Prayer: Eternal and loving God, we have felt your spirit in this place already, and we thank you for being here with us. Now in this moment as in all the moments that we have experienced this morning, touch us, awaken us, and inspire us by your spirit. And let the words of my mouth and the meditations of all of our hearts be acceptable to you O God, our rock and our redeemer.  Amen.

This is our stewardship campaign season and you have probably noticed that the title of today’s sermon is the same as the theme of our campaign. In this season, which concludes October 6, we are not being asked to see what we can afford to give to the church. Stewardship is not about what we can afford. The truth is we will find a way to afford whatever it is that we want. Otherwise there would be no need for ads and commercials. Nor are we being asked to base our giving on what anyone else gives. Stewardship is not about competition, or deciding someone else has given too much or too little.

Stewardship is about managing the things of God’s house, so counting the cost of what this congregation means to us. It is about the ministries we support, the people the we encourage, the warmth and welcome we extend, and the witness we make every time we tell some one where we go to church and why. It is each of us asking ourselves what this church would look like if every member here had our same commitment of volunteerism, sharing of gifts, and financial support. I know that we all live in differing circumstances, but the questions are worth asking. How creative would we be? How faithful and how joyful would we be if everyone counted the cost of stewardship and gave themselves to the church the way you do?

Our readings today give us two stories about counting the cost of stewardship. One story is about a church that didn’t think it had enough. The other is about workers who didn’t think they had gotten all that they deserved to receive.

An offering was being collected for the church in Jerusalem. It was a special offering collected from churches throughout the region. The Jerusalem church was the place of the disciples. It was the base of operations for those who walked and talked with Jesus in his lifetime. The Jerusalem offering then can be compared to our special day offerings now. It was like the collection we will take up for ministries such as Reconciliation, Week of Compassion, Christmas and Easter. Those offerings go far beyond our congregation make us partners with other churches to support the ministry we do together.

Paul is writing to encourage the Corinthians because they had begun to collect an offering for Jerusalem, but have stopped before the campaign had ended. Maybe they had a budget meeting and somebody said, “We can’t do this. They may need the money over in Jerusalem, but we need it have too. Somehow Paul has learned of the meeting and writes to Corinth. He tells them of a congregation less affluent than the Corinthians. Nevertheless, they have already given to the Jerusalem church.

“Look at the Macedonians,” he says. Don’t look for the purpose of competing with them. Look to see what motivates them. Let them be an example for you. The Macedonians are not wealthy, and that their lives have not been easy. They have paid the price for their faith in Jesus. They have known both poverty and persecution.

They could have insisted on being excused from the offering. In fact someone probably told them they were too poor to give. Keep your money; we don’t need it. You just pray for us”. But look at what they did. They begged to participate in the offering. Can you imagine? “Please let us give to the Jerusalem offering.”

In fact, they participated with joy in the offering because they were people of tremendous faith. When hard times came, they looked inward and said, “we are the people of Jesus Christ. We may be down, but we will not stay down. We will get up”. And they did. And when they did, they began to look out and they said what can we do? What is our mission. They had heard of the offering for the church in Jerusalem, and though they were poor, their creativity, their faithfulness, their joy led them to raise the money they needed to contribute to the offering.

What was their motivation? They were people of Jesus Christ. In spite of their circumstances, they could give to Jerusalem because “they gave themselves first to the Lord, and then by the will of God, to us” (II Corinthians 8.5). Their commitment to Jesus Christ was the high priority in their lives and if they belonged to Christ, then they knew that they belonged to Christians everywhere, and so they were part of something beyond themselves

Paul wants the Corinthians and us to know what the Macedonians understand. That is, the desire to give and support the work of the church comes first from our commitment to Jesus Christ. So it is that a poor church becomes the model for a more prosperous church. Be like the Macedonians, count the cost and know that sharing out of our love for Christ is worth every penny we give.

Paul says the Macedonians are models of sacrificial giving. Jesus says, when you count the cost, don’t let yourself get distracted by how much others have. Just do what you are called to do.

The story is prompted when a rich young man, a good man, who has kept the commandments all of his life asks Jesus how he can inherit eternal life. Jesus tells him to sell all his possessions, give the money to the poor, and follow him. The young man goes away heartbroken. He is unwilling to let everything he had go in order to follow Jesus. Jesus then turns to his disciples and says how hard it is for people who have so much let go enough to get in the kingdom of God. Why? Not because wealth is bad or sinful, it is not. It is a blessing and a gift. It is hard because sometimes the more we have, the tighter we hold on to it when in fact, we are called to let go and to come to Jesus as we really are, stripped of all that we think is important, in order to take on what we need - a life giving relationship with him.

Peter says, “then can anyone be saved?” “Not by themselves”, Jesus says. “But for God, all things are possible” (Matthew 19. 26). Peter needs more clarity. He has left the family fishing business to follow Jesus, and speaking for his brother disciples, he says, “We have given up everything to follow you” (19. 27)?

