Time, Talent and Treasure are three words associated with our call from God to be the best stewards of His blessings, including the resources we have and those we have developed to make the church and the world better places. At the heart of stewardship is responding to God’s call to spend some of our precious time in service or participation, specifically in local parish ministries and activities. This amount of time and focus must be driven by some reflection on our talents, what we can offer, what we are good at, and sharing them to advance the church’s mission, again most significantly at the local parish level.
Treasure refers to our financial commitment to the church. Originally ideas of stewardship were based almost solely on financial giving because they are fundamentally important in advancing any church community’s mission. Funding enables much to be done. I’m sure you have heard me refer to the very ambitious mission of Holy Family and how important your treasure, your financial support, is. Many of you are unbelievably generous in your financial support of Holy Family, particularly during our recent challenges, and, on behalf of all we do, all of those we help as a result – THANK YOU.
Perhaps you also heard me present a different paradigm for stewardship a couple of years ago. I would like to revisit this now because it is particularly pertinent to four of the readings in the past three weekends. Vineyards have been used by Jesus and others to illustrate some aspect of the kingdom of God. This week’s message is particularly challenging because it tells of a vineyard owner (God) who creates the best environment to build and create a successful, fruitful vineyard (world and church), then leases or entrusts the vineyard to others (humanity) who do not make it fruitful; in fact, they wastefully destroy it. There is ultimately punishment and consequences for the misuse of the vineyard and loss of life associated with it (sin) and the entrusting of the vineyard’s fruitfulness to others (us???).
My stewardship model is one that calls us to imitate the process in the vineyard of God’s kingdom that we live in and from which a really good bottle of wine is enjoyed or, to use the Gospel language, “…produce its fruit.”
Any stewardship concept must start with God. The wine making process starts with God’s creation of earth, nutrients in soil, water, sunshine, vitis (wind pollinated reproductive structures or seeds). We must first acknowledge that God gives us these as a blessing and calls us to make more of them. We, as humans, as stewards, then build upon these basic elements. We are to assume certain roles, such as Viticulturist (one who studies grapes), Enologist (one who studies the wine making process), Vintner (one who grows, produces and is a merchant of wine) and, finally, Wine Steward (one who serves the wine). Ultimately, the wine should be shared and enjoyed so that the process comes to a fruitful completion.
Steward is a word strongly associated with wine but, as it is used above, it is somewhat limited. My suggestion is that the entire process is stewardship – beginning with God, acknowledging the gift of the natural resources that God provides, the trust and hope that God places in us for a fruitful outcome, care of the vine itself, pruning, caning (creating an upright structure for the vine to grow) relying further on God’s unique blend of rain, sun and soil year to year, harvesting, crushing, producing through fermentation, bottling, storing, distributing/selling, serving, opening, tasting and, finally, sharing.
As my friend Tony Thompson says, “Wine is meant to be shared.” So is the entire process of stewardship so that the vineyard that God has entrusted to us produces the best bottle of wine, eliciting the most fruitful sharing through stewardship.
Our stewardship must be diligent, respectful and done in full cooperation with God, creating a partnership between us and God that is designed for fruitfulness. It calls us to acknowledge and thank God. I also believe that God created certain natural elements and dreamed that, through his partnership with us, the result would be very fruitful and most fruitful by sharing.
I am suggesting that stewardship is work, and work well worth doing so that all God gives us becomes more, better, fruitful. Strong, faith-filled stewardship requires an awareness and education concerning all of the steps to build church community likened to the ones mentioned above and a partnership that is more than sharing Time, Talent and Treasure.
As I have said many times, it takes a lot to do good church. Next time you open a bottle of good wine, think of all it took to get to you. Apply the same thing to church and sacrament and grace, and consider being as generous a steward as you can be.