A Steward of the Rich Man's Things

When it comes to your life in this world, you’ve learned a thing or two over the years, and you’ve got at least a few things figured out. Whether you’re a second-career man, a bi-vocational pastor, or rocking a side hustle — or simply a full-time pastor with a home and family to care for and look after — you know how to “get ‘er done.” Right? You know your own business, your hobbies and pastimes. You’re a bona fide expert at your own occupation and activities in this body and life.

By a fair amount of trial and error over the years, you’ve learned how to make your way in the world. You know how the system works, and how to work the system. You know how to connect the dots, to make ends meet, and to get what you really want, one way or another.

You’ve also figured out how to make friends. You know what they expect from you, and what you can reasonably expect from them. And likewise, notwithstanding all the ups and downs on your learning curve, you know what to expect from this life on earth, and what it takes to survive.

But do you know the business of God? Do you know how things work in His Kingdom? Do you know what to expect, and what is expected of you, on the way that leads to the Life everlasting?

The fact is that you are a steward or manager of a Rich Man’s things, not only as a pastor, but as a human being, and all the more so as a Christian — a Blood-bought baptized child of God. Your life is not your own, no matter what you may kid yourself into thinking. Everything you have is on loan from God. It is entrusted to you, not for the purpose of feeding the appetites of your fallen flesh, but for the glory of God in the good that He does to you and to others. You are to use His gifts in faith before Him and in love for your neighbors. That is your job and your responsibility.

And you should take heed and take to heart, there will be an accounting of your stewardship. There will be a day of reckoning, when the ledger of your body and life in this world is presented to the Lord your God. And there will be the facts to speak for themselves.

How have you spent your time? And, yes, how have you spent your money? Where have you invested your energies? To what or whom have you given your affections? What have you done with God’s things? And what have you done for those people whom God has placed around you?

In short, who has been your master? Who has been calling the shots? Is it you, or the Lord?

Do not suppose that “clocking your hours” as a pastor every week is adequate or somehow even generous on your part. If there is any portion of your life that you regard as “your own,” then you are robbing from your true and rightful Lord, who has created you and given you life and all that you are and have. On any given day, in any given week, at best you have only done your duty.

Have a care how you think about tithing, as well, and about almsgiving. Perhaps you have shied away from any such notions altogether, because they have sometimes been taught and practiced legalistically. And to be sure, do not at all suppose that tithing will atone for your sins, justify you before God, or purchase your place in His Kingdom. But having been forgiven freely by Christ Jesus, made righteous by His grace through faith in His Gospel, and named a child of His God and Father in your Holy Baptism, do not at all suppose that you are now to live as a god unto yourself.

As for tithing, ten percent of your income is not a bad guideline, a starting point. It is surely not too much. But if you are hard pressed, commit some significant percentage of your income as a regular offering to the Lord, as an exercise of faith and love. And if you are able, do not hesitate to go well beyond ten percent. Or, if you do not think so readily in terms of percentages — if your income and expenses are variable through the year — then consider setting apart as much for the Church and Ministry of Christ as you spend on your hobbies, your entertainment, your vacations, and your luxuries in life, whatever goes beyond your food and clothing and safe shelter.

And let your almsgiving likewise be as generous as you pamper yourself. After all, if you can find the means to pay for your pastimes, for ball games and video games, for going out to eat or going to a show, then you can also find the means to care for your brothers and sisters in Christ Jesus.

Only, whatever you do, realize that you are not buying God off, nor are you earning His favor, since you are using and investing His riches, not your own.

Be very clear on this point: God doesn’t need your stuff. It’s already His stuff in the first place. But God does require your heart. All of it. And because you are His steward or manager, He has entrusted you to live and serve according to His good pleasure, that is, according to His Word.

The Lord looks not only at what you accomplish, but at whatever drives you to accomplish it. When you proceed in selfishness, it may result in impressive things in the sight of men, but the Lord your God is not impressed. Nor is He pleased by your selfishness and self-serving behavior.

The Lord does not measure things by the law of the jungle. He does not teach you to look out for yourself first, and for your neighbor only when it appeals to you or suits your plans. He calls you to live by faith in Him alone, and for His sake to sacrifice your entire life in love for your neighbor. He charges you to love even your enemies, and to pray for those who persecute you. That is how you are to occupy your days and nights, your life, your time, your energy, and all of your stuff.

That which is highly esteemed among men is detestable in the sight of God. And the opposite is also true: That which is highly esteemed before the Lord is detestable in the eyes of men.

Consider the Lord Jesus Christ, the almighty and eternal Son of the living God. Though He was rich, yet, for your sake, He made Himself poor, so that you could inherit the riches of God in Him.

