Morning Devotion / Bible Study at LUCSA Assembly 03.09.

2013 Stewardship related to Baptism In the letter of Peter he says: Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of Gods grace in its various forms. If anyone speaks, they should do so as one who speaks the very words of God. If anyone serves, they should do so with the strength God provides, so that in all things God may be praised through Jesus Christ. To him be the glory and the power for ever and ever. Amen. (1 Peter 4,10-11) Paul calls upon Timothy in the first letter to Timothy: O Timothy! Guard what was committed to your trust, avoiding the profane and vain babblings and contradictions of what is falsely called knowledge by professing it some have missed the mark as regards the faith. Grace be with you. Amen. (1 Tim 6,20-21) Dear brothers and sisters in Christ! I used to think stewards are the people who at the railway station or at the docks take care of the luggage of passengers or other baggage; the people who push trolleys for others. I also thought of glorified waiters, who are sometimes called stewards. Later I learnt that within the church stewards are those who look after buildings, look after the properties of the church, are in charge of fund raising, self help-projects and look after the finances. Even later I learnt that it meant more than looking after worldly things: Stewards are charged with church growth and well-being of the congregation. In the New Testament stewards are mentioned as those in charge of a household, more specifically, the household of God. Stewards are not owners of whom or of what they are in charge of and cannot simply do (with them) as they like. They take care of those (things) entrusted to them (in this case, entrusted to them by God.) They do this in accordance with the will of the owner.

Some of us serve on trusts and are aware of the duties and responsibilities of trustees. Trusts are special bodies that are created for a specific purpose and trustees are entrusted by an owner / donor to see to it that those entrusted to them get what is intended by the owner. Trustees are specifically forbidden to help themselves and abuse their position to pursue their own interests. Their objective is to further the aim of the trust as defined by the owner. Stewards are trustees trustees of those things entrusted to them by God. Before I go on to the specific task of Christian stewards and derive this specific task from our baptism, I do want to point out to a very important aspect of stewardship, namely that of taking care of creation. For some decades now not only Christians, but also other faith communities (and even atheistic faith communities) are in agreement that it is the duty of humanity to take care of the world entrusted to us. We are all called upon to take care of and work for justice, peace and integrity of creation (the now commonly used phrase). Christians, Jews and Muslims share the belief that the world we live in is created by God ultimately for the sake of the humans who (as the pinnacle of creation) inhabit it. We are charged to subdue the world and rule it, but (and now I am using modern post-biblical terms) not to exploit and abuse creation. Humans may well be the pinnacle of creation, but animals, for instance, are not simply irrelevant things, but living beings living beings that in some way or other relate to human life. Not only are our fellow human beings (and the future generation of human beings) entrusted to us, but the whole world, the so called bioworld as well as the non-bio-world. We believe and confess that the whole world is Gods world and we cannot simply do with it as we like, but have to act like trustworthy trustees and care for this world of God entrusted to us by God. Created in the image of God (Gen 2) in this context means I am the foreman, the manager of Gods farm and not the owner. I act on His behalf and am responsible to him represent Him and act on His behalf.
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Now to more specific Christian stewardship: As has been pointed out by our respected brother bishop Manas Buthelezi (and others), having been baptised into Christ, we have received the highest honour that can be bestowed on anyone. At the same time we have been given the huge responsibility to see to it that my salvation granted to me by God is always seen in the context of Gods salvation for the whole world and that I / we have been entrusted with the task of being the instrument of Gods salvation for the world. We are trustees of a very valuable treasure, entrusted to us by the Creator who owns us as we are His creatures, and entrusted to us by the Saviour who has taken a special hold on us through His act of salvation in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, conferred to us in baptism. But what is this treasure that we have been entrusted to treasure? We are often very keen to look for Biblical texts which can give us a recipe for stewardship, and we very soon come up with methods of improving the financial situation of our Church or how to make the Church grow. But are we then not already answering the question as to what the treasure is that we are to treasure with a simple and probably not really thought through (wrong) answer. Our treasure is not our financial asset, our property, or (less materialistic) our growth our numbers. As we think we know what we are talking about when we speak about stewardship we forget to again and again ask the most important question: What is the treasure that has been entrusted to us? Of what are we trustees? The answer is: The primary treasure which we treasure and which we are entrusted to guard is the Gospel, the good news of salvation in Christ. But we are not to guard it (from being stolen or damaged) by burying it, (Mt 25,25) but by making it work by making it do what it in itself is able to bring about when it is invested when it is sown when it is proclaimed. The Gospel brings forth faith. We can therefore also, without contradicting what I have said just now, say that the treasure that has been entrusted to us is the faith.
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It is the highest treasure thinkable, as it transforms us from lost sinners to sanctified members of the body of Christ and inheritors of eternal life. Again, my faith is not my possession, something I possess, but something that possess me. The faith that we find in Christians is not a sign of their faithfulness, but a sign of the faithfulness of God that has taken hold of them. We can also say, the treasure is Christ, Christ in whom we are and who is in us the body of Christ in which we are and which we are. The apostle Paul speaks of us as being in Christ 164 times, linked to in the body, in the Spirit and in (the) faith. It relates to being baptized into Christ born anew by water and the Spirit (John 3,5) Yes, Christians rightfully say: We are in Christ and Christ is in us. We are in the body and at the same time we are the body (of Christ). We are in the Spirit and the Spirit is within us. We are in the faith, it has taken hold of us and we have faith. Through baptism, Paul states, we are drawn into salvation brought about by the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Rom 6,3f). We are incorporated (remember that the English word incorporate refers to the corpus (the body) of which we become an integral part). We are incorporated into the body of Christ. We are linked to Christ, the death of Christ on the cross, and become beneficiaries of his death for us as we partake in his resurrection from this death by God. His punishment, His having to die the death of a condemned godless sinner on the cross is the punishment we deserve for our godlessness. We speak of His sacrificial death. His resurrection is conferred onto us. (I again remind you of the detailed exposition we heard from Bishop Manas Buthelezi.) As God who raised Christ from death confers his unconditional yes on Jesus Christ, He confers this yes to us who through baptism have been incorporated into Christ who are in Christ, in the body.

