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Stewardship Talks : A wandering Aramean was my father

A sermon preached on Deuteronomy 26:1-11 by Bishop John Hind on the first Sunday in Lent 2004 at St Augustine, Bexhill. In today’s first reading there is a phrase which has haunted me ever since I first started reading the Bible. It began “A wandering Aramaean was my father” and continued (if I may summarize), “he went down into Egypt and lived there as an alien, few in number. When the Egyptians treated us harshly we cried to the Lord, the God of our ancestors, and he brought us out with a mighty hand and brought us into this place and gave us a land flowing with milk and honey. So now I bring you the first fruit of the ground that you, O Lord, have given me.”

These words were part of the instructions Moses gave to our ancestors about 3,000 years ago and they have shaped our understanding of God’s purposes ever since.

They were certainly part of the way Jesus had been brought up to see things and I wonder what he thought about them. Who was this wandering Aramaean? Well, he was of course a wanderer, that is to say probably a nomad, a shepherd, a tender of flocks, who relied not on the stability of a settled community but on the providence of God as he led his family from place to place.

The point of the story is that God took some wandering tribesmen in what is now SE Turkey and made a settled people out of them, but not before they had endured considerable hardships both as slave labourers in Egypt and many years of travel through the wilderness. Once they were settled however they realised how much God had done for them and that they should offer God something in return. They came to understand that they ought to offer to God the “first fruits” that is to say a portion of the best of the early harvest they got. This was a way of recognising that everything they had came from God.

These themes, homelessness, wandering in faithfulness to God’s call, God’s own generosity and our need to present our first fruits to God are central to today’s first reading.

It is I suppose rather obvious why this reading has been chosen for the first Sunday in Lent. Lent after all is a journey — it is a journey from Ash Wednesday to Easter, symbolising our own life’s journey from this world to the next, from the confusions, muddles and sins of everyday life to the perfect life of heaven which is what we have been created for. Part of the symbolism is precisely the idea of moving from the unsettled existence of a wanderer to the calmness of a permanent home. This life is a journey, heaven is journey’s end.

On journeys, there are choices to make, especially about the route which should be taken.

“Cheshire Puss” Alice began, rather timidly ... “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?”
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where —” said Alice.
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.
“ — so long as I get somewhere,” Alice added as an explanation.
“Oh, you’re sure to do that,” said the Cat, “if you only walk long enough.”
Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. “What sort of people live about here?”
“In that direction,” the Cat said, waving its right paw round, “lives a Hatter: and in that direction,” waving the other paw, “lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they’re both mad.”

During Lent we are challenged to answer the Cheshire Cat’s question. “Where do we want to get to?” — that’s the only way to know how to decide which way to go.

And of course, having chosen, we then have to take the consequences. Some roads are straight and smooth, some rough and windy, and it is not always the case that the road leading to our desired destination will be the easiest! But there really isn’t much point in going on a pleasant route if it doesn’t go where we want to get to.

So the first question for us at the beginning of Lent is “where do we want to get to?” I think rather too much of the time even as Christians we spend too much effort of how we live and not enough on life in our Father’s kingdom. So Lent is above all a time for reflecting on journey’s end. That is why we spend time reflecting on priorities in the Christian life and try to concentrate on what is of lasting importance. Hence the emphasis on prayer, study and fasting.

There is however another emphasis: almsgiving. Once we accept that all we are and all we have come from God, the obligation to use our money and other resources properly and thankfully is obvious. So one of the disciplines I particularly want to commend to you this Lent is a careful taking stock of how you spend your money. How much on yourself, how much on others, how much in general charitable giving, and of course also how much in direct support of the church.

Remember what we heard in the first reading. It was when God’s people were safely settled in the Promised Land that Moses set out for them the motive for their giving to God’s sanctuary. It was because of what God had done for them, leading them from a wandering existence to settled prosperity that they had to offer their first fruits. “First fruits”, you notice, not the left over change but the first claim on their resources.

The challenge to generosity is clear; but it is far more than merely a matter of a moral commandment. The starting point should not be a sense of obligation. The starting point should be gratitude. If we find realistic giving hard, it may well be because we are not grateful enough, or perhaps not even aware enough of all God has given us. So when considering your giving I suggest you should start not with a bank statement or a calculator, but by prayerful reflection of sheer wonder and generosity of God from whom we have received everything and the extent of whose love we shall commemorate in just a few week’s time when we gather at the foot of the Cross on Good Friday. Our giving should be in proportion not to our generosity but to God’s.