Luke
16:1-18
I.
After
Jesus gives his parables about the lost sheep, coin, and son, he keeps speaking
to his disciples. And he tells a
rather difficult story about a rich master and his hired manager. It’s difficult because not only is the
manager either crooked or incompetent, which is why he gets fired, but the
manager also gets rewarded for doing something we think is rather underhanded
and sleazy. Not only is Jesus okay
with this, he lifts up the manager as a shining example of how disciples should
act!
So:
we should steal from our boss, and when we get fired, we should steal even more from our boss. Got it.
But
to learn that from the story implies that we are looking at it from the wrong
perspective. We tend to see it
from the perspective of the one stolen from, or the one doing the
stealing. But there are other people in the story. What if we interpreted it from their perspective? These are the debtors who have their
debts partially forgiven.
From
that perspective, I suggest that this parable is really about forgiveness. It is no accident that it follows immediately the Parable of
the Lost Son, which features the astoundingly forgiving father. Here, the boss does not seem to be particularly forgiving at
first. When he hears about the
manager squandering his property, he demands that the accounts be produced and
he fires the manager. The manager was ripping off the master
for selfish gain, we presume.
Then
it is the manager who, still acting
as the master’s agent, and still acting out of remarkably selfish reasons,
proceeds to approach on his own some of the master’s debtors, offering them a
one-time-only opportunity to get out from under some of their debt.
Now
debt is one of those terms that should get our attention. What do we all pray daily? “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive
our debtors.” What does Jesus say
at the beginning of his ministry?
That he has come to proclaim “the acceptable year of the Lord,” which
means the Jubilee from Leviticus 25, which means a wall-to-wall forgiveness of
all debts. Then, as now, debt is a
major problem faced by most people.
Once
again, Jesus doesn’t seem to be bothered by how
or why good things get done, like
forgiving debts, only that they get
done. He is concerned exclusively
for the debtors here. If the manager is doing good for a bad
reason, Jesus is okay with that. As long as he’s really doing good. It is even fine with Jesus if the manager is getting
something out of it for himself! The manager calculates his debt-reduction scheme so that he
will have people who owe him some
hospitality while he is unemployed.
So,
at first the manager squanders the property of the master, just for his own
benefit. But after he is fired, he
still loses the master’s property, but now it is by helping others. He gives away the master’s assets… and the Master… rewards him.
II.
It
is almost like what the Master wants
is for his assets to be distributed. He is unhappy with the manager who stole
from him for his own benefit. But the manager is commended when he gives some of the master’s wealth away to
indebted people. Perhaps the
master does not really want them feeling tied to him out of duty and debt, like
the older brother in the former story.
Perhaps the master realizes that he gets a share of the goodwill gained
by the manager’s action.
The
manager inadvertently and as a kind of last resort, actually builds community. He creates places where he will be
received and welcomed, and he does this by forgiving part of their debt to the
master. And it is of this that the master approves.
Jesus
says that the master “commended the dishonest manager because he had acted
shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their
own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of
dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal
homes.”
In
other words, go out there and be a debt forgiver,
in every sense of the word, which is what Jesus teaches in the Lord’s Prayer. Don’t even beat yourself up imagining
that you are somehow indebted to God. In one sense, we are, of course,
indebted to God… but God does not want debtors, people who are always thinking
that they have to pay God back, and maybe if they do pay God back then they
won’t owe God anything anymore… which is ridiculous. Walt Whitman once complained about people who “sweat and
whine about their condition,” who “lie awake in the dark and weep for their
sins,” who make him “sick discussing their duty to God.” Jesus is with Whitman on this. God doesn’t want our forced duty. God wants our love, that is, our generosity towards others and our forgiveness of
their debts.
It
is precisely because we can never repay our debt to God that we have to forget
it. God has forgiven it. It is this basic fact of forgiveness
that Jesus’ disciples have to embody all the time. Our lives are about forgiveness by any means necessary.
All
wealth is to some degree dishonest; it is about humans attaching value to this
piece of paper or metal, value that fluctuates wildly and bizarrely. Jesus says to make this and everything
else a tool for mission, a way of
spreading the good news. A means
of reconciliation, in which the lowly are lifted up, their debts forgiven,
their lives restored.
III.
Jesus
goes on to say that if we trust him in how we manage the little things, like money, we will be able to trust him in the big things, like love and justice, truth
and beauty, goodness and wisdom.
If we can’t do what is right with our wealth, don’t expect God to bless us with these important things. If we can’t serve God with all the
things God has given us, how can we expect God to bless us in such a way that
these things somehow belong to us?
Seriously, if your teenager has wrecked your car, who would give her her own car? Do we expect
to be rewarded for destroying God’s
planet? The whole reason the
planet is as wrecked as it is has to do with people following, serving, loving,
and worshiping money.
How
we act depends on whom we love and what we serve. If we serve wealth, if we dedicate our lives to doing
whatever is required to increase wealth, we will live in a certain way. But if we love and serve God, we will
live in a rather different way. “You
cannot serve [both] God and wealth.”
