November 1, 2026
He finally figured it out.
A rich man had decided he was going to find a way not just to gather all of his gold before he died, but to take it with him to heaven. He planned it, he came up with an idea, and he had it all buried with him. Sure enough, when he showed up at the pearly gates, all of his gold was right there with him. He smiled as he walked up to St. Peter, knowing he had done the thing nobody else had ever managed to do. "Look," he said, "I brought it." Peter smiled back and said, "Welcome. But why did you bring so much pavement?" "Pavement?" "The streets here are paved with gold."
The man thought he knew what he was doing. He thought he could bring everything he had gathered on this earth with him, and he did. But in heaven, the thing we treat as so valuable here is nothing but asphalt. It is what they put down to make the roads.
That man spent his life trying to figure out how to carry more with him. How much of our own lives do we spend doing the same thing? When is the last time you looked in your attic? Your shed? Your garage, your basement, your storage unit? Y'all, if you ever want a picture of what we are like in America, notice that you cannot drive anywhere without passing storage units. A piece of land gets cleared and we think, maybe it will be a restaurant, maybe a store. Nope. It is either a car wash or another storage unit.
We want to hold on to so much. We want to carry it all with us. And if we are honest, it is a bit of a sickness, a spiritual illness, that we are not willing to let go of what is no longer ours and live simply with what we need. When I hear Jesus talk about burdens in this week's gospel, I think about all my stuff. All the stuff I do not use. All the clothes in my closet I have not worn in four or five years, which also means they no longer fit. Why do I have all this? Because we carry a burden that says, you might need it. The world ties that burden on our backs and tells us we always have to be ready for whatever the future might bring.
When Jesus talks about the ones sitting on Moses' seat, tying up heavy burdens and laying them on the shoulders of others, he is not only talking about religious leaders. He is talking about a sickness in our society. The idea that we each have to take care of ourselves, that we cannot trust each other to take care of each other. The idea that we cannot ask for help, that we cannot need anything. That burden gets heavier and heavier.
The religious leaders of Jesus' day walked around as if they had earned their honor, when many of them had simply had it handed down to them. The priests in the temple did not get there because they sensed a call from God. They were born into it. And they paraded around with long fringes and broad phylacteries, the little boxes holding scripture, showing off how much they had memorized. The message was, my life is good and easy because God has blessed me and because I have earned it. We hear the same thing constantly today. If you earn it.
But the kingdom of God is not about what we earn. The kingdom of God is about sharing with each other. Jesus says it shall not be so with you. You will not have some people who are more important, some who look like they have it all figured out, some who have every answer and every ease while others go without. The greatest among you will be your servant, the one who looks at what they have and sees a chance to share it. That is what the kingdom of God is supposed to look like. What we have been given to care for is God's stuff. The silver and the gold, everything we can pile up for ourselves, it is not ours. It is God's.
This week and for the next three weeks, we are going to talk about stewardship: what are we supposed to do with God's stuff? In the modern church, stewardship has mostly become a conversation about how much to give. Ten percent? Maybe. What goes in the offering plate, and how do we budget it? But stewardship is so much more than that. It is remembering that what we have is not really ours. It is a gift from God, given so that yes, we can be nourished and cared for, and also so that we can help nourish and care for others.
The gifts one person has are not the same as another's. So instead of saying these gifts are worth a lot of money and those are not, we say we need each other. We work together to make a fuller, bigger community. And within the church, many hands make what? Light work. That is the picture of the kingdom of God in the world. Our burdens are not too heavy because some refuse to lift a finger while others carry everything. Everyone comes together and gives what they have, what they can, what they are able to. None of us is more important than any other. No one is lifted above the rest.
The prophet Micah shows us what it looks like when we forget that. We all know Micah from Micah 6:8: do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with your God. It sounds like a nice, inspirational verse. But y'all, Micah is not nice. In case you did not notice in chapter 3, his prophecies are a bit doom and gloom. And they are because of what he names. Micah does not just say, Israel, you have done terrible things and you are about to be wiped out. He tells them exactly what they have done. You cry "peace" while your stomach is full. You look around and say, everyone is fine, look, I am fine, so we are all fine. And all the while there are people among you with nothing to put in their mouths.
That is the sin of Israel and Judah in today's scripture. The people who have plenty say, I do not know what you are complaining about, I am fine, while others have every reason to complain because they do not have enough. When Micah says do justly, this is the justice he means. Do not assume that because all is well for you, all is well for everyone. Stewardship is recognizing that what we have been given is meant to help all of us, meant to be a blessing for us and for others.
