As most of you know, we
are in week three of our annual stewardship drive. After spending a
week on each of the four parts of the worship service and learning
about the gifts that God gives us in each of these parts of worship,
you will be asked to consider the gifts that God has given to you
personally, much like Jaye did in our drama. In two weeks, on Oct.
23, you will be asked to make a commitment to respond to God out of
the gifts that God has first given to you and hopefully you will
respond slightly different than she did. In week 1 of our stewardship
drive, we talked about the gift of relationships that God gives to us
when we gather for worship. Our challenge is to commit our lives to
Jesus, wherever that may take us. Last week, we talked about the gift
of the Bible and how our challenge is to make reading the Bible a
daily part of our life. This week, we’re focusing on the Celebration
part of our worship service – Holy Communion. Our stewardship
challenge this week is to receive the gift of Jesus and to become
Giving Trees ourselves. To better understand this challenge, I need
to read to you one of my favorite books of all time – The Giving
Tree by Shel Silverstein. Many of you have probably read it
before, but it’s short and it’s worth hearing again. As I read it,
think about how this story relates to our relationship to Jesus
The Giving Tree
by Shel Silverstein
My friends, Jesus Christ
is our giving tree. He loves you very much. He longs for you to come
swing in his branches and sit in his shade. He desires you and
eagerly waits for your return. He is ready and willing to give you
the only thing that he can – himself. Thankfully, Jesus is the one
thing that we need in this world above all else. And he is here
waiting for you.
In Holy Communion, we visit our
Giving Tree. It is a celebration. It is here that we receive the
very precious gift of our Lord’s body and blood. It is here where we
remember how our giving tree gave up everything he had so that we
could be with him in paradise. Like the boy, we can return to our
giving tree whenever we feel that we need it. And like the story,
Jesus is always ready to give more of himself to us – to nourish us,
to strengthen us, to empower us, to forgive us, to love us. This is
what makes Jesus happy.
Unfortunately, I also see myself in
this story. I am the little boy, we all are really. We come to the
tree and we take what we need to get by. We are needy and we are
takers. Our prayers are all talking and very little listening. The
Bible is a crutch that we read only in the hard times, if at all. We
get protective and defensive when we are asked to give of our time or
our money. We give very little back and we only return to the tree
when we need something else. Unfortunately, this is reality, yet this
is not God’s desire for us. God’s desire for us is that we become
giving trees ourselves – we become the ones who give to the rest of
the world. As Paul says, “Let the same mind be in you that was in
Christ Jesus.” As we receive this precious gift of Jesus, as we take
part of this tree with us wherever we go, our stewardship challenge as
Christians is simply to become giving trees for the rest of the
world. And the only possible way we can do this is by staying
connected and always returning to our Giving Tree. This makes the
tree very happy. Amen.
