When I was a little girl, I vividly remember the annual stewardship drives conducted by the various churches where we were members. These programs began with a presentation of an ambitious budget for the church, and then focused on ways for members to calculate the correct amount to give to support that budget. Children like me often received little “piggy” banks shaped like churches where we could put money away for Sunday morning. I don’t know about the other kids, but I rarely had anything to put in that bank. I received my nickel for the offering every Sunday morning tied up in the corner of a handkerchief, which I proudly stuffed into my red patent leather “going to church” purse. I felt completely disconnected from all the excitement as the pledges were counted, but I really liked the annual banquet where we ate baked ham and green beans and scalloped potatoes. I grew up with the impression that when a church used the word “stewardship” it was code language for “be sure you give at least a tithe to the church.” I attended church training every Sunday evening, and that is where they taught us how to calculate the tithe. It was a lot like the IRS code – monumental, demanding, and impossible to do right. We all felt doomed, and we mostly went around apologizing inside, if not aloud, for failing to give God his tithe. We felt guilty, because even though a tithe was a tenth (there was no dispute about that), we were never quite sure what it was a tenth of. Gross income? Gifts? Change found in the couch cushions? In retrospect, as I recall those training sessions, I am always reminded of the Pharisees. Jesus said that they were so good at tithing that they even tithed the herbs in their gardens. Yet they were so good at religious money management that they found ways to avoid helping their aging parents and they could walk right by an assault victim on the highway because helping him would make them late for worship. Jesus was not impressed by anyone’s ability to calculate a tithe. That little formula is about counting money. Jesus wanted people to live in a relationship with him that required a complete commitment of their lives, not a bag of money that was exactly, not one penny less than and not one penny more than, a tithe. Jesus taught that stewardship is not about money, but rather, about the heart. When a rich man came to him hoping to be praised for his obedience to the law, including the tithe, Jesus ignored all that legal compliance and asked him to forget the money and give God his life. The man could not do it. Jesus told a story about a rich man who gave his stewards different amounts of money to use in his name. When he came back, he didn’t condemn the man with one talent for not making it into ten talents; he condemned him for not realizing that the talent was in his possession, not to hoard, but rather to use in service to the man who owned it. Here is the real meaning of stewardship. Stewardship is our recognition that we own nothing and God owns everything. Every crumb of food we eat, every sunrise we enjoy, every penny we earn, every blanket that keeps us warm in winter – everything is God’s gift to us, and we ought to use it gratefully in his service. We owe God our gratitude for everything, and we need to remember to use everything the way God does. We don’t need to pinch pennies or develop complicated formulas for tithing. We must simply be grateful to God for all that we receive, and put our faith in him. We need to get over the fear that if we give something away, we will be poor. Oh, how I hate the word “ought.” That is the word used freely by people who want to impose an obligation on others. They tell us we “ought” to tithe, and they tell us we “ought” to give over and above. The problem is that tithing and giving and serving and financing the kingdom are not at all things we “ought” to undertake, like it or not. Rather, if there is anything we “ought” to do, we “ought” to pray to grow in our relationship into a maturity that will guide our use of all the blessings, material or otherwise, that we receive from the Lord. Do you remember how it felt the first time you began to grasp what Christ had done for you? Do you remember when that load of guilt that built such a wall between you and God was lifted as if it had never existed at all? Did you not want to shout your thanks and share with everyone this wonderful experience? What shut you down? Our salvation is the greatest blessing any of us ever receives from the Lord, and we give thanks for it privately, but what keeps us from tithing that blessing? Why can’t we share the blessing of salvation with other people? It is the same thing that makes it hard for us to share our money, our food, and our time. We think we need everything we have. We think that when we let go of anything, it is gone, and we do without. We see that we could use even more than we possess. We don’t think of using everything we possess in ways that express our gratitude to God for his provision. This is the secret. When we acknowledge that everything we have belongs to God, then those tough calculations are out the window. We can’t possibly figure out how much we “owe” God if all of it belongs to him. Everything changes when we accept that we are stewards of God’s gifts. If God gives me the use of his great gifts, then all I need to do is figure out what use of those gifts shows God my great gratitude. When I accept that I am the steward of all these gifts, not the owner, then it is a lot easier to pass the gifts I receive to others in need. The tithe in the Bible is a lesson and a model for us as stewards of gifts that do not belong to us. Stewardship is not compliance with some law that requires us to give God a tenth. Stewardship is the act of love that says “thank you” to God by using his provision for our families and sharing those gifts in gratitude for the way God provides for everything. When we live in a servant relationship with the God who loves us, our giving is not like paying off the IRS. It is more like a ticket to fulltime happiness.