That is what gives us as a communion of the body of Christ our unique identity. That ultimately also gives LUCSA, the Lutheran Communion in Southern Africa its identity, its mission and its mandate and duty to speak and act. That is the treasure of which also LUCSA is a trustee, a steward. Yes, all of us have various things which make up our identity. Each one of us has an identity given by birth, a genetic identity forwarded to us through our parents. (I remind you also of what Bishop Nambala told us). We have an ethnic identity, a cultural identity, a language identity, a professional educational occupational identity, we belong to a specific age group, a specific gender, we have a specific political orientation and a sexual orientation. We can be classed as conservative or liberal, progressive or laid-back inactive consumerists. As true as these classifications may be, what links us as Christians is the fact that we have been given a new identity: we are in Christ, we are inextricably bound to the body of Christ, participate in and have ourselves become the body of Christ. This identity does not nullify the many other identities, but transcends those identities, so that those with their various identities, backgrounds and behaviour become and remain part of us, part of the communion in Christ, no matter what. Our make-up is not so much determined by what we have in ourselves, within ourselves, but by in what we are. Yes, we are in Christ and Christ is in us, but it is not as though we are in Christ only in as far as we feel or see Christ to be in us. We are in the Spirit and the Spirit is in us, but it is not as though we are in the Spirit only in as far as we believe and experience to have the Spirit in us. We have faith, but it is not our faith that determines our being in the faith. In Christ we participate in His trust in God and are the beneficiaries of Gods trust in us through Christ. Pauls teaching on baptism, on being in Christ, in the body, in the Spirit, in the faith, is intrinsically linked to his teaching on justification. We are justified by grace through faith. (Romans 3,23f)

God justifies the godless sinner, declares the unjust to be just, does the incomprehensible thing to account to us that which belongs only to his own Son Jesus Christ. He confers Christs justification on us not because of our faithfulness, but in spite of our unfaithfulness, not because we believe but in spite of our unbelief. Or, (as we have learnt at Umpumulo from our revered systematic theologian, Klaus Nrnberger): In Christ God accepts the unacceptable unconditionally. That is what we believe and proclaim. That is what we trust in and teach. That we have been justified by God cannot be proven, cannot be seen, but can only be believed, but thank God, our being justified does not depend on the strength of our believing the unbelievable. This treasure, has been entrusted to us, this message of forgiveness in Christ. How do we become good stewards, faithful trustees of this gift? For ourselves this gift means assurance of salvation, joy, freedom. But we are good guardians of this gift when we not only make it our own, not when we keep it to ourselves, but when it is freely passed on, sown. Our primary stewardship responsibility is to see to it that the Gospel, the faith, the incorporation into the new life in Christ is shared with others that they also partake of this salvation. The one Gospel, the one faith, the one baptism has to be translated, formulated and then proclaimed in such a way that it can take hold of the people around us, entrusted to us. In the Bible itself we have a very good example of translating the Gospel, formulating it in new words, and yet the very essence remains is even enhanced. The early Christians had the preaching of the apostles, it later had the letters of Paul, even later had written Gospels, Mark, Matthew and Luke. Was that not enough?

