Works and Wisdom: A Practice of Stewarding Community

On Sunday, we are invited to gather in celebration as we kickoff another year of ministry at Epiphany. It is an odd thing that this lands on the first Sunday after Labor Day in the church even though many of our lives are no longer tied to an agricultural calendar, but as with many things in the church, we hold to the long tradition that has shaped life in the United States for the bulk of its history. After all, even our academic calendars (although this is beginning to change) are based on the agricultural calendar and when labor was needed to bring in the harvest.

And so, on Sunday we gather with the voices of our choir buoying us into worship with joy and jubilation for the start of another year in which ministry will unfold and in which God will invite us deeper and deeper into a life in Christ with each other.

In this context, we are also invited to consider the ways that we will place our gifts on the altar to the glory of God. In our time together this Sunday and for the next many Sundays ahead of us, we are invited to consider how we will offer works and wisdom as part of the gifts that we place on the altar for God to bless and give back to us in ways that we can neither ask for nor imagine.

But wait…what exactly is meant by these new terms works and wisdom?

Well, perhaps we can think of these as synonymous with the older terms of time and talent, but I reckon that works and wisdom get more to the heart of what we are offering when we give of ourselves for the building up of God’s kingdom. I rather think that offering ourselves as part of ministry teams helps us to give of works - those times when we volunteer for a specific ministry or task or project - and helps us to give of our wisdom - those things we have learned through the combination of experience and reason.

The start of our fall stewardship focus this year is not on how much money we are going to give. It is rather on the ways that we will give ourselves into ministry for the building up of God’s kingdom, and for us to be the fullest member of Christ’s body, we need the works and wisdom of every member of the parish. We are being asked to consider three questions on a card that invites us to volunteer for a ministry team or project, to learn more about a ministry team or opportunity in the parish, and to consider what we know so well that we would like to teach it or share it with others in the parish.

As we join teams in the church, we are bringing our lived experience and our ability to reason - to think creatively alongside others - into community. We are joining up with fellow disciples who also have a deep passion for a particular ministry team, and through the team we join, we become part of the community that is inviting God’s wisdom to flow through them as decisions are reached and as actions are taken.

As the theme of this year’s stewardship campaign suggests, we truly are rooted in abundance, and we begin living into this rootedness through the ways that we give works and wisdom back to God on Christ’s table. In so doing, God gives our works and wisdom back to us in a new way, and God meets us and lavishes us with God’s grace enabling us to do far more than we could ever ask or imagine.

In Christ,

Hunter+