A sermon preached at Kowloon Union Church on Twenty Fourth Sunday After Pentecost 14 November 2021, by Rev Phyllis Wong. The scripture readings that day : Matthew 25:14–30 and 1 Peter 4: 8–11.
Opening prayer
God of love and faithfulness,
May the Word of your love touch our heart. May Your Word deepen our faith. Awaken our Holy Spirit to understand You more and be transformed to be God’s good stewards. May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable and pleasing to You. Amen!
Stewardship Sunday has been a tradition arranged annually to encourage church members to make pledges to give faithfully, lovingly and sacrificially, our time, our talents, and even our treasure (money) to our church. We had stopped for a few years and glad that we tried again this year with the Council’s inputs.
Today I would like to share the message about stewardship by going back to the roots – that is from the book of Genesis.
Hear these word taken from Genesis 1:26
26Then God said, “Let us make humankind in our image, according to our likeness; and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the birds of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the wild animals of the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps upon the earth.”
The scripture reminds us when God created the household of the world, he has entrusted human being to take charge and take responsibility for caring all creatures.
Stewardship is thus the will of God proclaimed right at the beginning when the world was created.
When God entrusted human beings to take care of the world, it implied God has deep trust on human beings of what they can do. With this trust, God has expectations upon humankind. Within the church, Jesus Christ our Lord has expectations on his disciples to take care of the household of the church. All people who are created in holy God’s image are given talents and gifts to do the work of God. Being the steward of God is an inherited duty. Stewardship is also a natural response to the disciples of Jesus Christ.
Today our four brothers had done a funny and lovely drama to illustrate the parable of talents.
The parable is not to teach us about how to make use of our talents for investment or touching on the importance of making profit. The parable is about commitment and attitude of the servants.
The master, who represented God has given us different kinds of gifts according to our ability. God has entrusted us to take care of all the gifts.
The parable reiterates the fact of
Number 1 - God has trust in us
Number 2 - God has expectation on us
Number 3 – there is consequence if we don’t take our own responsibility
In the parable, what really upset the master was that one of the servants made excuses and told lies. The master even scolded him “you are wicked and lazy”.
From the eyes of the master, good stewards are to take their responsibility, and should never find excuses to justify their inactions. Moreover, good stewards are taking seriously of the charge by the master, try to do their best to overcome difficulties, and even willing to take risk and challenging themselves for offering God their best.
The parable reminded me of One Body In Christ (OBIC). OBIC is a church KUC provides venue for their worship and fellowship every Saturday evening.
This year OBIC celebrates their 10th anniversary. One of the activities they planned was fund raising and they had set a targt of HK$100,000. As a small church of around 40 people regularly attending the worship service, this amount was not easy to meet. But they made it. It was amazing!
Members of the church arranged charity sale and charity performances. Anyone who would like to perform in a special evening Service need to raise at least HK$2,000. A member I named her Susan wished to participate and raise fund for the church by singing. But she is not good at it. So she went to a teacher to train her voice and enhance her skills in singing.
Although Susan has her own personal problems to handle. But she did not focus on her problems and inadequacy. She used the gift of her voice and tried to improve it through learning and practising. In the process of her service, I saw her joy and her increasing self-confidence.
From Susan, I realized that being God’s steward is the willingness to overcome difficulties and to walk the extra mile in order to achieve goodness for God. It is exactly what the wicked and lazy servant refused to do in the parable.
Be God’s steward. Sisters and brothers, when an invitation is extended and a need is identified in church that required your help and support, are you willing to say yes by trusting in God and in yourself that you can do it?
Be God’s steward requires trust.
Another important element of being God’s steward is LOVE.
Love is a powerful driving force to stewardship
The reading today taken from 1 Peter 4 reminded us a very important lesson. As God’s steward, our primary role and responsibility is to love and whatever we do is for the glory of God through Jesus Christ.
St Peter experienced deep grace from Jesus through his forgiving and sacrificing love. Do you still remember Peter denied Jesus three times? But Jesus forgave him. More than forgiveness, Jesus commissioned him to be the church leader to tender his sheep. Peter was one of the apostles called to be the rock of the church. Peter affirmed his love to Jesus when he was asked “do you love me” three times after the Lord’s resurrection.
Love from God and love to God is the very reason for our service and being a steward. While church pastors and leaders are encouraging believers to offer time, talents and treasures to God and to church as God’s good steward, we must be humble before God. While sisters and brothers are responding to the call of stewardship, remember there is one purpose, only one, that is for the glory of God and for the sake of his people. Stewardship is never to achieve personal ambition or to fulfil personal desire or to prove one’s ability.
In the early church, Christians suffered a lot of persecution. Being Christians to follow Christ took great risk as they might even lost their lives at that time. The words of St Peter were to encourage the believers to keep loving each other so as to overcome sins, to serve without complaining, to make good use of God’s differing gifts as steward, and to affirm that God is the source of strength and grace. This is great reminder to each one of us as Christians today. We do face a lot of challenges, changes and uncertainty such as job insecurity, relationship problems, mass emigration, threats from Covid 19 pandemic and restricted freedom under NSL and the tough social distancing measures. Many who have works are suffering from long working hours and immense stress. A lot of people young and old are facing health challenges.
God has given us a unique congregation in KUC. When we are able to use our rich God’s given gifts to help each other and beyond, with love, with generosity, with wisdom and with responsibility, we can stand still and strong to overcome the wind and storm.
As one, let us be connected with one another in Christ as God’s steward, to build a community full of life and love, through our giving and our being.
To close my sermon I would like to share this story.
A father who was very rich and had a lot of land gave to his daughter and son a field each. His son was happy in the beginning. But after a month of hard work, he could not fix the field and many problems could not be resolved. He ended up giving up the field. One day, when he passed by his sister’s field, he found her working on the field joyfully. He observed her for a period of time and found that she was always working happily in the field. He eventually went to asked her sister: “why are you so happy working in the field. Don’t you find the work so hard and not rewarding at all.”
His sister shared with him that at the beginning she found the work was so difficult and she was about to give up too. But she went to see her father asking for advice. Her father was patient to teach her and give her a lot of encouragement.
After hearing it, the son started to do the same like his sister. They were working together and supporting each other. Whenever they encountered difficulties, they would discussed together with their father and asked for advice.
One day, the son and daughter got very good harvest and they brought them to their father’ house with great joy. Their father congratulated them for the success because of their hard work.
His son replied instead, “no, father, the harvest was a witness of your love and your trust to us. After that the father gave all the fields he had to them. His two children continued to work with joy because they felt the love from their father. They worked very hard too in order not to disappoint their father and wanted to show their love in return. With love and trust, they did not find working in the fields a big burden. Instead, the responsibility that they have to take was a source of joy and satisfaction.
Closing prayer
Thank you God for your love and your trust on us.
You have entrusted us to be your stewards, to take care of your world and your people.
Strengthen our faith in you and deepen our love in you. Help us to serve you, your creation and your church faithfully and joyfully with a grateful hearts. Unite us in KUC to be your stewards. Through our committed and loving services, may we make this world a better place to live with your full and loving presence. To God be the glory. Amen!
AMEN
# posted by Kowloon Union Church : Sunday, November 14, 2021
