Over the years I have found that sanctuaries are not the only sacred spaces in any given church. Indeed, in every church I've been a part of there are always at least two "holy of holies," as it were. The first is the sanctuary. But the second is the kitchen.

At Grace Covenant there were so many rules posted in the kitchen you would have thought you had entered the Pentagon. I'm a little surprised you didn't need a security clearance to pass through those doors. Or at the very least be required to take off your shoes, for it was clear the space you were about to enter was holy ground.

Now I'm glad to say that our kitchen does not give off that kind of aura. Our kitchen is a warm and friendly and welcoming space. But it does have it's own signs, one of which is relevant to our purposes here today. On the big cupboard opposite the stove there is a sign that reads as follows:

Stewardship

If you open it, close it . . . If you turn it on, turn it off . . . If you unlock it, lock it . . . If you borrow it, return it . . . If you make a mess, clean it up . . . If you move it . . . put it back . . . If it belongs to someone else . . . get permission to use it . . . If you value it, take care of it.

Certainly the point is well made: Stewardship is about caring for our stuff, the stuff God gives us to look after. But this sign also reminds me that stewardship is one of those words that has come to mean many different things. Like "love" or "art," stewardship means different things to different people in different contexts.

So it's important on this Stewardship Kick-off Sunday to get clear about what stewardship means in this context, not in the kitchen but in the sanctuary; not in our social lives, but in our devotional and spiritual lives.

Later this week you will get a letter from me and from John Jordan, the chair of our Budget and Finance committee, asking you to consider the investments you are willing to make in the life and ministries of Warren Wilson Presbyterian Church and College Chapel.

In that letter we offer the best definition of stewardship I've ever heard. I honestly can't remember the source of this definition, so I can't credit that person properly. I only remember that it went like this:

"Stewardship is everything I do, with everything I have, after I say, 'I believe'!"

I love that quote for a lot of reasons. I love it because it conveys the deep sense that stewardship is not just about how we manage our finances; it is rather about everything we do. On this view, stewardship is about what goes on in the kitchen, and in our homes. It has to do with how we live our lives not just in here in this sanctuary, but out there in the wider world God has made. It's about our relationship to our neighbors, our community and the environment. It's about how and where we shop, how we vote, how and what we drive, how we live our lives as a whole.

"Stewardship is everything I do, with everything I have, after I say, 'I believe'!" I also like this quote because it grounds stewardship in our faith, so that everything I just mentioned - where we shop, how we vote, how we live our very lives-- all of that is in some way a spiritual practice, integrated with our worship life, the life that starts here, in this sanctuary.

Now, even though I have not yet used the word "money" in this sermon, my guess is that your hackles, or at least your defenses, may be up a little bit.

And not surprisingly. Someone said that the nerve between our hearts and our pocketbooks is the most sensitive nerve in our bodies. Sensitivity to money and stewardship is typical and expected.

The problem here is that if we are reluctant to link the question of how we use our money with how we practice our faith, or if for propriety's sake we find it distasteful to talk about money in church, then we've picked the wrong faith in some ways.

It may surprise you to know that Jesus talks about money more than any other topic. In fact, people who study these things tell us that money is mentioned in the Gospels four times more than any other subject, including prayer and faith.

Startling, isn't it? But again maybe we shouldn't be so surprised by that. Ever since Moses came down from the mountain to find God's people worshiping that golden calf, Jewish religious leaders have long recognized that money and our relationship to it has perhaps the biggest impact on our spiritual life. Gold, mammon, lucre, cold hard cash, whatever you call it, money can affect our prayer life and our faith life more than anything.

Suppose your phone rings and it's your doctor's office telling you that your bioposy results came back and they're not good and can you please come in to talk to the doctor? My guess is that before you even call the doctor you're going to be talking to God, maybe even on your knees.

But supposing your phone rings and it's Ed McMahon telling you that you just won $17 million and will you be home later today to receive that big oversized check? And by the way can you please look surprised when you open the door for the sake of the tv cameras?

For most of us, were we ever to find ourselves in that unlikely position, we might never pray again, our need for God having just vanished. Or we might not pray for years, until we realize that this golden calf we've been given doesn't satisfy our deepest longings, doesn't fulfill our deepest needs. Until we realize that even 17 million dollars won't love us back, or support us when we're going through tough times and we just can't make it on our own.

