Stewardship Message

Working together with the gifts God has given us for the work God is calling us to do.

Thank you for your response to our Stewardship Package which went out on October 15th. Many of you have returned your Commitment Cards, for which we are very grateful. As I am sure you are all aware, having some idea of our income is essential in planning how we will serve God and God's world in the coming year.

Our Stewardship Team will be calling parishioners who have not returned their Commitment Cards towards the end of November to ensure that you have received your Stewardship Packages and to answer any questions you may have.

Several parishioners are participating in the small group sessions in the people's homes to explore and reflect on the four elements of stewardship - of self, of relationships, of the earth, of our resources. These discussions are very thought provoking and encourage us to be better stewards of all of the gifts we have received from God.

On the back of the Commitment Card included with the Stewardship package was the request that each parishioner identify one of the five St. Jude's ministries (see below) he/she would like to learn more about. Over the winter, we hope to put on a workshop to introduce parishioners to the priorities, principles, dreams and activities of each of these five ministry areas:

- Communication and Public Witness

- Christian Formation

- Liturgy and Worship

- Justice and Servant Ministries

- Stewardship Development

Thank you for your continued support of St. Jude's and God's ministry with your time, talents and financial stewardship. Judy McCracken, Ministry Coordinator - Stewardship

Stewardship....from the Rector

September 30, 2007

"No one can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other; or else he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You can't serve both God and Mammon" Matthew 6:24

Mammon led them on-- Mammon, the least erected Spirit that fell From Heaven; for even in Heaven his looks and thoughts Were always downward bent, admiring more. The riches of heaven's pavement, trodden gold, Than aught divine or holy else enjoyed In vision beatific. By him first Men also, and by his suggestion taught, Ransacked the centre, and with impious hands Rifled the bowels of their mother Earth For treasures better hid. Soon had his crew Opened into the hill a spacious wound, And digged out ribs of gold...

John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book 1, 678-690

God's call to renew our sense of stewardship is, it turns out, a lot more complicated than what we so often think of when somebody in church says "stewardship" It is more than a calculation of commitment to the ministry expenses of our common life as a congregation. It is, instead, a matter of relationships - relationship with our own body-self, with other persons, and with the earth and the rest of creation. And we are asked to understand those relationships as directed by a purpose beyond ourselves.

Sometimes we get things right in an almost effortless way. Many of us understand, for example, that we are our children's servants - that they have been entrusted to us for their nurture and formation. But we are also their parents, and serving them cannot mean just doing what they want. To serve them rightly, we need a trustworthy point of reference beyond us and them. And so we might say that we are serving the purposes of God in the nurture and formation of our children, and that we share that service with a host of others - teachers, neighbours, extended family, friends. Then follows a long and not always effortless reflection on what God's purposes are and how best we may serve them. Stewardship is the sustained lifelong habit of deciding what purpose we will serve, what power beyond us is trustworthy.

Finally, the conversation becomes more focused, and the question is no longer the big sprawling questions that we can fend off with a rationale, a philosophy, or an excuse. Finally the question is this: "What purpose will we serve with the resources entrusted to our household?"

Sometimes we talk about the money we contribute to the ministry of the church as "for God" and the rest as "for us". But it isn't that simple. Using resources for healthy eating, for adequate shelter, for activities that bring growth and renewal, for the care of our bodies and the well-being of our dependents - all these are part of responsible stewardship, because God has a stake in them all. In serving these needs we are serving the purposes of God. But "need" is a slippery concept. Some people need an annual winter vacation in a warm place. Others need a high-end automobile. It may be so in some cases, but in others, the word "need" is inaccurate - the proper word is "want" or "desire". Not always sure exactly where that line between need and want is in my own life, I am appropriately hesitant to locate it for others. At the same time, knowing that the line exists, I have some responsibility to attend to it in my life, and to invite others to look for it in their own lives. As followers of Jesus and fellow-servants with him, we are called to probe a bit deeper than we sometimes do into where that line truly is. Needs before wants. And, more radically, the needs of others and the world before my wants. Addressing true needs is part of our service to God, and on God's behalf to the world. But confusing needs and wants has led, to an excessive, corrupt, compulsive, destructive and soul-shrinking consumerism that betrays our nature as creatures in the image of God.

