23 September 2007

Luke 16:1-13

When I first read today’s gospel lesson from Luke, I thought, “I’m going to have to wrestle this one to the floor.” Well, after spending time with it, I’m ready to say “uncle” and admit that it’s wrestled me to the floor. For this confusing parable from Jesus is one that I’d really rather not deal with. It begs too many questions. And I can’t hope to answer all those questions. But, as I think about it, it does seem particularly apt on a day when we begin to think about our stewardship and how each of us will support the church in the coming months.

Over one-third of Jesus’ parables and sayings deal with money and faithfulness. Think of the rich young ruler told to sell everything he had; think of the widow who put her last coins in the Temple treasury; think of the eye of a needle and a camel; think of any number of parables and you’ll probably bump up against money.

It’s not surprising. The bible shows that God does have a preference for the poor. Throughout the Hebrew Bible, there are laws upon laws about how your treat the widow, the orphan, the sojourner. And Jesus knew that the poor were all around him during his day and age. It sounds familiar doesn’t it? Jesus would feel quite at home in our day and age, wouldn’t he? He would probably have lots to say about our society and culture and world given the growing divide between rich and poor; between the haves and the have-nots, not only in our world, but right here in our country and state.

So what can this confusing parable say to us in our day and age? Let’s look at it again. Jesus tells this parable following last week’s reading about the lost sheep and the lost coin with the parable of the prodigal son in between. All this lostness. And then comes this parable; a parable in which the hero of the story seems to be dishonest. And he is. Perhaps it’s his way of being lost.

He’s a manager or steward (there’s that word again) of an estate, and a bad one at that. He sees the writing on the wall, as it were, and knows he’s going to get the sack at any point. He recognizes, wisely, that he’s too old to dig ditches (I can agree with him on that) and too proud to beg (which is fair enough). So he has a plan. He goes to the people who are in debt to his master and reduces what they owe from 20 to 50 percent. What a plan. Then, he’s thinking, I’ll be welcome into these homes at least.

Pretty shrewd, isn’t it? But, here’s the catch in this story: his master hears of it and what does he do? He commends him on his shrewdness. He’s just been cheated out of a good portion of his dealings. He has just had this dishonest manager take it away from him, seemingly all square.

The master commends the manager. It’s shocking to us. I wonder if it was as shocking to the disciples’ first-century ears. Did they find the incongruities in this story that we do?

But wait, Jesus tacks a moral onto the story: a moral about serving God and money; about not being able to serve both; about where your allegiances lie. That part I can grasp onto! That’s the part that makes perfect sense to me.

We are much more like the dishonest manager than we would like to think. We are shrewd in our dealings making sure that we are safe and secure before thinking about anything else; before even thinking about God perhaps. And that’s when we realize that we’re trying to serve two masters.

Because we try this impossible task of serving two different masters, we get ourselves into trouble. We flit from one to the other; promising one that we’ll be obedient but tied to the 2nd one like a dog tethered out in the backyard. We run the risk of worshiping wealth in our culture, because it is so prevalent. And that’s bound to get in the way of our worshiping of God.


We have come to the time in our church life in which we are considering stewardship. We face budget difficulties in our congregation and faithfully pray that God will help us out…somehow…someway. You just have to look at the back of your bulletin to see our current state of financial affairs. With faith, we draw up budgets and seek out the assistance we need to carry out those budgets.

It has been said that budgets are moral documents. They point out what people think is important, what is seen as essential. We as individuals who make up the congregation are parts of that moral document. And as such, we are the support to those things that we see as important, as essential.

We cannot serve two masters, it’s true. We cannot serve our own wealth while we try to serve God. If increasing our own wealth is the consideration we take into our minds as we decide about stewardship, we are not serving God. That is a truth we have to take into account.

We have many ways to respond to requests for stewardship. We have our talents, our time as well as our financial resources with which we can respond. We cannot survive without members giving of all three of these categories; especially in a small church such as ours. Most of us give whole-heartedly in many ways. We give what we can and prayerfully think about how we might even add to that.

Each of us is important when it comes to this question of stewardship. Each of us must consider what we have and what we can give out of all of God’s gifts to us. We must recognize that we might be trying to serve two masters at one time. One is going to win and one will lose out. Which will it be?