Worship Service at Church of the Dawntreader Thursday September 19, 2013 10:00 a.m. SLT
Scripture quotations marked (NIV) are taken from the Holy Bible, New International Version®, NIV®.
    Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by Biblica, Inc.™ 
    Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.
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Invocation:
The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Love of God, and the Communion of the Holy Spirit be with us all. Amen
Confession and Absolution
We come before you, our Loving Father, Mother God, confessing most of all our need of you.
We confess that we have not always acknowledged just how much we depend on you.
We confess that we have not always loved you with all our heart, soul and mind.
We have not always loved our neighbors as ourselves.
We ask that you will forgive us and grant us your strength to conform more fully to your loving will for us.
We pray in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ,
Amen.
In obedience to the command of our Lord Jesus Christ, it is my privilege to declare to you and to myself, the entire
forgiveness of all our sins.
In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.
Amen
Prayer of the Day
Let us pray.
God among us, we gather in the name of your Son to learn love for one another. 
Keep our feet from evil paths. 
Turn our minds to your wisdom and our hearts to the grace revealed in your Son, Jesus Christ, our Savior and Lord.
Amen
First Lesson: Amos 8:4-7 (NIV)
4 Hear this, you who trample the needy
       and do away with the poor of the land,
 5 saying,
       "When will the New Moon be over
       that we may sell grain,
       and the Sabbath be ended
       that we may market wheat?"—
       skimping the measure,
       boosting the price
       and cheating with dishonest scales,
 6 buying the poor with silver
       and the needy for a pair of sandals,
       selling even the sweepings with the wheat.
 7 The LORD has sworn by the Pride of Jacob: "I will never forget anything they have done.
Here ends the First Lesson
Psalm: 113 (NIV)  
1 Praise the LORD. 
       Praise, O servants of the LORD,
       praise the name of the LORD.
 2 Let the name of the LORD be praised,
       both now and forevermore.
 3 From the rising of the sun to the place where it sets,
       the name of the LORD is to be praised.
 4 The LORD is exalted over all the nations,
       his glory above the heavens.
 5 Who is like the LORD our God,
       the One who sits enthroned on high,
 6 who stoops down to look
       on the heavens and the earth?
 7 He raises the poor from the dust
       and lifts the needy from the ash heap;
 8 he seats them with princes,
       with the princes of their people.
 9 He settles the barren woman in her home
       as a happy mother of children.
       Praise the LORD.
Glory to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
Second Lesson: 1 Timothy 2:1-7 (NIV)
1I urge, then, first of all, that requests, prayers, intercession and thanksgiving be made for everyone—
2for kings and all those in authority, that we may live peaceful and quiet lives in all godliness and holiness.
3This is good, and pleases God our Savior, 4who wants all men to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.
5For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus,
6who gave himself as a ransom for all men—the testimony given in its proper time.
7And for this purpose I was appointed a herald and an apostle
—I am telling the truth, I am not lying—
and a teacher of the true faith to the Gentiles.
Here ends the Second Lesson.
Gospel Lesson: Luke 16:1-13 (NIV)
The Parable of the Shrewd Manager
 1Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions.
2So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you?
Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'
 3"The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job.
I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg—
4I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'
 5"So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'
 6" 'Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied.
      "The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.'
 7"Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?'
      " 'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he replied.
      "He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.'
 8"The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.
For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.
9I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves,
so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
 10"Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much,
and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much.
11So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?
12And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?
 13"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other,
or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."
Here end the Readings from Holy Scripture.
 - Sermon -
As you may have noticed already, the theme for our time together today is stewardship.
I appreciate the way the New International Version has interpreted the word as management,
because management is generally the way we think of stewardship in our time.
Of course, if you are involved in churches at all,
you probably think of stewardship as the money you give to the church,
but that is not its original or intended meaning.
In fact, the concept of stewardship is very specific, even more so than the idea of management.
A steward is a manager, but usually involved with the management of property that does not belong to him or her.
The parable in our Gospel lesson for this week is one of my all time favorites
because I believe that it gives us as good an example as we could ever have
of the true meaning of stewardship.
In the time of Jesus, a steward managed the affairs of a wealthy landowner
and had full control of all of his finances and property.
He had the legal right and authority to lend money and goods and to collect rents and payments.
The steward was in charge, in other words.