One way that people of faith have guarded against entrapment in the consumer agenda of Mammon has been the deliberate setting aside of "first fruits" for the common good. This practice amounts to a voluntary reduction in the capacity to consume; oddly, many of its practitioners report that it does not constrain their lives. In fact, when they begin to ask questions about needs and wants, they discover that resources formerly spent on transitory (and in the end unsatisfying) wants becomes available for real needs and deep desires. That is to say, being deliberate about our stewardship in this way leaves us with a little less money but a lot more life.

September 23, 2007

The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it. And the LORD God commanded the man, 'You may freely eat of every tree of the garden; but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil you shall not eat, for in the day that you eat of it you shall die.' Genesis 2.15-17

But the serpent said to the woman, 'You will not die; for God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.' So when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a delight to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate; and she also gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate. Genesis 3.4-6

For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the children of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and will obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labour pains until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly while we wait for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. Romans 8.19-23

In a recent New Yorker article, "Sowing for Apocalypse" (August 27, 2007), John Seabrook explores the world of seeds, and unearths a rich and worrisome array of trends and practices in what has become "the global seed industry". There is, for example, something approaching consensus that the diversity of plant life on earth originates in relatively small pockets near the equator - in parts of the world like Africa, Central and South America, South Asia and the region of the Indian Ocean. Almost everything cultivated for food in North America originates in one of those regions. In fact, only two or three crops cultivated in North America actually originated here.

Because of the success of hybridization, however, much of the development of those seed "germlines" has taken place in North America, and increasingly in the laboratories of chemical companies. As a consequence, much of the diversity upon which the food supply of the world absolutely depends is at risk of being lost. The emergence of what are effectively "monocultures" in staples such as potatoes and corn, along with the endangered status of many of the predators who control insect infestations, makes the global food supply deeply vulnerable to pests and disease. The nineteenth century potato famine in Ireland is poised to repeat itself on a global scale.

Moreover, Seabrook writes of a "seed war" between the big chemical companies, who patent the seeds they sell, and farmers in the very regions from which the original germlines of those seeds were brought to North America. For the companies, seed hybridization is an expensive process, and deserves the protection of patents that forbid farmers to do what farmers have always done - save last year's seeds for next year's planting. For the farmers, seeds are part of the common heritage of a people, and belong to the common life of that people for the common good.

For stewards, created in the image and likeness of God, and charged with the work of tilling and keeping the earth, these issues take us in an unbroken line back to our first mythical ancestors, who appointed as trustees to till and tend the garden, instead usurped the role of owner, and set out to stake their entitlement as "consumers" by seizing the fruit of the forbidden tree. When a trustee (for example of an estate) begins to behave as if the assets of the estate belonged to him or her, there are consequences before the law.

When a trustee (of the earth, of its plants and other creatures, say) begins to behave as of the assets of the estate belonged to him or her, there are consequences before the spirit, if not the law. We live in the midst of a culture that has lost almost every vestige of that sense of trusteeship, or stewardship. It exists as an occasional quaint twitch here and there, but by and large, we live as if the earth were here for us, and not us for the earth. And because of the near idolatry with which we approach the allegedly benign construct called "the market", whose founding assumption is that we are individuals competing for scarce commodities, we are set not only against the earth, but against one another. Or perhaps it is more apt to say that because we allow the market to set us against one another, we end up acting in ways that betray the very earth that sustains us and all creatures.

Either way, there are consequences - war and hunger, poverty, catastrophic climate change, burgeoning childhood asthma, not to mention the profound loneliness of so many lives - that suggest it may be time for a renewal of stewardship. In fact, the recovery of a sense of stewardship is of vital importance to the healing of our human purpose within creation, and of our human relationships.

