Faith Works 7-24-21

Faith Works 7-24-21

Jeff Gill

When Jesus is enough

___

While this column has been intended from its outset to be aimed at anyone interested in how faith gives shape to our lives and actions, how "faith works," it's only honest for your columnist to admit he comes at this from a Christian perspective.

I believe the Christian witness is true, even if there may be particular points of application where other Christians and I do not entirely agree.

So I have been talking this summer about a concept that has more church context than everyday usage, with the word "stewardship." I can extend my context to Judeo-Christian in pulling in the Genesis witness to what God is up to in creation, and how both Jews and Christians — along with many others, to be sure — understand that we have not just been given this world to use and abuse, but to tend and care for: stewards of creation.

Some look at those same Biblical texts and put the weight a bit more towards dominion and domination than others of us would, but the context of having a divinely mandated responsibility for how we care for creation in whole and of its parts is pretty clear. We are stewards, caretakers for a time, of a lasting cosmos around us. Humans may have levels of thought and reason and responsibility that are different than those of ocelots and armadillos, but we're also part of the whole even as we're particularly obligated to care for the whole.

There are those who interpret that stewardship call on humanity to mean we should be vegetarians, others who say we should be sparing in our eating of meat, and some would just say stewardship means being mindful of what meat-eating says about our place in the larger plan. Like I said, there are divergences in application when we talk about stewardship. I heard a very useful sermon in seminary, as I prepared for parish ministry, entitled "Do shepherds eat mutton?" It's an interesting question to reflect on, not just about dinner entrees.

But my own Christian orientation takes me to a perspective I like to sum up, like that sermon title, a great deal of consideration in just a few words of reflection: Jesus is enough.

Saying "Jesus is enough" is a limiting principle that doesn't lend itself as well as I might like to a newspaper column. It works out in the living of it, by using the person and place of Jesus as a yardstick, a unit of measure, a ruler (in more ways than one!) for knowing where "enough" is.

But I think I can say to you all here that the starting point, for anyone, Christian or not, is to admit there are limits. Necessary and absolute limits. I am not eternal. I am not infinite. I am not everything. If I'm none of those things, then I have limits I need to respect.

Yes, there are human imposed limits on people that are wrong, even evil — discrimination, stereotypes, racism and bigotry, sexism and stigma — which we need to overcome at times. This, for me, is where Jesus comes in as a crowbar as well as a master key, but to say "I'm more than you think I am" is still not adding up to "therefore I am everything."

And where I believe faith is at odds with the spirit of our age: as a Christian, I find myself ruefully shaking my head at "I can do anything" let alone "I can have everything." I would argue that hunger for more, more, more can be traced back to a concept we shorthand as "sin." We can't have everything, and we shouldn't. Often wanting more is just a fig leaf for wanting it all, and I don't believe we can have that.

If in Jesus, through him, we have everything we need, then I don't need everything. And perhaps I can even find my way to knowing what is enough. And enough is usually a bit less than what I want.

How much is enough? Stay tuned: it's a long summer!

Jeff Gill is a writer, storyteller, and preacher in central Ohio; he's still working on knowing how much is enough. Tell him how you've got it figured out at knapsack77@gmail.com, or follow @Knapsack on Twitter.