NT Lesson: Mt 25: 31- 46

OT Lesson: Genesis 1: 26-31

Prayer for Illumination

Let us pray. O Lord, help us to hear in the scriptures what you would have us do. We pray that we might encourage each other to do together what we may be too timid to try on our own.  In Jesus’s name. Amen

This passage is not about gentle Jesus, meek and mild. This is judging Jesus. In this passage, I think Jesus was tired, scared, maybe a little fed up with the intransigence of his followers, inwardly questioning whether it’s all been worth it. Ten verses later Judas is cutting a deal for 30 pieces of silver. 

According to Matthew, Jesus painted a picture of judgement day. It’s brutal and binary. You’re in or your out. You’re either a sheep or a goat. The sheep on the right hand enter the Kingdom. The goats on the left roast eternally with the devil.   

On what basis is that sheep/goat decision made? Well, Jesus repeats the criteria four times just so there can be no mistake, no wiggle room.

Listen please.

Read MT: 25: 31-36

First of all, I am so happy that Anna is taking time away to reflect and refresh. I don’t care how energetic and enthusiastic a person is – there comes a time to step away and listen to the creator and enjoy creation. I know I am speaking for many, if not all of us, when I say Anna has met and handily exceeded our expectations. 

So when Anna asked me some time ago to fill in today, I was more than happy to agree. But I did notice a certain sheepish grin accompanied her request. As soon as I said, “Yes”, she said, “You do realize that Sunday is Stewardship Sunday, right?”

I said I hadn’t, but I that I was fine with that. 

Now, it will hardly come as a surprise to you when I tell you that preachers really don’t like preaching stewardship sermons. For a lot of reasons. But this is the first time I’ve seen a preacher leave town and literally head for the hills. I‘m glad you got a chuckle out of that because, sooner or later, I’ll pay for that wise crack.

It’s not just preachers who don’t like stewardship sermons. I know plenty of you are saying to yourself, “Here comes the annual give more money to the church pitch. I’ve heard it a hundred times.”

OK. Fair enough. We will get around to that later but first I would like us to think about stewardship in a larger context. Stewardship is more than what money buttons the preacher can push on one Sunday in November. Stewardship is much, much more than you deciding how much money you plan to give to First Pres in 2023.  

I believe that stewardship is the bedrock of our relationship with God and God’s creation. I believe that stewardship is the core contract between us mortals and the eternal creator. Thus, we worship. Thus, we give thanks. Thus, in gratitude, we accept the call, the onerous responsibility to tend God’s Garden, this teensy, tiny blue ball we call Earth, wobbling and spinning and sun-circling endlessly in a vastness we cannot even measure.  I believe stewardship is why we are here in the first place.

You may be wondering what would lead me to make such extravagant, elaborate claims for stewardship. How about the first chapter of the Bible?  Genesis 1!

Listen to this. Listen for the repetition.  Listen for the sing-song, the chant. Listen for the poetry. But don’t miss the theology. Don’t miss God assigning us our reason for being, stewardship of creation.  

Read Gen 1:24-31

So, just to be clear, we are supposed to be stewards of the earth and all those living, breathing plants and animals that we can eat or genetically modify, cross pollinate, clone or tame to do our work or just enjoy because, after all, God said this was good. And God said, “Manage it! You’re in charge.   It’s ours. All ours - to manage and enjoy. 

Let’s cut to the chase. When it comes to evaluating our performance as stewards of creation, what grade would you give us? We understand the job description, but how would you rate mankind’s job performance?

If you’re coming up with anything higher than a D+, perhaps a gentleman’s C-, you may have some research to do. After tens of thousands of years of mankind’s rather benign stewardship, in a mere one hundred years, we have managed to irreversibly alter the climate of the earth. We have endangered and/or eliminated thousands of those creeping, crawling things over which we were given dominion. It’s easy to list our failures. But it’s not all bad. We have connected oceans, dammed rivers, harvested forests, plowed prairies, walked on the moon, landed on Mars, harnessed the atom, cured diseases, fought hunger, harnessed the wind, captured the sun and generally had a rollicking good run as stewards of the earth. Until lately.  Slowly, we are beginning to admit that we have gone too far. We have irreversibly overheated our house.

We have raised the temperature of the plant one degree, more or less and climbing. It’s hard not to see that we are teetering on the edge of disaster. It’s not like we haven’t been warned, early and often.  Rachael Carson, 70 years ago started warning us. And plenty of voices have followed.  People ranging from Bill Nye the Science Guy to Neil DeGrasse Tyson, hundreds of scientists, Jacque Cousteau, even Al Gore, and the speaker at our last Rothermel event.  We, who have ears to hear, didn’t want to listen to anybody.  Let alone to Al Gore.  We can be so smug and snide without even trying.

