Stewardship
What is Stewardship?
As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace. (1 Peter 4:10)
The Lord’s way is not a way of comfortable living or of what Dietrich Bonhoeffer, in The Cost of Discipleship, scornfully calls “cheap grace.” This is not real grace but an illusion. It is what happens when people approach the following of Christ as a way to pleasant experiences and feeling good. Bonhoeffer contrasts this with “costly” grace. It is costly because it calls us to follow, and grace because it calls us to follow Jesus Christ. It is costly because it requires a disciple for Jesus’ sake to put aside the craving for domination, possession, and control, and grace because it confers true liberation and eternal life. It is costly, finally, because it condemns sin, and grace because it justifies the sinner.
But all this is very general. To understand and practice this way of life, people need models to imitate. These exist in abundance in the holy women and men who have gone before us in the faith; while our supreme source of guidance is found in the person and teaching of Jesus.
Jesus sometimes describes a disciple’s life in terms of stewardship (cf. Mt 25:14-30; Lk 12:42-48), not because being a steward is the whole of it but because this role sheds a certain light on it. An oikonomos or steward is one to whom the owner of a household turns over responsibility for caring for the property, managing affairs, making resources yield as much as possible, and sharing the resources with others. The position involves trust and accountability.
A parable near the end of Matthew’s Gospel (cf. Mt 25:14-30) gives insight into Jesus’ thinking about stewards and stewardship. It is the story of “a man who was going on a journey,” and who left his wealth in silver pieces to be tended by three servants. Two of them respond wisely by investing the money and making a handsome profit. Upon returning, the master commends them warmly and rewards them richly. But the third behaves foolishly, with anxious pettiness, squirreling away the master’s wealth and earning nothing; he is rebuked and punished.
The silver pieces of this story stand for a great deal besides money. All temporal and spiritual goods are created by and come from God. That is true of everything human beings have: spiritual gifts like faith, hope, and love; talents of body and brain; cherished relationships with family and friends; material goods; the achievements of human genius and skill; the world itself. One day God will require an accounting of the use each person has made of the particular portion of these goods entrusted to him or her.
Each will be measured by the standard of his or her individual vocation. Each has received a different “sum”—a unique mix of talents, opportunities, challenges, weaknesses and strengths, potential modes of service and response—on which the Master expects a return. He will judge individuals according to what they have done with what they were given.
Who is a Christian steward?
As each one has received a gift, use it to serve one another as good stewards of God’s varied grace. (1 Pt 4:10).
What identifies a steward? Safeguarding material and human resources and using them responsibly are one answer; so is generous giving of time, talent, and treasure.
But being a Christian steward means more. As Christian stewards, we receive God’s gifts gratefully, cultivate them responsibly, share them lovingly in justice with others, and return them with increase to the Lord. The definition, rooted in biblical and church tradition, corresponds with Almighty God’s decision to entrust to humanity the universe God had created (Gn 1:26-31) and with Jesus Christ’s famous parable of the talents (Mt 25:14-36).
For disciples of Christ—everyone who responds to Jesus’ invitation, “Come, follow me”—Christian stewardship is an obligation, not an option. Correctly and fully understood, Christian stewardship holds every individual accountable to God for personal care of the universe. At the time of judgment, God will have the right to ask: “What did you do with my world?”
Christian stewardship, therefore, applies to everything—all personal talents, abilities, and wealth; the local, national, and worldwide environment; all human and natural resources wherever they are; the economic order; governmental affairs; and even outer space. This stewardship does not tolerate indifference to anything important in God’s world.
—Excerpts from Stewardship: A Disciple's Response, Pastoral Letter on Stewardship of the Bishops of the United States, 1992
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- Stewardship: A Disciple's Response
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