It is easy, when we are doing well, to forget that not everyone is. Easy to forget there is hunger, there is heartache, there are people struggling and suffering. Raise your hand if you had a hard week this week. It is okay. That is a decent number of hands. Micah reminds us that even when everyone looks okay, that does not mean everyone is okay. There is so much more going on in the lives of the people around us than we can know, and the only way to know is to ask.
Have you ever asked somebody "How are you?" and gotten a long answer, and then they say, "Oh, I'm sorry, I guess you didn't really want to know all that"? Maybe you have been the one who said it. But in the fellowship of Jesus Christ, we always need to want to know. What is your need? Where are you hurting? Where can you be cared for better? That is what the community of Christ is supposed to look like: I hear where you are hurting. I may not be hurting there, I may not be struggling in that way, but that does not mean you are not. How can I help? How can I serve?
This is what Jesus sets out for us. Do not elevate people. Look for the people who are serving, and follow them, because they are the ones following Jesus. I am going to say that again. Look for the people who are serving and follow them, because they are the ones following Jesus. It is easy to hear Jesus and think, well, Jesus is up high and the rest of us are down here. But Jesus never saw it that way. Jesus always said, I am your servant. Follow me.
And here is the thing. Have you ever noticed that when you are serving others, your own burden feels lighter? When you join together with people, it does not seem nearly as heavy. For a large part of my life I have walked around with a tune in my head saying, you have to do this, you have to do that, you have to make everything a certain way. Oliver would describe me as grumpy, and he is right, because I chose to take up a burden that was not mine. But I have also learned that when I carry only what is mine, it is a lot lighter. That does not mean everything goes right. Let's be clear: Jesus' servanthood led him to the cross. But it does mean we can bear the burden.
So the first question of stewardship is this: what is mine to nourish me, and what is mine to serve others with? That is discernment we do day by day, week by week, month by month, year by year. Something might be mine to nourish me right now, and later it might become something to nourish someone else. Stewardship is staying connected to God and listening. Yes, that is yours right now, you need it this moment. And other times, maybe you do not.
When I pastored in Richmond, I would stop on my way to church on Sunday mornings, usually at Hardee's, and get a couple of sausage biscuits. It became a tradition. That might explain some of the clothes that do not fit. And every Sunday I would pass somebody on the road holding a sign, needing food. Notice what I said. I would pass. Until one day I thought, I have two biscuits. I do not know if it was God knocking me upside the head or a gentle voice, but something said, you do not need two. Give them one.
I am not going to tell you it fixed everything in my life, y'all. But my stomach was probably happier. You have two. Why not give them one? It was a simple message, and every once in a while it bubbles back up for me. Some mornings I probably do need a little something extra, especially after too much Halloween candy the night before. But plenty of times, that extra thing is not for me. Maybe it is for someone else. Maybe it is a chance to serve. And here is the funny part: it was two for four dollars, or $3.17 for one. Eighty-three cents for that extra biscuit. That is a strange thing to hear fifteen years later.
So where do we look in our own lives? When we see a two for one at the grocery store, do we grab it and figure the little red box needs a little something extra? Do we see the two for one and say, maybe I will take one to the food pantry? Do we notice those chances to do one small extra thing to serve, to nourish, to help? Because what it really comes down to is not spending most of our days thinking about ourselves.
That is a reminder I need to give myself every morning. It does not mean you can never think about yourself. It means remembering every day that there are others out there. Others on the road, others walking down the street, others in the grocery store, who also have needs and could use some care. Am I willing to pay attention, not just to what I need but to what they need?
I like a shortcut. Tami got me a pair of socks that say, "I know a shortcut." And the thing that annoys me most about shortcuts is the people who live on them, because they are not in as big a hurry as I am. How dare they exist in their own neighborhood? I wish I were joking, y'all. But any time I see somebody pulling out of a driveway or a side street, my brain says, uh-oh, these people. We all need to be reminded, constantly, of other people: their needs, their lives, their chances to be served and to serve us.
We have no idea about so much. But we can pay attention. That is not too big a burden to bear. That is the very thing God has called us to be and to do in this world. May we, as Jesus said, be servants. May we be humble, and know that in that we are following the Savior of the world.
Amen.