretaker, until someone else cares for them.  And then someone else, and another after that.

 I tell that story to say this: Michael is merely caring for that set of tokens; he doesn’t own them.  They are his, in a sense.  But they aren’t his, either.  He is, in theological language, a “steward” of these tokens.

 There’s a lot of talk these days about caring for the earth.  People are interested in “green” products and “green” processes, so that this adjective no longer describes a color but a philosophy. It’s a philosophy of living lightly, of having a small carbon footprint. To consciously promote things “green,” is to remember that, like Michael, we’re all passing through this world, and none of us really owns much of anything.  We use, consume, and perhaps restore or abuse the planet.  But it isn’t ours.  We are merely stewards of it all.  The planet belongs to God.

 The affirmation that the planet belongs to God, not to us, is an old one, of course.  I think it’s an affirmation at the heart of those very old verses that begin our scriptures:  “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth….”  (Genesis 1:1)  I realize that we’ve fought with each other as liberals against conservatives (or as progressives against fundamentalists) notice how even the labels are loaded!?  We’ve fought about whether those opening verses in Genesis are literally or scientifically true, while ignoring the greater, more widely accepted truth agreed on by both sides of the faith: “God created the heaven and the earth.”  And we didn’t.

 Friends, neither Genesis nor the rest of our Bible is about “creation science,” even if you believe such a notion is true, and not an oxymoron.  Nor is Genesis about evolution, which may be the best explanation science, has yet devised to explain how we all arrived here to share this mysteriously wonderful world.  Rather, Genesis is not science at all, of either political stripe; Genesis is theology.  Genesis is a theological reminder that this world is a gift of God, and that makes the remainder of the Bible, I suppose, a commentary on how we humans ought best to use this gift of God.

 The biblical truth is that ours is a wonderful, exciting planet, a world that sustains us with bounty, beauty, and wonder beyond our ability to imagine, it is all a gift.  Here is the heart of thanksgiving for our nation and for our world. This world is not here for only for us; we are here for each other. Despite claims made by fences, refrigerators, checkbooks, or deposit boxes, this world is never ours alone.  To the extent that we control the use of those gifts in our hands, these gifts are never ours merely to consume.  Theologically, this world is ours only to enjoy, to explore in wonder and gratitude, and finally to give to our children.  The hope that we’ll leave it a bit better than we found it is, in part I suspect, our realization that we are quickly passing along on this grand and giving planet.

 By either coincidence, if you happen to believe in such, or by the work of the Holy Spirit (I didn’t actually plan it this way, I assure you), today is not merely the culmination of our stewardship campaign, a reminder of thanksgiving, and the end of the church’s yearly liturgical rhythm.  The church’s year ends, theologically, as it always does, affirming “Christ the King.” (Or, if you’re more inclined toward the politically correct, “The reign of Christ.”) Either way, we say it, today is a liturgical highlight for those who notice.

 This day says to us the in the church, “God alone is God.”  Our stewardship campaign has the same message. To remember that we are “stewards” and not owners of this earth is to remember that God alone is the “owner,” who has generously called us to responsibly caring for this world and all in it that we mistakenly call “ours.”  Today God says to us, to paraphrase Chevy Chase’s punch line from “Saturday Night Live:”  “I’m God.  And you’re not.”

 Christians affirm that truth.  Christians know if we know little else, that God is not our buddy, though God is, in many ways and at the moment our deepest need, our friend.  But God is more, infinitely and immeasurably more than merely our friend.  God is the source of all the resources we casually call our own.  How we use these resources reflects what we think of the God who gives them. It’s good to remember who we are:  fallen sinners yet loved by God.  Still, we are not God; but we are all that we are by the goodness, generosity and grace of God.  The epistle lesson ends with a reminder of just who God is:  “’I am the Alpha and the Omega,’ says the Lord God, who is and who was and who is to come.” (Revelation 1:8, New Revised Standard Version)  We are the ones who are now, but only for a while.  We were not.  And we will not be.

 But now, we are.  And now, we are blessed.  And now, we can be responsible for all that God entrusts to us.  We are those, says this same lesson from John’s Revelation, who are blessed by God.  From his rocky little island prison in the Mediterranean Ocean, John writes to the faithful:  “Grace to you and peace from him who is and who was and who is to come … and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness … and ruler of the kings of the earth.  To him who loves us and freed us from our sins by his blood, and made us to be a kingdom, priests (another synonym for stewards!) serving his God and Father, to him be glory and dominion forever and ever.”  (Revelation 1:4b-6)

 We serve a God who is larger than are we.  We, as stewards, give to support a vision of a family united by love around the world.  We, as stewards, give to serve a God who longs that we enjoy this world, but that we also shape it for the better, not merely consume its goodness for our own convenience or comfort.

 This world is God’s, not ours.  Still, in the here and this, our only time, how we use our world is our responsibility.  One day, we’ll stand before the King, Christ the King, who’ll ask us all, “What did you do with that life I gave you?”

 Some will have little more to say than, “Well, I gathered up some tokens and I used them to have a very good life.”  If that’s all there for us, the church, to say, well, heaven help us.

Heaven help us indeed.  Amen.

Mamaroneck United Methodist, November 22, 2009.

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