Stewardship is the opposite of the Publishers Sweepstakes syndrome. Even if you did suddenly win $17 million, stewardship would still not be so much about money as it is about living faithfully. It's about each of us finding our own answer to the question: What is worthy of dedicating our lives to? What is worthy of investing our time, our talent, our treasure? Where do our allegiance and devotion lie? To what, with what, with whom, do we want to be in relationship? What is the ground of our being, the source of meaning, joy, fulfillment for us?

Those are the questions that stewardship is ultimately about. Of course such questions are not new. Today's text is about these same things. I must also say this really was our lexionary text for today -- I did not pick it specifically to serve our purposes on Stewardship Kick-off Sunday!

Indeed I probably wouldn't have picked it, for on first reading it's doesn't really serve our purposes. Jesus seems to endorse the distinction that many of us want to make. Money, he seems to be saying, belongs to the realm of Caesar, the realm of Empire, the secular realm. So pay your taxes because if you don't, empire will find you and you might end up in jail.

If anyone has a claim on your money, it's the Emperor, he clearly says. That would seem to work against any good Stewardship campaign, expect that for Jesus everything belongs to God, everything , including Caesar. For him the emperor is a mere drop in the ocean, and the ocean itself belongs to God, the great I AM, as we heard in the passage from Exodus John read for us.

So we come back to where we started: "Stewardship is everything I do, with everything I have, after I say, 'I believe'!"

If I have my history right, and if I've heard your stories correctly, stewardship as such comes and goes at Warren Wilson. There is more or less attention given to it, depending on the year, and perhaps also depending on who is filling the pulpit during any given stewardship season.

So I think it's important that I tell you why I care about stewardship, and why I was pleased that the Budget and Finance Committee had already planned to do a stewardship campaign before I arrived.

First, I believe that Stewardship is about owning our life together. In life there are renters and there are owners, and that applies to church just as much as it does to housing. I know the college owns these buildings, but do we own this space? Is this our home? Do these pews and carpet, this Font and this Table, do they belong to us? Are we invested in maintaining not just the quality of this building but the quality of everything that makes our life together possible, from Sunday school supplies to office supplies, from mission trips to the music of our wonderful organ?

So, I value stewardship because it is about owning our life together and investing in it.

I also believe that stewardship matters because this church matters, and the wider church matters. It matters because as people of faith we can't trust Caesar to get the job done, or to work for the same values we work for. And this is why stewardship is about so much more than our financial commitments. You see, Lockheed Martin or General Dynamics aren't going to work for peace; they are invested to some extent in war. Sad to say but the U.S. government is not going to work for justice; most politicians don't see that as government's job. Dow Chemical is not going to protect the environment; they're shareholders won't let them.

Stewardship matters because the church matters. No one is going to work for God's Kingdom, or to realize peace and justice on earth in the way we do. And what we can do together as the community of God's people is so much more than what we can do alone, particularly if our own house, this house, is strong and in order.

Yes, this year we are asking you to make a pledge to support this church. We're asking that because, as Jesus himself knew, you can't open your hands to love and serve if they're closed too tightly around your wallet. But we're asking you to make a pledge because our business here at Warren Wilson Presbyterian Church and College Chapel is about ultimate things; it's about values and practices that we can only achieve together, as a community. And I think we all want that community to be as strong as it can be.

When the Pharisees came to test Jesus they asked him a straightforward question: "Is it lawful to pay taxes to the emperor, or not?" The didn't ask him about God, only about the emperor. But, typically, Jesus takes this simple question and turns it into something profound. "Give . . . to the emperor the things that are the emperor's, [but give] to God the things that are God's."

What Jesus does not do is to go on to enumerate what those things are. He leaves it to you, and to me, to answer that question, and to decide for ourselves what belongs to God.

"Stewardship is everything I do, with everything I have, after I say, 'I believe'!" Thank you for your support of Stewardship season, for your support of the life and ministries of Warren Wilson Presbyterian Church and College Chapel. With that support, and working in community, I believe we can do wonderful things together. I know that's true because we already are.

Thanks be to God!

Amen