This weekend at St. Peter was Country Time, our big fall festival turkey dinner. Between carry-outs, deliveries, and dine-in, we served 790 meals in about two hours! Lots of people working together is great to see.
For a variety of reasons, I swapped this week’s lectionary readings with next week’s, so this week we heard the RCL readings for the 15th Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20. The sermon texts this week were Amos 8:4-7 and Luke 16:1-13. Two helpful commentaries for this sermon on the parable of the dishonest manager were Casey Cross at Modern Metanoia and Helen Debevoise’s column for this week in Feasting on the Word (Amazon link), Year C, volume 4, page 94.
Grace and peace from the One who was, who is, and who is to com, Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen
Some of you were here last week when I described Jesus’ parable in Luke 14 as challenging and uncomfortable. Two chapters later, we have Jesus telling the disciples another challenging parable, but this time it’s not only challenging, it’s also bewildering!
At first glance, it sure sounds like Jesus is telling us to follow the example of a dishonest man. The fifth commandment says “Do not steal” and here it sounds like Jesus is telling us to steal!
Sometimes in parables—these stories he tells to make a point—Jesus uses less than ideal, even unsavory characters as a comparison to tell us something about God or something about how we ought to live. Perhaps you remember the story from a few weeks ago about a man who goes to his neighbor late at night to ask for bread. The man gives him bread, not out of generosity, but to get him to go away so he can get back to sleep.
Jesus uses that parable not to say God gives us daily bread because God’s annoyed and wants us to go away; he uses it to say “How much more” will God give to us. If even a grumpy guy woken up late at night can be persuaded to help, how much more generous is our loving heavenly Father?
The point of this story is not to be dishonest. The point is that if even this dishonest, incompetent fellow can be shrewd with his money for his own benefit, how much more wise can we be with what God has trusted to us?
It looks like the basic problem with this guy is that he’s an incompetent manager. He’s squandering his master’s money. Then when he’s caught, he starts giving it away, cutting down people’s debts to his master so they’ll owe him a favor. This time when he’s caught, his master actually commends him.
I assume he still gets fired, but now the problem the master has with him isn’t his scheming—in fact, if he’d put that kind of effort into actually managing his master’s money, maybe he wouldn’t be getting fired! The problem is that he’s doing it for his own goals.
He’s being generous to people so that they will remember him and be generous back to him later. The problem is he’s trying to serve two masters. By trying to serve himself and his own needs at the same time as he’s serving this rich man, he’s setting himself up for failure, because his goals are not the same as his employer’s goals. The issue is not that wealth is bad, or that managing your money well is sinful; the issue is who you’re serving.
In confirmation class this month, we’re studying the 10 Commandments, and of course we started with the first commandment (anyone remember that one?). I am the Lord your God; you shall have no other gods before me. Martin Luther tells us that means we should fear, love, and trust God above all things.
God demands first place in your life, because God created you. God redeemed you. God is the One who gives you life. That commandment is the foundation for just about every other commandment in the Bible. If God is in the right place at the center of your life, everything else falls into line.
Our temptation, of course, is to put other things before God in our lives. Luther also says that whatever you put your hope and trust in becomes your god. Often, it’s money and stuff that gets between us and God. Our money might say “in God we trust,” but the temptation is to trust in the money and the stuff money can buy us. The world tells us enough wealth can guarantee us food, healthcare, shelter and clothing, everything we need for life.
But all that is temporary, and on some level we know that. All the life money buys us will come to an end. Only God can create real life. Only in Jesus do our lives have lasting meaning and purpose. The wealth we have is given to us by God in trust, as a tool. God gives it to us to help others, to spread God’s love and care for God’s creation. Money is meant to be a tool for serving, not a something to be served.
In that reading from Amos, God condemns what happens when wealth itself takes first place. Amos is prophesying in a time of prosperity in Israel. The farms were producing and lots of people are doing well. The economy’s booming and bank accounts are getting fat. People started to think they’d got it made; they had everything they needed for life.
But as the rich got richer, they misused their wealth. They forgot about God’s call to justice and treating others right, and instead only worried about getting wealthier, mistreating the poor in the process. Money became the goal, not a tool to use to serve others and glorify God.
Along comes Amos, who sees the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer, and he writes, “Hear this, you who trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land.”
Hear this you who worry more about commerce and the chance to sell and work rather than caring about the Sabbath set aside to worship God. Hear this you who are so focused on wealth and profit that you’ll cheat with false weights and measures.
God sees what is happening, and God is not happy. Amos comes to give a warning, to call for the people to repent. Within a few decades, their selfishness will lead to disaster as they’re conquered by invaders from Assyria. Everything they have will be taken away until all they have left to rely on is God.
No one can serve two masters, for you will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth.
The more trust we put in our wealth, the less we trust in God. The more we buy into the lie that money can save us, the more we buy into the lie that wealth is capable of giving us purpose and meaning and life, the farther from God we wander.
That’s important for us to remember all the time, but especially on a weekend when we as a church are having a big fundraiser. The purpose of Country Time is to raise money, so we can do ministry.
Much of the money raised will be given away beyond our congregation, and that’s good. Some of it will be used within St. Peter, and that’s good too. As long as we remember that the purpose is to raise money to do ministry that glorifies God and builds God’s kingdom, we’re doing ok. We can even be shrewd managers with how we operate. We’re supposed to be good, wise stewards.
But if we slip into making it a competition for what group in town can have the biggest bank account reserves, or what youth group can go on the biggest, fanciest trip, or what church has the biggest steeple, or anything else that glorifies us instead of God, then we’re in trouble.
God belongs in first place in your life. As you make decisions this week about how you spend your money, and equally importantly how you spend your time, think about who you’re serving.
Think about what your choices reveal about your priorities. May all your choices and priorities reflect the One who has claimed you and given you life, Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen