A message from the Stewardship Team
This year we will be looking at four different aspects of stewardship: Stewarding Relationships, Stewarding Wealth, Stewarding Power, and Stewarding Courage. The first aspect in stewardship is that of relationships. Relationships are foundational to the church–from Adam and Eve’s relationship to our relationship with other people and the world around us. We encourage you to read the Scriptures associated with this aspect as well as the accompanying reading and answer the questions to help you determine how you can be a wise steward of relationships.
Stewardship week #1
So often when members hear ‘stewardship season’ they automatically think about congregation and personal finances. Perhaps this is because congregations typically address stewardship in the fall as the congregation council prepares the annual budget, or perhaps it is because ‘money’ is frequently synonymous with ‘stewardship’ in the minds of many. Whatever the reason, Sharing the Good News is a holistic stewardship resource that, following the Revised Common Lectionary, takes a deeper look into stewardship of the whole self. With this 4-week series we will be invited to explore how stewarding all aspects of our lives is a way of living our faith and sharing the good news with the world.
Stewarding Relationships
Genesis 2:18-24
Psalm 8
Hebrews1:1-4; 2:5-12
Mark 10:2-6
“They will know we are Christians by our love,” is not just a song lyric. Time and again in Scripture readers are reminded that not only will the world know we are Christians by our love, but that the world will come to know God’s love through our love. Given recent studies showing trends in both decreasing participation in faith communities and public opinion about Christians being hypocritical, judgmental, and anti-gay, the church has work to do in terms of living God’s love in meaningful ways.
The church is inherently relational, as relational as God’s Triune self, forever working, moving, and pouring out love for the world. In Genesis God’s love is poured out through the Word and Spirit in the act of creating. Life, in all its beauty and wonder came from the eternal love and spark of God’s passion and in God’s desire for abundant life for all, we read about God’s delight in creating a partner for the first human.
“This at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” the human says, after several attempts of God finding a suitable partner. Yet there was still relationship before the second human was created. The first human was in relationship with plants, animals, and working to steward their home, God’s good creation, from their first breath. Since that first partnership with the earth, God’s desire is for every relationship we have to be an expression of God’s divine love. It is imperative, however, to acknowledge that many relationships do not express this love and become abusive, harmful, and all too often reflect the evil and sin that separate us from God’s love, evidence of which is seen in more intense natural disasters, famine, violence and war, broken relationships and commodification of humans.
But, when these relationships blossom, beautiful love is shown: in friendships, families, communities of faith, and partnerships lived out in surprising ways. Care for the pollinator garden, welcome of refugee, meals shared, and love poured out. To create this kind of love that glimpses the divine takes discipleship, faith, and work. They take time, they take understanding and forgiveness, they take compromise and willingness to laugh (with each other and often at ourselves).
At its core, the Christian life of discipleship centers around the wise stewardship of relationships that God has entrusted us with. How we live in relationship is how we share God’s good news: that all are loved, all are worthy, and all deserve our respect.
Questions for Reflection
- Who are the people God has given in your own life who cause you to react like Adam, “Finally! Someone who gets me!”? How do you tend to your relationship with them?
- What relationships has God given you that seem to test you? How might you pray for the other person(s) today?
- How do the relationships in your faith community communicate God’s love to the world?
Excerpt used from “Sharing the Good News”
Southeastern Iowa Synod