All We Have Is God's | A Generous Life | Trinity Sermons

Hello and welcome to this week's episode of Trinity

Sermons. This week we welcome the Right Reverend

Andrew Asbill, Bishop of the Diocese of Toronto,

as we continue talking about the importance of

generosity. And Bishop Andrew is going to talk

to us about stewardship and how everything that

we have actually belongs to God and why that

can transform the way that we view the stuff

that we have. My name is Christabel, and our

reading this morning is from the Gospel of Luke,

Luke 12:35–37

chapter 12, verses 35 to 37, 42 to 46, and 48b.

Be dressed ready for service and keep your lamps

burning, like servants waiting for their master

to return from the wedding banquet, so that when

he comes and knocks, they can immediately open

the door for him. It would be good for those

servants whose master finds them watching when

he comes. Truly I tell you, he will dress himself

to serve, will have them recline at a table,

and will come and wait on them. The Lord answered,

Who then is this faithful and wise manager, whom

the master puts in charge of his servants to

give them their food allowance at the proper

time? It would be good for the servant who the

master finds doing this, so when he returns.

Truly I tell you, he will put him in charge of

all his possessions. But suppose the servant

says to himself, my master is taking a long time

in coming, and he then begins to beat the other

servants, both men and women, and to eat and

drink and get drunk. The master of the servant

will come on the day when he does not expect

him, and at the hour he is not aware of. He will

cut him in pieces and assign him to the place

with the unbelievers. From everyone who has been

given much, much will be demanded. And from everyone

who has been entrusted with much, much will be

asked. The word of the Lord. Well, it is truly

a delight for Mary and I to be with you, Trinity

Streetsville. I've been wanting to come on a

Sunday morning for a great many years now and

delighted to be here with your incumbent, Rob.

Rob, I am so grateful for your ministry. The

passion that you bring, the enthusiasm, the teaching,

the preaching, the joy that you live every day

in the gospel and you have such an infectious

way of spreading that message both within this

community and beyond. And we are grateful that

you're a leader here at Trinity. Thank you, thank

you, thank you for being such a wonderful servant.

How many of you know what a canon is? In our

church, there are very few opportunities for

a bishop to be able to offer an honorific to

clergy and, in some cases, laity for the work

that they do beyond themselves in their own parish

and within the diocese and in some contexts beyond

across the land and in the communion. Last Friday

evening at Synod, I named Rob Herkemans, a canon

in the Diocese of Toronto and at the Cathedral

Church of St. James. In church land, it's the

equivalent of the Order of Canada. And I mean

that quite honestly. There are very few ways

that we can actually honor folks who give so

much of their life away in a sacrifice for others.

And for Rob, that is true for you. But, you know,

it's not just about clergy. There are a few parishes

in every diocese that are known from sea to sea

to sea. They are known because they are understood

to be places of excellence. places of authenticity,

places of deep and profound faith. And Trinity,

you need to know that you have a wonderful reputation

that is known right across this land. And I believe

the reason why is that you actually understand

that ministry is not the sole purview of clergy.

It is actually an enterprise to which all of

us are summoned by virtue of our baptism. When

we say every day yes to our baptism, the kingdom

of God comes near. When we say yes to daring

to love our neighbor and to go as far as to love

our enemies too, the face of Christ is made known

through us. When we bring our time, our talent,

and our treasure, and we offer those away, the

church comes to life. And in this season, when

we are contemplating the generous life, today's

theme is being stewards, good stewards. When

I was 11 years old, I came to my father, who

was the priest, and I said, Dad, I'm really bored

in Sunday school. And then he said, well, you've

got two options then. You can sit with your mom

at the 11 o 'clock service, or you can join the

junior choir at 9 .30. I decided I wanted to

do something, so I joined the 9 .30 choir. What

he didn't tell me at the time was there was no

way I was going to go home alone, so then I had

to sit through the 11 o 'clock as well with my

mother. I figure that I've been doing two services

a Sunday for at least 50 years of my life. Some

of us are slow learners. But when you allow yourself

to just be taken away by the liturgy, especially

in the Anglican tradition, there are lines that

just sink in and are part of who you are. When

we sit... together in a community, we bring those

prayers with us. And let me tell you a story

first that takes me to one of those particular

sentences. Anthony DeMello tells the story of

two brothers. One is a bachelor and the other

is married with five children. They farm one

farm together and they split the proceeds of

the grain 50 -50 and everything just worked fine.