John (or as some scholars insist) the school of John, re-tells, reformulates the already known Gospel in such a way that by using different language, different formulations, different images (and even a different chronology!) it brings exactly the same one Gospel to people who thereby are further enriched and strengthened in faith. John, being in the Spirit and being driven by the Spirit becomes a true trustee of the Gospel, a faithful steward. (Let me just go into some detail:) John in his Gospel uses a different language to that of Paul and that of the Synoptic Gospels. As you know there is no account of the institution of Holy Communion in the Gospel according to John, yet the whole Gospel of John is one big explication of the fact that by eating the body and by drinking the wine we participate in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We, the church, the body of Christ are being fed by the twelve baskets full of bread that the twelve apostles gathered after the great feeding. We, the church, the body of Christ, are still drinking of the huge quantity of wine that was left after the wedding at Canaan. Although there is no special direct reference to the institution of Holy Communion by Jesus Christ, no other Gospel is so filled with the very essence of the sacrament of Holy Communion, of being in Christ, of partaking of the bread and wine, the flesh and blood of Christ. I am the bread of life, I am the vine, says Jesus. We eat this bread, we drink this wine, say those who belong to him. We can also say: The treasure of the Church of which we are the stewards / trustees are the sacraments. This is not in contradiction to the aforementioned, namely that the treasure is the Gospel and the treasure is the faith. The Gospel according to John says relatively little about the other sacrament, baptism. But when Nicodemus asks Jesus how one can enter into the kingdom of God, Jesus uses a formulation that at the time of the writing of the Gospel of John is already commonly used in the practice of baptism by water and the Spirit. (Jn 3,5), and the reader knows that John is speaking of Christian baptism. We who have been baptised are conceived by the Holy Spirit, says John.
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Again, the link to the Spirit. Paul speaks of the baptised as in Christ, in the Spirit. Whereas in Matthew and in Luke the origin (the genesis) of Jesus Christ is that he is of the Spirit (conceived by the Holy Spirit is how our creed later formulated it), John points out that the origin (the genesis) of every Christian is that he is of the Spirit, born of the Spirit, conceived and generated by the Spirit. In the letter to Titus we find a similar formulation about baptism as the new birth, or the re-birth in and through the Spirit. Not based on our justifying works, but according to the mercy of God, our Saviour, He saved us through the bath of rebirth and renewal of the Holy Spirit! (Titus 3,5) Martin Luther draws our attention to this verse from the letter to Titus and links it to the most comprehensive and intensive text on baptism which we find in Pauls letter to the Romans (Rom 6,3f) (which has been dealt with extensively in previous bible studies and especially in brother Buthelezis keynote address). The point made: We, without our own doing, have through baptism been incorporated into the body of Christ, drawn into faith in Christ, conceived by the Holy Spirit, and have been granted a new existence inheriting life and salvation. What does this new identity mean to us, what does it do to us and what does it make us to do? We are of royal blood! That is how we are designated in the first letter of Peter (2,9). You are the elected generation, a royal priesthood, a sanctified people, a people belonging to God. You have been freed from the bondage of sin by the blood of Christ (Titus 1,18f). The priesthood of all the baptised or the general priesthood (Luther used this concept in contrast to the teaching of the Roman Catholic Church that only a few (the priests) have been consecrated into priesthood by a special sacramental act of the church). We, Lutherans, know of only one original consecration, namely baptism.
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(As we have heard already) The priest has direct access to God, he needs no intermediaries. There is no barrier between the sinful human being and Holy God, as through baptism he / she is so closely linked to Christ (in Christ) that God accounts to him / her what He accounts to Jesus Christ. In and through the Son of God, we have become sons / daughters of God. So, be aware of this your special (baptismal) status! No-one can take this from you! Yes, people can (often rightfully) point out to you that you do not always behave as if you were a son / daughter of God. They may see little of Jesus Christ in you. And you yourself may see little of Jesus Christ in yourself. You have seen many things about yourself that others may not have seen, but that you know God has seen. And this may worry you. And it should disturb you! It calls your being a Christian into question. Royals should behave like royals! But they remain royals even if they do not behave like royals! Luther gives the simple advice: When you go to bed at night conscious of what you have done and where you have failed; when you get up in the morning to face another day, conscious of the fact that you have a daunting task ahead of you, (daunting because you have to face others, but also having to face yourself), then make the sign of the cross on your forehead: I have been baptised! I have been incorporated into Christ, the one who died on the cross! I am dealt with by God as He dealt with Jesus Christ in raising Him from the dead. I can begin anew because I have been declared new, made new. Martin Luther did not have the privilege that many of us have, to be able to start the day with a refreshing shower, otherwise he would have advised us not to leave the shower cubicle without making a big cross on our forehead, and saying to ourselves: As I stand here naked before God, I have been washed, I have been refreshed, I am clean, I know who I am because I know to whom I belong, I have been baptised!

