Disciples and stewards
1 Corinthians 4:1-5, Matthew 10:24-31, 37-39
Welcome to the second in our sermon series on faith and the environment, and on God and climate change.
For those of you who were here last week, Jack Wakefield from Tearfund reminded us powerfully that ‘responding to the brokenness of this world is an opportunity for us to know Jesus more intimately, and to follow God with all that we are.’
Being stewards of God’s good creation is more than a matter of using less plastic. It’s a call to deeper faith and a call to follow Jesus more fully. And as we get to know and follow Jesus more fully, we might just find that we also want to look after his creation better, and trust that he will show us how.
Over the next few weeks we will be looking at what discipleship, worship, lifestyle and mission look like, particularly from the perspective of our call to be stewards of God’s good creation.
Paul’s letter to the Corinthians says that we are called to be ’servants of Christ and stewards of God’s mysteries’ and that, as stewards, we need to be found trustworthy.
Anyone here a fan of Downton Abbey? You know the butler and housekeeper, Carson and Mrs Hughes - they are stewards, entrusted with running the house and everything that happens in it, by Lord and Lady Grantham.
A good steward thinks of what’s needed today, but also has an eye to the big events coming in the future, and plans accordingly. A good steward uses resources wisely, without waste and for the benefit of everyone. A good steward has a budget, and works within it, not using more than is available. And a good steward knows that they are accountable for the use of resources entrusted to them.
Paul writes that we are to be trustworthy stewards of God’s mysteries, and that God will be the judge of our trustworthiness.
But the evidence all around us is that we have not been trustworthy. We have made a mess of our responsibilities. Climate change, oceans full of plastic, the devastating loss of species are all around us, creating a future that looks very bleak.
We’re stewards of God’s creation. And we’re also disciples. In order to be good stewards, we need to start with the call to be disciples.
Because to be a disciple is to be a learner. The best translation of the Greek is ‘apprentice’. * To be a disciple is to be apprenticed to Jesus; someone who wants to learn from Jesus to become more like him.
To be a disciple is to learn what matters to Jesus, so the same things start to matter to us; to learn how he deals with a broken and complex world, so that we can do the same; to learn how he carried the call entrusted to him, so that we can be trusted with the call made to us.
To be a disciple isn’t to have it all sorted, it’s not to be holy and special - it’s to have made a decision to follow Jesus and learn from him, so that we might be more like him tomorrow than we are today.
So, as stewards and disciples, what do we learn from Jesus when we look at the challenge of climate change?
Two things stand out.
First. that Jesus is absolutely and completely committed to justice for the poor. When he stands up in the synagogue in Nazareth he says he is anointed ’to bring good news to the poor, to proclaim release to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free’. He probably learnt some of this from his Mum who, when she discovered she was pregnant sang the Magnificat, which includes the revolutionary lines ’he has brought down the mighty from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the empty with good things and sent the rich away empty.’
And as Jesus’ mission unfolds, we find him with the lepers, the hungry and the cast aside. We see him deeply concerned for the fate of those who store up riches while others lack the basics; we hear him warn the wealthy of the risks they face, and declare that the poor are blessed.
What do we learn from Jesus? We learn that injustice is unacceptable to God. We learn that, as stewards of his mysteries, we are to stand against injustice, and alongside those who suffer at the hands of the powerful.
And climate change is, amongst other things, a matter of justice. The fact is, we’ll be ok here in Kent, at least in the short term, as temperatures rise, and as the oceans warm. We can live with, and afford to hold off, the worst effects of climate change. But that isn’t the case for people in Sub-Saharan Africa where the desert is already marching forward every year, or on Pacific Islands that are threatened with inundation. It’s not the case for the people Jack described to us, facing a struggle to find clean water for their families, or dying in the streets in 45 degrees of heat in Bangladesh.
It’s genuinely difficult for us to really care about people on the other side of the world, who we will never meet and for whom we can do nothing directly - but to be a disciple of Jesus means knowing that each one of these people is a child of God, as precious to Jesus as we are.
When Jesus calls us to be stewards of God’s creation, it means stewarding it for all - and especially for the poorest and most vulnerable, whose lives are put at risk by the way we live.
Secondly, Jesus lived a life that was simple. He didn’t own much, and said that whereas foxes have dens and birds have nests, he doesn’t even have a place to lay his head.
But Jesus also shows us there’s more to simple living that not having stuff. A simple life is fundamentally about being grounded in our God-given identity ,in a world that tells us we are what we have, what we buy, consume and own. In a world which tells us we risk being less valuable, loveable, acceptable and successful if we don’t have the right stuff.
It’s not easy - every Instagram post, every shop window, every magazine wants to persuade us that success lies in what we look like, what we own, or how our home appears.
But being a Christian means, fundamentally, that you are not a ‘consumer’ - you are a disciple. Who you really are isn’t defined by your clothes, your car, your house or the contents of your shopping basket, but by your relationship with Jesus. Your value lies in not in your bank account but in the truth that Jesus died for you.
A simple life-style is one which starts with our identity in Christ, his love for us and for all God’s children, and in the light of that life changing love, seeks to have a minimal impact on the world around us.
It’s one that asks ‘do I really need this’ as our hand reaches out to the shop shelf, or hovers over the ‘buy now’ button. A simple life style welcomes second hand and recycled clothes, it doesn’t need the latest car, holiday, phone or laptop, it chooses a train rather than a car, and thinks very carefully about whether to fly. A simple lifestyle chooses to give the gift of time, laughter and something home made, instead of expensive new stuff. It makes decisions about what to buy on the basis of its impact on creation and other people, rather than price, ease or beauty.
A simple lifestyle is a Jesus lifestyle.
Let’s be honest. None of this is easy. We’re all hypocrites. We’re all caught in an economic, cultural and social system which beckons us away from Jesus. We all get it wrong again and again.
And so it’s no coincidence that the word ‘disciple’ is the same as the word * ’discipline’. Choosing to learn from Jesus and then to act like him is a matter of a thousand little choices which we have to make every day, but as we make those choices, they become our way of life, our discipline.
I was really challenged when Jack from Tearfund showed us the glass jar showing all the non-recyclable rubbish that he and Caitlin had produced this year.
I felt ashamed of the sackfuls of rubbish we put out, week after week. And I asked him how he did it … and he told me, it took them five years to get down to one jar. And his other advice was: start with the bathroom.
So I started this week by going to the Heath Stores and getting soap, shampoo and conditioner, all of which can be refilled there, at the Heath Stores, cutting probably three plastic bottles a week from our recycling pile in one go. It’s a small step, but it’s a step. One step at a time.
Each week, at the end of the service we say that ‘when we were still far off you met us in your Son and brought us home.’ We may be far, far away from leading carbon-neutral lives, but the call made to us, as His disciples, is to recognise how far away we are from where Jesus wants us to be, and to take a step in the right direction, following his outstretched hand.
So take a moment now.
We all live complicated lives with a million things to do. But in this quiet moment, cutting through all the pressure and complexity, is there one thing that Jesus is calling you to?
Maybe it’s a specific thing you’ve been meaning to do for a while
Maybe to pray, every day for God’s creation, for climate and environmental justice
Maybe to learn more. Perhaps to read more on the Tearfund website. Or one of the books on the bookstall. This one, by Ruth Valerio, is really good.
And if it helps you make a commitment, write it down - there’s space on the back of your weekly sheet.
Let’s pause and ask God how he’s calling us to be His disciples today, as we steward his good creation.