Sermons

Sep 23 - Deacon Jan Bales

Listen to audio version of this sermon.

Pentecost 17, 2007
Luke 16:1-13

People not familiar with the Bible are surprised to learn Jesus spends a lot of his time talking about money and practically zero time talking about sex. Listening to or reading current media about the debates tearing our churches apart, naturally one would think Jesus talks only about sex. However, Jesus talks about issues around money and wealth all the time; more than any other subject, as a matter of fact. Jesus knows what can get us into trouble in our relationship with God. It fascinates me that although our culture is obsessed by money, we don’t want to talk about it in church. I’ll bet if Fr. Brian or Fr. Christopher greeted you after church and asked how your bank account was doing, many of you would clutch one hand over your heart another over your wallet or purse and head for the parking lot thinking you might try someplace else next Sunday. You’d be thinking: “all they want at church is my money.” It would make you nervous, maybe angry.
Last week we heard the words the prophet Jeremiah uttered almost 500 years before Jesus. Fr. Brian proposed that Jeremiah speaks to us today about economic exploitation of innocent desperate people going hungry because we’re too confused, corrupt, apathetic or lazy to figure out how to transfer some of our abundant resources and obscene wealth in the right directions. These are the same issues Jesus was addressing. Jesus was a Jewish rabbi steeped in Jewish scriptures. His teachings reflect the centuries of Jewish belief that God has a preferential concern for the poor. Much of Jewish law was designed to take care of the poor and disenfranchised. Yet 2,000 years ago the separation between the wealthy and the poor was as it is today, a vast chasm that seems impossible to cross. The exploitation of the poor in Israel was done not only by the Roman conquerors and other foreigners but by wealthy Jews who twisted to their advantage the very laws meant to protect the poor.
Today’s parable certainly is about money, and it jars us. It obviously jarred the writer of Luke as well since he added several sayings in an effort to moralize and soften it. We often remember the last verse: “You cannot serve God and wealth.” I grew up hearing, “You cannot serve God and mammon.” Mammon sounds so nasty, doesn’t it? Dirty old money. I like a modern translation: “You cannot serve God and your wallet.”
The parable is unsettling because it seems to applaud qualities we are not supposed to like. Further, the material Luke adds doesn’t really help our understanding. I lost count of the number of commentaries I read on this parable. Everyone agrees this is the most difficult of all the parables of Jesus. (Aside: thanks, guys!) Using a different translation let’s listen to the parable with only the verses many scholars believe are original to Jesus. Luke 16:1-8a.: “There was this rich man whose manager had been accused of squandering his master’s property. He called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? Let’s have an audit of your management, because your job is being terminated.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What am I going to do? My master is firing me. I’m not strong enough to dig ditches and I’m ashamed to beg. I’ve got it! I know what I’ll do so doors will open for me when I’m removed from management.’ So he called in each of his master’s debtors. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘Five hundred gallons of olive oil.’ And the manager said to him, ‘Here is your invoice; sit down right now and make it two hundred and fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A thousand bushels of wheat.’ He says to him, ‘Here is your invoice; make it eight hundred.’ The master praised the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” Unquote. End of parable.
It’s open ended. What happens next? We want to know! Is the manager hired back or not? Scholars believe Jesus told this parable precisely because it doesn’t moralize and has an unexpected and surprising twist. If we hear it with our 21st century ears, we may wonder where’s the good news in a parable where an exploiter seems to get away with it? Sounds more like a story in The Wall Street Journal. ENRON revisited. Why does the master commend the steward for what appears to be dishonest and deceitful behavior?
Let’s unwrap the parable through the ears of Jesus’ audience. We can be fairly sure the master is an absentee landlord who visits his estates on occasion or is a member of the local nobility who lives in a nearby urban center. The figures on the contracts indicate large holdings of land, including orchards.” (Herzoz, p. 240) He is a member of the elite class, he is very rich and he controls the lives of the local people, the vast majority being very poor. The steward is given a pink slip, which means he is a retainer and not a slave. You don’t fire slaves. Slaves are property. You find another job for them on your estate, sell them or kill them. The manager is dependent on his job and does not have the security of a slave who, unless killed for a crime, would be guaranteed a place in a household somewhere. His dismissal as a steward is a death sentence. To drop out of the class of retainers down into the class of expendables who are the day laborers who dig, or beg when they don’t have work, means he will soon die. He is an estate manager with authority and every time he buys or sells anything he takes a “cut” but his extra profits are off the record or under the table and cannot be flaunted. In this system, whatever is written on the account books must be delivered to the master. The steward is always between a rock and a hard place. He needs to present enough profit to feed the greedy lifestyle of the master. At the same time he needs to make a living for himself and deal with the endless complaints of the debtors and