Year C

Luke 16:1-13

The Rev. Denise Vaughn

Put Your Money to Work

The Jamestown, New York Post Journal once reported this church blooper, the choir anthem for Bethel Lutheran Church’s Sunday service “Will be Powell’s ‘The Lord Jehovah Resigns’”.  If the Lord God ever thought about resigning, rather than reigning, this might be a good Sunday to do it, given today’s Gospel reading! This uniquely Lukan parable is generally considered one of the most difficult passages in the Gospel. Even St. Augustine is said to have remarked, “I can’t believe this story came from the lips of our Lord.” Yet, even though this parable of the dishonest steward poses significant theological challenges, its strength is in the fact that it is the people’s story. What I mean by that is that a parable is a grass roots lesson connecting ordinary real life with the extraordinary nature of God. Parables can be gifts of clear insight into God’s choices for our lives.

Traditionally called the parable of the unjust steward, it is the story of a rascal, a crooked, dishonest business manager. The plot revolves around fraud, embezzlement, and creative accounting. The central character cheats both his customers and his boss. But when he gets caught and is about to be fired, he is ingenious enough to save his own skin. This he does, by calling in the clients and reducing their debts to the absentee landlord. He has bought their obligation, their friendship, and hospitality to him by altering the ledger books. I owned and operated a small business for 18 years and I worked hard to be fair and honest with my employees and my customers. My books definitely did not contain any cleaver accounting. Some of you own a business or have owned one and may find, as I do, that this parable seems to go right against the grain of the right and wrong ways to do business.

This story ends not in the way we might imagine but with the boss surprisingly praising, not scolding, the scoundrel definitely conflicting with our convictions concerning honesty and fairness. The crooked manager basks in the praise of his boss for sheer shrewdness and clever dishonesty. He never repents, only laments getting caught and having to work so hard. He admits being too weak to dig ditches for an honest day’s pay and too proud to beg. In my opinion, it is hard to find much to like about this character and hard to derive much spiritual sense from it at all. Obviously, though Luke thought it important enough to include it in his gospel so somewhere in this passage, there must be a key to unlocking the treasure of its meaning for us.

The key we are looking for just might be in the eighth verse, it reads: “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” Taking a closer look, we find his dishonesty was not praised, his cheating was not commended. This was no compliment for a job well done. Nor, was the master delighted to be bilked out of his rightful profits. But, the steward was surely clever, energetic, and decisively responsible in handling the crisis of his future. With the end in mind, the steward redeemed whatever he could about his present situation. He understood that, in order to be where he wanted to be in the future, it was important how he handled today. This is what has caught the attention of the owner and caused him to applaud his servant.

At the end of the story, Jesus turns to his disciples to drive the point home: “for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light”.  Jesus’ point was this, if those who profess themselves to be my followers were as keen on their Christianity as the steward was on his shrewdness in business, it might be a vastly different world. As followers of Christ, how we handle today and the riches God gives us, makes a difference for our future and for the future of others. The future Jesus is concerned about is our eternal well-being, that is, that which makes for ultimate human happiness and fulfillment or that which leads to misery and destruction. To this Jesus says; “You can either serve this present age and love its treasures, or you can love God and serve God in this present age with your treasures. But you cannot do both. One leads to death. The other leads to life.”

As hard as we go after money and financial security, eventually we realize it will fail us. There are things that money just cannot do, or buy, or resolve. We can have it all and still be unhappy because our things cannot fill the emptiness or make us happy. This parable speaks to this and speaks especially to those Christians who have lost the vision of the larger picture. In the book of proverbs, Solomon wrote that, “Where there is no vision, the people perish”. When we have no idea where we are going, the treasures in front of us are hardly treasures at all; they become simply things, things that have no larger value beyond our own need for them. They become objects that can easily be used and abused, as we say.

If we accrue all these things, and use them only for ourselves, we have lost the vision of who God has called us to be. Only God’s vision for our treasures can make us truly fulfilled and happy. God’s vision is that money can lead to life when we use it to serve God; when we put our money to work for the Lord and when we understand that all that we have comes from God to begin with. Or, money can rule us, but money succeeds when it does not rule us but serves us because it is possible to manage our goods, possessions, income and investments, talents, all that “stuff” in ways appropriate to God’s rule in our lives. Our money, given shrewdly, with enthusiasm enables others to experience the love of God, to experience the extraordinary nature of God and we find that fulfillment we are searching for. Now that is putting our money to work!

The crisis that Jesus addresses in this parable is that somewhere in the middle of our journey we stopped living for Christ. We stopped believing that Jesus died and was resurrected and that life was made new. The children of light stopped believing in the promises of God, lost their vision for God and stopped hearing God’s voice. This parable is a wake-up call, to reclaim who we are and to renew our vision today for the kingdom of God among us and beyond us. Because, in order to be where we want to be in the future, it is important how we handle today. As Paul reminds us in 1Timothy, “This is right and is acceptable in the sight of God our Savior, who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. The truth, that to follow Jesus, to live in and for the coming of God’s love and justice in the world, this must be the singular devotion and passion of our hearts. And from that task we should never resign!