The second stewardship sermon in the series. I'm not sure I have figured out this theme yet!
“Woven Together through Giving: Woven in Christ” John 15: 1-15; I John 4: 7-21; St. Andrew Presbyterian Church; September 27, 2026; Fall 2026 Vision and Stewardship; Richard B. Culp
John 15: 1-15: “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinegrower. 2 He removes every branch in me that bears no fruit. Every branch that bears fruit he prunes[a] to make it bear more fruit. 3 You have already been cleansed[b] by the word that I have spoken to you. 4 Abide in me as I abide in you. Just as the branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in me. 5 I am the vine; you are the branches. Those who abide in me and I in them bear much fruit, because apart from me you can do nothing. 6 Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned. 7 If you abide in me and my words abide in you, ask for whatever you wish, and it will be done for you. 8 My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit and become[c] my disciples. 9 As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. 10 If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commandments and abide in his love. 11 I have said these things to you so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete.
12 “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. 13 No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command you. 15 I do not call you servants[d] any longer, because the servant[e] does not know what the master is doing, but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.
Introduction: the weaving on the loom in the chancel, reminds us that we switch the preaching reflections this morning from visioning to stewardship.
as we have been moving back and forth between visioning and stewardship reflections, I suspect we all are coming to recognize that both topics are connected - our vision of who God calls St. Andrew to be is tied to our understanding of stewardship
and our understanding of giving is tied together with our vision of who we are called to be as God’s people is this community of faith.
the weaving before us is not only an appropriate metaphor for our stewardship Theme,
but perhaps for our visioning as well.
Now to the topic at hand this morning: woven together through giving: woven in Christ.
Our giving begins with God and moves through Christ.
Our connectedness begins with God and move through Christ.
Move 1: What we know about giving starts with the God of creation who gives us life.
a. Our very being is a gift.
1. God did not have to scoop up the mud and breathe the breast of life into us.
All that we are grows out of the gift of life God gives to us.
Our very being is God’s gift to us.
2. To be made in the image of God means to be made as one who gives.
Obviously, the biblical text continues after the creation story with many more demands and implications about what it means to be made in God image,
but at our core, we are people created as a gift and called to be givers.
5. Henri Nouwen, in The Life of the Beloved, writes about what it means to live fullinto who we are created beings.
he notes that “Our humanity comes to its fullest bloom in giving.”
He goes on to describe what he calls “our highly competitive and greedy world,” in which we live as “if our happiness depended on having much.”
Such living he suggests happens because “we have lost touch with the joy of giving.”
when we lose touch with the joy of giving, we lose touch with the truth that we are created as a gift from God
and that to live into the image of God in which are made means being givers.
All we know about giving begins with God.
b. God, of course, continues to give to us after giving us the gift of life.
1. We continually see God’s giving in our lives
and recognize the abundance God has for us.
2. And, of course, we come to know God’s greatest gift to us in the person of Jesus Christ.
it is not enough for God to give us the gift of life,
God also gives us the gift of redeeming our lives through Jesus Christ.
the gift of Christ who lives among as a friend;
the gift of Christ who offers us new life;
the gift of Christ who dies on our behalf to save us.
As we look for what it means to be made in God’s image, we see Christ’s self-giving love and hear Christ’s call to follow him in living our lives by giving of ourselves to other.
What we know about giving begins with God giving us the gift of life
and continues through the gift of Jesus Christ who gives us new life and invites us to join him in eternal life.
Move 2: Likewise, our connectedness begins with God and moves through Christ.
a. Jesus tells the disciples this in the Gospel of John passage we read this morning.
1. Remember, these words we heard are what is known as Jesus’ it is a final discourse in the Gospel of John.
his final words to the disciples.
Jesus’ last chance to impress something important upon his followers.
2. he takes that moments to offer up an image that depicts the relationship God has with Christ,
God has with us,
Christ has with us
and we have with each other.
b. It is a familiar image - vine and branches.
1. God is the vine grower.
the creator who gives life to the vines
the giver of gifts who provides for the vines.
the God who calls us to grow into the good fruit.
