Today is the beginning of our stewardship pledge campaign for this year. This is the time when everyone in the church is asked to consider how they can help support the church financially over the coming year. There are many ways in which we all give our gifts to support Edgewood—our time, our talents, our presence in worship. At this particular time and for the next four weeks, we will look at our financial giving and what our giving supports at Edgewood, in our outreach to the community and world, and in our denomination the United Church of Christ.

In thinking about stewardship we go back to the beginning and ask what does it mean to be a steward and why would I give my money to the church. After all, I can attend church for free, why give money? If the movie is free, I don’t pay for it. If my public radio station is free I don’t have to pay for it, except when they come at me with those annoying pledge weeks which interrupt my favorite programs.

So, in the beginning. What happened in the beginning? Well, as we learned in children’s time, God created the earth and then created adam, which is the word for earth or dirt or mud creature if we want to get technical with our Hebrew. God creates a mud creature and sets that creature in the Garden of Eden, a beautiful, perfect, idyllic place with stuff to eat and beauty to contemplate and just one thing to avoid.

And God said to this adam that we call Adam, “this garden is for you to live in.”

Note God did not give Adam the deed to the garden, or sell Adam the garden or anything like that. Adam was in charge of the garden, the steward or caretaker of the garden. It was still God’s garden. After awhile Eve came along and she and Adam lived there happily in communion with God at least until that eating the forbidden apple part.

But what I want to emphasize today is that in the beginning we were created in the image of God and given the job to care for God’s garden, God’s world. We did not create the world. We did not buy it and we can’t recreate another one if we mess this one up. We are stewards, caretakers, working in God’s world on behalf of God.

It still is God’s garden. Even after Adam’s fall out with God, even after all these thousands of generations, the earth and all that is in it, is God’s. All of it. Everything here. Everything you see. Everything in your home. Your home itself. You are driving God’s car. In your bank account is God’s money. All that passes through your hands is God’s. All of it is God’s. We are just asked to take care of it and use it for the benefit of all people.

Well, that is the hard part isn’t it.

Sharing doesn’t necessarily come naturally. Even two year olds soon figure this out and “Mine!” becomes their favorite word.

But the truth is that everything is God’s. Everything. Even our own selves as we believe as faith filled people that we return to be with God after we die. Everything is God’s and we are in charge of managing it.

The question for us is what do we see? When we look out into the world on a crisp beautiful morning like today, what do we see, God’s world or our world?

When we sit down to dinner either at Super Thursday or in our home, what do we see, God’s gifts to us or the fruit of our own labors? God’s food or our food?

Here’s another one. I invite you to take out your wallet. Now don’t worry I am not going to ask you to take anything out of your wallet and put it in the plate; that part is later in the service.  At this point I just invite you to get out your wallet. See, I’m doing it myself.

Now open it up and look inside it. What do you have in there?

Maybe some money, credit cards, lots of little slips of paper, receipts, business cards. Maybe you have pictures of loved ones. You know, if God carried a wallet, your picture would be in it.

But anyway, back to what is in there. I think most often we think “oh, I have $40 in my wallet or there’s my credit card or there’s the statement from my last ATM visit of my account.”

Except that if we take our relationship with God seriously that is not what we would see.

“Oh, there’s $40 that I’m holding for God. Oh there’s the credit card I use in my daily living trying to heal God’s creation. Oh there’s the slip for the bank account—yes, it’s a joint checking account. It’s God’s money but my name is on the account as well.”

Everything that is in your wallet is God’s. Everything. You are asked to be a good steward of all of that in God’s name. How you spend it, save it, share it, hoard it all is done with God’s stuff, God’s money.

This is not the most comfortable thought. It challenges us to see differently. To act differently. To look around us and understand the world and our place in it differently. And, to look in our wallet and all that it symbolizes, and to spend differently.

That is hard.

What do we see when we look at the world, when we look at our lives, when we look at our wallets? What do we see?

My mom has a peculiar talent. She is always finding money wherever she goes. It is kind of uncanny. Often she finds and picks up quarters or pennies but sometimes even five or twenty dollar bills that are lying on the ground in parking lots or on sidewalks.

I told her one day that she has some sort of great gift for this. But in return she told me she didn’t think so. She said she reckons she just spends so much time looking at where she is walking, looking at her feet, that she just sees the money that is lying around. But that she is missing what is truly important, looking out front to see where she is going, to see what is ahead, toward the future.

I think she has a point. It is hard to see the kingdom of God when we are so busy looking at our feet. We may find money and that is often what happens when we focus on where we are going, how our lives are. But looking down does not help us see or speak of the visions of God, does not lead us toward fulfilling the dreams of justice and wholeness. Does not connect us with others or with our Creator.

