This is the week that we begin the fall stewardship drive here at Prescott United Methodist Church.  I have to admit, when I was told that my sermon for this weekend needed to address the issue of stewardship, my mouth said: “yes, of course.”  But inside, I couldn't help but groan a little bit.  I have been where you are many times – in the pews, listening to sermons about stewardship, and I'm not sure that I've ever heard a stewardship sermon that I've really enjoyed. 

Don't get me wrong – I think that sermons on stewardship are important, and I don't want you folks to think otherwise.  But it has often been my experience that churches don't do a particularly good job of talking about money.  We fail to recognize stewardship as something that's at the very center of Christian life, and so preachers sometimes fall into the pit of sounding like a PBS pledge drive.  We list all the important things that are going on at the church, how many people are served and how God is at work, and hope that people will be inspired to give money.  I wouldn't want to listen to a sermon like that, and I presume that you folks don't, either.  

There are two reasons I don't want to preach that kind of a sermon.  First, it's clear that you don't need it.  This congregation already gives quite a bit.  Now, that doesn't mean that there isn't room for growth – there always is.  Besides, if I told you that no more giving were needed, this would be the last year I'd be preaching at the opening of the stewardship drive!  But it is clear that you already know something about the importance of giving. 

The second reason is this:  I think stewardship is a much bigger issue than the money or time or the other resources that we give to the church.  Stewardship has to do with the most basic aspects of how live our lives as disciples of Jesus.  What I'd like to do tonight is to offer you a few reflections on how stewardship touches every aspect of our living.  So – for a few minutes, let's forget that we'll each be asked to renew our financial commitments to the church in the next few weeks, and start with something a little more basic.

I entitled this sermon “Home Economics” because each of those words brings us back to some of the most important, fundamental aspects of our daily living.  Home is where we begin and end most of our days; it is where some of our most important relationships have been developed.  Homes are places of safety, or else we are aware that something is very wrong in our lives.  The most basic physical needs of our human existence – shelter, food, clothing – are found in our homes, and we are painfully aware that all is not right with the world when there are so many who live without such needs being met.   Homes are where we learn to live with others, and with ourselves.  Our homes are, to quote a contemporary theologian, “anchoring places where, over time, we craft the practices by which we prosper or fail to prosper.”  My guess is that, more often than not, our homes serve as the center of our lives, the place where everything else comes together.

The word “economics” is probably as central to our lives as most of our homes are.  “Economics” comes from a Greek word (oikos) meaning “household”, you’ll find the same root in words like ecology, or ecosystem.  Economics is about the place where we live, and how we go about living there.  We think about economics as being all about money, financing, and lots of technical stuff that we’d rather leave to the experts.  But really, economics deals with all our resources, financial or otherwise, and the ways that we decide to use those resources.

Home economics, then, is simply the way that we structure our home-life, so to speak.  I like the phrase because it helps to sum up all our resources, and what we do with them.  Unfortunately, home economics is not something that we seem to talk about much in church.  This is unfortunate because many of us are very much in need of a word of grace when it comes to the day to day business of managing a busy home with a busy schedule.  I'm guessing that most of you are stretched fairly thin when it comes to your time, or your energy, or your financial resources – or maybe all three. 

There are more important things to do every day than there is time to do them.  We are asked to participate in more organizations than we humanly have time for.  Our friends and families place demands on our time, as well they should.  We scarcely manage to fit everything in, and I suspect that many of you often have the feeling at night that you wish you could have gotten more done, that you could have crossed a few more things of your to-do list.

Our budgets are similarly stressed.  Even if we’re able to afford  a high standard of living, which many of us are, we pay a price for it.  As we prepare to celebrate Labor Day tomorrow, we ought to be aware of how much of our lives many of us spend working.  Americans work longer hours than people in most industrialized nations, but we’re incredibly anxious about whether or not we can afford the life-style we want.  We work hard, but it’s hard to know when we have enough; when we can stop. 

I will admit to you that, in my own life, it’s sometimes a struggle to remember that my life doesn’t need to be controlled by my budget, or by my busy schedule.  At times, life can seem overwhelming.  By the standard of God’s entire household, I am far richer than most of my neighbors, and yet I can be anxious about financial security.  I am young and healthy, and yet I worry that I won’t have the energy to get everything done.  God gives us days and seasons, but rather than trust that those are good gifts, I worry that there won’t be enough time for everything. Does any of this sound familiar?

When Jesus tells us that we cannot serve both God and money, I think he’s reminding us of something we have all learned, at one time or another.  When we are distracted by stress over time and money, it’s harder to be aware of God’s presence in our lives.  Jesus tells us – forcefully – that we can and must make choices about how we nurture and use the many gifts that God has given us.

I believe that stewardship is really about these kinds of choices.  It’s not just the amount of money that’s given to the church on Sunday morning.  It’s how we think about and use God’s gifts, and how we make decisions about what we need, what our families and communities need, and how we can best serve God and neighbor with the gifts we’ve been given. 

This means that when you go to the grocery store and buy food for your kids, that’s stewardship.  When we pay the water bill, go to a movie, take the people we love out for dinner, pay our taxes…  all of this is stewardship, because it’s how we use our financial gifts.  The question is: is it good stewardship?  Is it faithful?  We might ask the same questions of how we use our time, and our energy.

I don’t believe that we’re asked to give up everything that we have.  After all, parents could give away everything they have and not be able to feed their children, and that would hardly be good stewardship.  I think one reason that this can be a difficult subject is that we’re afraid that we’re not prepared for “faithful giving” – we’re afraid of being asked to give away everything, and live lives of voluntary poverty.  Well, it may be that many of us could benefit by having less stuff.  But I’d like to suggest that, as Christians, we believe that God is present in all the aspects of our lives.  The things that surround us – our homes, our appliances, our clothes, our cars – these things aren’t bad in and of themselves.  They’re bad when they distract us from God’s grace, from the needs of our neighbor. 

When we’re willing to live in a way that allows us to enjoy God’s gift, instead of being anxious about whether we have enough of them, then we begin to live with a sense of simplicity that enables us to care for our neighbors, as well as ourselves.  This is the word of grace that I think we’re often in need of hearing: there is enough time, there are enough resources to live faithfully and joyfully.  By being more faithful in deciding what we need, we are freed to live with more energy for the things that are most important to us.  As the Shaker hymn says, “Tis the gift to be simple, ‘tis the gift to be free, ‘tis the gift to come down where we ought to be.”  It’s no coincidence that simply and living freely are connected to each other – by stewarding our resources well, we are free to enjoy them, and to share them.  Otherwise, if we hoard our resources, our blessings become a burden.  Straightening out our own household economics makes it easier to participate in the wider household of God's kingdom, God's creation, and all that it includes.

Ordinary time, the season we’re in now, is a time to remember God’s grace, and the way that we grow in that grace.  I invite you to think about where God is in the details of our home economics, and how we might serve God with all of our resources.