This past week, I flew to Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a gathering of Presbyterian pastors from around the country. The hotel where we stayed was located directly across the street from Oral Roberts University, and looking out my window, I saw the prayer tower in the middle of that campus, stretching up toward the sky.

You may remember, back in 1987, that Oral Roberts University, and the new medical center they had constructed, ran into financial difficulty. So Dr. Roberts decided there was only one thing to do. He went up into the top of the prayer tower and declared that he wasn’t coming down until $4.5 million was raised by his supporters. If they failed in the effort, said the televangelist, "God might call me home," not to his local residence, mind you, but to heaven. Well, the contributions came in, the university is growing today (although the medical center has been closed), and that prayer tower still dominates the skyline above the campus.

Looking out at that tower from my hotel window last week, I began to wonder what might happen if I decided to climb up into the McClatchey Carillon after the benediction today and told all of you that I wasn’t coming down until we had achieved our annual giving goal of $2.7 million for the next year. I played around with that idea in my mind for a few minutes, including the real possibility that some of you might be just as glad to leave me up there . . . and then, I drew the drapes closed and went to sleep in peace.

Because, I know and you know that we don’t need that kind of fund-raising folderol here in this church. Over the past ten years, you have given generously and sacrificially to our annual giving and capital fund campaigns for the ministry and mission of this congregation.

Speaking personally as your pastor and friend, I am overwhelmed by, and deeply grateful for, your support of what we are trying to accomplish here in the name of our Lord. You are, without doubt, "Faithful Stewards of God’s Grace" and I am confident that you will respond, once more, to the challenge before us, to raise the resources required for the worship, the work, and the witness of this great church as we move forward toward the next millennium.

The theme which our Annual Giving Committee has chosen, "Faithful Stewards of God’s Grace," comes from the text in I Peter, chapter 4, wherein the Apostle Peter reminded those early Christians that they had received a gift from the Lord. That is what the Greek word for grace, charis, literally means—a gift which no one can earn and none of us completely deserves. The greatest gift God has given to us is the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, To Whom, said Peter, belong glory and dominion forever and ever.

That is a gift which we should not take for granted, because through Him, through Jesus Christ, we have all been given life here and now on earth and eternal life in heaven.

But sometimes, we do take it for granted, until something happens and we feel life slipping away from us. I remember a sermon that Dr. Fred Craddock preached at the Chautauqua Institution years ago. In his mind’s eye, he pictured a desperate man with a fistful of twenty dollar bills running up and down the corridor of a hospital, stopping at every nurse’s station, talking to every doctor, reaching out to every orderly saying, "My wife, my wife is in room 21. She under the oxygen tent. Here’s twenty dollars if you can just . . ." "Sorry sir, but what you want you just can’t buy here."

Craddock then imagined a man rushing through the world trying to find the market where they sell life.

"Could I buy some rain here?"

"No, no, we can pipe water to your house, but there’s no rain for sale."

"Well, can I buy a friend here?"

"No, you can get a companion for the night, but we don’t have any friends for sale."

"Can I buy a home?"

"Sorry, we don’t have a single home. We’ve got some nice houses."

"Can I buy a little time?"

"No, we can offer you a fine watch, but we’ll sell you no time. Time is not for sale."

(From the sermon "Freedom: Beyond Poverty and Wealth" by Dr. Fred B. Craddock, 1979)

You see, life is a gift, and by God’s grace it has been given to us. Jesus said, "I have come that you may have life in all of its abundance" (John 10:10) That is what He offers to us, and what we need to do is receive the gift with gratitude.

In her book Amazing Grace, the Presbyterian author Kathleen Norris put it this way:

Such is the amazing grace of God! And what we need to do is receive the gift He has offered us—life and love and joy and faith—with an attitude of gratitude.

But there is one thing more, said the Apostle Peter, and it is this: As each of us has received the gift, let us employ it as good and faithful stewards of God’s grace. In other words, we are not supposed to keep God’s gifts to ourselves. We are all called to share those gifts with others.

So, said Peter, practice hospitality . . . render service (to those in need) and as good and faithful stewards, employ the gift . . . of God’s grace.

There is no place in all of scripture which describes that kind of stewardship more compellingly than in the 25^th chapter of the Gospel of Matthew. Jesus told the story, the parable, this way:

Now if Jesus had ended the parable at that point, we could probably conclude this first sermon about annual giving on an upbeat note. We could remind ourselves that God has blessed us richly, that He wants us to increase our gifts generously and sacrificially, and that our reward will come in knowing that we have pleased God and touched the lives of those in need through the faithful giving of this church. All of that would be true, and we might even request Charlie Whittaker [church organist and director of music ministry] to play a little "pledge-card-filling-out music," ask the ushers to come forward and wrap up this campaign here and now.
But Jesus did not end the story, this parable of the talents, on an upbeat note. And although the conclusion makes me uncomfortable, as a preacher, I cannot avoid the truth of the text.

What Jesus actually said was this. The third servant, who was fearful of taking what He had been given and trying to increase its value, hid his talent in the ground. And when the master returned, and found out what had happened, things did not go well for that servant. The one talent he had kept was given to the others, and that servant was cast into the darkness. So shall it be for you, Jesus concluded. For to every one who has will more be given . . . and from those who have not, even what they have will be taken away.

To be honest with you, I have never tried to explain those words before because I really don’t understand what they mean. These verses at the end of Jesus’ story seem to contradict so many other things He said, and what happened to that third servant appears to be unfair and unduly harsh. So originally, when I planned this sermon months ago, I had intended to leave the last part of the story out. But I can’t do that today, and in closing, let me tell you why.

If we really believe that life is a gift and that by the grace of God we have all received blessings beyond measure, then could it be that Jesus was telling us that sharing those blessings is non-negotiable for a Christian? Whatever He meant by the last part of this parable, the reality of our obligation to be faithful stewards of all that we have been given comes through with resounding clarity. God expects us to share what we have with those who are in need, and if we don’t do that, we will be held accountable.

Matthew says that this third servant was afraid to take the risk; fearful, perhaps, that he would lose what had been entrusted to him; apprehensive, perhaps, that there wouldn’t be enough to go around; worried, perhaps, that he would come up short when the chips were down. So he kept what he had received, and held onto it for dear life.

The late Dr. Karl Menninger had a patient like that at his clinic in Topeka, Kansas. The patient was affluent but unable to let go of anything he thought he owned. So in one of their counseling sessions, Dr. Menninger asked him, "What are you going to do with all of that money?"

"Just worry about it, I suppose," the patient said.

The psychiatrist pressed the point, saying, "Do you get that much pleasure out of worrying about it?"

"No," answered the patient. "But I do get anxiety attacks when I think about giving it away to someone else."

According to Jesus Christ, with all respect to modern day psychiatry, that answer is unacceptable. Why? Because all that we are and all that we have been given has been entrusted to us from God for a while—while we are here on earth. We don’t get to keep it when life is over, and we cannot send it on ahead. But what we can do, as Faithful Stewards of God’s Grace, is to share our gifts with others here and now while we have the chance. That is our theme for this Annual Giving Campaign—Faithful Stewards of God’s Grace. And that, my friends, is both the opportunity and the responsibility that the Lord offers to all of us today.

In the name of the Father, and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.