All Saints Lutheran Church

Pastor Raita Neely

October 12, 2003

Deuteronomy 6:4-9; Mark 12:28-34

Someone has said that stewardship is everything you say and do after you say "I believe". I like that definition. Stewardship is wholistic. It has something to do with our money, but it has more to do with the way we live our whole life. If we are good stewards we care for ourselves, we care for other people, we care for God's good creation and we give of our resources of time, talent and treasure. Once you confess Jesus as Lord, you see every thing and everyone around you as God's good gift, and it becomes your joy to live in a good and healthy relationship, both with what you own and whom you call neighbor.

A teacher of the Law of Moses asked Jesus the question: "Which commandment is first of all?" We can understand why the question when we realize that Israel lived by the law, and at the time of Jesus, according to people who study such things, there were 613 laws that every Jew tried to obey in the course of a day. No wonder then, that the scribe was looking for the most essential one of the bunch. If you could zero in on the one law that superseded the rest, it might make life easier.

Jesus does not disappoint the questioner. He goes right to a form of the shema; The Shema is what we heard in the reading from Deuteronomy. The word shema means "listen" or "hear". It is the Jewish confession of faith that was used at the beginning of morning and evening prayer in the temple and daily in the prayers of pious Jews. There is only one God, the God of Israel. So love God with all your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Love the God who has given you the law, who has provided you with a way of being in the world. Why was the law so important and much loved? Because the people knew God's love for them through the law. They were not left to fend for themselves - without direction. God had graciously provided for them a way through the confusion of competing lifestyles and the empty promises made by lifeless gods. God still does this, just like a parent setting rules for a child, giving guidance because the parent loves the child deeply and wants to see the child grow and live and thrive.

But Jesus is not done. There is a twist. He reminds his listeners that the love of God needs to be accompanied by loving others as we would want to be loved ourselves. What does that mean for us stewards? It means that love is meant to be given away. Hoarded love turns into narcissism, selfishness, and paranoia. Trying to love God without also loving self and neighbor is like trying to carry a full bucket of water down a steep hillside. It's hard to keep the water from spilling out. Jesus tells us to let it pour. Spill away. And the more of God's love you spill on others, the faster your bucket will be replenished.

What might that look like in our time? Here is a story that shows so well what love of neighbor meant to two families who lived in California . One family, which had emigrated from Japan and settled at the turn of the century near San Francisco , had established a business in which they grew roses and trucked them into San Francisco three mornings a week.

The other family was a naturalized family from Switzerland who also marketed roses, and both families became modestly successful, as their roses were known in the markets of San Francisco for their long vase-life.

For almost four decades the two families were neighbors, and eventually, the sons took over the farms, but then on December 7, l941, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor . Although the rest of the family members were Americans, the father of the Japanese family had never been naturalized. In the turmoil and the questions about internment camps, his neighbor made it clear that, if necessary, he would look after his friend's nursery. It was something each family had learned in church: Love your neighbor, as yourself. "You would do the same for us," he told his Japanese friend.

It was not long before the Japanese family was transported to a barren landscape in Granada , Colorado . The relocation center consisted of tar-paper-roofed barracks surrounded by barbed wire and armed guards.

A full year went by. Then two. Then three. While the Japanese neighbors were in internment, their friends worked in the greenhouses, the children before and after school and on Saturdays; and the parent's work often stretched to 16 and 17 hours a day. And then one day, when the war in Europe and in the Pacific had ended, the Japanese family packed up and boarded a train. They were going home.

What would they find? The family was met at the train depot by their neighbors, and when they got to their home, the whole Japanese family stared. There was the nursery, intact, scrubbed and shining in the sunlight-neat, prosperous, healthy.

So was the balance in the bank passbook handed to the Japanese father. The house was just as clean and welcoming as the nursery.

And there on the dining room table was one perfect red rosebud, just waiting to unfold-the gift of one neighbor to another.

You may never be asked to care for a neighbor in this encompassing a way, but Jesus does give you the command to care for the neighbor. I know many of you do this as individuals. But it is also both the joy and the burden of the church to be caring for the neighbor near and far. Most of you know the many ways All Saints cares for the neighbor by both reaching out to those within the congregation which is usually a ministry of compassion, prayer and care, and reaching beyond our walls into our neighborhood, into the Twin Cities area and beyond into the world.

The economic times are hard, and they are especially hard for the poor and the jobless. Last week an Ethiopian man came to All Saints to see if we could help him and his family make their rent payment. Married, with two young children, they live near downtown Minneapolis in a one room efficiency which costs them $789 a month. He recently lost his job as a janitor because of medical problems. He has no health insurance, but he is getting medical help. Life is hard for this young family. It is not that they don't want to work, but rather that the jobs they can do pay very little, and the housing they can get costs way out of proportion and keeps them poor. With cuts in all the aid programs, they don't have very many options. Should we help this family? Or, should we tell them go somewhere else? How do you look your neighbor in the eye and refuse him housing, clothing or food, when you have the means to help? Last week, you loved this neighbor as yourself.

Because our Lord Jesus said, "You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength and you shall love your neighbor as yourself - there is no greater commandment than these."

As I was thinking this week about giving, I came upon some proverbs or maxims about giving from different cultures, here are some of them:

The Irish say, "He who gives when he is asked has waited too long."

The Chinese say, "A bit of fragrance always clings to the hand that gives."

The Russian bit of wisdom is, "If everyone gives one thread, the poor man will have a shirt."

The Hindus add, "All who give, have all things. They who withhold, have nothing."

A Sanskrit saying is, "All we can hold in our cold dead hands is what we have given away."

A Jewish saying, "The generous man enriches himself by giving; the miser hoards himself poor."

In Proverbs(28:27) we read, "Whoever gives to the poor will lack nothing, but one who turns a blind eye will get many a curse."

And we have all heard , "It is better to give than to receive."

It seems that many cultures value generosity, but why then is it so hard for some to actually do the giving? I think there are many reasons. One of them certainly is how you view what you have. If you see what you have as your possession, it will be hard to part with it. But if you see what you have as God's gift to you, you will be more likely to share. If you see your life as being on the verge of scarcety, you will clutch at everything, but if you see the abundance of God's providence for you, you will more likely be able to give to others.

Giving also has something to do with how we view other people. If the neighbor is someone by whom we feel threatened in some way, or someone whom we cannot see as a brother or sister, we don't really care about what happens to them. But if we see all people as God's children, people to be loved and cared for and interdependent with us, we will be more likely to see the benefits of mutual care.

It has been said that to a pickpocket all the world is a pocket, but to a Christian all the world is a neighbor. Thank you dear people of All Saints for being good neighbors to so many. Thank you for daring to love those who are near and far. May God's love increase in you as you see and hear about the needs around you and may that love come spilling down like our beautiful autumn leaves on the many neighbors who need you. Amen.