Our Stewardship Team gathered throughout the winter and spring and had some meaningful conversations about how we measure what matters in life.  We talked about how stewardship is more than money.  Stewardship is a lifestyle based on a relationship with Jesus Christ and fulfilling our baptismal covenant to provide and participate in the mission and ministry of Hickory Neck Episcopal Church to proclaim the Gospel in word and deed in order to change the world in which we live.  But we also talked about how things can get in the way of our faith journey:  our allegiances, our faith, our compassion, our use of money, our generosity, and our belief that God provides what is necessary for living out our lives.  And so, we agreed.  In order to help us navigate how to be faithful stewards, we would begin a preaching series over the next several months – looking at those challenges to our faith journey and what scripture has to say about them.  Today, the Stewardship team teed me up on this Ascension Sunday to talk about allegiances.

Now I do not know about you, but when I read the text about the Ascension from Acts, I did not really hear anything about stewardship.  Jesus did not lean over his shoulder as he was ascending to heaven and shout, “Don’t forget to tithe 10% to the Church!” So, what does the Ascension have to do with faithful living – with stewardship?  Well, to understand that notion, we have to take a big step back from the event of the Ascension.  You see, the Ascension is sort of a pivot moment in our lives.  Luke, the author of both the gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles, understood history to be “divided into two ages:  the broken old world marked by Satan, idolatry, sin, injustice, exploitation, fractiousness, scarcity, enmity with nature, violence, and death.”  The renewed world where God restores all things to God’s purposes is “marked by true worship, forgiveness, justice, mutuality, community, abundance, blessing between nature and humankind, shalom, and life.”[i]  Jesus’ life and ministry was in witness against the broken world and a shepherding in of the renewed world.  In the process of ascending Jesus gives authority to the disciples to continue the work of the renewed world.  That’s why the whole rest of the book of the Acts of the Apostles will be about how the community of Jesus – the Church – will live:  sharing resources, supporting those in need, living as a community of abundance, mutuality, and justice.

This past Thursday’s Discovery Class was the session where the attendees teach the rest of class on given topics.  One set of our class members focused on the history of the early church in America.  They talked about how the church in the 1600s and 1700s was the governing body of the region – using their resources to care for widows and orphans, tending to those who fell on hard times, basically serving as the social services agency of the region.  Now, they also had clergy appointed by the governor and charged local residents a mandatory levy to help the Church pay for those expenses (an idea I imagine a certain treasurer of ours probably wouldn’t mind) – but for all intents and purposes, the early church of the Americas operated just like the early church in the Acts of the Apostles – living as a community sharing resources, supporting those in need, embracing abundance, mutuality, and justice.  In essence, a community who understood their allegiance to be to the kingdom of God and not to the kingdom of brokenness:  a community of faithful stewardship.

We are told in our reading from the Acts of the Apostles that as the disciples watch Jesus ascend to the heavens they stand there for a moment – frozen in time as their scrambled brains try to figure out what has just happened and what Jesus’ ascension means.  While they are standing there, looking at heaven, two men in white robes appear and ask them a simple question, “Why do you stand looking up toward heaven?”  In other words, God uses these men in white to tell the disciples, “Don’t just stand there – go be the church!  Jesus showed you the way to abundant, faithful stewardship.  Now go bring kingdom living to life!”

That is our invitation today too.  Now you may be thinking, “Yeah, but the Church has changed so much.  We are not the primary social services agency in town – we are not the place responsible for people’s physical, emotional, and spiritual well-being!”  But Jesus tells us today that we are.  That every single member of this community has a part to play – can contribute your financial resources, the gift of your skills and expertise, the offering of your time to make this church a modern expression of the kingdom of God here in Upper James City County.  On this Ascension Sunday, we can choose to carry on the work of Christ, to do our part to turn away from brokenness and be agents of healing and wholeness.  Where will we find the capacity to enliven that abundant life?  In our Eucharistic Prayer today we will pray, “And, that we might live no longer for ourselves, but for him who died and rose for us, he sent the Holy Spirit, his own first gift for those who believe, to complete his work in the world, and to bring to fulfillment the sanctification of all.”[ii]  Not only did Jesus give us the mission, Jesus also gives us the Holy Spirit – that gift we will celebrate next week – so that we might be the faithful stewards of God’s abundance, declaring our allegiance to living in the light – to being the agents of abundance God knows we can be.  Our invitation is stop looking up, and start looking around at the kingdom God has gifted us to tend.  Amen.

---

[i] Ronald J. Allen, “Considering the Text: Week One, Ascension Sunday, 12 May 2024”  Center for Faith and Giving, as found at centerforfaithandgiving.org, 2.

[ii] BCP, 374.