Jesus says, don’t worry about it. Just do what you have said you will do. Besides, the day will come when it will all be turned upside down. In God’s kingdom, the last will be first, and the first will be last. Then he tells them a story, a parable really. A parable is a story about ordinary things, told to make an extraordinary point about God and Jesus Christ.

A landowner needed some workers so he went to the town square at six o’clock in the morning and offered the people standing there a day’s pay for their work in his field. They agree and go. At nine o’clock as he is leaving the local diner where he has had breakfast he sees more workers. He hires them, for what is a right and fair price. They trust him and go. He returns to hire more workers at noon, at three and at five.

At six o’clock, pm, the workers line up to collect their wages. He pays the ones hired at five o’clock first, and gives them a full day’s pay. He does the same for the workers hired at three, at noon, and at nine. The six o’clock am hires are giddy. If he is paying these others for a whole day’s work, and they came to the field late in the day, how much more will we get? We were here longer, we deserve more. Visions of bonuses dance in their heads. They open their pay envelopes expecting extra cash, only to find a day’s pay.

Have you ever looked forward to getting some good thing you knew you deserved? Remember the anticipation? Your senses were all heightened, your feelings of well-being and worth were at their highest level, all things were ready to receive you good thing, and then you discovered that you were getting the exact same as everyone else?

The twelve hour workers are not happy. “These last worked only one hour, and you have made them equal to us” (20.12). This is a parable. If it were only about workers and wages, we would question the judgement of anyone who pays a full day’s wages to people who only worked and hour. But, it’s not only about workers and wages. It is about God and the church. It was given to the church at a time of great diversity. People had began responding to the grace and mercy of Jesus Christ. They were giving themselves to Christ and offering themselves to the church. Some Jewish Christians were not at all happy that Gentile Christians were not only joining the church, but were beginning to assume leadership in their church. Everything was changing and they didn’t like it. We can almost hear them as they say. “These new people are taking over everything. We have been here the longest. They just got here. It’s just not the way it used to be. Why are all of these people here anyway”?

Matthew wants the growing church to make room for everyone’s gifts, no matter how recently they have come to the church. “Count the cost”, Jesus says, and understand that longevity may mean more knowledge, wisdom and experience but it does not mean superiority.

Besides, we all made the same declaration. We each have said, in one way or another, “I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” The landowner says, “what is the problem? I did not deceive you? I paid you what you agreed to work for, didn’t I? Take your wages and go. Am I not allowed to do what I want with what’s mine? Are you mad because I am generous?”

“We empathize with the grumbling workers because in one way or another we have been in their situation. We have known reckless employers who rewarded lazy workers more generously than faithful, hardworking employees. But can God be so unfair”? (Interpretation series. Matthew. Douglas RA Hare. Louisville, John Knox Press. 1993, p.230).

This is not about fairness, it is about mercy and grace, and the ability of God to invite into God’s realm whomever God will. The kingdom of God is not like tenure on a job or a reservation at a good restaurant. There is no seniority when it comes to receiving God’s salvation. All of us have been in places where we were looking for a place to feed our souls. The Kingdom of God is that place we are brought to when God finds us standing around, waiting, needing to do the work our souls’ require. Think of the town square as the place where the unloved find love, the lost are found, and people who are spiritually homeless find a place of welcome and rest. No matter how long or short our journey, we all have a place here.

What is true in Corinth was true for Matthew and is true for us. The first step in stewardship is to give ourselves to Jesus Christ. As we give ourselves to Christ, we can trust God to be merciful and gracious to us. Our call is to be faithful. So let’s work hard at what God has called us to do. We can practice compassion, we can live as justice-seeking, evangelizing, worshiping, giving, creative, faithful, joyful stewards of God. We can continue to move in the momentum in us, God is working through us in this place, and we want to continue to dream, and grow, and thrive.

After all, we serve a living savior who counted the cost of our salvation and paid for it with his own life. We know that what Paul wrote to the Corinthians was true for the first hearers of this parable and it is true for us. “[We] know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your/our sake, he became poor, so by his poverty we might become rich” (v.9). We are rich in our salvation because of Jesus. We have learned that all of the money marked for the church goes in the offering envelope and that the candy store and the other stores will have to wait their turn. We are found and not lost because of him. We are loved because of him; we have life eternal because of him.

Because of all that is true whether we have been in the church 70 years or seven days; whether we count ourselves among the rich or the poor, or somewhere in between, there is one more thing we know as we count the cost of our stewardship.

“The final standard of our giving is not to be the result of a careful calculation of how much will be left when we have given. Nor ought we to think of how much we will receive from others should we fall into need. The only standard is the love of Christ. In the light of that can we hold back anything (Best. P.81)? The answer of course is no. We cannot hold back our gifts, or our blessings to others who know the same relationship we do. We do not hold back, but open ourselves to God, and find in God, more than we can ever imagine.

Praise God for raising up a creative, faithful, joyful spirit within us. Amen.