HANDLE WITH CARE: #1 The Stewardship of Relationships

By Dr. Gilbert W. Stafford
Scripture: Luke 7:38, Mark 3:14, John 14:12

I want to talk with you on this program about being a good steward of interpersonal relationships. Good stewardship means several things.

VALUING PERSONS AS PERSONS

First, it means that we value the person more than we value what they have to give us. Ron Coody is an ecologist in Kazakstan. On a return visit to the United States, he brought me a little gift. When I became a bit too gushy about it, he very kindly said that he wanted to teach me a lesson that he had learned from the Kazaks. “What is that?” I asked. He proceeded to tell me that Kazaks, when given a gift, say a simple thank you, but never make too much of the gift itself. “Why?” I asked. “Because,” he told me, “one should concentrate on the giver, not the gift.” I got the point. The gift is simply a means whereby the giver can give of himself or herself. Therefore, if I concentrate on the thing given, I divert my energies from the personal relationship. It is not the gift that is central, but the giver.

My barber told me about a family standing near the casket of what they thought was their deceased father arguing loudly about the inheritance. They were completely oblivious to the people around them. In fact, they got so loud that the funeral director asked them to leave. “But this is our father,” they protested, “and we have the right to be here.” “Who is your father?” the director asked. When they told him, the director had to inform them that they were in the wrong parlor. Their father was in another part of the funeral home. They were so greedy about what they hoped to get from the deceased that they had not even bothered to look in the casket at the corpse. It wasn’t the person they valued but what they could get out of him.

We see this in its ugliest form in rape and in prostitution, each of which completely disregards the person and concentrates on the sexual gratification the person, can give. The Jesus perspective is, however, the complete opposite. Jesus drew people into the circle of his love by valuing them as persons. That is what we see in the story about the sinful woman who found her way into the house of Simon the Pharisee. Jesus forgave her sins and treated her as a person of value, not as an instrument for gratification as had been the case time and time again in her life.

She, not surprisingly, was overwhelmed by this outpouring of grace and love. Notice what Luke 7:38 says about her response: “She stood beautiful…[Jesus] at his feet, weeping, and began to bathe his feet with her tears and to dry them with her hair. Then she continued kissing his feet and anointing them with the ointment.”1 Finally, she had found a man who valued her as a person.

To relate to people—whether relatives, friends, or people in general—the Jesus way, is to value them as persons more than we value what we can get out of them. 


INVESTMENT OF TIME AND INTEREST 
Second, good stewardship of relationships means that we invest time and interest in them. We take the time to be with them. This is more than a matter of length of time; it has to do with the intensity of the time spent. We can be with some people for a long time without ever feeling that they have really been with us. Others, however, are able to so concentrate on us that even though the length of time is short, we feel that they have really been with us. They look us in the eye; they give every indication that they really do hear what we have to say. When they are with us, other things or persons do not distract them.

I’ve seen this in large congregations. Theodore Parker Ferris, one time rector at Trinity Episcopal Church in Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts had this gift. Although my wife and I were infrequent visitors at Trinity Church, Ferris had a way of connecting with individuals on a personal level in that large church building. I can still remember the focused intensity of his eyes as he looked at the individuals in his congregation. I was convinced that even though he did not know our names, he really knew that Darlene and I were there. He probably gave us no more than five seconds attention as he surveyed the congregation, but in that short period of time, he communicated that he was really with us. He made us feel that we counted. Although it was an investment of only five seconds, it was an intense five seconds when it was as though he focused his whole attention on us.

In reference to family relationships and friendships, obviously it is about more than five seconds that we are talking, but the point is the same. When we make an investment of time in a relationship it needs to be more than the ticking of the clock; it needs to be the engagement of the heart. For Jesus this was always the case. He spent time with people, and he wanted them to spend time with him. Their time together was not the ticking of the clock but the engagement of the heart in each other’s presence.

I find it of great interest that Mark 3:14 says that when Jesus called the twelve apostles, he appointed them “to be with him.” Jesus was interested in what happened to them. He was able to track what was going on inside them. On the night of his arrest, for instance, he knew that Peter was going to betray him. He knew Peter better than Peter knew himself. He was tracking him.

Every one of us needs someone who is tracking us. We need those who care about what is happening to us. The worst possible human situation is to be convinced that no one really cares what happens to us. It is then that people often lose hope and give up on life. We all need an audience of supporters who are there to celebrate when we have something to celebrate, and are there to encourage when we are down and out, and are there to guide when we feel lost and don’t know which way to turn.

Who calls you up and asks how things are going? Who is there to read between the lines? Who is it that you can count on to handle the secrets of your heart with care? I pray to God that you have at least one person who does that sort of thing.

Now change the questions. Are you a person who calls up others to ask how things are going? Are you one who is there to read between the lines for those who trust you? Are you a person who can be counted on to handle with care the secrets of another’s heart? Are you a person who shows others that what they do really does matter?

UNBINDING THEM 

Third, good stewardship of relationships means that we treasure persons without suffocating them. Treasuring people is different than treasuring things. If we have a precious heirloom, for example, we might put it in a trunk stored away in a dark closet, but to do that to a person would, of course, suffocate them. That is not the way to be a good steard of relationships. To be a good steward of relationships is to treasure persons in a way that will not cut them off from life and growth. Instead, good stewards do whatever they can to help others whom they treasure to grow and develop, to expand their relationships with others and most importantly with God.

What Jesus says in John 14:12 may surprise us: “very truly, I tell you, the one who believed in me will also do the works that I do and, in fact, will do greater works than these, because I am going to the Father.” This is in the section of John where Jesus is talking about the coming of the Holy Spirit. He says that the Holy Spirit will be the source of ongoing life for believers after his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension into heaven. What Jesus is encouraging here is the growth of his disciples. He wants them to be plugged into the source of life that will keep them alive, growing, developing, and doing every greater things. That’s the Jesus attitude which we should have in our relationships with others. We don’t want family and friends to be limited to the boundaries of our physical lives. We want them to be all that the Spirit enables them to be; we want them to do whatever is in keeping with what God has revealed in Christ as being good. As Jesus said to those who witnessed the new life given to dead Lazarus, “Unbind him, and let him go” (John 11:44), even so our Lord still says to us in regards to those persons in our lives who have new life in Christ: “Unbind them, and let them go.”

The Jesus way for being good stewards of our spouses, of our children, of our parents, of our relatives, of our friends is this:

Value them as persons more than you value what you can get out of them.

Invest time and interest in them.

Unbind them and let them go.

This is the Jesus way.

PRAYER 

Let us pray:

Gracious Lord, grant us the guidance we stand in need of as we evaluate how well we are doing at being good stewards of our relationships. Forgive us where we have gone astray. Convert us to the new patterns revealed in Jesus Christ our Lord. In his name we pray. Amen.

1 New Revised Standard version used here and throughout.

Script 2597 (GWS)
October 6, 1996
SERIES: HANDLE WITH CARE
1. The Stewardship of Relationships
Scripture: Luke 7:38, Mark 3:14, John 14:12