2. Jesus is the vine.
the one who brings the life-giving sustenance from God
the one who brings the gift of life to the branches through himself.
the one who connects all the branches
3. we are the branches
a. the vine, Jesus Christ himself, binds us together.
Apart from Christ, we are nothing but individual branches that will end up in withering and getting thrown into the fire.
Abiding in Christ, we are connected to each other, and we bear fruit.
abiding as in staying in place
abiding as in enduring
in as in holding out
which are some of the connotations of the Greek word translated as abiding in this text.
Jesus as our friend
stays in place with us
endures for us,
holds out for us
and models for us what it means to gift the gift of abiding.
Move 3: Our giving and connectedness are inextricably tied together because God is the one who does both through Christ.
a. a few years ago, I read a book that studied people’s giving.
1. t researched things like “Why do people give?”
or “what made someone a generous giver.”
As you might imagine, there were lots of things that can impact whether one gives to support others or not.
2. One of the statistics caught my attention:
If someone “Simply belonging to a congregation – whether one attends regularly or not – makes a person 32 points more likely to give (88% to 56%)” Who Really Cares: America’s Charity Divide, Arthur C. Brooks, Basic Books, 2006 (36).
Fascinating. If you belong to a congregation, your are more likely to give.
Maybe because in a congregation you are likely to be asked to give and challenged to reflect on your giving.
but I also think being part of a congregation means being connected.
it means recognizing that God has called us to care for each other and be responsible for each other and those others out there in the world.
in our connectedness, we discover both the call to give and how our giving can be put to use to share in our connectedness.
2. have you heard of Yield Giving?
a philanthropy group created by Mackenzie Scott that has given away over $26B to charity.
Mackenzie Scott, you may recall, was Jeff Bezos’ first wife. She was a graduate of Princeton University who met Bezos she was working at a hedge fund in NYC.
She married him,
give up her job at a hedge fund in NYC
and then joined him to pursue his idea of selling books on the internet.
she was part of beginning when Amazon was a few people backing boxes of books in a rented garage to mail to people who had bought the books on the Internet.
When they were divorced 26 years later, she received roughly $38B as her part of the divorce settlement, which led to her setting up Yield Giving as a way to support charities. (https://www.forbes.com/profile/mackenzie-scott/)
She made a pledge to give away most of her money.
As she described what she called her Giving Pledge, she said that she understood her fortune was not her personal achievement, but something that was built by the “the collective labor of countless people"
which meant she should share it.— something that needed to be returned, not kept. (https://yieldgiving.com/process/)
3. She points out something that we as followers of Christ,
that we who are the branches bound together by Christ the vine,
she points out something we already know.
From the moment God calls us into being and gives us the gift of life,
we are givers and we are connected.
through Christ.
Amen.
I John 4: 7-21 Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. 8 Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 9 God’s love was revealed among us in this way: God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 10 In this is love, not that we loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 11 Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 12 No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us, and his love is perfected in us.
13 By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. 14 And we have seen and do testify that the Father has sent his Son as the Savior of the world. 15 God abides in those who confess that Jesus is the Son of God, and they abide in God. 16 So we have known and believe the love that God has for us.
God is love, and those who abide in love abide in God, and God abides in them. 17 Love has been perfected among us in this: that we may have boldness on the day of judgment, because as he is, so are we in this world. 18 There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear; for fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not reached perfection in love. 19 We love[a] because he first loved us. 20 Those who say, “I love God,” and hate a brother or sister are liars, for those who do not love a brother or sister, whom they have seen, cannot love God, whom they have not seen. 21 The commandment we have from him is this: those who love God must love their brothers and sisters also.
Time with young Disciples:
have you done any weaving? it’s out in the narthex again this week.
- Why Purple?
- why Christ when talking about giving and being connected to each other?
- Stewardship begins with God and runs through Christ.
- After worship, it will go to narthex and you can weave a piece of cloth
3. Different color each stewardship week
Only in sanctuary on stewardship weeks
Why does this represent giving
Shows how we are connected, or woven together
Weaving = stewardship
In/out together
Might make mistakes
Different directions
At the center is cross
Can start and just do part