He came down from heaven to become true Man, and not only that, but to bear the sins of the world in His own Body, to hand Himself over to the Cross. He liquidated Himself. He spent it all. He gave Himself away. Not for those who loved Him, but for you, though you were His enemy.

And the world says in response, “Jesus, you’re a bloody fool! That’s no way to live!”

And yet, it is the way that God lives. It is how He has lived for you. He humbled Himself and became obedient even unto death, in order that you might live with Him in His Resurrection.

You also, then, have this heart, mind, and spirit of Christ in you. For this is how you are to live.

For God’s sake, be generous to your neighbor, even if you don’t like him. Use the stuff that God has given you to love and serve those in need around you. And don’t tell me there are no people like that. There are. You know there are. So, love them. Don’t just speak nice words to them. Do things for them. Go out of your way. Give up some of your time. It isn’t your time, anyway.

Forgive. Above all, forgive. Forgive those who have trespassed against you, as your dear Father in heaven forgives you. That is the coin of the realm in the Kingdom of God, within His one, holy, catholic, and Apostolic Church on earth: Forgiveness of sins. It is not hoarded and hidden away. It is spent freely. And the more forgiveness is given, the more it multiplies and grows.

You are to exercise your stewardship in faith and love. That is the course that you are given to follow. So, then, trust in God, who has given you all things to begin with. Do not be afraid that if you give some of it away, He’s going to deprive you. He’s not going to stop being generous. He has no problem with generosity. That is what characterizes Him. It flows from His very nature.

If you are generous with what the Lord your God has entrusted to you, do not worry, and do not be afraid. He knows how to feed you. He knows how to clothe you. He knows how to take care of you. And because you are His very own, He does all of this for you with charity and compassion.

Even when you fail to be grateful, even when you fret and fidget and forget to say thank you, and even when you go about your life as though you have gotten everything for yourself, your dear Father in heaven still has this overflowing abundance of generosity for you in Jesus Christ. And it is such generosity that you are likewise to have for your neighbor. Indeed, the Lord’s generosity with you is not for your benefit only, but for the benefit and blessing of your neighbors, as well.

So, what’s that going to look like? What is that kind of faithful stewardship of your life and that kind of godly generosity in your life going to look like?

Well, here’s the thing, which ought to resonate especially with all of you who are pastors of the Lord’s people: It looks like the stewardship of the Mysteries of God, to which you have been called. It looks like the Ministry of the Gospel, like the administration of the Means of Grace.

The right way to use the temporal stuff that God has entrusted to you for this body and life on earth looks like the way that you as a pastor are given to use the Means of Grace on behalf of God’s dear children: the way you make disciples by way of Holy Baptism and ongoing catechesis in the Word of Christ Jesus; the way you feed those disciples with His holy Body and precious Blood; the way you freely and fully absolve them in His Name and stead. According to the Lord’s commission and command, all of these sacred things are done and given freely, without charge, and without cost.

The stewardship of the Mysteries of God, that is the pattern by which you are called to exercise the stewardship of your body and life, and of all that the Lord your God has placed into your care.

It is not like the scribes and Pharisees, who are lovers of money and lovers of praise from men. It is rather like the Gospel, because it is the life that is lived by and from and in the Holy Gospel. It is like the Lord Jesus, coming down from heaven and giving Himself for you and to you, and to and for others, also. That is how the Lord administers His true riches.

And that is how you are to manage and administer the Rich Man’s things.

It may seem foolish in the eyes of the world. Well, so be it. You ought to look foolish in the eyes of the world. Your Lord Jesus did, and so He does. The world still thinks this is all a bunch of nonsense. But living by faith, your hope is in Christ. And your hope shall not be disappointed.

Truth be told, your stewardship is not what it ought to be, neither in the church nor in your home.

Surprisingly, shockingly, the Lord nevertheless continues to deal with you by the stewardship of His Gospel. The Lord Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of God, your Savior, He is the faithful Steward and Manager of His Father’s things. For His Name’s sake, He praises you and blesses you, because He has poured out the Holy Spirit generously upon you and adorned you with His perfect righteousness. He has given Himself for you. He has reconciled you to His God and Father. He has been a Friend to you in need. And having befriended you in love and called you to Himself, He forgives you all of your debts, all of your trespasses and sins, and all of your faults and failings.

In His own faithfulness and righteousness, He who gave Himself up for you in love, continues to give Himself to you with the free and full forgiveness of all your sins. And for His own sake, for the sake of His divine and holy Love, He welcomes you into His House, into His dwelling, both here in time, where He feeds you at His Table in His Church, and hereafter in eternity, where you shall feast upon the Wedding Banquet of the Lamb in His Kingdom forever and ever.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

The Ministry of the Word of Christ

As He called and gathered the disciples to Himself, to follow Him on His journey from the waters of His Baptism to His Holy Cross and Passion in Jerusalem, so does He appear to them and reveal and give Himself to them in His Resurrection from the dead.  Not only for their own faith and life and salvation in Him, body and soul, but that He should also send them as ministers of His Word, that His fulfillment of the Old Testament should be written down and preached to all the nations, even to the ends of the earth and to the close of the age.  That you also, here and now, should hear and believe the Word of Christ Jesus, in order that, believing, you should have life in His Name.

