Trinity IX [Luke 16:1-9] (14-Aug-2022)

  

This sermon was preached at St Peter’s Evangelical-Lutheran Church, Public Schools Club, Adelaide, 9am

Grace, mercy and peace be to you from God our Father, and from our Lord Jesus Christ.

I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into eternal dwellings.

Prayer: Let the words of my mouth, and the meditations of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.

 

Our Gospel reading today tells the parable of the dishonest manager. We read at the beginning of the reading where Jesus says: There was a rich man who had a manager and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.

So, the first thing we see here in this parable is that the money and the possessions belong to this rich man, they don’t belong to the manager. The manager is just a man who has been asked to organise the affairs and the property of the rich man.

The manager might be a like a manager at a restaurant—he doesn’t own the restaurant, he’s just been asked to organise things at the restaurant. Or, it might be like a real-estate agent—he doesn’t own the houses or the properties. He just organises the affairs on behalf of the owner or the landlord.

And so, we read that this manager has been wasting the possessions of the rich man. He has been doing a bad job of his management, and eventually other people found out about it, and charges were brought against the manager.

And so, we read: 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.”

What happens is that the manager is fired, and he has a very short time now to get his things together and do something else. The rich man hears the charges, and asks him to turn in his account, to hand over the paperwork, and the rich man would then find another manager.

And so we read in the reading: 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 management, people may receive me into their houses.”

We read here that the manager goes out and talks to himself. He consults his conscience, and he thinks through what his options are. He is being fired from his job, and now he has to think about what he is going to do.

He says: What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? He has to think quickly. His area of specialty is management, and he probably thought that he was a particularly good one, because he had cut some corners and got away with it. However, his dodgy dealings caught up with him, and the rich man realised that he was losing money.

And so, we can see that the manager tries to think what else he can do. He says: I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. Since he can no longer work in his area of expertise, he thinks, maybe I can work in some kind of construction work. In those days, people would have been needed to dig, to make bricks, or build foundations for building houses and such like. But he says: I am not strong enough to dig. There are going to be plenty of experienced, strong labourers who will do the job much better than me with my little chicken-wing arms.

Then he says: I am ashamed to beg. He has been a working professional person all his life – he doesn’t want people to see him on the street.

So the manager comes up with a plan. He says: I have decided what to do so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses. 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.”

And so, what happens here is that the manager comes up with a plan. The only thing he has known is his dodgy dealings, and so tries to use his street-smarts and his know-how for his advantage, while he still has time. He goes and cancels and eases some of his master’s debts, and this makes the people happy with him. They would say to him, “Thanks a lot for that. That really eases my burden.” And so, here are all these people who are grateful to the manager, and become his friends, and are happy with him.

Then we read in the parable: The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. Now, what does this mean? Wasn’t the rich man, the master, firing the manager? Why is he now commending him?

Well, he is commending him for his shrewdness. He has been a dodgy manager for a long time, and now, while he still has time, he uses his dodgy skills for his own advantage. And the rich man recognises that in doing this, he has also made a whole of people who owed him money very pleased with him too, as well as his manager.

But it’s not as if the master, or the rich man, is happy with the dishonest dealing. In the musical movie “Oliver”—based on the classical novel by Dickens, “Oliver Twist”—there is a little moment where Fagin, who is in charge of a gang of boy who thieve for him, realises that one of his boys has kept something for himself. He calls the boy out, who then puts the pocket-watch, or whatever it is, back in Fagin’s box. Fagin then says to him, “Good boy! What a crook!”

And this is a similar thing in our reading where the master realises that his manager is dishonest, but also realises that he is clever. In using the short time left that he has, the dishonest manager has done something still a bit sneaky, but at the same time, he has done something which is good for everyone.

Now, after this, Jesus then gives us an application of the parable. He 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 eternal dwellings.

