God and Wealth

 

I admit that I had already written this sermon for our clergy conference in the spring. But I did make a few minor changes, but I stuck with this reading in part because it is a really hard one to grapple with and also I felt that my congregation and I needed to take a break from hearing their former journalist priest talk about the headlines, especially my angst and anger at the assault on the First Amendment. 

Instead, I talked about wealth. See what you think.

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Text: Luke 16: 1-13

If this morning’s Gospel left you a bit confused…you are in excellent company.

This is one of the tougher of the Lukan parables.

We looked at this one in our Lenten study this past spring… that class I called “Playing with the Parables.”

To be kind and fair to everyone in the group…we started out with the most beloved of Sunday School stories…staging and discussing the Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son.

Those are well-known…and everyone could get into the spirit of the class…acting out the different roles so we could then dig into them a little deeper.

Then I gave them this particular parable of the dishonest manager.

And—whew—when we’d played the scene once…it was almost as if I could see the question marks…and a few exclamation points and tildas and such…hanging over everyone’s heads.

 This story is strange and one that is tough for us to wrap our heads around.

Even biblical scholars find this parable difficult to decipher.

I mean…the two main characters are not great people.

The rich man decides to fire the manager based on a rumor that the guy is squandering the rich man’s property.

And the manager…realizing his boss hadn’t even bothered to check the books… decides to strike back by slashing what people owe the rich man in the hopes that by lowering the bills…the people will love him…and he’ll have a place to sleep tonight.

The class really wrestled with this one.

They noted that we don’t know the tone of voice of the rich man.

Was he impressed or annoyed with the how clever the manager had acted?

The people who played the parts of having their bills reduced were happy…but they also said they weren’t entirely free either.

They still were in debt to the rich man…and now they owed something to the manager.

And we also talked about to whom Jesus was sharing this parable.

We’re told that he’s speaking to his disciples.

But…if we were to look to the end of Luke Chapter 15… only moments ago…he was addressing a crowd which included tax collectors…the guys who weren’t the best Jews and were notorious for tacking on extra charges so they could pocket some money for themselves. 

Also in the crowd were some Pharisees.

They’ve been eavesdropping on his teaching and mumbling about the company Jesus keeps.

So when Jesus starts painting this verbal picture of a rich man given to snap judgments…and his dishonest manager figuring out how to save his own skin….he’s speaking to the whole cross-section of the community: the very poor…the very rich…and the very despised.

All of them cogs in the wheel of a system that is about the haves and the have nots with their attention fixed on money.

Who has it.

Who doesn’t.

Who owes what to whom.

How much is owed.

Jesus uses this dishonest manager working inside an inherently oppressive system to make a point about how the “children of the world” operate shrewdly.

Notice that he doesn’t say the manager acted justly.

He says the manager is shrewd….cunning.

He knows how to work this system so that he can land on his feet.

Because the manager only shaves off some of the cost of the oil and wheat…he still retains an advantage over the very poor.

He now appears to be something like a Robin Hood hero to them.

After his hasty refiguring of the accounts…he’s hoping they will see him as a “good guy” and make sure he doesn’t end up homeless.

In his own small way…this dishonest manager’s self-interested move injects a little more fairness into an unjust and oppressive system.

But only a little.

Because the debts haven’t been excused.

That’s how this economic system works… for the world.

That isn’t the way of God’s economy.

In God’s economy…debts are forgiven.

Period.

In God’s dream for the world…nobody would owe the rich man anything.

In fact…there wouldn’t be such an unequal balance of power and privilege…and the dishonest steward would have toppled the whole system and not have to worry about couch-surfing.

 

That’s how the world would begin to resemble heaven. And all eyes would be on God.

We’re all caught up in systems in our society that challenge the church…those of us who follow Jesus and see ourselves as children of light…to wrestle with systems that have us participating in oppression.

For example…we’ve inherited the legacy of the idea of private property.

But really the land doesn’t belong to us.

First…it belonged to God.

Then there were the people who were here long before many of our ancestors got on boats to cross the ocean to get here.

The Seminoles, the Creek, the Timucua and the Hitchitee Tribes all lived in this area which was once called Troupville.

Governments take land…give it to others…and still others after that…

We pave over legacies or turn them into parks.

Some profit.

Others are left in search of affordable housing.

Some win. Others lose.

Now we may not be able to completely dismantle these systems that are so entrenched.

But we can question them…and we can find ways to challenge them…and consider a question I posed a couple of weeks ago:

What are the things that we are willing to give up to follow God?

Can we conceive of a world where we are willing to let go of “things”…such as anxiety over money…to help build a stronger community for all of us?

There are a few things that we are doing to disrupt and shrink the chasm between rich and poor.

We’ve made a start here with our basket out in the narthex…taking up a collection of food that we can distribute to those who come to our door in need.

And some of what we take in goes to LAMP as they care for those without food and shelter who come to them.

Our congregation converted beer money into donations to my discretionary fund….and because you did that…I was able to help someone with a medical need this past week.

We can even look at our patron saint Anna Alexander…who we will be celebrating this Wednesday.

This deaconess of the church navigated many obstacles to open a school in Pennick.  

And through her faith and determination…she helped educate generations of children…opening the doors for them to better lives…despite the way the world wanted to limit those who were the poor…both blacks and whites.

And she did it without the financial help and backing of the Episcopal diocese…even though she was using our Prayer Book as her textbook… and running the school on the grounds of the Church of the Good Shepherd…the church she planted in Pennick.

If we are serving the God of life and liberation…then we need to keep chipping away at the barriers that hold people back…and not give into our own temptations to put money above making a way forward for a better world.

We can and we must be willing to put our best efforts out there to be agents of change that helps others…even if what we do feels like just a drop in the ocean.

Because each one of our drops makes a difference…and sometimes helps us to transform lives without us even knowing it.

Jesus so aptly puts it…that if we are children of the light…we cannot serve both God and wealth.

Choose God. Let the rest follow.

In the name of our One Holy and Undivided Trinity.