As God the Father intended from before the foundation of the world, His Son, Christ Jesus, has perfectly fulfilled the Holy Scriptures by His becoming flesh, by the ministry of His preaching and miracles, by His Sacrifice upon the Cross, and by His bodily Resurrection from the dead on the third day.  This work of God in Christ is what the whole Bible is really all about.

So, too, by the preaching and teaching of the Holy Scriptures, by the Ministry of His Word and Sacrament — as also here and henceforth in the words and works of His servant, Pastor Gadbaw — Christ Himself is actively present within the life of His Church on earth, and He is powerful to save all those who hear and receive Him in the preaching of His Holy Gospel.

The Lord is merciful to all who call upon Him in truth, that is, by faith in His Word; for it is by His Word that you know His Name, that you know the Father and receive the Spirit in Christ Jesus, the incarnate Son, and that you fear, love, and trust in the Holy Trinity by divine grace and mercy.

And yet, for all of that, life within the world and in your own skin is a daily challenge.  It is a troubled world, challenging and difficult, chaotic and discouraging.  Everyone is dying, everything is perishing.  Suffering and sorrow, anger, hatred, and violence are pervasive on all sides.

The Cross looms large over a fallen and perishing world, and it cannot be understood rightly apart from the Word and Spirit of Christ Jesus.  But there are so many voices, so many words, and so many competing agendas, all of which threaten to drown out the preaching of His Gospel.

In the face of terrorist attacks on a daily basis and Christians being martyred all around the globe, the Lord’s Church appears to be powerless, subject to the capricious whims of this sinful world.  Certainly, there is open and growing hostility toward the Lord’s Word of Truth.

Even within the life of the Church, there are doubts and fears and difficult times.  You are tempted  to second guess or reject your pastors, to control them, or simply to ignore them; all because your sinful heart and mind refuse to recognize the Lord Jesus Christ in His Ministry of the Gospel.

Examine yourself.  Allow the Word of God to have its way with you.  And consider how it is with your heart and mind, with your spirit, soul, and body.  Are you at peace with God in your thoughts, words, and deeds?  Are you confident of His forgiveness and salvation?

Do you live as though the Cross and Resurrection of Christ made any difference in your life?  Do you lie down and go to sleep each night in the faith and comfort of the Cross?  And do you wake up each morning in the joy of the Resurrection?  Or do you drag yourself off to bed, exhausted by another day, with a mind full of worries and fear?  And do you get back out of bed to face another day with something more like grim determination than cheerful hope and expectation?

If you would know and love the Lord Jesus and abide with Him in Peace by faith in His mercy, then remain here in His City, in the midst of His Jerusalem, that is to say, within His Church on earth.  For here you are clothed by His Father with the Holy Spirit through His Word of the Gospel.

It is by the preaching of His Cross and Resurrection that He comforts you and lifts you up from your doubts and fears to hope and joy and gladness in Him.  That is the preaching of repentance for the forgiveness of all your sins in His Name, that you should believe and trust in Him, and live in Him by faith, with peace in your heart through the hope and promise of His Resurrection.

Such repentance, faith, and life with God are accomplished in your body and life by the preaching of the Cross and Resurrection, because it is by the Cross and Resurrection of Christ Jesus that He has accomplished everything for you.  His dying and rising are your repentance, faith, and life.

So, then, because the Lord your God loves you and does not want you to perish forever in the darkness of your sin, despair, and unbelief, He sends His servants to proclaim Christ Jesus to you.  And just so, Pastor Gadbaw is sent by the Lord to preach to you here at Trinity, to comfort and sustain you in the Word and faith of the Lord Jesus Christ.

You receive and embrace the Lord Jesus in this preaching, not by your own reason, wisdom, or strength, but only because the Lord in mercy opens your ears, your heart and mind, to understand the Scriptures.  And to understand the Scriptures is to understand Christ Jesus, crucified and risen from the dead.  For the whole Bible is the Book of Christ, and He is the One who opens that Book to you.  Not to make you smart, but to make you alive, and to make you His own.

The preaching of His Cross does crucify you.  It puts you to death and buries you with Him.  But at the same time, His Word of the Cross also removes all of your sins and raises you up with Him.

And Christ Jesus preaches this Word to you in flesh and blood like your own.  For He was not only crucified in the flesh, and not only did He shed His precious blood for you upon the Cross, but He is also risen from the dead forever in His own Body of flesh and blood.  He has known the curse of your sin and death, He has suffered your blood, sweat, and tears in His Body, that you might receive and know His Life and His Salvation in your own body of flesh and blood forevermore.