Now, what is Jesus saying? That Christians should be dodgy in their dealings? Well, in actual fact, when we look at the 10 Commandments, this is what the Ninth and Tenth Commandment are about, to some extent, which speak about coveting. So, the Ninth Commandment says: You shall not covet your neighbour’s house. People want something that they can’t have, and so they try and get it, but not just by stealing it openly, but by wheeling and dealing. They try to get things for themselves, but not in a way that breaks the law, but in a way that gets it under some kind of pretext, so that nobody can technically accuse them of breaking the law. But everyone knows it’s wrong: the person who lost their property or possession knows they were tricked or scammed, the person who took it knows they got a great deal, and everyone else knows that the person who came out on top must be dodgy. Luther writes in his explanation of the Ninth Commandment:  We should fear and love God so that we do not scheme to get our neighbour’s inheritance or house, or get it in a way which only appears right, but help and be of service to him in keeping it.

So, no, Jesus is not telling us to be dishonest, or dodgy, or cunning, in such a way that we get things for ourselves in dishonest way.

But Jesus says: For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. He makes a comparison between the “sons of this world” and the “sons of light”. The sons of light refer to Christians, to Jesus’ disciples, to those who are part of his kingdom. Jesus says: I am the Light of the world. Whoever follows me will never walk in darkness, but will have the light of life. He also says to his disciples in the Sermon on the Mount: You are the light of the world. Let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works, and give glory to your Father in heaven.

So, for us Christians, because we have been called by Jesus to follow him, because we have been baptised into his kingdom, and because we have the forgiveness of sins, and the gift of the Holy Spirit, we shine the light of Jesus into the world, because we have been made new people, and are continually being renewed and transformed in our minds and hearts. But sometimes, it takes us a long time to learn this in our everyday life and in the our everyday experience.

And so, what it means, is that the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. The dodgy and dishonest dealers know much more about how to be dodgy and dishonest, than Christians know about how to be godly, and how to shine this light. For those who are dishonest, it’s all they know, and it’s all that they have.

Sometimes people might say: why is it sometimes that unbelieving people have a huge amount of money and possessions? Why is it sometimes that unbelieving people live in beautiful houses, or in beautiful parts of the world? Well, remember that it’s all that they have. They don’t have Jesus, and one day it will all end for them, they will die, and they will take none of it with them, and they will face God in his judgment. On the other hand, we Christians have Jesus, and even though we think sometimes that we might be in need, in actual fact, because we have Jesus, we have everything we need. We have the Saviour of the world, who is also the Creator and Preserver of the world. And so we say: My help is in the name of the Lord. He made heaven and earth. I said, “I will confess my sins to the Lord”, and he forgave the guilt of my sin. This is a wonderful thing! We can stand firmly with confidence and say: The Lord is my Shepherd; I shall not want.

And so Jesus says: And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into eternal dwellings.

Jesus is speaking here about “unrighteous wealth”. In Greek, literally, it says, the unrighteous mammon, or mammon of unrighteousness. Mammon is a Hebrew word which means not just money, but also possessions. It’s a bit like our English word, “stuff”. When Jesus says: You cannot serve God and mammon, it’s a bit like saying, You cannot serve God and stuff. Stuff and things!

Now, money and possessions are good things, and they are gifts from God. We need money and possessions and God provides them. But sometimes, as well, the Scripture speaks of these things as bad, not because they are bad in and of themselves, but because people so often use them for bad purposes. So, for example, Jesus says here, “unrighteous wealth”. St Paul says that the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. It’s not money that is the root of evil, but the love of it.

And so, it’s not just money we’re talking about here, but God gives to us all kinds of things in our lives for our blessing and for our benefit. He is the rich man in the story, and we are managers. The things that God has given to us do not really belong to us, but we are called to be managers of these things, stewards, if you like. We are not allowed to have our stuff, our things, our money, or anything like this, be our masters. They must not rule our lives. But we are allowed to have them, but in such a way that we rule them, in such a way that we manage our money and possessions—not that our money and possessions rule us.

