New Research: Original Responsibility Trumps Original Sin

These days, I challenge myself to study the bible using a metaphorical approach.  Revisiting the creation stories (there are two, you know!), I used stewardship as my focus.  As I reflected on the passages, the thought occurred that stewardship is about personal responsibility.  If a steward is defined as a manager of a household or property; responsibility is a big part of the job description.  As guardians of God’s creation, the responsibility may be more overwhelming than the first washday after vacation! Gen. 1:26 has God giving humankind dominion (note 1) over his creation with the instructions to “be fruitful and multiply; to fill the earth and subdue (note 2) it”.   The second creation story uses one of my favourite metaphors, gardening: “The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to till it and keep it”  (Gen. 2:15).   With blessings came responsibility; and so it has ever been.  As any gardener soon learns, tilling and keeping the garden is a daily affair.  The attentive gardener walks through their garden daily in an intimate relationship with their own Eden, communing with plant, soil, water and all the living creatures that call that garden their home.  In the garden, the trinity of time, talent and treasures are witnessed in a very tangible form.  Careful balancing of time, talent and treasures is required by the gardener.  Too much or too little of any the components is not satisfying to the eye, body or pocketbook.  And to everything in the garden, there is its season: the season of hard work, the season of spectacular colour, the season of dormancy and the season of financial investment.   It is an ongoing cycle that renews itself annually bringing new surprises, disappointments, challenges and successes totally dependent on the gardener given dominion over his creation.  Gardening is a holistic enterprise.

So is stewardship.  “Think of us in this way, as servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries” (1 Cor. 4:1).  Saint Paul challenges us to think metaphorically about our responsibility in God’s creation.  Maybe that is why we started out as gardeners.  What better place to learn of God’s mysteries than with the dynamics of the garden.  The theory that living matter or reality is made up of organic or unified wholes that are greater than the simple sum of their parts (American Heritage Dictionary, definition of holism) is tested daily.  Thus, stewardship is best viewed through a holistic lens.

Over the summer, your stewardship committee has been carefully, actively and prayerfully studying holistic stewardship.  We have carefully studied material from various sources.  We have actively engaged in lively meetings where we wrote and discussed our personal ideas about stewardship.  We prayerfully sought help and guidance as ‘the stewardship of God’s mysteries’ requires more help than we ask or imagine.  This Fall, we will be sharing our written reflections on holistic stewardship with you.  A year of holistic stewardship renewal at St. James’ will be celebrated with ongoing education, awareness and spiritual development.  Presently, we are finalizing our timeline for this renewal and will share it with you in October. With the foundation of holistic stewardship laid in place with this year of renewal, we look to building on it each year thereafter.

I speak for myself.  This summer’s work on this committee has been challenging.  It demanded that I not only read material that made me think in new terms of expectation and commitment; it required self-examination and contemplation.  It has made me look at my relationship with this church of St. James’ as I would any other relationship: how important is this relationship to me, how much of my resources (time, talent and treasures) should I share in this relationship, if I expect to give a portion of my resources on a regular and ongoing basis, what should I expect to return to me?  The self-awareness (note 3) that this summer of study has given me is that these questions will never be permanently answered.  They will always be questions that I need to ask myself on an ongoing basis.  Like the garden, the work is never done.

The stewardship committee consists of Lorne Mitchell+, Hugh McDonald (chair), Nancy McCallum (secretary), Jane Kirkpatrick (wardens’ representative), Michael Binns, Mary Lou Kingham, Marina Weston and me.  If you have questions, concerns or more importantly, if you would like to become involved with a really exciting venture, call any of us; we want to talk about holistic stewardship.

Like good stewards of the manifold grace of God, serve one another with whatever gift each of you have received.  Whoever speaks must do so with the strength that God supplies, so that God may be glorified in all things through Jesus Christ.  To him belong the glory and power forever and ever.  Amen (1 Peter 4: 10-11)

Nicola Adair

Notes:

• Dominion is an interesting word, when you examine its roots (I know...enough of the gardening metaphors).  However, the root seems to be the Medieval Latin dominio, from Latin dominium – property, from dominus - lord.  The Lord’s property?
• Subdue is a strange word for the Genesis writer to choose.   When I replace subdue with discipline, and use discipline in the positive sense of bringing order and improvement, I don’t feel myself bristling against the passage.  Another thought: from the root ‘discipline’ comes the word disciple.
• Awareness is a word commonly used today but what does it mean?  When I looked at its synonyms, the word seemed very relevant to holistic stewardship.  Words such as mindful, heedful, cognizant in a formal equivalent, conscious of something sensed or felt, awake as in fully conscious of something.  Alert, watchful and vigilant in the sense of recognizing and responding to something or a situation- to me this is the essence of the ongoing nature of holistic stewardship.
• I used the New Revised Standard Version of the bible in this reflection.