On your own, you are blind and lost and frightened.  Only Jesus can open your eyes to His Gospel of peace and forgiveness and eternal life.  First He must show you how real your sin is, and how desperate is your situation and your need for a Savior.  And then He must lead you to recognize Him as your Savior and to know the glory of His Cross as the fulfillment of the Holy Scriptures.

That is how He works to save you.  By His Word of the Gospel, proclaimed in His Name, your sins are freely and fully forgiven.  And by that Word of Holy Absolution, you are rescued from your fear of death, from your uncertainty and superstitions, and brought into the confidence of faith.  You are taught by His grace to trust and rely upon Him, and to receive all good things from Him.

He is here with you in His Church, and He addresses Himself to you.  He speaks from His great heart of love to your own heart and mind, to your body, soul, and spirit.  In the midst of your pain and confusion and difficulty, He’s here talking to you.  And by His Word to you, He removes your burdens; He grants to you the peace and hope that are found in His Resurrection from the dead.

From within His Church and Ministry on earth, His Cross and Resurrection are preached to all the nations — unto repentance and faith in His forgiveness of sins, unto life and salvation in His Name — until you are gathered to Him in glory in the Resurrection of all flesh on the Day of Judgment, when you shall be clothed with Power from on high, glorious in body and soul, like unto Christ.

His Word does and gives what it says, just as the Holy Scriptures of St. Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets preached Christ in days of old and were perfectly fulfilled with His coming in the flesh.  The preaching of the apostolic witness of His Cross and Resurrection truly delivers the goods.

Just as Jesus was present in a bodily and personal way for His disciples, so is He present for you in the life of His Church, in the preaching and administration of His Holy Gospel.  That is what it’s all about.  Christianity is not a disembodied “spirituality,” or a superstitious “ghost story.”  It lives and abides in the flesh-and-blood real presence of the crucified and risen Jesus of Nazareth.

That is what it meant for the Twelve to be sent as witnesses of the Cross and Resurrection.  And that is what it means for Pastor Gadbaw to proclaim repentance and forgiveness of sins “in the Name of Jesus.”  For when the called and ordained servants of the Word of Christ thereby deal with you in His Name, in accordance with His divine command, it is your dear Lord Jesus Christ Himself who is thereby caring for you, granting you His Peace and His forgiveness of your sins.

And for you, Brother Gadbaw, as from and in your Baptism, in your vocation as a child of God, so also from your ordination to the Office of the Holy Ministry, and now in your Divine Call to Trinity, in your station as a servant of the Word of Christ Jesus, the Promise of the Father rests and remains upon you and accompanies you in all that He sends you to do and say in His Name.

It is not an easy work that you are given to do.  Humanly speaking it is often a thankless task, and you may not be able to see or perceive that you are doing any good or making any difference.

The preaching of repentance is not fun for the preacher or the hearer.  It crucifies and puts to death the sinful heart, mind, body, soul, and spirit.  But it accompanies and aims at the preaching and bestowal of the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins in the Name of stead of Christ Jesus.  And it is by that Word that all the people of God, pastors and laity alike, live and abide in Him by His grace.

The Word that you are called and sent to preach is the Word of Christ, crucified and risen from the dead.  It is for the nations, but it is proclaimed from within the Church, on earth as it is in heaven.  It is to and from the Church, the City of God, His true Jerusalem, that you preach — to and from the Font, to and from the Altar, the Breaking of the Bread, wherein the Lord Christ is with you.

And as the Lord has bestowed His Spirit upon Pastor Gadbaw, and as He continues to sustain him in the Office to which He has called and ordained him, so does He bestow the same Holy Spirit, the Promise of His Father, upon all of you through this Office and Ministry of His Holy Gospel.

He causes His Word to be preached to you here in this place, in this city, that you may know Him and receive Him in the Breaking of the Bread, and that you may know and love the Gifts Christ freely gives you by and with His Word.  So that, hearing and receiving, trusting and believing, you may abide in Him, and be purified in Him through His forgiveness, and raised up to newness of life in Him, both body and soul, in perfect health and strength, at peace with God forevermore.

Rejoice, therefore, give thanks, and sing.  Even from the waste places of Jerusalem, the City of the Cross — under duress; in the midst of destruction; assaulted by the devil, all his works and all his ways; tempted to despair — sing for joy and praise the Lord, confess and call upon His Name in the sure and certain hope and promise of the Resurrection, which is yours in Christ Jesus.  For the One who calls you is faithful, and He will surely continue to fulfill all that He has spoken and promised, to the praise of His glorious grace, for the life and salvation of His beloved children.

In the Name + of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.