As I was chugging along on my tractor, trying to bring form to this sermon, I couldn’t help mentally listing all the ecological disasters – like that Texas size raft of plastic trash reportedly swirling around somewhere out in the Pacific Ocean. Or the vanishing glaciers. Or the wild fires. I could go on and so could you. But a funny thing happened on my way to advanced doomsaying. Two Sundays ago, October 30, the New York Times devoted its entire Magazine Section to study this very topic of global warming. I dove in expecting to find the usual directory of disasters, villains and hopeless predictions. And those were mentioned, lest we want to bury our head in the sand again. 

However, what I found was good news. Optimistic progress reports. Careful analysis of the difference between one more degree of warming and a degree and a half or heaven forbid two degrees which would be pretty bad but not inevitable. There were sobering, but still hopeful, reports on the real possibility of stopping, not reversing, but stopping the heat increase, saving the planet. The critical ingredient in winning this battle has to do with how fast we can get off carbon-based energy and on to renewable solar and wind energy. The shocker is, the great news is, we are farther along in that transition than I thought we were. The transfer to wind and solar is fast and rapidly accelerating. Who knew?

Do you know why? Not because all of us tree huggers and green organizations are triumphing, although we have plenty of successes to brag about.  Not because the worst polluting nations have finally come to their senses, although some have. The almost miraculous speed of this the conversion is due almost totally to market driven forces.  We capitalists have just discovered that carbon is more expensive that wind and solar. We capitalists have concluded that we can make more money faster with wind and solar than with coal and oil. This has been long predicted but always scoffed at. The scoffing has stopped. The investing has begun.

There are still plenty of tough problems. We still need to exercise maximum creativity, pursuit of science, technology and allegiance to facts. But as one foot soldier, who takes seriously the stewardship of God’s planet, to you other foot soldiers, I’m encouraged for a change and it feels pretty good.  Even our own Neuse River got an award for improvement. Yeah, Neuse River Keepers. 

We talk about saving the planet. Let me assure you the planet will be just fine. The planet has been through far worse that this in the last billion years. At times, far hotter, far colder, far wetter, far dryer. South America used to be connected to Africa. The planet will be just fine, trust me. It’s going to spin around the sun for another few billion years. The plant will be just fine.  What is in grave jeopardy is life as we know it. What it comes right down to is that human life as we know it is in the balance. The planet and even humans can survive without polar bears and redwood trees. And the planet will survive with or with or without humans. Its human life, our life, we are trying to secure and stabilize. It is our job to fix this mess. God is not going to fix this for us.

Which brings us face to face with that gospel lesson we read earlier. A critical part of this whole stewardship deal is that we are also stewards of the human race no less that we are stewards of Monarch Butterflies and white rhinos. Yes, Cain, we are our brother’s and sister’s keeper. And it has become an enormous assignment, a huge job, an almost impossible task to feed and clothe, house and heal the human race. Yet I contend that, too, is stewardship. We are also stewards of the human race. That’s what Jesus is trying to tell us in the Mathew passages we read. If you want to follow Jesus – if you want entrance to the Kingdom – then feed and clothe, house and heal the least of these.  

When I and a lot of people in this room were young, watching Howdy Doody and Captain Kangaroo and Ike was in the White House, in round figures, there were three billion humans on earth. A deceptively simple time. Today there are nearly eight billion.  Three billion. Eight billion. We were certainly fruitful and multiplied. Just as we were also instructed to do in Genesis 1. 

We, especially those of us in the rich countries, seem only vaguely aware that we stewards might have some responsibility for the humans in the world. We are vaguely aware that getting grain boats through the Black Sea, or getting drinking water to the sub-Sahara, just might in some macro way, might be at least part of our job description as stewards of creation. 

We have governments and agencies and the United Nations and NGO’s and church organizations to work on this on an international scale. We support this work through offerings, contributions and taxes and, while not nearly enough, we keep at it. But in that Matthew passage, Jesus wasn’t talking to governments and NGO’s.

Jesus was talking to us, individuals, like us, to men and women who wanted to follow Jesus, who aspired to enter the Kingdom, do the right thing, to be a sheep and not a goat. Lord, I want to be a Christian, in my heart. Well, feed and clothe, heal and house. We shall accomplish together what would be very difficult as an individual. So we have, congregations, and committees, and pledge cards, budgets and special offerings and all the rest of it that seeks to do together what would be almost impossible one by one.