Until one night, in the middle of the night,

the man who was married with five children woke

up and worried about his brother. He said, it's

not fair that we split everything 50 -50. Here

I am with five children. I have all the security

I need in my old age, and there's my poor brother

who's all by himself. He's going to need to save

more now so that he has a future. So he got up

in the middle of the night. He filled a sack

full of grain. He walked it across the field

to his brother's granary. He dumped it into his

brother's granary and went back to bed. A few

nights later, the bachelor brother woke up and

he said, this is not fair that we split everything

50 -50. I only have to feed myself, but he has

five children to take care of. So he got up in

the middle of the night. filled grain in a bag,

walked across the field between the two, and

placed it in his granary. Back and forth they

went for months and years until one night they

got up at the same time. And in the middle of

the way, they bumped into each other and realized

what they were doing. Years after they died,

the telling of that story leaked out. When the

local community wanted to build a church, they

chose the place where the two brothers met because

they could not think of a more holier place than

that. A place where compassion, where forgiveness,

where care, where mercy meet, where the bread

of anxiety is left behind to embrace the bread

of abundance. When I was 11, That little offertory

sentence that was said in the Book of Common

Prayer Sunday by Sunday, blessed be thou, O Lord

God of Israel, forever and ever. All that is

in the heaven and in the earth is thine. All

things come of thee and are given to thee. Chronicles

29. Everything belongs to God. Paul says it differently

in 1 Timothy. We brought nothing into this world.

We can take nothing out. We enter into this world

empty -handed and open -handed to receive the

very blessing that God has given to each of us,

hearts and minds and imagination and gifts that

we receive and we offer. And when we depart this

life, we open our hands one more time to receive

that blessed gift of eternal life. with open

hands. It's living between the two points that's

tricky. Because it's tempting to, in the way

that we live our lives, to grasp rather than

to live with open hands. From a very young age,

when we are learning how to talk and we move

beyond mum or mama and dad or dada, the third

word is mine. It's mine. And we learn in those

early days what it means to possess. My toy,

my room, my seat, my clothes, my book. Watch

children play in a nursery school, and they're

dutifully off playing. Somebody, one of the children,

picks up a toy. Another one drops it to try and

possess the toy that they have, even though they

don't really want it. But because you like it

and possess it, I want it for myself. We learn

from a very young age what it means to possess.

And we live in an age where we are constantly

tempted to have more. Earlier in chapter 12,

we heard from in Luke, we hear Jesus say, beware

of all kinds of greed because your life is not

measured by your possessions. I don't know about

you. But that takes a long time to discern. It

takes time for us to know that it's just a car.

It's just a coat. It's just a watch. Scrooge

learned that lesson. So did Jacob when he stole

his brother's blessing. So did the prodigal son

when the money ran out. when we learn how it

is to come back to ourselves, to truly see ourselves

in that moment. And it's very challenging in

our day and age when we are constantly bombarded

every single day with images and with messages

and with videos of what it means to have possessions

and more and more stuff. Algorithms pursue us

in our pursuit for that one thing. I don't know

how it is that every time I Google something,

somewhere in that image is the sauna that I really

want to buy one day. It is always there. Don't

know how it happens, but it's still always there.

Your namesake, Trinity Church in New York City.

That looks straight down Wall Street. And back

in 2022, they put in a new stained glass window

that is lit from behind. So you can't actually

see it from inside the church. You can only see

it from the outside. And it is a stained glass

window that's built on the story of the talents,

according to St. Matthew, of what it means to

be a good steward of the gifts that God has given

to us. And it pushes that image straight down

Wall Street to remind the financial district

that the chasm between the very rich and the

very poor continues to grow and to grow and to

grow. My favorite part of that window is in the

very bottom right -hand corner is a picture of

a person looking into a cell phone. with the

light peering back on their face while the needs

of the world are not seen. I don't think there's

another stained glass window that has a picture

of a cell phone. But we live in a distracted

society. We live constantly for that which catches

our eye and fail to see how we are being drawn

by God. to a different pathway. Beware of building

your abundance or your possessions and being

not wealthy in God. Because the story that's

told earlier in Luke is of the rich farmer who

tears down all of his barns and builds bigger

ones so he can sit back and live life easy. But

what does it mean to be rich in God? I think

it means living your life this way and not this

way. Of being able to trust that you are the

very blessing that's going to bring life into

the world for your neighbor and a perfect stranger

around you. Live too long with this and we shrink

and we shrivel and live only to ourselves. Live

like this takes courage, to be able to be a steward.

