Proper 20 C

The parable of the unrighteous manager doesn't appear to make sense. How can this thief be commended as shrewd for changing the amount that debtors owe the rich man? Could it have something to do with the Lord's Prayer?

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.

Proper 12 C

"Teach us how to pray." One of the disciples wanted to know how to pray and in response we have the Lord's Prayer which outlines what to pray for and gives us guidance of what is important to Christ.

Proper 12 C

Transcribed from a sermon given on

July 25, 2010

At St. Barnabas Episcopal Church

By the Rev. Valerie Ann Hart

Jesus had been praying and one of his disciples asks him, “Teach us how to pray.” Teach us how to pray. I have an example of someone who knew how to pray. It is the founder of the organization that we are doing a fund raiser for on August 20^th. People describe her as being very saintly and running this organization on a shoe string. This is how she described how she prayed. Every morning she would get up and spend a half an hour on her knees telling God what she wanted. Then she spent the rest of the day making do with what God gave her. That is one way to pray.

Jesus responded to his disciples request with what we call the Lord’s Prayer. What we have here in Luke is a version that is a little bit shorter than the one most of us have memorized from our childhood and that we hear over and over again in church. St. Augustine describes the Lord’s prayer as being the perfect prayer because it tells us what we can pray for and the order of their priority. What it is we can ask of God and the priority of how important each one is.

The prayer begins with Father, Abba, parent, about as close and intimate a relationship as one could have. It describes a relationship with God that is close, immanent and real. And then it says hallowed be thy name, great is your name. So great was the name of God that the Jewish people didn’t even say it out loud. Your name is so magnificent, so hallowed, so sacred we don’t even speak it. There we have the transcendent God, the God that is so beyond human beings that we can’t even say the name. A God that is the source of all our being - the creator of the universe - beyond our imaginings, beyond the universe. So right at the beginning of the prayer we have this duel nature of God. God is intimate, close, close as a parent and yet so transcendent and so beyond that we can’t even say God’s name. You’ll find that most prayers begin with a description of God - Gracious God, loving God, God who created the universe. When you look at the prayers in the prayer book, when you listen to prayers that are said during the service, you will notice that they almost always start with some kind of description of God. So does the Lord’s prayer. That is the format. Father, immanent, present, transcendent one, hallowed be your name.

Then there are the requests. The first one, the first and most important request, is your kingdom come - your reign come. The first prayer for all of us should be God let your will be done one earth. Let your will be done in my life. Let your will be done in my heart. Be the king. Be in charge, have a world that goes by your will. That is the most important prayer we can have. Not my will, but your will. Your kingdom come.

The next thing is to ask for what we need. Give us today our daily bread. Give us what we need to survive, today. That request harkens back to the people of Israel while they were traveling with Moses in the wilderness. You may remember that they were there for forty years and when they were hungry and God provided manna. They would get up in the morning and there would be this crust on the ground that they could eat that tasted a little like honey. They would gather it for the day. But they were only to gather one day’s worth because if it was kept for another day it went bad. They had to trust that God would provide it the next day. So Jesus is saying we can pray for what we need for today. We can pray give us enough to eat today, but we are not supposed to be asking for an annuity fund that will provide us enough food for the rest of our lives. We are supposed to realize that if God can take care of today God can take care of tomorrow and the next day. That our security is not in our retirement funds, our security is knowing that God will be with us each day. So we are to ask, “Give us what we need today.” Enough food, enough shelter. Bread is also often interpreted as referring to spiritual food. Give me what I need. We know that God knows what we need. So that is the second thing we ask for.

The third thing we ask for, the third most important thing to ask for, is forgive us our sins. It is that important. Asking God’s forgiveness for our sins is that important. It is right up there with asking God to give us what we need to survive today. It is that important.

Now this particular version is a little intimidating because it says, “forgive us our sins as we have already forgive those who sin against us.” So if you haven’t already forgiven the ones who have sinned against you it is a little intimidating. It is a challenge. But the forgiveness is important. It’s central. It is the essence and central aspect of Christianity. It wouldn’t be Christianity without it.

