Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.
Text: (Luke 16:1-13)
And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?
Prayer: Lord God, our heavenly Father, enlighten our darkness with the light of your Holy Spirit, so that I may preach well and we all may hear well, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Our Gospel reading today starts like this:
He [Jesus] also said to his disciples.
And after the parable, Jesus says these words: The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.
This story is not for the Pharisees, it is not for scoffers, unbelievers, or outsiders. It is for insiders. Jesus told the parable to his disciples, but he allowed the Pharisees to hear it, but they didn’t understand it, they didn’t receive it, they didn’t believe it: so they mocked Jesus, they laughed at him, ridiculed him, made fun of him.
So we see that our parable today is very significant, because it has a special M rating on it: may contain violence which will cut to the heart, may contain nudity which will lay you bare before God, or may contain coarse language: language which Pharisees, lovers of money, as Jesus calls them, don’t want to hear.
So we read:
[Jesus] also said to his disciples: There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’
The rich man has a manager: someone who looks after his money. And he hears that the manager has not been honest in looking after the he money. So he takes his management away from him.
Another word we can use for the word “manager” is a “steward” who has been given a “stewardship.” Or we could call him a “treasurer” who has been given a “treasury” to look after. And so the rich man takes the manager’s job away.
Then we read:
And the manager said to himself, “What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from my management, people may receive me into their houses.’
If the manager is going to lose his job, he needs to have a plan up his sleeve. He’s lazy though: he doesn’t want to work to hard, and he doesn’t want to have to ask people for help. So he comes up with a master plan!
We read:
So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, “How much do you owe my master?” He said, “A hundred measures of oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.” Then he said to another, “And how much do you owe?” He said, “A hundred measures of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill, and write eighty.”
Do you see what he did? He went to make some friends. He wanted to get friendly with some people, by taking away some of their debt. At the same time, he does this without his master knowing about it, and he cheats his master. He uses his master’s money to get some friends.
So far, do you all understand what’s happening in the story? This is the easy bit: the next part is very unexpected.
We read:
The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness, [for his wisdom]. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.
Scratching your head? What’s Jesus talking about here?
First of all, listen to the first thing: The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.
Hang on a minute! Didn’t the manager cheat his master? Didn’t the manager make a few friends for himself by wasting his master’s money? Wasn’t the rich man going to sack his manager because he was already wasting his money?
Why on earth did the master commend him?
It’s a very strange situation: The rich man is going to fire a man who is dishonest, and the man is going to lose his job. Then the manager before he loses his job, goes around and makes some friends by ripping off his master.
And then, this is so unexpected, the rich man, the master, says to him: Well done! You did a good job!
Wouldn’t we expect the rich man to get even more cross?
Well, have a think about it! The manager made the rich man some friends too. How do you think the rich man found out about what the manager did? It probably happened that these people came and thanked him, and said, “Thanks very much. I’ve been having a really hard time lately, and I just couldn’t afford to pay back what I owed, but now I can. Thanks very much!”
And the rich man says, “Hey! Not only did the manager make himself some friends, but he made some friends for me too!”
And then Jesus says:
For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.
Aha! Now we know what this parable is about! It’s about money. You cannot serve God and money.
So what is this parable saying to us?
First of all, the rich man is God. If you want to be rich, God is still the richest, and all the gold, silver and jewels of the entire world belong to him. And also, all the riches of heaven belong to him too.
You have been given many good things in life. You are his manager. You are his steward. You have been given a responsibility. You, as a person who lives on this earth, have a responsibility to look after the things that God has given to you. This is your treasury, this is your management, this is your stewardship.
And also, this is not talking to you primarily as a member of the human race, but as a member of his church. This parable is addressed to Jesus’ disciples. It is not addressed to everyone. The Pharisees laugh and mock this parable.
So what is this treasury that God has given to you to look after? What is your management? What is your stewardship? Well it is everything he has given to you! Everything that is valuable. We’re not talking so much about “spiritual” things, if you like, we’re not talking first of all about sharing your faith, even though faith should always be shared, but we’re talking here about your wealth, your things, your money. The word in Greek is mammon, which is not just money, but stuff! And at the end of the reading today, Jesus says: You cannot serve both. “You cannot serve God and money.”
And Jesus says, “For the sons of the world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.”
People know that they won’t always have a job. They know there will be a day when they will be old and they need to have some money in the bank. They need to have some money up their sleeve to live on when they don’t have any more money. They need a pension, or they need some superannuation. Or they need someone who will take them in and look after them. They don’t want to be out on their face.
So, if that’s how people think when they can’t work any more, what do you think when God will take your life away from you? Your money won’t do you any good then. You can’t save up your pennies to buy your way into heaven. You need to be faithful until death and receive the crown of life. You need to repent and be baptised. You need to come out of the kingdom of darkness into God’s marvellous light. You need to invest your time and your energy into God’s word, so that when your life is taken away from you (and that time will come like a thief in the night) you will be proven to be a worshipper of the God of life, who gives life, and not of the money, which will drag you by the hip-pocket so low that you can’t imagine. You can’t serve God and money.
So it’s very important, if we are not going to worship money, what are we going to do with it? We are going to manage it! We are going to manage our money and our wealth well, not let our money and our wealth manage us. God is our master, money is not. God has given us our money to look after, our money doesn’t look after us. There are many churches around with all those so-called “evangelists” on the TV that say: Put money on the plate, and God will give you a Lamborghini in return. Those people are worshipping their money, not God, and they will be shown to be false prophets in God’s good time.
So what does God expect you to do with your money? First of all, he asks you to put it all back into his hands. You are baptised, you have been made a holy person, because Jesus died for you, rose again for you, and now covers you with his blood, and forgives all of your sins, not just in the next life, but in this life, in the church. That’s what the church is here for: to give you the forgiveness of sins, and when you are covered by God’s grace, and by God’s holiness through the forgiveness of sins, so is your money, so is your management, so is your stewardship. It becomes holy money, set aside for a holy use, because it is in the hands of holy people. So your house is a holy house, your things are holy things, and your possessions are holy possessions.
So think about it: how do you support God’s church? St Paul says: Each one must give as he has made up his mind, not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. And God is able to make all grace abound to you, so that having all sufficiency in all things at all times, you may abound in every good work.
God says: make up your own mind. You decide how much you want to give God. In the Old Testament, God required of people a tenth of their earnings, and many Christians do the same thing. You can give less, or you can even give more. But it’s God’s money, he’ll look after it, he’ll look after you. Anything you lend to him will be repaid to you.
But also in our reading today, Jesus says: Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.
God wants us to be merciful, just as he is merciful. The economics of this world only works justice: the sons of the world, as Jesus call them, only do what is fair. Only Christians can truly know what is merciful, to be kind to those who don’t deserve it, to show mercy to those who’ve messed up their own lives by their own faults, who are caught in addictions of booze, drugs, domestic violence, gambling, sexual addiction and pornography addiction, through their own fault, because our heavenly Father forgives us the sins we committed, as an old prayer says, “by our own fault, by own most grievous fault.” Only Christians can know what it means to help those in need, not because they are doing something to earn their way into heaven, but because they are already there. The church in many places has not yet learnt what it really means to be merciful: it has learnt to be just, and do social justice, but it has not yet learnt in many places what it means to be merciful, because so often the church has not yet heard the forgiveness of its own sins. Australia is not a country that has already had the gospel and is now losing it, it is a country that has never heard the gospel in the first place! Australians know what justice is, but not mercy.
If someone needs something that belongs to you, give it to them. As Jesus says: “Give to the one who asks from you.” You never know: the person may be an angel in disguise, and not even a cup of cold water will go unnoticed to God. You see, when we do these things on behalf of God, and we give to people who are needy, we make God look good, we give him a good name, and who knows, those people may even be standing there welcoming us when we enter heaven’s gate itself.
That’s God’s economics. The Pharisees scoff because it’s upside down. Worshippers of money keep their money to themselves. But with God everything is shared, even with those who don’t deserve it and who owe God their very lives and every breath. Jesus shares his death and his resurrection with you, through holy baptism. Jesus shares the Holy Spirit with you, through the hearing of the Word of God and the forgiveness of sins. Jesus shares his own body and blood with you in the Lord’s Supper.
And with us, we are given a stewardship, we are given a treasury. It is always a dishonest stewardship, and it is always one that needs the forgiveness of sins poured out over it. We love, because God first loved us. God’s economics does not work without the forgiveness of sins, good stewardship does not work without the forgiveness of sins spoken over us – it does not work without that freedom – the freedom which has the body of Christ on our tongue and the blood of Christ pouring down our throats. God created the world, and Jesus died for it. But most importantly, he created you, he gave you a stewardship, and Jesus died for you, and rose again for you. Amen.
Lord God, heavenly Father, you order the world through the forgiveness of our sins. You sent your Son to die for us and you bless us with the gift of the Holy Spirit. Teach us to be good stewards, of heavenly riches, and also of the unrighteous wealth, and keep us from being slaves to money, in Jesus name. Amen.
No comments:
Post a Comment