St.
Matthew’s
Proper
20
Jesus said to the
disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were
brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him
and said to him, `What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of
your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.' Then the manager
said to himself, `What will I do, now that my master is taking the position
away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have
decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome
me into their homes.' So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked
the first, `How much do you owe my master?' He answered, `A hundred jugs of
olive oil.' He said to him, `Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it
fifty.' Then he asked another, `And how much do you owe?' He replied, `A
hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, `Take your bill and make it
eighty.' And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted
shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their
own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for
yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may
welcome you into the eternal homes.
"Whoever is faithful
in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very
little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the
dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not
been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?
No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love
the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God
and wealth." Luke 16:1-13
If you have been around church in the past few weeks and
months, you might have noticed that money, or riches, or the difference between
rich and poor, or giving away everything to the poor have been common themes in
our gospel readings. I think these
themes have shown up about 5 times since June, here we are again today, and
they will show up again at least two more times before November. This is not because we are about to enter a
time in which many churches talk about money or pledge drives. The reason for this is because we are roughly
reading our way through the Gospel of Luke based on a three-year cycle of
readings, and Luke brings the subject up repeatedly. Essentially, in the Gospel of Luke, one verse
out of seven has to do with money, or richness, or poverty. It is incredibly important.
The net result of this is that I’ve spent some of this
summer feeling quite guilty that I own more than two pair of shoes. And yet I cannot escape it either. If I’m to read the Bible, I’m going to run
into this theme again and again. This is
especially true in Luke, which has the most piercing thrust of social justice
of any of the gospels. And as one commentator I recently read rather grumpily
wrote in the 1950s: “We may have to make
allowance for Luke’s frequently manifest prejudice in favor of the poor…but
when all allowance is made, the language around wealth and money seem consonant
with the mind of Jesus.” I cannot do
justice to every instance, but it may be helpful to look at the accounts of
money and wealth that are in the Gospel of Luke. And I want to look first at the promise in
Luke that the world through Christ is in the process of being turned upside
down. And second, about the account
money that Jesus gives: what money is
and what money does. It might help us understand what’s going on in
this passage from today, which commentators consider one of the hardest
parables to interpret. If you have a
Bible with you, feel free to mark where we end up, I’ll be calling out verses
because I’d like you to be able to refer to these later if you want to.
Again
and again The Gospel of Luke makes reference to turning the world upside
down. And one of the first things to be
smashed will be the power of money. The
theme shows up incredibly early in the Gospel of Luke (1:53), with Mary singing
in joyful exuberance of what God is bringing about: he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.
When
Jesus shows up in his hometown synagogue as a guest preacher, he chooses a
passage from Isaiah to declare fulfilled in him, saying (Lk 4:18):
“The Spirit of
the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim
release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed
go free.”
In other words, Jesus is
here for the lowly.
In Jesus’ sermon on the
plain, one of his huge open air preaching gigs, he furthers this theme of
turning the world upside down, preaching (Lk 6:20- 25):
‘Blessed are
you who are poor,
for yours is the kingdom of God.
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh…
for yours is the kingdom of God.
‘Blessed are you who are hungry now,
for you will be filled.
‘Blessed are you who weep now,
for you will laugh…
‘But woe to
you who are rich,
for you have received your consolation.
‘Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
‘Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.
for you have received your consolation.
‘Woe to you who are full now,
for you will be hungry.
‘Woe to you who are laughing now,
for you will mourn and weep.
Last
example I’m going to mention about turning the world upside down
(but there’s at least three more): Next
week will be the passage on Lazarus and the rich man (Lk 16:19ff). The rich man and the sick beggar Lazarus find
their fortunes reversed in the afterlife. And the rich man, finding this quite
untenable, is told that he had his good things in his earthly life, when he
showed no concern for Lazarus’s suffering.
Next, what is the account of money that Jesus gives? How does it make people behave, and what is
it?
Again and again Jesus confronts money as a concern. “But
wait,” some might say—“money isn’t the root of all evil. Love of money is!”
Well, that’s what the letter to the Hebrews says; today we’re talking
about Luke and what Jesus says. The idea is that money is morally neutral—so
long as people make their money honestly and don’t hurt anyone, what’s the
harm?
In the parable of
the sower (Luke 8:11-15) the seed that fell among thorns represent those who hear; but as they go on their way, they are choked by
the cares and riches and pleasures of life, and their spiritual fruit does not
mature. In other words, money has the
capacity to put a barrier between us and God. The problem, says Jesus throughout the
Gospels, is that our hearts cannot be so easily extricated from our stuff.
It isn’t simply
the use of money—or it’s hoarding—that presents a problem, it’s the
possession of something we are trained
to value because of the opportunities money can open up to us—the social status
it gives us. Money and wealth is not
necessarily value-neutral— possession of it moves one psychologically in nearly
imperceptible ways. Is money a tool?
Sure, but we’ve made it a necessity to live.
Is money just paper and metal?
