I've been doing some thinking. About stewardship. Wise stewardship. I dislike the expression "no brainer", but I'm guessing most Christians, Christian organisations and churches would, when push comes to shove, or when vision comes to cash, opt for responsible stewardship as the essential wisdom in dealing with money. Stewardship itself is a word replete with responsible thoughtfulness, careful use of resources for maximum effectiveness, and made more rigorous by qualifiers like "wise" and "responsible" the case seems unanswerable. There are even parables about it with their message of bad things happening to those who don't invest wisely, or spend responsibly.
But I've been doing some thinking, and that can be a dangerous thing for any of us. Especially if it begins as an annoying niggle, develops into a serious question and compels a complete rethink of a sacred "no brainer" questions and answers like responsible stewardship applied to the use of Christians' money and resources, individually and corporately.
What was responsible stewardship for the Macedonian Christians who out of their poverty gave to other Christians and their Jewish brothers and sisters in that wonderful piece of irresponsible stewardship called The Collection which dominated the end of Paul's life?
What was responsible stewardship for the sower who went forth to sow and knew that 75% of the seed would be wasted or worse.
What was responsible stewardship for the woman who brought an alabaster jar of precious ointment and in an act of outrageous extravagance used it to anoint the feet of the Teacher who had helped her to a place where she could feel loved again? And, said Jesus, with not a hint of concession to responsible stewardship, "She has done a beautiful thing", that would echo round the world and be remembered long after all the budgets and cost cuttings and careful strategies for growth are consigned to that unmemorable place called the balance sheet.
In a consumer culture where choices of what we do with money are driven by recession, I'm left asking what it is Christians do that is radically different, outrageously generous, counter cultural in the positive sense of offering something that contradicts the worship of the bottom line. Against the current focus on getting and receiving, value for money and the buy one get one free approach to life, what it is that the Christian faith offers is precisely a lifestyle of offering, a way of enacting and embodying a love defined in giving.
Now I can think of a number of ways the the contemporary church has bought into the whole value for money mentality and I'm aware but not persuaded by the way we re-translate that bottom line spirit by calling it stewardship, wise or otherwise. You see I can't get away from the astonishing puzzle of how it could be that 'he was rich yet for our sakes became poor, so that we through his poverty might become rich'. That is an approach to wealth redistribution that recognises no bottom line, cannot read barcodes, and fails to see the value of always wanting value for money.
As a Gospel people, Christians are called to that fundamental orientation away from self-interest to self giving, finding value in that which makes for the Kingdom of God which is justice and joy, forgiveness and peace, and a quite reckless generosity that questions careful stewardship as the default position for how we use God given resources. Now and again, and more often than we are prepared to think, we are called to sow seed at a 75% loss, we are moved to take that alabaster jar and waste it in an act of devotion that enriches the world, though some ask the tediously responsible question "why this waste?" We are stewards, not only of money, but of an extravagant Gospel that commits us to a life that is creatively and persistently and inconveniently generous and uncalculating. These are not budget criteria, they are attitudes that require a different calculus.
A week on, and I'm still thinking about this post. I think it is about time we reclaimed the correct, original, use of the word 'prodigal' - using our resources abundantly, freely, lavishly, extravagantly to build the Kingdom.
Posted by: ang almond | October 22, 2011 at 02:27 PM