Today we have an oracle from a prophet six hundred years before Jesus and we have yet another puzzling teaching from Jesus challenging to us in our stewardship season. After all who wants to think of themselves as a worthless slave?
We will connect the dots between the righteous, the life of faith and the life of gratitude. Since college football is upon us these days, I want to give you an image I have of Jesus sitting in the bleachers cheering for us. (Nebraska joke) Next I must tell you a story that is mostly 1.
This is a story about the medieval church where bishops were political appointments and corruption was rampant.
Two brothers grew up in the same small farming village. They learned the value of hard honest work from their parents. The older brother eventually left the farm to attend the university. He studied hard and seemed to have a knack for learning. He studied all the classics in Greek and Latin. His teachers were always impressed with his writings and scholarship. After years of schooling he was ordained a priest. He liked the role of a parish priest. He had excelled in school by organizing everything around him and in the parish he organized and controlled every aspect of the parish. Nothing happened in his parishes without his finger on it. He prided himself in his service of God.
The older brother held himself and others to high standards. His conduct of the liturgy was flawless. His work running a large parish was noticed by the bishops. He considered himself a tough but fair judge when it came to evaluating the work of other priests and staff working under his administration. He did have a bit of a temper and would sometimes fly into temper tantrum if others did not work exactly according to his plan or if things beyond his control forced a change of priorities. His superiors tended to discount his anger issues because his job performance as a priest was stellar in every possible way.
The older brother was a poster child for “elevation” to the status of bishop and he was eventually consecrated bishop in the church. He was a self made man and proud of it. Portraits of him could not hide his smugness and self satisfaction. He was an important figure in the church.
The younger brother saw his older brother’s path and would have nothing of it. He stayed behind helping his parents with farm work until they passed on. When his parents died he sold the farm and gave the money to the church. He joined a monastery working in the kitchen and in the fields. Although he could read and write from his basic education, he often commented that reading the Gospel was all the education he needed.
He summed up the good news in this way: “God became human in Jesus Christ and the world crucified him for who he was. In rising from the dead Christ shows us there is hope for everyone. We cannot do anything to earn God’s favor. We must believe and live by our faith.”
Even after many years working in the fields and kitchen of the monastery and attending daily prayer services and mass the younger brother refused even to be accepted a member of the religious order. He only wanted to serve others in the kitchen in his life of faith. To the day he died his service and his writings revealed a heart that saw God’s blessings in everything including the hardships. He was deeply grateful for everything God had given him – a six by eight foot cell, a bed, a Bible, a set of clothes and a job in the kitchen.
Most of us have far more worldly possessions than the younger brother. Most of us have jobs that we might consider more edifying, more interesting or even more important. Do we view our possessions as things that we have earned and as things that we own? Or do we see them like the younger brother as gifts and blessings from God that we neither earned nor deserve? Do we see our possessions and accomplishments as a temptation to push God out of the picture while inflating our own sense of self importance?
Living a life of deep gratitude is the life of faith. The prophet today says the righteous will live by their faith. Jesus tells us we are to live as slaves in the kitchen. We are to recognize God as the source of all that we are and we are to give thanks for that. When your sense of deep gratitude grows, your faith grows AND the church grows.
By the way, the older brother faded away in history as just another bishop in a medieval European church. We really don’t know much about the bishop because he really didn’t do very much. We know the younger brother today centuries later.
The writings of “Brother Lawrence” (even though he never became an official member of the religious order) are classics in Christian spirituality and teachings.
Your stewardship challenge and in fact your faith challenge is to choose which brother you will pattern your life after. Jesus is sitting out there in the bleachers cheering for you to make the right choice. “Increase our faith.” … Indeed!