When, as stewards, we are willing to tend the tree that is not for us, but for another - another person, another people, another species - we become a sign of contradiction to the crippling assumption of contemporary market idolatries - that we are self-serving creatures locked in an often lethal struggle over who will consume and destroy the earth. Such stewardship is part of our witness, of our call, and of our duty.

September 16, 2007

"May their lives together be a sacrament of your love to this broken world, so that unity may overcome estrangement, forgiveness heal guilt, and joy overcome despair." (Prayers of the People, Celebration and Blessing of a Marriage)

This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one's life for one's friends. John 15.12-13

As we explored last week, care for ourselves is care for our purpose as well, and much of our purpose has to do with our presence and participation in relationships. Whatever else the mystery of the Trinity means, it suggests that God's life is "all about relationship".. And so for us, made in God's image, relationship is not simply a feature or option of our lives, but something of our lives' essence. We know, for example, that maternal-infant bonding is of critical importance to life-long emotional wellbeing, that isolated and alienated persons suffer from something much deeper than mere loneliness, and that healthy friendships contribute to healthy and purposeful lives.

So it is no real surprise that stewardship - taking care of what has been entrusted to our care - should include care of relationships. And it is likewise no real surprise that much of our failure as stewards (caretakers, trustees) is a failure to tend our relationships purposefully and effectively. That failure first emerges in the mythic opening chapters of Genesis, where the estrangement between God and persons becomes estrangement among persons, and, in fact, as we shall explore next week, between persons and the rest of the creatures of God. First, Eve and Adam find themselves at odds over who should 'take the fall' for eating the forbidden fruit. Then Abel and Cain fall into a lethal quarrel over God's favour. The impairment of the divine-human relationship is reflected in impairments in relationships among humans.

Our first mythical ancestors they acted in denial of their assigned role as trustees or caretakers, and usurped the role of owner. The forbidden fruit of that single tree in the midst of the garden became an irritant that drove them into that rebellion.

The impairment in the divine-human relationship is a matter of failed stewardship, of the abandonment of the purposes of God by God's human creatures. Set in the garden to till and tend it, and with a tree in the middle of whose fruit they are not to eat, Eve and then Adam in turn do consume that fruit. Here is a tree that the humans are to tend that is not for their benefit. It is, that is to say, a stewardship tree. Later, other apparently arbitrary laws about proscribed food - pork and seafood included, will once more establish the purpose of God in God's covenant with Israel. Other limits will also appear - limits on the accumulation of wealth and on the range of human sexual intimacies. Not everything is for us to consume or use; not everything is to be valued in terms of its utility for me individually, and not all I am called to tend is for my benefit. There is always a tree in the garden that I must tend, not for myself, but for another.

This becomes particularly clear in our closest relationships - with lovers, spouses, children, siblings, and in close and abiding friendships. We do not own these others. We are not entitled to anything from them. Rather, we are given to them and it is our work our work to understand and live out how we will open our lives to them as a gift.

That is, of course, not how we behave, much of the time. Much of the time, we act towards one another based on fear, indifference, or hostility. For this reason, God meets us again, first in Israel, and then in Jesus, to redeem us - to liberate us from the futility of fear, indifference and hostility, and to equip us for human relationships of compassion, concern, and trust. At its heart, this redemption holds open a door for us - one that we may enter or not, as we choose. But our choice matters, because through that door is a new life for us - one in which we renew our self-understanding as stewards and sojourners, pilgrims across a landscape that is both delightful and terrifying, making a journey that we cannot make alone. In that journey, interdependence is a sign, not of the weakness of persons, but of the strength and beauty of shared pilgrimage and a common life.

