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Overview
A short guidebook on what it means to be a Christian investing time, talent, and treasure for the body of Christ.
The Rev. Dr. John H. Westerhoff challenges Christians to move beyond the quest for material possessions by embarking on a life of simplicity that begins with an inward journey. An exploration of how to fulfill the baptismal covenant by giving generously from the heart to achieve a deeper relationship with God.
“My aim is to provide a resource for you to grow personally and to use in in the development of a program of stewardship in your congregation.”—from the introduction.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780819229502 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Morehouse Publishing |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2002 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 46 |
| File size: | 1 MB |
About the Author
John H. Westerhoff taught at numerous Episcopal, Roman Catholic, and Protestant theological schools around the world, retiring in 1994 as the Professor of Theology and Christian Nurture at Duke Divinity School. He is the author of more than 25 books, including Will Our Children Have Faith?, Living Faithfully as a Prayer Book People, and A Pilgrim People. He died in 2022.
Read an Excerpt
Grateful and Generous Hearts
A Pilgrim's Stewardship Adventure
By John H. Westerhoff
Church Publishing Incorporated
Copyright © 2013 John H. WesterhoffAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-8192-2950-2
CHAPTER 1
Opening Reflections
At our baptism each of us was made a Christian. However, insofar as Christianity is a way of life, each of us is called upon to live in community and enter upon a pilgrimage to become Christian, that is, to live into our baptism and become the person our baptism proclaims we are. This pilgrimage is an adventure and a difficult challenge, particularly in terms of becoming a faithful steward.
One of the major reasons that it is difficult for us either to understand or become faithful stewards is that we live in a functional era, a time in which our being is defined by our doing. In other words, we are what we do.
As followers of Jesus, however, we cannot separate who we are from how we behave. But neither can we begin with our behavior. We must begin always with whom God has made us, that is, with our being, who by God's grace we really are.
Our identity is to be founded upon the fact that we have been incorporated into the body of Christ to the end that we might have Christlike characteristics, that is, be disposed to behave in Christlike ways. (I refer you to Calling: A Song for the Baptized, by Caroline Westerhoff, Cowley Publications.)
One of the difficulties in understanding stewardship in our functional era is that most people's understanding focuses on action, trying to convince people to give of their time, talents, and treasures to the laudatory programs and faithful works of the church. Nevertheless, this essay is not concerned with raising money or gaining more volunteers for the church. Therefore, I invite you to put aside all your present understandings and all you have been taught about stewardship and consider an alternative.
What follows is about God's invitation to enter upon a pilgrimage of living into your baptism, of acquiring a more grateful and generous heart, a heart like Jesus'.
Much Obliged, Dear Lord
Fulton Oursler, author of The Greatest Story Ever Told, tells the story of Anna, the old black woman who raised him as a child. One day, he writes, he was sitting in the kitchen and heard her say, "Much obliged, dear Lord, for my vittles."
"What's a vittle?" he asked.
"It's whatever I've got to eat and drink," she responded.
"But you'd get your vittles whether you thanked God or not!" he continued.
"Sure," she said, "but it makes everything taste better to be thankful. You know, it's a game an old preacher taught me to play. It's about looking for things to be thankful for. Like one day I was walking to the store to buy a loaf of bread. I look in all the windows. There are so many pretty clothes."
"But Anna, you can't afford to buy any of them!" he interjected.
"Oh, I know, but I can play dolls with them. I can imagine your mom and sister all dressed up in them and I'm thankful. Much obliged, dear Lord, for playing in an old lady's mind."
"Then," she continued, "one day, I got caught in the rain. I had heard about people taking showers and I've seen the one you use, and I thought, now I have one too. You know, God is just giving away heaven every day. Much obliged, dear Lord."
Oursler ends his story with these words: "The soul of long-dead Anna was a big soul, big enough to see God everywhere, and she taught me a great deal about life; for I will never forget when word came to me from the dingy street where she lived that Anna was dying. I remember driving in a cab and standing by her bedside; she was deep in pain and her old hands were knotted together in a desperate clutch. Poor old woman, what had she to be thankful for now?"
"She opened her eyes and looked at me. 'Much obliged, dear Lord, for such fine friends.' She never spoke again except in my heart, but she speaks to me every day there, and I'm much obliged, dear Lord, for that."
This is much more than a moving Pollyanna story. Anna was not simply an optimistic personality, one who, no matter what, could look on the bright side of things. She was, in Oursler's words, "a big soul, big enough to see God everywhere." She was in her heart a grateful person, one who had a deep sense that all of life is a gift. Taking nothing for granted, demanding nothing as her due, she recognized that we come into this world with nothing, we go out with nothing, and in between we are given all we have.
