15th Sunday After Pentecost, 09/22/2019

Sermon on Luke 16:1-13, by Luke Bouman

Luke 16:1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ 3Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ 8And his 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. 9And 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. 10“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

What’s In a Story?

All of the Gospels record Jesus speaking in stories. Some of the most familiar of these stories are in the Gospel of Luke. Last week we had two stories of lost things from Chapter 15 of Luke’s Gospel. The third of those stories, commonly called the “Prodigal Son” or “The Lost Son” is usually read during the season of Lent. These stories are clear in their intent that God comes for the lost ones. The context is that Jesus is speaking to the Pharisees, directly, concerning their propensity to leave the lost ones behind. I love these stories because they remind me of times when I was lost, or when I had lost something and worked desperately for its return. Today we have another story from Luke’s Gospel. It follows directly on the heels of the stories in Chapter 15. But it differs from them in several significant ways. This story is told to the disciples, not Jesus’ critics. This story is the opposite of clear in how it is to be understood. One might even call it ambiguous. The story is, not surprisingly, not beloved like those that precede it. In fact, I’ve known pastors who see this text coming in the lectionary and find a reason, literally any reason, to preach on something else.

So, what is it about this story that makes people so uncomfortable? Is it the fact that the main character is kind of an “anti-hero?” The “Dishonest Manager” as some people have called him, isn’t the kind of

person that any of us want to emulate, after all. We like honest people, earnest people, loving people. We don’t particularly care for people who mismanage their Master’s wealth, and then, when they get caught, mismanage it some more. It is hard to see where Jesus is going with this story. And then we get to the explanation at the end. What should have cleared things up, only muddies the waters more. So, does Jesus really want us to make friends by means of dishonest wealth? Will doing so really get us welcomed into eternal homes? Or is Jesus just being sarcastic? And just how exactly is it possible to be “faithful” with “dishonest wealth?” And how do we know the difference between “dishonest wealth” and “the true riches?” These questions are just a few of the many that this lesson poses.

For me the answers lie in doing two things. First, recognizing that there IS a link for this text to the three stories of the lost the precede it. Those stories, upon deeper inspection, are not about the lost, I.e., about us at all. They are about the one who seeks for the lost coin, who risks losing a whole flock for the sake of one lost sheep, who sacrifices everything for the love of not one, but two sons, both selfish in different ways, in order to teach them the way of love. This last might be the key to understanding this story that follows.

But perhaps an even better clue to understanding this story is to understand a whole different set of stories from a different group of story tellers. The prophets of the Older Testament also spoke in stories. These stories were pointed in describing God’s relationship to Israel, God’s chosen people. The prophets also had a primary reference point for their stories. They used them to call God’s people back to the covenant relationship that God had established with them at Sinai. That covenant was based on God’s faithfulness in rescuing them from slavery and giving them a purpose: to live in such a way that they might reflect God’s grace and generosity in order to draw all nations, all peoples to God.

The Gospel text might be paired with a reading from Amos, or, if you use the “semi-continuous” series of readings, a text from Jeremiah. Both readings call God’s people to account for using the wealth and power granted them for selfish interests and gain at the expense of the poor, thus failing to live up to the covenant that God established with them. As such, the people forfeit their position as God’s chosen. What happens next, in both stories, is that God’s chosen people suffer the humiliation and exile.

So, what if the story of the “Dishonest Manager” is simply Jesus retelling the story of Israel? What if Jesus is describing a person in a typical wealthy household who is trusted with representing and reflecting the master’s way of life to all those around him? What if Jesus is using the position of “steward” or “manager” of the house in this story because it is usually a position of highest trust? What if, in other words, the manager of this story is none other than Israel, in its trusted covenant relationship with God? Sure, there are ways in which that analogy will break down, as all analogies do, sooner or later. However, I do think that the analogy has merit, as Jesus is extending the story beyond the exile and starting to talk about restoration. How, after being fired, does a master restore a once trusted servant? How, after being exiled, does God restore Israel? The answer to both questions is in the story that Jesus tells. Like the stories of the lost that turn out to actually be stories that reveal something about the persistent love of God, so this story about the manager turns out to be a story about the nature of the master.

Imagine, in this story, that the manager is indeed the chosen people of Israel. They have, out of their own vain and selfish ambition and greed, hoarded God’s gifts for themselves. The prophets have spoken often how they refused to extend God’s blessings to the poor and oppressed, as God once did for them when they were oppressed. And if they could not be expected to share God’s material blessings, how could they be trusted to share God’s love, the truest of riches, with others? So, in time, God exiled the people to Babylon. In their exile, they imagined all of the reasons that they had lost God’s favor and they decided it was because they weren’t religious enough. So, upon their return, the most faithful among them because super religious and observant of all of the customs and traditions. But they still missed the point that the best way to be faithful was to be generous both with God’s material blessings and with God’s love and favor. Even though they had returned home from exile, something was still missing.

So, God acted again, this time coming among the people as one who serves. He would once again lead the people into the act of self-giving service by giving God’s own self to the world. In Christ, God acted in an extravagantly forgiving way, especially with the poor and outcasts. While this enraged the super-religious people of the day, God was determined in Christ, to unite a divided humanity under God’s gracious rule and determined to do this by fulfilling the gracious calling of Israel from within. But now, Israel, too, would be transformed. Their vocation of extravagant love was restored. Their borders were expanded to include all those who joined this way. Their mission extended to include all people. Of course, the righteous super religious people were not amused. They insisted that the laws of scripture determined what love is. God’s response in Christ was to say that love determined what the laws of scripture were about, not the other way around. (Thank you for the cartoon, “The Naked Pastor,” for this delightful truth.) The truly faithful use of wealth is to give it away. Only a people who knew how to do this with earthly riches could do this with true wealth, loving kindness. So, Jesus, himself, fulfills the calling of Israel, and in doing so, restores all of Israel, now expanded to included all of humanity, to its relationship with God.

In the end, understood this way, the story makes sense. Jesus fulfills Israel’s vocation. He is both fulfilling the Covenant of the Older Testament and establishing a new Covenant. His generous way of serving love is extravagant and wasteful, like the dishonest manager at the end of the Gospel’s story. In this way he shows that faithfulness is not about following the rules, nor is it about “being fair” but rather it is about the extravagant, persistent, risky love of God, spread far and wide as we possibly can. We think of the manager writing down the debtor’s obligations in the story as somehow dishonest. But in God’s economy, such an act is an act of radical faith, and earns a commendation.

So, the question for us becomes, how are we doing? How are we “managing” the material things that God gives? Are they for us to keep to ourselves, or are we using them for others in faith? For truly, if we cannot be faithful with our material wealth, how can we be expected to be generous with God’s love? Truly, Jesus is saying, we cannot serve two masters. We cannot serve both God and wealth. How is God transforming us, and forming us, into managers who are as extravagant as God in loving the world, especially the poor and oppressed of the world?

Luke Bouman

E-Mail: luke.bouman@gmail.com

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