You have to choose one or the other. In other words, not to put too fine a point on it, you can’t
glorify God by making money; and you can’t make any money glorifying God.
And
it is the Pharisees who happen to be listening in who say, “Now wait a
minute!” They ridicule Jesus and
what he is saying. They, like
everyone else, are “lovers of money.”
They, like everyone else, and no doubt like us, do not really agree that
we can’t serve God and wealth.
Because, well, how is the church supposed to survive?
We
have buildings and property, we have investments, we have salaries to pay, we
have mission to support. This
can’t be done for free! Don’t we
know it! Jesus himself knows his
group can’t survive without some involvement with money. He has several wealthy women
underwriting his ministry. He even
has a disciple appointed treasurer.
So he can’t mean that his disciples are supposed to live without money
at all.
Jesus
says that what people prize, what
people value, what people use to
measure their own success, that is,
money, is an abomination in the sight
of God. And if something is an
abomination, we should get rid of it as quickly as possible. And if that abomination is something
humans value, we should take advantage of that fact and translate its perceived
value into real value by giving it away and making it serve human needs. That way we gain welcome into God’s
eternal household.
I
am not going to fall into the trap of diluting or equivocating on Jesus’ words
here. There is no sense in which
“well, it’s okay to have a lot of
wealth as long as we’re not ‘serving’
it.” Or: “I can possess it, but it I can’t let it possess me,” or some such nonsense. God is not fooled by this kind of
self-justifying, hypocritical doubletalk.
God sees the heart. God also
sees the chasm between people with wealth and the poor neighbor… a topic he
will address in the parable for next week.
IV.
No
doubt the Pharisees were pointing out passages of the Torah that appear to
indicate that wealth is a sign of God’s blessing. Jesus says, in effect, that “Yeah,
well, you guys are the experts on the law and all, so use it anyway you like,
even to justify your own greed and selfishness. I don’t think that’s what the Torah is really about, but that’s just me.
“The
law and the prophets were in effect until the coming of John the Baptizer;
since then the good news of the kingdom of God is proclaimed, and that is the deeper Spirit of the
law. I have always strongly urged
everyone to enter this new relationship with God and each other, even if you
have to force your way in past your own reluctance and the resistance of your
family. But, properly understood,
every insignificant detail of the Torah
and the prophets will last until the end of time. And the spirit of the Torah and the prophets is always towards justice, no matter how
many verses you can dig up to justify your own self-serving position.
“I
will give you an example of the way you guys mess up the Torah so that it means something the opposite of what God intends.
The Torah says divorce is
allowed in some cases and according to a specific procedure. It does this to give rights to wives
and children, and to the community itself. But you take that grudging and limited permission and turn
it into a rationalization allowing men to ditch their wives on the least
pretext, as long as they follow the letter of the law, which you manipulate. In this way you use the law to break
the law, and do harm to innocent women, letting men throw unwanted wives into
poverty, the very thing the law wants to prevent.
“I
am speaking flat-out in the Spirit of the Torah
when I say therefore that anyone who divorces his wife and marries another
commits adultery, and whoever marries a woman divorced from her husband commits
adultery. That’s because the
deeper meaning of the Torah is the
protection of the weak against the predations and violence of the strong. And if even my words in this case should be twisted again into a ruthless letter that victimizes the weak, it is again the Spirit, blowing where she
wills, that will correct our practice.
“The
Torah does not go away. We just receive an ever deeper and
truer interpretation of it. Now it
is about the Kingdom of God, which I have come to proclaim and enact, and into
which I invite others.”
V.
So
there is a certain creativity, and kind of wildness, and s single-minded focus
as well, to discipleship. Jesus
would have us do justice, love kindness, and walk with God no matter why or how
or with whom. Jesus would have us
follow the Spirit of the Torah that
he embodies, even if it means breaking the letter of the law and going against
the law’s self-sppointed guardians, the Pharisees.
If
it’s our selfishness and fear that is making us forgive people, that’s fine. People are being forgiven. Debts are being canceled, or at least
reduced. If money is confusing the
issue, Jesus says, “So use money to enact the values and practices of God’s
Kingdom by giving it away to people who need it more than you do. If even the law, that is, Scripture
itself, is apparently getting in the way of our mission to do the Kingdom,
Jesus says follow the deeper Spirit of the Bible, and act on behalf of the
weak, the victims, the destitute, and the vulnerable. Jesus is the Word of God. If we think the Bible contradicts him then we are reading it
wrong.
We
can take dishonest wealth, an abomination, and transform it into something that
does good in the world in Jesus’ name.
We cannot serve both God and wealth; but we can make our wealth serve
God.
And
I guess in this season in which we are talking about stewardship and the
importance of giving of our time, talents, energy, and resources to God in the
church, this is all good to remember.
Hopefully, this church is a place where we find forgiveness, acceptance,
blessing, and peace. Hopefully
this is a place where we can show that we can be faithful with a little, and so
receive the true riches. Hopefully
this is a place where we can show how even things valued by people can be transmuted
into things that serve God.
+++++++