To be thankful is not to deny that life can be difficult and painful. It does not compel us to pretend that things are better than they are or to ignore the suffering and pain in our lives or in the lives of others. But being thankful does require us to acknowledge our creaturehood, our dependence, and our lack of self-sufficiency. And it does require us to express through grateful and generous hearts our thankfulness. "Much obliged, dear Lord, for all you have given us."
Perception Is Everything
How we understand and live our lives is a result of how we perceive life and our lives. Christianity is a way of life dependent upon our perceptions, which is to say our faith. We all live by some faith. And that faith determines how we live.
Recall the parable of the talents (Matthew 25:14–30). It is a story that is related to stewardship, but not in the way we might think. In this story, like many others, there are two throwaway characters whose purpose is to draw attention to a third character. In this case, there is the master, who is God. God entrusts his three servants with his money. God returns and asks them to account for their stewardship. The third one explains, "I perceived you to be a harsh, demanding, critical parent, and so I saved what you gave me and here it is." And God responds, "You say I am a harsh, demanding, critical parent? Well then, let's take what you have saved and give it to the others, and then cast you out where there is gnashing of teeth."
Here is a parable intended to teach us that the God we perceive is the only God we can experience, even if the God of our experience is not God at all. Further, this faith or perception of God will influence our understanding of stewardship. Stewardship, therefore, is first of all about how we perceive life and our lives—about faith.
Stewardship is one dimension of the Christian life of faith. It is not a program, not an every-member canvass, not a fund-raising campaign, not an occasion for people to vote whether they like or do not like how the church spends their money or treats them.
Stewardship is what we do after we say Credo, we believe, that is, after we give our love, loyalty, trust and obedience to God, the God of our faith.
Christian faith, I acknowledge, makes little sense in the modern world. It is a perception of life in which everything we have and are is gift. It perceives that we are called to be servants of the master, ministers of the magister, stewards of God.
A Confession
My theology of stewardship has always been orthodox. My problem, however, was that what I believed in my head I did not believe in my heart. To be personal and I hope not self-serving, for many years I had difficulty living faithfully in terms of my stewardship of money. I rationalized. I worked long and hard for everything I earned, for less than I reasoned I was worth and my family deserved. I made my contribution to the church through my labor, my time and my talents. And while I made a pledge each year, it was very little. As you may guess, I never preached on stewardship. I told my parishioners that the financial aspect of the church's life was their responsibility. Over the years my guilt increased, for I knew my stewardship was poor and my life of faith flawed.
Then a number of years ago, Caroline, with whom I had worked for many years, and I talked about the possibility of marriage. Early on she made it quite clear that if we did marry we were going to pledge a minimum of ten percent of all our earnings to the church and it would be the first check written each month. That was the beginning of my conversion.
Amidst these conversations on stewardship two memories surfaced. The first was working with Caroline in New York sometime earlier. We had finished a long day and were going out for supper. Walking up Fifth Avenue, we looked down and there was a large bill in a doorway of a closed business. She picked it up, looked around, and saw that no one around us seemed to have lost it. I'm embarrassed to say my first thought was that it would take care of supper. We walked a few feet. In front of us was a group of street musicians. Caroline dropped the bill into their offering basket, saying, "It came from the street—it needs to go back to the street."
The second was a conversation with Peter Lee, the present bishop of Virginia, who was at one time my rector, colleague, and friend at the Chapel of the Cross in Chapel Hill, North Carolina. One day he told me of his father during an economic recession. While he was in college, he sent a letter to Peter saying that he was experiencing some financial difficulties. He explained that he would not consider cutting or even reducing his pledge, his promise to the church. That would be paid first, no matter what, so Peter had better find a job and apply for a scholarship because otherwise he would need to drop out of school.
Today, Caroline and I do tithe. I feel good about that, and now I have no trouble talking about money and stewardship. Our habit is to pay by check, the first written each month. But Caroline, who sits in a pew most weeks, insists on making an additional weekly contribution because she believes that this symbolic action is an important part of the liturgy. She also lives by an important principle, namely that if there is only one bill in her wallet, that is what she will offer. She came home a few months ago and with a glint in her eyes told me of her morning's struggle of conscience when she looked in her wallet and discovered that all she had was a very large bill. Then she looked at me and said, "What do you think I did?" "That's easy," I responded. "You gave it!" "Right," she said. "I'm glad you did," I commented with a chuckle, "but next time why not check your wallet before you come to church." I knew she wouldn't.
The Economics of God
One of our problems in the church is that we rarely discuss the relationship of theology and economics, the economics of God. Rarely do future clergy study economics in seminary, or future business executives study theology in business school. For too long we have appeared content to maintain a heretical dualism between a material and spiritual world. Regretfully, it is a position still present in the church's canons, which speak of the vestry being responsible for the temporal affairs of the church and the rector the spiritual.