Today’s Hebrew Bible reading is from the book of Joel. Joel is considered a minor prophet, one of twelve in our Bible including others such as Malachi, Amos and Obadiah.

Scholars have a hard time dating Joel because in this short book there are no references to kings or other leader or any other specific event that would tell us when the book was written. What we know from reading Joel is that the people of Israel have really suffered. There has been a drought and a terrible plague of locusts--so many locusts that Joel refers to them as an army. They have devastated the land and crushed the spirit of the people.

In this morning’s reading however, Joel offers a vision of hope. That the people will experience the abundance of God, that better times will come that the grain stores will be full and the vats of oil run abundantly.

Joel could have stopped there. And when we are considering our lives, especially our financial situation, we often stop there. “When will better times come, O God, when I’m not worried about my job or the economy or I just have more money to spend.”

But that is not where the reading stops. Joel goes on to tell us that in the midst of abundance, in the midst of eating in plenty, there is something more, something more important.

God says, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men and women shall dream dreams, and your young women and men shall see visions. Even on the male and female slaves in those days I will pour out my spirit.”

This passage is so inspiring that it is quoted two places in the New Testament, most notably in the Acts story of Pentecost. This is one of my favorite passages of scripture. That the people of God will share in the dreams of God. That we shall see visions and speak out about the reign of God and the justice of God.

All of us. The young and the old, the free and the enslaved or enburdened. Women and men. All of us. We shall see and proclaim and envision the dreams of God. All of us. Pick up your head, stop looking at your feet, see the vision of God.

When I was seventeen I had my calling to ministry. I was on bus with forty other high school kids and chaperones riding through the high desert of California at night. The moon rose and cast the landscape into sharp shadows of light and dark and I felt the distinct, overwhelming and wonderful presence of God. And I began to cry.

In that moment I knew God existed for sure, for real. I had a vision of the interconnectedness of creation, the beauty of life and my part in it. In response to this overwhelming vision I knelt on the floor of the bus with my youth pastor and I offered my life, my self, to God to serve God with my life. This path was not a straight one. It had its share of doubts and wandering in the wilderness but eventually it brought me to seminary and to South Africa and to be a pastor serving with God’s people.

That one evening has made all the difference in how I see the world. I can’t see my work, my life, my money, or my dreams the same way. They are informed and shaped and claimed by God’s dreams.

But one doesn’t have to have a specific calling experience like mine to live out God’s dreams in one’s own life. Joel is very clear about this.

What happens first is that we understand God’s abundance, spread out for us and all the world. And then, focused on that abundance, focused on God, we shall see the vision that God has for the world. And we shall be changed. We shall see what God sees. And it means we will see our own life, our own strivings, our own possessions, our own power and privilege differently.

For my partner Jeanne’s birthday, I gave her surfing lessons. Our lesson began with learning how to get up on a surfboard on the land and then we set off to try it in the water. It was hard work. Very hard. It was hard to get your feet in the right place. It was hard to keep your balance. But the most difficult thing was where to set your eyes, how to look. Really.

Our surf instructor told us over and over, where you look is where you will go. And it was true. In our efforts to stand up on the surfboard we would look at our feet to make sure they were on the board. And, well, when you look at your feet, which are down, which way do you go--well, down. Wipeout. Where you look is where you go.

One of the hardest things in life is set our eyes, how to look. Where you look is where you go.

That is true. God created us all and placed us in this world as caretakers of all creation and as stewards of everything that comes to us—money, power, opportunities.

God has gifted us with visions: dreams, prophecies of how things can be, should be, can be if we work with God for the good of all people.

If we spend all our time looking at our feet, our problems, our lives… If we spend all our time looking in our wallet and seeing our money, or lack thereof, our bank account, our successes…

…We miss the dreams, the visions, the path of God.

Edgewood is a place where we seek to remember the call God has placed on us. Where we seek to pick up heads—to stop looking at our feet and to start looking to the dreams God casts in our midst. Edgewood is a place where you are asked to contribute your money to the church so that together we can continue to reach out to the lost, to comfort those in mourning, to speak out for justice, to offer extravagant welcome to all who come through our doors.

In this year’s stewardship campaign I ask you, I invite you, to come and live out God’s dream with your time and talents and, yes, your money. That we may come to see that all that we have is God’s, everything. And that surrounded by God’s abundance, and infused with the spirit that God has poured out on all of us, we can put our wallets, and our lives to God’s service.

Pick up your eyes, O people.  For God says, “I will pour out my spirit on all flesh. Your sons and your daughters shall prophesy, your old men and women shall dream dreams, and your young women and men shall see visions.”

Amen.