God's Trust in our Stewardship

I speak to you in the name of the one true and living God. Amen.



I talk quite often about how much God loves us. My faith in God’s love gives me great comfort. God’s love does not depend on our actions. God does not just love us when we are being good. God loves us when we are doing evil. God loves those who have faith. God loves those who disbelieve. God became human and died on the cross for all of people. For people just like you and me, complete with all of our flaws. God loves us, every one.

But what does this love look like? How about this: Then God said, "Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth." 27 So God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

For those who are curious, that is from the end of the first chapter of Genesis.

That is quite the vote of confidence. Not only did God use herself as the mold for us, he gave us dominion over everything else in creation. That’s pretty heady stuff.

God trusted us to have dominion over all of creation. God trusts us to rule over it. God trusts us to take care of it. God trusts us to use it wisely.

Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God's mysteries. 2 Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found trustworthy. – The beginning of chapter 4 of first Corinthians.

More heady stuff. Through Christ, we not only have dominion over creation. We also are stewards of God’s mysteries. Once again, we are shown God’s amazing trust in us. But this time our responsibility is set down as well. As stewards, we are required to be trustworthy.

That’s what our Gospel is about today. What does it mean to be a trustworthy steward of God’s gifts to us; of our inheritance?

Does it mean that we should store up our gifts? Save as much as we can for a day when we have little to give? Should we “tear down our barns and build larger ones, and there store all our grain and goods?”

That would be the frugal thing to do, but it isn’t good stewardship. Stewardship is about the good use of our gifts, not about the storage of them.

Our Gospel today talks about one other aspect of stewardship.

The rich man in our reading makes a crucial mistake. He believes that physical possessions, or material wealth, can satisfy his inner being, his very soul.

No amount of stored wealth can do that. We may delude ourselves into believing that it is so, but it just isn’t.

True satisfaction, the fulfillment we feel in deep in our hearts, only comes from action. It is in the moment and it is another gift from God. It doesn’t do any good to store it up. Saving it only makes it smaller.

There’s a funny thing that happens when we practice this kind of stewardship. When we choose to give a portion to do God’s work: a portion of our time, a portion of our wealth, a portion of our hearts, what is left over is somehow more that we started with. When we show God that we are worthy of his trust, God shows us just how much he has to give.

Thanks be to God.