“And Jesus said to him, ‘What do you want Me to do for you?’ And the blind man said to Him, ‘Rabbi, let me recover my sight.’” What could sight be for us, except the capacity to discern what is holy from what is unholy? As we heard from the Epistle to the Hebrews, having the “faculties trained by practice to distinguish good from evil.” To distinguish what is of the Holy Spirit from that which is from the flesh, the world, and the devil? So that we can recover our sight, so that we can truly see. And in seeing, all the more readily and effectively exercise our stewardship, through our threefold tithe of time, talent, and treasure. This is the third of my sermons on stewardship. I am offering sermons on this topic because our stewardship reflects our entire attitude to the Church, which is realized within our parish. In my first sermon I spoke of stewardship as seeing ourselves, members of this congregation, as gardeners: that we are to do what gardeners do: help growth happen, through cooperating with God; gardeners who have in mind an image of the harvest to get through the difficult work, which for us is the image of an adoring and merciful congregation in a beautiful church with a strong desire to know God. In my second sermon, I spoke of being gardeners who show humility before Almighty God. As Saint Paul teaches, it is not us but God Who gives the growth, only God Who gives the increase. And we are made humble by our awe of God, from Whom all growth comes – in awe of the fact that all creative power comes from God, Who is the maker of all things, and through Whom all things are made. Stewardship entails being a gardener in the garden of Christ with profound respect for the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life. In Christ’s garden, the Holy Spirit dwells, the Holy Spirit acts, the Holy Spirit leads us to Christ. For our parish to be Christ’s garden is for us to recognize that the Holy Spirit can act powerfully, such as to make the impossible possible. Our stewardship is thwarted by pride, yet it is genuine in humility. I spoke of always seeking to serve our awesome God, serve His awesome power, serve His incredible creativity, serve His loving energy that gives all things life, that fills all things with His sacramental blessing, that shines with the brightness of heaven in even the darkest of places, illumining all things with the torch of Christ’s light which ever burns with health, with salvation, with the peace that passes all understanding. In support of all of this understanding of stewardship, we hear this teaching from the Epistle to the Hebrews: “For God is not so unjust as to overlook your work and the love which you showed for His sake in serving the saints, as you still do. And we desire each one of you to show the same earnestness in realizing the full assurance of hope until the end, so that you may not be sluggish, but imitators of those who through faith and patience inherit the promises.” In hearing these words “our work and the love which we show for His sake in serving the saints,” as about us as well, we can hear them as directly about our stewardship. Our work and the love which show for God’s sake in serving the saints, which here means fellow Christians alive as well as faithfully departed, this is our threefold tithe of time, talent, and treasure. Our tithe is for God’s sake, that He will give the growth if we, as gardeners, through work and love shown for God’s sake, truly serve Christians; that is through work and love help Christians grow in their faith. For that to happen, we need to give our tithe: of time in worship and prayer, that we ourselves are fed by grace and remember God’s law to love Him with our whole being, and love Him in our neighbor; for that to happen, we need to give our tithe of talent, in support of the ministries ongoing in this parish (Vestry, liturgical ministry, ECW, Daughters of the King, Atrium catechesis, the various teams