Sure, but we‘ve created powerful and complex systems of ranking and
prestige based on who has more.
So what’s the
harm, indeed? “Jesus appears to
agree with money’s basic corrupting potential, since he told us how difficult
it would be for a person who is wealthy (note:
he did not say “a person who loves money”) to enter the kingdom.”[1] He said this to the rich young ruler (Luke
18:18ff) who was otherwise very righteous, but could not give it all away to
follow Jesus.
Contrast that rich young
ruler to Zaccheus (Luke 19:1-10) a tax collector who vows to Jesus to not only
give half of everything he has to the poor, but to pay four times the
restitution to anyone he has cheated and extorted.
That got Jesus’s
attention. Here was someone willing to
part with wealth for the sake of the kingdom.
Here was someone willing to make restitution for participating in
economic systems that left the poor especially vulnerable.
Rank
acquisitiveness has no place in the reign of God. Jesus seems to know what we
know deep down: we are not good spiritual multitaskers. We have a hard time
focusing on two things at once: we cannot serve both God and wealth. And simply acquiring wealth opens us up to
numerous opportunities—both large and nearly imperceptible—to downplay and
delude ourselves into thinking that our money does not change us or we deny
that the way we allocate money as a society impacts others.
So Jesus, in Luke seems to think that money is tainted by
its very nature. Hence all the warnings
to store up treasure in heaven instead (See Luke 11:41, 12:21, 12:33, and
18:22). The acquisition of wealth leads
one to lose sight of God and given how often the rules of a society will
privilege the rich, the acquisition of wealth is often theft from the
poor. This is why when John the Baptist
was asked what people had to do to be saved, he said not to extort or take more
taxes than necessary (Luke 3:14).
Salvation and faith and belief in Christ and what God is
bringing about through Christ is according to Luke will necessarily involve a
change in orientation—a way of understanding that the economy of God is
different from that of the world.
Are you still with me?
Okay, now let’s take a quick look at the Gospel passage
from today. There’s so much to say about
this passage. But I’m going to limit
this to what it might mean when Jesus tells us to “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when
it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes (Luke16:9).”
Is Jesus
telling us to be dishonest? Does Jesus
mean for us to do some religious money laundering when he asks us “if we have
not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to us the
true riches (Lk 16:11)?”
Here’s what might be going on. Throughout Luke, the point is that money is
being made at the expense of the poor, and Jesus often says to give one’s
wealth away to the poor as a way to get closer to God—to better understand what
it means to trust God and to align one’s own concerns with God. We also see the reversals of fortunes are a
big part of Jesus’s preaching of the Kingdom of heaven and our eternal
destinations.
Because of this, I think that when Jesus talks about
dishonest wealth, he simply means worldly wealth. He’s deeply suspicious of human claims to be
unaffected by our wealth, and I think he asks us to be suspicious of our own
rationalizations.
If we are being commended to do what the steward did by acting
like the steward and lowering the debtor’s bills, it is possibly because the
steward cancelled the interest or his own extorting cut from the overall debt.
Loan sharks and exorbitant interest were common at this time in history, and a
steward could get away with a 50% mark-up in some cases. By making such adjustments, the steward hopes
to make friends who will take him into their own homes in gratitude. Even if the steward’s motives are suspect,
the debtors experience some form of grace and reprieve, and that’s not nothing.
So, if Luke and Jesus both mean for this parable to be an
image of the Kingdom of God, it could be that Jesus is meaning for us to use
our worldly wealth, as tainted as it is from our journey in a sinful world, to
make friends with the poor so that they make the wealthy welcome in eternal
habitations. Our willingness to do this
is a sign of faith that we’ve aligned with God’s economy.
This interpretation would be in keeping with the frequent
commands to give everything away to the poor in exchange for treasure in
Heaven, and the interpretation would be bolstered by the condemnation the rich
man receives for ignoring the beggar Lazarus that we will read next week. A story that, by the way, immediately follows
our passage today. Luke means for them
to be read together.
Okay, so what?
What do we do with this? Well, we
cannot serve God and wealth. After an enigmatic difficult parable, Luke puts that
straightforward morsel of Jesus’s teachings to clarify everything else. It’s always worth asking where God might be
calling us to put worldly, wealth toward that which enriches instead of impoverishes—toward
that which fosters friendship and reconciliations than division.
And maybe it is okay that I own more than two pairs of
shoes, but the life of faith is one of constantly checking on my
rationalizations and ways of using the resources I’ve been entrusted with.
And as aware as we might be of own propensities for
self-delusion and questionable motives, might we be brave enough to welcome the
questions that Jesus confronts us with about how we manage dishonest worldly
wealth?
[1] Luke 18:24. "The Politics Of Scripture: Luke
12:32-40—Maryann Mckibben Dana | Political Theology Today". 2016.Politicaltheology.Com.
Accessed August 31 2016.
http://www.politicaltheology.com/blog/the-politics-of-scripture-luke-1232-40-maryann-mckibben-dana/.
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