Nevertheless, for Christians there can be only one reality and it is spiritual, a reality that has two dimensions, one material and the other nonmaterial. For this reason, when we discuss the spiritual life in the church we need to include the material, that is, money. As we correct this misunderstanding and consider the spiritual life and the economics of God we become aware that we have typically misinterpreted the biblical tithe. For example, the tithe of ten percent of all one's holdings was to be an expected beginning point, not a goal to work toward. In fact, there is some evidence that there might have been two tithes, one paid to the temple and priests and the other to the poor and the needy. And when the people came to worship they were to bring both tithes and offerings. The offerings were a tithe of their time and talents to the service of God and the needy.
More importantly, the tithe was not a means to raise money or pay for services. The intent of these tithes and offerings was spiritual and symbolic. Just as there was once a custom that the faithful were to fast, not eat or drink, before communion to remind themselves of the food they need most for life, our tithes and offerings were to remind us what we need most for life—not material things or the things money can buy, but an ever deepening and loving relationship with God.
This idea of the economics of God may make little sense in our materialistic culture, but I can testify that once I understood and accepted it, my question was no longer "What do I need to give?" but "What do I have a right to keep?" And the answer is "Not much." I am still not as grateful or generous as I should be, and I have a long way to go before I do as I know I need to do. But I am quite convinced that there is a direct correlation between my relationship with God and my giving of myself and my economic resources to the service of God.
I therefore need and expect the church to remind me, encourage me, and support me in growing into an ever deepening and loving relationship with God so that I might become a more faithful steward. This relationship with God is our only end, and everything else is to be understood as a means to that end. I know that now and have never been happier in my life.
Stewardship is the way to spiritual health and maturity, but for stewardship to have a chance we must begin with a serious spiritual question: What do we owe to God for the free gift of life and its accompanying benefits? The answer, of course, is everything. And that means we need to reject the all-too-common conviction that what we have personally earned, deserved, acquired, or won is ours to possess and do with as we see fit.
Our challenge is to make this text from Frank von Christierson's hymn our own: "As those of old their first fruits brought of vineyard, flock, and field to God, the giver of all good, the source of bounteous yield; so we today our first fruits bring, the wealth of this good land, of farm and market, shop and home, of mind and heart and hand" (705, Hymnal 1982).
As a statement of faith this hymn makes clear that everything we have and are belongs to God. That "All things come from you, O Lord, and of your own have we given you" is a conviction, however, is not self-evident and impossible to prove by logic. It is a matter of faith.
At the heart of Anglican theology is the incarnation, the spirit dwelling in matter, the dwelling of God within creation. God's spirit is within us, among us, beyond us, and beneath us. The separateness we have created between religion and economics is the result of a false consciousness. As Anglicans whose understanding of the spiritual life is materialistic, we need to ponder and practice the economic implications of "God with us."
It Just Isn't Easy to Accept or Comprehend
Recall the story Jesus told about paying taxes (Matthew 22:15–22). The religious folk were always trying to trap Jesus. "Teacher, we know that you are right in what you say and that you teach the way of God in accordance with truth," they say to him one day. (Now there is a setup!) "Is it then lawful for us to pay taxes to the emperor or not?" Not easily tricked, Jesus takes the coin and asks whose head and whose title it bears. They answer, "The emperor's." "Right, then give the emperor the things that are his and give to God that which is God's." Caught! They knew they bore on their souls the image of God. Their very lives belonged to God. For it is God who made us and not we ourselves. We may owe a few coins to the emperor for taxes, but we owe everything—all our time, our talents, and our treasures—to God.
Still, we typically talk of our money, our abilities, our home, our degree, our possessions, our life, our job, our church, our accomplishments. Have you ever noticed that the possessive dominates how we talk? We say I have a car, a home, a job, a degree, a mate and so forth.
One day a woman came to me in tears. She explained, "I do not have any friends." I responded, "Please listen carefully. I do not want to make you feel bad and I do hear your pain. But I'm not sad that you have no friends. You see, no one can have friends, that is, possess another. The issue for all of us is not in having a friend but being a friend."
And yet, the dominant metaphor of our culture is owning. We own a point of view. We say, "I'll buy that." Our worth is often judged by how much we contribute and participate, not who we are. Yet for Jesus our worth is our being, our character, the manner in which we are disposed to behave and the motives behind our behavior. Recall the woman with the small coin who was praised because of her gift (Luke 21:1–4). In gratitude to God for her blessings she offered her tithe joyfully. And while it amounted to almost nothing, as compared to the scant amount given grudgingly by the rich man, she was the one Jesus called faithful.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Grateful and Generous Hearts by John H. Westerhoff. Copyright © 2013 John H. Westerhoff. Excerpted by permission of Church Publishing Incorporated.
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