Stewardship

Wendell Berry’s poem, “Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front,” addresses not just the farmer in the title, but all of us. “Manifesto” starts off with an unsettling warning:

 Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more.

 It’s a powerful poem and you can find it in its entirety here — https://www.poetry-chaikhana.com/Poets/B/BerryWendell/ManifestoMad/index.html. It’s worth reading.

 It’s hard not to think about stewardship as linked closely with money. Maybe that’s just in my mind, conditioned by 40+ years of parish ministry! Despite three years of the retirement life, I still associate Autumn as a time of financial harvest, the gathering of the pledges, and not just the pumpkins. The church can’t exist without the financial support of dedicated parishioners. Still, limiting our understanding of stewardship to money is lifeless. The focus on money begins to blind us to other realities. Isn’t that what Berry is saying in the lines quoted above?

 Granted, much of our stewardship is about our financial support of ministry. That’s a reality, and an important reason for sharing our financial resources. I would encourage you to take seriously your financial stewardship of St John’s and to give generously.

 Sometimes it is hard to remember that stewardship is also about being stewards of divine experiences we’ve had a glimpse of but do not fully understand, of seeds to be planted for a harvest we may never realize, and of a faith witness that God calls us to proclaim.

So, here is how Berry advises we reset our understanding:

Ask the questions that have no answers.

Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.

Say that your main crop is the forest

that you did not plant,

that you will not live to harvest.

Say that the leaves are harvested

when they have rotted into the mold.

Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.

Stewardship is about planting seeds and tending growth that will result in harvests we may not live to see. It is about harvesting the work of faith of those who have gone before us. It is about committing to living in ways consistent with our confessions of faith. It is about seeing and valuing creation in a way that is often in opposition to demands of the secular world. It is about living in the presence of the mystery of God and knowing that God is always with us, even if we cannot envision what that presence might mean for the future.

Berry’s stewardship advice is challenging and won’t be headlined in most stewardship drives.

So, friends, every day do something

that won't compute. Love the Lord.

Love the world. Work for nothing.

Take all that you have and be poor.

Love someone who does not deserve it.

In the end, we aren’t just financial stewards. Our financial stewardship grows out of how we have embraced the presence of the mystery of God. We start there, with God’s love and grace. Love the Lord. Love the world. Have faith. The rest will fall into place.

- By the Rev. Susan de Puy Kershaw