The Measure of a Steward

I have been pondering what I wrote last week about putting our money where our faith is.  But of course it is more than that.  It is about integrity.  It is about purity.  The understanding that the scriptures convey about purity concerns single mindedness rather than duplicity.

I think about a recent lectionary reading from Amos on the plumb line.  Remember when we were little kids and our parents used to put us up against a wall or doorway and make a mark on it to see how tall we were getting?  With the plumb line God is measuring us to see if our whole lives add up to who we say we are.

But the good news is that it is not about who we say we are.  It is about who we have been declared by God to be.  We are the Body of Christ in this world.  Not just when we gather in church.  Sure, church is where the bread is broken and we are constituted into the Body of Christ, but it is in the world where we work and play that we are sent to be Christ to a hurting world.

And perhaps the plumb line is not solely for judgment, but so that as God continues to work on us we are built straight and strong.  As we are made new every day we become more and more who we have been created and called to be.

So we don't have to invent ourselves into the Body of Christ.  Perhaps then, as the Nike ad says, we. "Just Do It."  Is that a new way of saying Do justice?


Lord, We thank you that you make us new every morning.  We thank you that we are fed by you and strengthened to be you in the world.  Amen




Amos 7:7-15

This is what he showed me: the Lord was standing beside a wall built with a plumb line, with a plumb line in his hand.

And the LORD said to me, "Amos, what do you see?" And I said, "A plumb line." Then the Lord said, "See, I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people Israel; I will never again pass them by; the high places of Isaac shall be made desolate, and the sanctuaries of Israel shall be laid waste, and I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the sword."

Then Amaziah, the priest of Bethel, sent to King Jeroboam of Israel, saying, "Amos has conspired against you in the very center of the house of Israel; the land is not able to bear all his words. For thus Amos has said, 'Jeroboam shall die by the sword, and Israel must go into exile away from his land.'"

And Amaziah said to Amos, "O seer, go, flee away to the land of Judah, earn your bread there, and prophesy there; but never again prophesy at Bethel, for it is the king's sanctuary, and it is a temple of the kingdom."




Copyright © 2006, The Rev. Dana Reardon. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Email her at mspastor@aol.com.



The Rev. Dana Reardon is pastor at St. Paul Evangelical Lutheran Church, Warwick, RI.  A lifelong Lutheran, she came to ordained ministry after 21 years in nursing, mostly in pediatric intensive care.  She graduated from Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia in 1998 and served 4 ½ years in Upstate New York before becoming a New Englander.  She is still trying to understand the accent.  While in the Upstate New York Synod she chaired the Stewardship Team.  That began her fascination with what makes stewards -- and more, what makes for generosity. She has three amazing daughters: Pastor Reardon says much of what she knows of life she learned from them.