And so, in our parable, the rich man is God, and we are his managers. And we are not faithful in our management, we do not manage things as we should. God knows this, and he threatens to each person their proper wages. The wages of sin is death, as it says in Romans. Each of us has been given a management of things, but only in this life, and in such a way that we will take none of these things with us. We also know that soon, we are going to die, we are going to be sacked from this management.

And so, what does Jesus say we should do with our things which we have been given by God? Jesus says: 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.

Jesus wants us to use the things we have been given for the benefit of others, and in such a way that they will praise God for what we have done for them.

But also, Jesus is not saying that we earn eternal salvation because of what we do for other people. Not at all – the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. Sure, we are all going to die, but eternal life is a gift which has been given to us, because of the sacrifice and the death of Jesus.

Now, many people can’t fathom this wonderful gift that Jesus has won for us in his suffering and death. They think that Jesus must be some kind of dishonest manager, that there is something dodgy about it all. They think that each person has to be punished for their own sin. People think, what about Hitler? What about rapists and murderers? Don’t they all deserve hell? How can someone else die for their sins? If someone gets away with a crime in this life, shouldn’t they suffer for it in the next life?

Well, it is true, that God is just, and he is a righteous judge. He pays each according to his works. And it is appointed for each of us to die, and then comes the judgment. But when Jesus lived his life here on earth, he gave his own life in our place. He took upon himself our sin, upon his own shoulders. He himself didn’t have any sin, but he took the guilt and the punishment of our sin upon his own shoulders. And he suffered and died for it, and he did this in our place. And then the debt which we owed to God was completely cancelled, because he paid for it in full. When we trust in Jesus, and believe in this wonderful salvation that he has won for us, then his innocence and his purity and his holiness is credited and imputed and charged to our account, because our sin and guilt and debt was charged to his account. And so, Jesus died and rose again, so that there would genuinely be nothing that we owe to God, and that our sin would be truly paid for.

When it comes to us, then, we look to how Jesus has laid down his life for us, and then, in a small way, we might see how there are other people around us who are in some need, and we might think: How can I help them? How can I use the things that God has given me to alleviate their burden? How can I alleviate some of what they owe?

Now, this might have to do sometimes with how we use our money, but also, it can have to do with how we might use our time for people’s benefit, or our possessions, or whatever—whatever God has given to us, as his managers, as his stewards.

And then Jesus says: Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.

These people who we help in this life, when they arrive in heaven, will be able to witness to Jesus: this person helped me. Also, we know that when we help others, that Jesus is hidden behind them, as when he says: As you did it to the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.

So in the church, especially, we should help each other, and use the gifts that God has given to us, to help each other and serve each other, not because we earn eternal life by doing this, but because this is how God calls us to conduct our management.

Later in this chapter, we read the parable of Lazarus and the rich man, where we see the opposite thing happen. Abraham receives Lazarus into the eternal dwellings, not because Lazarus helped Abraham, but because Abraham is the father of faith, and Lazarus, having absolutely nothing, was welcomed as a child of faith. If this rich man had been a man of faith too, and had helped Lazarus, and if this rich man’s faith had shown forth and manifested in love for this needy fellow, at his gate, then Lazarus would have been able to receive him too into the kingdom of heaven, in such a way as to say: “This man was a man who helped me in my time of need.”

So, we need to be very clear, that we don’t earn heaven because of our loving works for our neighbours, but our works are the way in which other people recognise that there is a living faith in us. And then they are able to give a witness to it, even before the throne of God.

And so, we commend ourselves to Jesus, and we ask him to help us in this life to use the gifts that he has given us in service of others. We will always do this imperfectly, and in a sense, we are always dishonest managers. But Jesus, the truly perfect man, the truly honest manager, who is the Light of the World, has laid down his entire life for us, using every gift he has for the salvation of the whole world, so that whoever trusts in him may have eternal life. In faith, we trust in him as our Saviour, and as Christians, in love toward our neighbours, we seek his guidance and strive to follow in his footsteps. What a wonderful Saviour he is! Amen.

 

The peace of God which surpasses all understanding guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.