Proper 20 C
Sermon given on
September 19, 2010
By Rev. Valerie Ann
Hart
At St. Barnabas Episcopal
Church
Luke 16:1-13
Some weeks when early in the week
I sit down and I read what the readings are for the coming Sunday I go, “Oh I
have an idea of what I might do with that.” Other times I sit down and I read
it and I go, “Oh I have several different directions I could go with these
readings.” Other times I pick up the readings and I go, “Huh. What is the point
of this?” Well it was one of those kind of weeks.
This Gospel reading contains one
of the most difficult parables that Jesus told. It doesn’t make sense. So I
struggled a bit with it this week, and I think I came to an understanding of
it. It is a confusing parable because here we have a rich man, this would be a
Bill Gates, and a manager or a steward. A steward back then would be in charge
of a person’s whole estate. So it would be like Bill Gates hiring someone and
saying, ‘I’m too busy traveling around the world and doing good things. You
take care of all my money. You decide where it is spent and you make sure of
everything, that my homes are taken care of and my investments are done well.
You are in charge of all of it. I give
you complete authority over that.” And then Bill Gates goes off and does his
thing.
Meanwhile the manager is saying, “Hum
I could put a little away for myself. “So maybe he opened up an account in
Switzerland and he’s getting a little of the money going over there. He’s
putting a little here, and he’s putting a little there and he is getting a nice
house of himself. Well the rich man finds out that the manager is not doing
what he is supposed to do and tells him he is in trouble. Now if I were the
rich person, I won’t give that person a couple more weeks with any authority. I
would have said that you are out of here give me the key, you are gone, I’m
calling the police. But that is not what this rich man did. In the parable he
tells him you are going to have to give me an accounting of what you have done.
I want to see the books. And the manager thinks, I really like the kind of life
I am living. I’ve gotten kind of weak so I can’t possibly go out and do manual
labor. And I’m much too proud to beg - I’ve got an idea. So he calls in people
who owe the rich person money and says, “Look here’s the books, I’ll switch them
out. Instead of owing $100,000 you owe $50,000.” And then he calls in somebody
else and says “The person I work for, you owe him $200,000 on your mortgage.
Well I’ll tell you what, we are going to cut your mortgage down to $100,000.
How does that sound? Sound like a good idea? Now remember me I’m your friend. Right?”
So after you hear this what do
you expect when the rich man finds out about this, when the rich man finds out
that not only did this manager stash away some money for himself but then he
gave it away to other people? What do you expect the rich person to do? To be
furious right. But instead, Jesus says that the rich man commended the dishonest
manager. Commended him as being shrewd. Now shrewd may not be the ideal
compliment, but he certainly didn’t condemn him. He said he was shrewd. He was
smart. He was doing the right thing. How can that be? It doesn’t make any sense
as a parable.
So as I worked with it I noticed
that it went on to talk about if you are faithful with a little then you will
be able to be faithful with a lot and if are honest with a little you will be honest
with a lot. Then it says that if you are faithful with the things of this world,
then you will be able to get the things of the eternal world. Ah, the eternal
world, that is suggesting something spiritual. So I thought about Jesus’
parables. In so many of the parables the person in charge is represents God,
like in the prodigal son the father represents God. So let’s say that this rich
person represents God. So who is the manager? Who would the manager be if the
rich person is God? It would be each one of us. Each and every one of us is
that dishonest manager, because every thing we are and everything we own really
belongs to God.
You remember back at the beginning
of Genesis, God made human beings and told human beings that they would be
responsible for taking care of the earth. We were created, our reason for
existence, is to be the managers of creation. Think about it. What is yours, really
yours that you didn’t get from God? Maybe you were born rich and you have an inheritance
from your parents. Well you can’t really think that that is yours. You don’t
deserve it. So okay you have been hard working all your life. You started out
with nothing and you’ve gotten up every morning and you’ve been to work by nine
and you’ve stayed sometimes till six or seven and you have worked hard every
day of your life and you’ve gotten paid. You’ve worked hard, you’ve used your
muscles and you worked in construction. Who gave you those muscles? You have
talented hands and you can paint and draw and do wonderful talented things with
them. Who gave you the gift of those hands? You have a mind that can think and
you got one of those jobs where you work at a desk and you use your mind most
of the time. Who gave you that mind? Who gave you the energy to get up each
morning? Who gave you the drive to go do it? Where did that come from? It’s not
ours, it’s God’s. Each day, each day when we wake up that’s a gift from God. So
the question is, all this abundance that God has given us, each one of us, what
have we done with it? What have we done with it?
If I hire someone to take care of
my things, that person is supposed to do what I want them to do. If I hire
someone to be the chief executive officer of a profit making company, I want
them to go out there and make money. If I hire someone to be the CEO of a non
profit organization that serves the community, I want that person to make sure
that this organization is serving the people it is supposed to serve. If I have
a large financial trust fund and I hire someone to run it, and I want that
money to be given away, then that person should be giving the money away.
So what happened with this
manager? This manager realized that he was being found out. He wasn’t doing
what the owner wanted him to do. And what did he start doing, he started giving
it away. He started forgiving debts. Forgiving other people’s debts. Does that
sound familiar? Do you remember one of the ways in which the Lord’s Prayer is
translated? It is, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.” That comes
from Luke. I had this sense that maybe there is a tie in here, so I went back
and got my Greek New Testament out. Sure enough the word for the people who
were in debt to the owner that the manager gave them money to and the word used
in the Lord’s prayer (forgive us our debtors) is the same word. There is a tie
between this parable and the Lord’s Prayer.
What the manager did when he was
found out was he started forgiving other people’s debts. That was shrewd because
Jesus said that in the Lord’s prayer we ask, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive
our debtors.” So this manager got smart and said “Hey, I may be in it for
myself, but have been told that if I give it to others, if I forgive others,
then I may get forgiveness myself.” Pretty shrewd, pretty shrewd.
So if we go under the assumption
that we are that dishonest manager because every one of us, every one of us,
has in some way squandered the gifts that God has given us. Just think of our
bodies. The greatest gift we have from God is our bodies. How do we treat our bodies?
What kind of odd chemicals have we put into it over the years? Have we smoked?
Have we drunk too much? How do we treat it? Do we give it good exercise? Do we eat
good food of the right amount? Do we treat our bodies well? If I hired someone
to take care of my body and that person treated my body the way I treat my
body, I’d fire them.
So even this most precious gift
we don’t do a great job with. And all the other gifts that God has given us, in
what ways have we gotten lost and started thinking of them as ours? And when we
think of it as ours, and when we think of ourselves as being in charge, then it
is important that we stash some away because we have to take care of ourselves.
But when we remember that it is all God’s anyway then we realize that it is God’s
responsibility to take care of us. So we don’t have to be focused on ourselves.
The manager in the parable had a
moment when he realized that the owner understood what he was doing and there
was going to be an accounting. Each one of us at some point in our lives
realizes that God knows what we are doing with the gifts that God has given us,
and that there will be an accounting. When we realize that, when we realize
that, there can be a certain amount of terror that comes up, but if we remember
the Lord’s prayer we can start forgiving others in hopes that we will be
forgiven. We can start giving to others because we know that that is what the
owner really wants for us to do with the gifts that we have been given.
So, I encourage you to forgive
others with the promise that likewise we will be forgiven.
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