In our story, the landowner, or master, had received word
that his steward was guilty of mismanagement,
that he had been wasting his property.
So he called the dishonest steward in and warned him that he was about to lose his job.
The steward would have to put his affairs in order and turn in his accounts.
So he began to work on a plan to make sure that he would be taken care of when he was thrown out.
He went to each of the master's debtors and reduced their debt on his account ledger.
What he did was not exactly above board, but it was entirely within his rights as manager or steward.
Both the master and the Lord Jesus commended the dishonest steward for his shrewdness.
Now, my first reaction to that is probably the same as yours,
"WHAT??!!??"
But we need to remember first of all, the most basic principle of parables.
They were stories taken from ordinary life in the world of Jesus and his hearers.
He used those stories to make a single important point about life for them and for us.
Certainly, neither the steward in the story -
and even less the Lord Jesus -
commended the steward for his dishonesty, for his malfeasance in his duty.
But both commended him for his shrewdness.
So let's think for a moment about what he did that was so shrewd:
He helped others with the authority given to him
in the hope that they would help him when he needed them.
In other words, he used the property in his control
to help others
even though that property was not his own to begin with.
And that is the essence of stewardship as I understand it.
Let's look at what he did more carefully.
He had been entrusted with money and property that belonged to someone else.
He used what had been entrusted to him to help others.
His motivation may have been desperation and selfishness,
but his actions were the very heart of stewardship.
Today, stewardship is not a very popular subject, at least not the way I like to think of it,
but it is particularly important to the well being of us all,
and the principles of good stewardship could solve many of the problems of the world today.
People whose work involves stewardship in our time include all kinds of managers,
particularly managers of money and property, not only real estate, but also all kinds of credit and banking.
Everyone who handles other people's money or property
is involved with stewardship.
Naturally, any manager's first concern must be with the interests of his or her employer.
Financial managers have to follow the rules and principles of the companies they work for.
If they do not, they will be just like the dishonest steward in our parable:
They will soon be unemployed.
Yet there is someone else they must be concerned about, too:
their individual clients.
So the job of a good steward is to use money and property that belongs to someone else
for the benefit of others.
And the responsibility of stewardship is not limited to finance and property management.
We are all called to be stewards
We all have possession of the money and property of someone else.
We are all managers of someone else's wealth.
A great old hymn says it better than I can, addressed to our Lord God:
"We give thee but thine own, whate'er the gift may be;
All that we have is thine alone,
A trust, Oh, Lord, from Thee."
So it is: Whatever we have really belongs to someone else.
It all belongs to our Lord and our God.
We manage it for Him,
and we use it for the well being of others.
Clearly, this concept of stewardship is very important to our Lord.
He spoke of it a lot.
Our failure to live by His principle of stewardship
has resulted in untold human poverty and suffering.
I pray that people all over our world may come to understand and accept
the basic spiritual principle of stewardship
so that our management of the gifts God provides
may result in the well being of all people.
Then we will see the Kingdom of God
drawing near in our own times and places
as well as the world to come.
Amen.
Prayer of the People
Please type your spontaneous petitions in chat.
Each prepared petition is intended to remind us of the things we need to pray about,
so a brief pause will be provided for us to pray our own petitions,
either sharing them in the chat window
or praying them in our own hearts.

Loving God, we pray for each other, for those who depend upon us for prayer, and for all people according to their needs.
We ask that your healing power may prevail in our lives.
We pray that those in positions of public trust may be worthy of that trust as they act as stewards of power and wealth
for the benefit of all.
We pray that conflicts may be resolved in the context of relationships,
so that violence of thought word and deed may be diminished all through our world.
We ask your blessing for all who bear witness to the Gospel, so that relationships with you may be deepened for all people.
All these things, and whatever else you see that we need, we ask that you will grant for the sake of your Son,
our Lord Jesus Christ, in Whose name we pray.
Amen.
Our Lord's Prayer
Our Father Who art in Heaven, hallowed be Thy name.
Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our daily bread,
And forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.
And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.
For thine is the Kingdom, and the power and the glory, forever and ever,
Amen.
Benediction
May the Lord bless us and keep us.
May the Lord make His face to shine upon us and be gracious to us.
May the Lord lift up His countenance upon us, and give us peace.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,
Amen +