FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, ATLANTA, GEORGIA
Sermon by Dr. George Bryant Wirth
Celebration Sunday
August 27, 2006
CHRIST AT THE CENTER: STEWARDS OF
GOD’S GIFTS
Scripture:
Genesis 1:26-31; I Peter 4:7-11
INTRODUCTION
On this Celebration Sunday,
it is a joy for me to welcome all of you back to the corner of 16th
and Peachtree in the heart of this great city, as we begin another new church
year, in fact the 158th year of ministry and mission since the
founding of our congregation in 1848.
Looking behind us, we can see
in our mind’s eye a long line of Presbyterians who have gone before us, those
faithful Christians who laid the foundations and developed the traditions,
which are so important to us.
Looking around us today, we
are surrounded by fellow travelers in our journey of faith, sisters and
brothers who rejoice with one another for all the good things that are
happening here and now at this present moment in time.
And looking forward toward
the future, we can catch a glimpse of the glorious vision, which God holds in
store for us, believing, trusting and hoping that the best is yet to be!
For all of those reasons and
so many more, we have come here to worship the Lord today with joy in our
hearts and praise on our lips, as we embrace a new season, focused on the
theme: “Christ at the Center: Stewards
of God’s Gifts.”
I
To tell the truth, when we
prayed and made plans for this theme many months ago, we didn’t know for
certain if the concept of “stewardship” would get off the ground. It reminds me of what happened at Kitty
Hawk, North Carolina back in December of 1903.
Two brothers, Orville and
Wilbur Wright from Dayton, Ohio, rolled their new invention – an airplane – out
onto the beach. No one had ever
successfully flown an airplane before, and a man in the crowd which had
gathered there shouted out loud, “You’ll never get that thing off the ground”!
The Wright brothers kept
pushing their fragile aircraft across the sand until they got it up onto the
side of a hill. The skeptic taunted
them again, “It won’t take off boys”!
And then…as they pushed it off the edge and the wings began to catch the
wind and it lifted up into the air and flew for more than 120 feet, they
naysayer reluctantly replied, “Well, if you do it like that, of course it’ll
fly.”
And that is what we are
hoping and praying will happen as we launch this new theme for the coming year:
“Christ at the Center: Stewards of God’s Gifts.” Many people think that stewardship is really a fund-raising campaign,
somewhat disguised by Biblical and spiritual window-dressing. And if that became the main thing here,
Sunday after Sunday – talking about money and asking you to give more of it –
my guess is that we could pretty well empty this sanctuary by Christmas.
But the reality is that being
“Stewards of God’s Gifts” covers a much wider range of our lives in a myriad of
dimensions. It goes back originally to
the book of Genesis, chapter 1, where God creates human beings and gives them
“dominion” over almost everything – “the fish of the sea, the birds of the air,
the animals on the earth, the plants and the trees”…and according to the Bible,
God entrusts all of that to us, saying on the sixth day of creation that
“everything He had made was very good” (Genesis 1:26-31) and was given to human
beings for their enjoyment and safe-keeping.
The Hebrew words which
describe that kind of stewardship are found time and time again in the Old
Testament: “haish asher al,” meaning, “the man who is over,” implies that we
are the over-seers of all that has been given to us.
In the New Testament, the
Greek words which describe this same concept are similar: “epitropos” (Luke 8:3
and Galatians 4:2) and “oikonomos” meaning those who have responsibility for
the affairs of a household.
And that is why, when the King
James Version of the Bible was translated and finally published in 1611, the
word those scholars used was “steward,” coming from the Old English “stigweard”
– stig, meaning “house or household” and weard, meaning “warden or keeper”
(definitions from “The Steward: A Biblical Symbol Come Of Age” by Douglas John
Hall, Eerdman’s Publishing Company, 1990, pages 40-41).
Distilling all of that
information down into a simple and yet profound statement, the Canadian
theologian Douglas John Hall summarizes in his book “The Steward” that:
“…reflecting upon this word…,
we…conclude that stewardship has not only to do with money, budgeting and
finances, but (moreover) with the whole ordering of our life, our corporate
deployment of God’s varied grace in the daily life of our world” (ibid, page
41).
Now, I think that is what the
Apostle Peter had in mind when he wrote his letter to those first century
believers, offering to them and to all of us ever since, a Christian
definition, in keeping with the original vision in the book of Genesis, of what
it means to be faithful and responsible stewards in God’s kingdom:
As each has received a gift, employ it for one
another, as good stewards of God’s varied grace…in order that in everything,
God may be glorified through Jesus Christ. (I Peter 4:10-11)
The Greek words embedded in
these verses are “oikonomoi…caritos theo” – stewards of the gifts of God. And that my friends is the theme to which we
are going to pay a lot of attention in the months ahead: “Christ at the Center:
Stewards of God’s Gifts.”