tenants. The steward’s asset is his literacy which gives him leverage. At the bottom of the barrel are the tenants and debtors whose weapons are anonymous rumors that the steward is wasteful. Their power comes from passive aggressive behavior, foot dragging if you will, and rumormongering. They can complain but not too much or their grumbling will backfire. Thus the steward cannot be judged by today’s standards. He is doing his job which includes an under the table cut. The charges against him are part of the endless war between landowners and the peasants. And although the Torah forbids usury and the Mishnah forbids interest, wealthy Jews found their way around it. Most commonly interest was hidden in the contract and not separated out from the principal in the amount owed on the books. The rates seem to have been about 25% for money and 50% for goods such as wheat. So when the steward reduced payment of the loans, he took out the hidden usury or interest rate. One interpretation suggests the steward chose life with God by eliminating the hidden cost of the loan thus affirming Jewish law, which forbade usury or interest. And the landowner, especially if he was Jewish, could not protest the changed figures because he knew the added on amount was illegal in the first place.
What does the parable say to you? Does it sound like a story off the business page of the New York Times? Does it echo stories we hear all the time? Stories about the discrepancies between the haves and the have knots. Stories about gouging, kick backs, CEO’s making millions while their workers lose health insurance. What are we to make of this story? While I like the idea of the steward becoming a good Jewish boy, there are some other choices. A popular one goes thus: Persons whose goals in life are spiritual should learn to use the ingenuity of those whose goals are worldly. Followers of Jesus should be as shrewd and wise using earthly means to their advantage to prepare for trials and tribulations. There is also the choice to see this parable as reflecting that the grace of God cannot come to the world through respectability, but only through death and losing and therefore become the means of resurrection and living. Or, we could focus on the theme of resourcefulness. What about the idea that “friends are more important than money” as we watch the steward pare down the amount the debtors owe the master but become indebted to him.
This parable is so open ended, the possibilities are endless and perhaps that is what Jesus intended. Each of us must find our own answer. I guarantee you, whatever you decide, it will come back to stewardship. If you are a disciple of Jesus, you are about stewardship. How are you going to use your resources? How are you going to help others reclaim their resources? Let me tell you where the parable leads me today. As I write these words, I fall in line with professor William Herzog who writes, “Faced with a limit situation, the steward devised limit acts that changed the scenario from a sorry and predictable tale of woe to a scene of rejoicing. The master who held all the cards lost the hand. The weapons of the weak employed by the debtors were matched with an arsenal of equal strength by the steward, whose weakness was also exposed. Out of the battle came a temporary respite for the debtors, a glimpse of a time when debts would be lowered, and a place where rejoicing could be heard.” (p. 258) Unquote.
The three parables immediately preceding this one are the three stories of being lost: the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost sons (or the prodigal). All end in a gay fiesta, a party of rejoicing. The word used for the prodigal son’s squandering is the same used for the steward’s squandering in this parable. While this may not be a parable of the kingdom of God, it does illustrate how the “weapons of the weak can produce results in a world dominated by the strong.” (p. 258) It must have thrilled the crowd, the poor people who first heard it. There was hope. This was good news. It’s party time! Rejoice!
What does it have to do with stewardship? Think about it. Jesus indicates the kingdom of God is our world turned upside down: rich become poor, weak become strong, last will be first, burdens become light. What role do we play in turning the world upside down? Who or what do we serve? How can we use our resources to cause rejoicing in the kingdom of God?
Two weeks ago heading north for a retreat, my companion and I stopped for lunch at a coffee house whose proceeds sponsored a ministry for the poor and homeless in the community. When I went to use the restroom, instead of a sterile, utilitarian space, I found an attractive space with framed calligraphies adorning one wall. I paid little attention at first, but on the way out the phrase “Dear God” caught my eye. Moving closer, I adjusted my trifocals and read: “Dear God, Please make the poor to be rich and the rich to be poor just so they know what it feels like. Then put everyone in the middle so that there will be enough for everybody. Thank you.” I don’t remember the author’s name, but he was age 7. Mohandas Ghandi said, “there is enough for everyone’s need, but not enough for everyone’s greed.” God created and is creating. It is good. The plan seems to be that there is enough for everybody. Rejoicing seems a heavenly state of being. What role are you willing to play in the party, in the wonderful banquet in the kingdom of God? This is a stewardship sermon and it is about money. Amen

The exegetical work and some ideas for interpretation are from:
Parables as Subversive Speech, chapter 13: “Weapons of the Weak,” pp. 233-258, by William R. Herzog II (ISBN 0-664-25355-5), Westminster John Knox Press, 1994

The translation of the parable is from:
The Five Gospels: The Search for the Authentic Words of Jesus; New Translation and Commentary by Robert W. Funk, Roy W. Hoover, and The Jesus Seminar, 1993, pp. 357-358