The word steward comes from the Old English sty

and ward. The sty was the farm or the house or

the property. The ward is the keeper. The ward

did not own the sty or the farm or the house.

They tended the farm, the house, the land. We

are not called to possess the land. We are called

to be stewards of it, to live in a relationship

with an open hand, knowing that the land and

our gifts pass through us. If we hold it, it's

not a blessing. If we let it go, it becomes a

blessing. Bob was a good Baptist. And when Bob

was young, he went to see his pastor and asked

him how he could learn how to tithe, how to give

10%. And over the first number of years, it took

some doing because he didn't have a very good

paying job. But in time, he learned how to tithe.

And he felt good about that accomplishment. And

then over time, he got better jobs and better

jobs and better jobs. He got married and he had

three or four children. And as he was making

more money, now almost $400 ,000 a year, he was

finding it very difficult to tithe. So one day

he went in to see his pastor and told the pastor

of his predicament. And he said, please, pastor,

can you pray for me? So the pastor made a very

simple prayer. Oh, Lord, please help Bob lose

his job. Amen. And Bob said, whoa, what gives?

He said, Bob, when you had nothing, you live

with abundance. Now that you have a lot, you

live with scarcity. How do we live our lives

with open hands? One of the holiest people that

I have known in my life is a man named Terry.

And for years, Terry would panhandle out in front

of Church of the Redeemer in downtown Toronto,

where I was the incumbent for 15 years. And Church

of the Redeemer has a common table program that

feeds breakfast and lunch for about 100 to 150

people a day. And Terry grew up in Collingwood,

and he played hockey when he was young, and it

was his way of escaping a broken family. And

then he became a laborer when he got a little

older. He fell off the roof one day and had to

collect ODSP, and he lived in Toronto and could

not make ends meet. So he would sit at the corner

of Avenue Road and Bloor Street and sell outreach

papers to make a little bit of extra cash. He

had a toothless grin and knew everybody who walked

by that corner early in the morning. And he and

I became fast friends. One day on Good Friday,

he stepped into the church for the very first

time and he asked God to help him become sober.

And from that moment on, our conversations became

different. And I knew when he fell off the wagon.

because he wasn't at the corner. And I knew that

he was on again when he was back. And on those

mornings, we would embrace, and I only had to

look at him to say, I know that you know that

I know that you know that I know. One day at

a time, Terry. Then one day he came to me and

he said, Father, I'd like to get baptized. And

then our conversations became different. And

on a Wednesday midweek, he, along with others

who supported him, came and he was baptized.

And there was not a dry eye in the house. And

then one Christmas, I gave him a card. You see,

at the end of every year, if I had any money

left over in my discretionary fund, I would write

checks to people in the community that I knew

needed an extra helping hand. And one year I

wrote him a check and I put it in the card. And

I said to him, there are no strings attached.

About a week and a half after Christmas, he said,

Father, I want to tell you what I did with that

money. And I said, you don't need to tell me.

He said, I want to. He said, for every child

that gave me a quarter or a loonie for a paper

on a Sunday morning, I wrote them a card and

gave them a gift. That is a life that lives with

hands open. You can be the wealthiest or not.

God calls us as Christian followers. to live

with that sense of openness, to be dressed for

duty, to have your lamps lit, because you never

know when you are being summoned by the Lord

to be present and ready and able to serve the

most basic needs for our neighbor or our enemy

in our midst. May God continue to bless us and

call us to that generous life. not to live with

scarcity, but with abundance. Amen. Thank you

for listening to this week's episode of Trinity

Sermons. This sermon was recorded at Trinity

Church Streetsville on November 16, 2025.