II
So let’s focus today on a
theological affirmation with which most of us can agree: “All that we are and
all that we have has been given to us by the grace of God.” That is the Biblical witness of God’s people
from the book of Genesis to the last chapter of Revelation. That is one of the non-negotiable
convictions of our Presbyterian tradition going all the way back to the
Protestant Reformation. And that is the
personal experience of Christians down through the centuries of time, including
our dear friend John Claypool (rest his soul), who wrote in his books and said
from pulpits across this country over and over again: “Life is a gift, birth is
a windfall, and it all comes by the grace of God who loves us with a love that
will never let us go.” (Paraphrased
from “The Hopeful Heart” by John Claypool, Morehouse Publishing, 2003, pages
59, 75, 85-88)
Now, if we as Christians
really believe those words are true, then there are questions to be addressed
and decisions to be made which will set the direction that our lives will take
–
Are we willing to be more
Christ-centered and less self-centered? A wise person once said that “People wrapped
up in themselves make very small packages.”
And the exact opposite of that attitude was lifted up and written down
by a woman named Mary Brown in an old gospel hymn I learned a long time ago:
“There’s
surely somewhere a lowly place
In
earth’s harvest fields so wide,
Where
I may labor thro life’s short day
For
Christ the crucified.
So
trusting my all unto Thy care,
I
know Thou lovest me!
I’ll
do Thy will with a heart sincere,
I’ll
be what you want me to be.”
As Christians and as stewards
of God’s gifts, are we willing to be more Christ-centered and less
self-centered?
Another question to be asked
and answered is: “Are we ready to
use our gifts in service to others and for the glory of God?”
Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1750), a devout Lutheran who served as the organist of three churches in
Germany while he wrote all of that exquisitely beautiful music, signed his name
at the bottom of each manuscript and added the words “Soli Deo Gloria” – only
to the glory of God!
And George Eliot (1819-1880),
the English author who was so adept at bringing her characters to life,
memorialized another creative genius, this one an Italian who made
violins. Listen to these immortal
words:
“When any master holds ‘twixt chin and
hand a violin of mine, he will be glad that Stradivari lived, made violins, and
made them of the best…for while God gives them the skill, I give them the
instruments to play upon, God choosing me to help Him…if my hand slacked, I
should rob God – since He is fullest good – leaving a blank instead of
violins…he could not make Antonio Stradivari’s violins without Antonio.” (Quotation from “The Meaning of Prayer,” by
Harry Emerson Fosdick, Association Press, 1949)
Like Bach, Eliot and
Stradivarius…and Francis of Assisi, Dorothy Day in the slums of Chicago, Martin
Luther King Jr. here in America and Mother Teresa in the streets of Calcutta,
in your own way and time and place, are you ready to use your gifts in service
to others and to the glory of God?
CONCLUSION
Which leads to one final
question and it is this: “When you
have finished your life on earth and cross over to the other side, although you
can’t take your possessions with you, did you know that you can leave a legacy
behind?”
Dr. Frank Harrington, pastor
for 24 years at Peachtree Presbyterian Church who has gone on to the Church
Triumphant, loved to tell the story about an old and wealthy Scotsman who was
dying. He called his minister to his
bedside and whispered to him in a weak voice:
“Will I be included in God’s elect if I leave ten thousand pounds to the
Kirk?” The pastor thought for a moment,
took a deep breath and said “I think it’s an experiment worth trying!” (From Dr. Frank Harrington’s sermon
“Gratitude and Generosity Go Together: Not Where Did You Get It, But Who Gave
It to You?” October 8, 1989).
And here’s the bottom line:
although I promise you that we won’t talk about money every Sunday during the
coming year, the truth is that God has blessed us with resources in Atlanta and
in America beyond measure, and He expects us to share the gifts we have
received to help other people who are in need.
According to Jim Wallis, the
prophetic preacher and leader of the Sojourners Ministry who has spoken from
this pulpit, “There are one billion people on this planet who are trying to
live on less than a dollar a day, and three billion more who survive on less than
two dollars a day” (From “God’s Politics” by Jim Wallis, HarperCollins, 2005,
page 48). He calls that “The scandal of
poverty,” and God has called you and me to do something about it.
So the question is, when we
cross over to the other side, will we hear the Lord say to us those familiar
and hopeful words from the gospel of Matthew, chapter 23: Well done, good and faithful servant…enter at last into the joy of the Master?
As the Scottish pastor said
to the parishioner who was dying, “I think that’s an experiment worth
trying!” For you see, with Christ at
the Center, we are stewards of God’s gifts, from here to eternity!
In the name of the Father and
the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
The
sermon distribution fund has been established by the Session of First
Presbyterian Church to enable friends and groups to make contributions for the
printing of the Sunday sermons. Sermon
leaflets will be printed from time to time, as they are requested and as funds
are available. Please designate your
gift for Sermon Distribution Fund.
Thank you for your support.