Stewardship: Christ at the Center

I remember back to the time I first started to wonder about what the Bible is really saying and I was particularly bewildered by the part where God speaks to Moses out of the burning bush and tells him to go confront Pharaoh. Moses said, “Who shall I say sends me?” and God says, “I AM who I AM. Tell them I AM sends you.” And I can remember saying to myself, what the heck is that all about? What’s with this I AM stuff?

Later, when we were living near Hartford, a Saintly couple loaned us a series of tapes by an Episcopal priest by the name of Earle Fox. He explains the pagan worldview which prevailed at the time of Abraham and the Biblical patriarchs. To the pagans, everything was of the earth. Living things arose from the materials of the earth, lived their lives, and returned to the earth. Ashes to Ashes; dust to dust. Furthermore, there was a natural cycle to life: it arose in the Spring, flourished in the Summer, and died in the Fall. This was the great Circle of Life, the natural order, within which everything had its being, including the pagan gods themselves. You may have seen the ancient symbol illustrating this concept, the Ouroboros, the snake with its tail in its mouth, going round and round.

Into this world our transcendent God revealed Himself, the God who has His being independent of the created order, who stands outside the Circle. He is the one who is, the one who can, with authority, claim to be the only I AM.

Another of Fox’s insights is everyone has a spiritual life, since everyone has an object of worship they relate to. In ancient days people set up graven images. Nowadays we tend to be more sophisticated; we worship things like power or fame, although I suppose there are still a few men out there venerating their automobiles or golf clubs. But God had a better idea; He said we should have no other gods but Him and we shouldn’t have any idols. It’s a better idea, because, when we worship something other than God, we get in trouble.

When Jesus came along, he affirmed the greatest commandment. He said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind. But then He upped the ante.

In this next scene, I can imagine Jesus and all His disciples sitting around someone’s kitchen table and Jesus asks, what’s the scuttlebutt around town, what are people saying about me? They reported, you are a prophet of old, like Elijah, or maybe a new prophet, like John the Baptist. I can imagine too that some of the gossip was less complimentary and said that Jesus was an Elmer Gantry or a Jim Bakker. Just about the time the disciples were starting to enjoy this little dorm-room-style bull session, Jesus passed out the final exam, “Who do you, not the crowd, but who do you, say I am?” And Peter got it right, because God slipped him the answer, “You are the Christ, the son of the living God!”

In a sense the whole Old Testament is about people trying to understand what it means to have only one, true God, to put Him at the center of their being, and to have a proper spiritual life. Some got it right, like the Sunday school heroes, or the prophets, or the writers of the Psalms - and many got it wrong, like Pharaoh, or Jezebel, or the rebellious kings.

In like manner the New Testament is frequently about people trying to figure out who Jesus is. Think of the Pharisees, or the woman at the well, or St. Paul on the road to Damascus, or even John the Baptist. I liked the musical “Jesus Christ Superstar” precisely because, for all its distortions, its characters, even Pilate and Herod, it does ask the important question. In the title song, Judas Iscariot and the crowd cry out in bewilderment and exasperation, “Jesus Christ Superstar, do you think you are who they say you are?”

At this point, you may be asking, “If the Treasurer is supposed to be giving a talk on stewardship, why is he discussing theology - and rock operas?” It’s simple, as Jesus told Peter: this is the rock foundation on which He builds His church. To the extent God the Father is at the center of our spiritual life to the exclusion of petty gods, to the extent we know and acknowledge Jesus is the Word which was from the beginning, that is the extent to which my and the Vestry’s job is easy. Your and our response to God’s love will be as natural, loving, and complete as a child’s homemade gift to a loving parent.

James Kitler, Treasurer, Church of Our Father, Hulls Cove, Maine March 19, 2006