You have been made a royal priest, you have been consecrated by your baptism to have direct access to God and therefore are assured of life and salvation. That is something you can treasure for yourself. But a priest is not meant to be a priest only unto himself, for himself, but a representative of God a representative of God to others, to those around you, to those entrusted to you! A true steward of God, a true trustee of the treasure of salvation in the death and resurrection of Christ, a true guardian of baptism is one who holds on to, but then goes out and liberally hands out that which is entrusted to him. What has been entrusted to him is not lost when it is given to others, the love of God. The priest is sanctified by God, but like God in Jesus Christ he leaves the holy sanctuary and goes into the sinful world. Unlike in the Old Testament times when the priest (especially after having cleansed himself) cannot touch anything which is unholy, the priest sanctified by the sacrament of baptism is sent into the world. There are no untouchables, there are no people, no groupings of people, no identities which we have to distance ourselves from. We do not become more sinful if we deal with those whom we deem to be sinful. As justified sinners we are the instrument of God who grants justification to those who we may believe have no right to be and no right to do what they are doing The onus is on you as an individual to be a representative of God in Christ and a steward of the treasure of Gods grace in Christ. The onus is also on us as a group, as a wider body, as church or as LUCSA to be the royal priesthood. One way in which LUCSA has tried to be a good steward and has had quite some success in the past of holding on to the treasure, by passing it on is in formulating our faith in a new form as was done and is still being done in preparing Christian Education material, for small children, for older children, your young adults etc. The content is still the same as witnessed to in early Christianity as found written in the Bible. And this will always remain the primary source.

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The content is still the same as witnessed to and formulated by Martin Luther in the time of Reformation and still remains an important guide in understanding the very essence of Scripture. The content remains the same, but if the treasure is properly treasured it is not buried, or kept on a book shelf, but is formulated anew (and even more important) is proclaimed anew! Yes, LUCSA has organised good Stewardship Workshops and the member churches have gained a lot. May that also continue, but let us not be led to believe that that is the essence of what is really meant by stewardship / house-holding, being trustworthy trustees of the treasure of the Church. I do not see it as my task today to help you find new methods of being better stewards, but I want you to again and again focus on the treasure itself the true treasure of which we have become trustees. LUCSA is embarking on a very ambitious project to found an own Lutheran University. Now that is real biblical stewardship! Busying ourselves with the very essence of our Christian faith, treasuring the treasure with the expressed intention of holding on to the treasure and then passing it on, digging into Scripture so that the seed can be sown is real stewardship! May God ever remind us that as baptised into Christ, we have the biggest treasure that there is. It is meant for us! But not only for ourselves! We treasure this treasure by passing it on! This very special treasure does not decrease by it being shared, by it being allocated to others, but in it being allocated to others it shows itself to being more than enough for us and for those who will come after us! Amen. Hymn: God Father, Son and Holy Spirit, I have been baptized in your Name (Baptism Hymns 3) (Page 94 or 6 pages from last)

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In Christ called to baptize (Baptism Hymn 2) (Page 93 or 7 pages from back of booklet)

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