 As individuals, we are much more attuned to local needs and issues. We see the need and we know we want to respond to it. We know we are supposed to meet needs. House and heal. Feed and clothe.  First Pres has for decades joined with other congregations in establishing agencies to meet all sorts of needs, medical, hunger, housing, clothing, educational. In many cases, we were initiators in these efforts. We still are.

In round figures, about a tenth of our annual budget goes to outreach ministries. The Outreach Commission has the job of monitoring our ministry to fifteen specialized ministries in our area and beyond. Those ministries are listed in your stewardship packet and other places. The Session and Outreach Commission also make recommendations to the congregation regarding special offerings like OGHS and the Christmas offering and ad hoc offerings like for hurricanes and tornados. And that mason jar/pennies for hunger thing – we’re not doing that just for the money. We are trying to teach stewardship to our kids and each other. 

All my life, many times, I’ve heard the accusation, “The church is always asking for money.” To which I say, “Good! Amen! That’s what we are supposed to be doing.” Paul told us to encourage each other to give generously. So, we challenge each other. Maybe not as bravely as Paul did, but we do, at least once a year. 

One day a rich guy came up to Jesus and said, “Lord, all my life I have kept the Law, obeyed the commandments, attended temple.”  Jesus said, “That’s great. Now sell everything and give the money to the poor.”

Trust me on this: What we do with our money is one of Jesus’s favorite topics.

Now we need to consider one more thing over which we are stewards – and that is First Presbyterian Church, New Bern. We are stewards of the program and property of First Pres. We are responsible for the present and future of this church. I love this place and so do you. We have a fantastic staff. They’re not cheap but they are worth every penny. We have four buildings to take care of. Two of them are ancient. We have a terrific educational program. Something for everyone. If fact, it’s so good there are times I want to be in two places at the same time. We have a great music ministry here. The bells. The two adult choirs. Children’s choirs. I love that organ -especially when Vance cranks it up full blast and holds the last note of the postlude for 20 seconds. We have a great facility for our Day Care program, and church suppers and even pickle ball. We have built a great church library. We have a phenomenal stained-glass window that some of us don’t even know where it is. We are expanding our Memorial Garden. We renovated the Lighthouse which we offer for heavy public use. We repaired the steeple. We fixed the walk and the doorsills. And the list goes on right down to light bulbs and paper towels. 

I don’t know any way to say this other than to say bluntly, “If we value all this, if we want this, as with everything else in life, we have to pay for it.

Our pastor and session have scheduled these weeks and events, hoping that during the week to come we members will give serious, prayerful, thought as to how much money each of us going to commit to First Pres and to our work, our divine calling, as stewards of God’s creation and of God’s countless gifts and blessings. 

Stewardship of the planet, stewardship of the human race, stewardship of First Pres. Well. You can take it from there.

Prayers of the People

O God of all creation, God of Abraham, Isaiah and Jacob, God of Jesus of Nazareth, God who knows our inmost heart, hear our prayer today.

We thank you for trusting us with the keys to creation – for allowing us to know right from wrong, fact from fiction and good from evil. We thank you for the joy of learning and teaching– for working and playing – for singing and dancing – for laughing and crying, crying tears that rinse away our grief.

We thank you for parents and grandparents, every one of whom wants the best for their children. Today we pray again for all the children struggling to catch up after the interruption of pandemic. And for the teachers, an entirely new breed of heroes. Help us to remove or at least alleviate each other’s stress, the stress of lost time and lessons we can never make up. We pray for children all over the world, who even in poverty and deprivation, still learn, still dream and aspire and still make dreams come true. Tell us, O Lord, what should we do for them?

 O God, we are world on the move. Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore? We lament the war and corruption and famine that has millions on the run. This can’t be pleasing in your sight. In some cases, we have a pretty good idea what to do and we ask you help doing it. In other cases, there seems to be no exit ramp and we feel like we are stuck reliving dark times, an evil “ground hog’s day” of war and death. Give us wisdom. Give us courage, for the facing of this hour. 

O God, we pray for all those, including ourselves, who face decay in body and mind. We pray for those who face days of diagnoses and medication, for those who watch loved ones fade away. We pray for caregivers everywhere – our friends and neighbors who bravely and selflessly give comfort and care. We thank you for these sisters and brothers, surely your angels in the flesh. 

We love your kingdom, Lord, the house of your abode. We thank you, God, for this church, for our pastor and staff, for their creativity, patience and organization. Help each of us to do our part – to sing when the spirit says sing, to give when the spirit says give, and to serve when the spirit says serve.

Hear us now as the spirit says pray the prayer you taught- Our Father…