Sometimes we find people who have put together different beliefs. I was talking to someone last week who is a confirmed Episcopalian - confirmed in their adulthood. She was talking about her spiritual journey and her journey had taken lots of twists and turns. She was raised in a Christian church and then she studied various eastern traditions and went to the Unity Church for a while as well as various different sort of New Age kind of things. Then she found herself in the Episcopal church and really liked it and became an Episcopalian. She wanted to know what my view of death was so I told her of my trust in God and that it was good and so forth. And she said to me, “Well I’ve been thinking a lot about it, and I’ve decided there must be reincarnation.” I said, “Oh really, why?” She said because people have to pay for the tings they have done. If they’ve sinned and hurt people they have to pay for that and so they can pay for that by being reborn again.” And I said that that’s not the Christian message. The Christian message is we don’t have to pay for it. Thank God. The Christian message is that it is not fair. Thank God it is not fair. Because if it was fair we’d all have a lot of suffering to do to make up for the suffering that we have caused others, either intentionally or unintentionally. The whole point of Christ’s message is that God loves us and God forgives us so we don’t have to pay in hell, we don’t have to pay by being reborn, because we are forgiven. And her response was basically, “I can understand forgiving the small things people do, but what about people who do major things, who kill people?” It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter. The whole point of Christ was to tell us that we don’t have to pay for everything we have done. That God loves us and forgives us. And that is what Paul is saying in the second reading today. It is kind of a long complex reading so it is hard to pick out exactly what he is trying to get at but he is telling people that what you have been taught in Christianity is that you are loved and forgiven and you don’t have to follow a lot of rules. It is not about following rules. And don’t let somebody deceive you with lots of intellectual ideas, but know about grace and mercy and forgiveness.

I know what the idea of reincarnation can do to people. When I had my brain surgery years ago I was at that time involved in a Yoga community. After my brain surgery I was caring for three small children, and I was having seizures. It was horrible. Everything was horrible in my life. And my Yoga friends came to me and said, “You must have done something in a past lifetime to have brought this on.” That was not helpful. If you ever have a friend going through a really horrible time, don’t say to them “You must have done something in a past lifetime.” It is not helpful. What was helpful was remembering what I learned as a child, that Christ walks with us through the hard times. It wasn’t my fault that that happened to me. It wasn’t because I had done something in a past life or in this life. I must say that if I had to suffer for every time I have caused another person to suffer there would be a lot of reasons for me to be in pain. Thank God that is not what Christ taught. The Christian teaching is that God loves each one of us and if we will let him, if we will open our hearts and let God in, God will forgive us, wipe the slate clean and start all over. And that is important. It is so important for us to do it that Jesus has it right in the prayer that we are to say every day. Because every day we need to ask for forgiveness. I don’t get through a day being perfect. Maybe some of you do, but I don’t get through a day being perfect. I have to ask to be forgiven. And that is why it is right up there. That’s why it is such an important part of the Lord’s prayer. And like I said it is a little intimidating in this version that it says forgive us as we have forgiven those who have hurt us. Sometimes what I am asking forgiveness for is the fact that I haven’t forgiven somebody else. And then I also ask “help me learn to forgive that person.” But it’s right there. Central to our faith.

And the the forth thing we can ask for is keep us from the time of trial. Nobody is quite sure exactly what that means because there are lots of different interpretations for it. It has to do with keep us from having trails in our lives that are so severe that we can’t handle them, or give us the strength that we can handle whatever trials come along. That is the forth focus of prayer.

Then Jesus goes on to say that we can ask for anything. We can ask for anything, but it is within the context of the reign of God. If it is within the context of God’s will, then we will be like that person who started that organization who said, “I ask God for what I want and I make do with what God gives me.” And the greatest of those is that God gives us love and forgiveness.