If we make that choice, we discover and inhabit a whole new world, "for if anyone is in Christ, there is a new creation." (2 Corinthians 5.17)

September 9, 2007

You turn things upside down! Shall the potter be regarded as the clay? Shall the thing made say of its maker, "He did not make me": the thing formed say of the one who formed it, "He has no understanding"? (Isaiah 29.16)

Woe to you who strive with your maker, earthen vessels with the potter! Does the clay say to the one who fashions it, "What are you making?" or "Your work has no handles"? (Isaiah 45.9)

But we have this treasure in clay jars, so that it may be made clear that this extraordinary power belongs to God and does not come from us. We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed, but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck down, but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies. (2 Corinthians 4.7-10)

"Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. I am the vine, you are the branches. Those who abide in me, and I in them, bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. (John 15.4-5)

A steward is someone who holds something "in trust". Another word would be "trustee". Unfortunately, "stewardship" in churches is often reduced to financial stewardship, or even fund-raising. It isn't that there is no connection. As people of God, we hold financial resources in trust, and how we exercise that trust is important. But there is so much more than wealth entrusted to our care.

It begins with our very selves. Our lives come into being and continue in light of a relationship with God, who makes us stewards or trustees of our bodies, of our time and energy, of our work and purpose. One very important part of that stewardship is self-care - building habits and practices that strengthen and sustain our bodies in health. Diet, exercise, a life-giving practice of rest and work in rhythm are all part of our stewardship.

But something has happened to self-care in the past few generations. Health, once a means to an end - allowing us to work, play, serve and delight in God's world - has become, for many, and end in itself. Our bodies have been separated from our purpose, as if our bodies were our purpose, rather than serving a purpose beyond them, beyond us.

In our baptism, our bodies (not just our spirits, but our bodies) were washed with physical water and joined to the Body of Christ. The branch of our lives abiding in the vine of Christ. We belong to Christ, and hold our lives "in trust" for the purposes of Christ. The potter has made us for a purpose, and that purpose is not something we conjure up, but something to which we are called.

That call, writes Paul to the church at Corinth, is to the work of "carrying in our bodies the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our bodies." In our baptism, we were baptized into Christ's death and resurrection, symbolically leaving behind the old world of sin and death, and entering the new creation, God's kingdom of love and justice. And our life and growth (what the church calls "sanctification" or growing in holiness, is about bearing witness in our bodies to both death and resurrection.

It sounds more mysterious than it is. In the old world of sin and death, our bodies/our selves turn inward self-protectively. We are for ourselves. Life is dangerous; strangers are hostile, the Other is a threat, the best we can hope for from each other is benign indifference, and the worst is annihilation. In the New Creation, our eternal life established as promise by the resurrection, our bodies/our selves can be "of service" to the purposes of God. Those purposes are sometimes mundane - the changing of a diaper, a hospital visit, the neighbour's sidewalk cleared of snow. Other times, they seek and require our transformation - the hard work of serving our children as they move from childhood to adulthood, the re-thinking of something that once seemed certain, the embrace of the Other who unsettles and disturbs us. And sometimes it is downright hazardous - putting our bodies/our selves at risk for the good of another in danger, putting ourselves "in harm's way" for the safety someone at risk of harm.

It is good stewardship to keep our bodies/our selves as ready as they/we can be for the work we will be assigned. Part of that readiness is a matter of attentiveness to the One from whom our lives spring into being. Part of that readiness is regular connection with the gathered Body of Christ to receive the gracious gift of God's presence and purpose in the Eucharist.

And it is good stewardship to spend those bodies on work that is worthy of our humanity, formed in the image of God, and designed to join the work of God in and for the world. Spending carelessly without heed to our limits and our readiness is no more faithful than hoarding what we hold in trust. Part of that spending is to make ourselves present and useful in the Body of Christ, the church, to whom we belong. And part of that spending is in faithfully continuing the work of creation in partnership with God as we offer our bodies/our selves for the sake of the world. Self-care and self-offering are both part of our care - for our bodies and for the holy purposes for which they are intended.

Did you know?....St. Jude's now accepts Visa, Mastercard and debit cards for purchasing of tickets or items or even for donations. You may use this method in person or if you would like to do this over the phone, please call Julie Hudak in the Church Office at (905) 844-3972.

The Stewardship Committee wants parishioners also to be aware that this online service will cost St. Jude's almost 2% of the value of any contributions made in this way. We continue to encourage pre-authorized giving as a means of regular support to the ministry of St. Jude's, but want everyone to know that this new option comes at some cost.

"Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you has received."

1Peter 4:10 NRSV