Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ. Amen.
The text this morning comes to us from Luke's Gospel, the 16th chapter:
He also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’ And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management 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 removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.
Thus far the text.
Dear friends in Christ,
Sometimes, I sit in my study alone, and I look through the texts of the week and I say, “What in the world is going on here? Why is Luke such a downer?” I mean, it seems to me that we’ve had about 6 weeks of difficult teaching. And then, this week, we’ve got 4 verses of Amos about God’s judgment, we’ve got Paul telling Timothy that a woman should learn in quietness, and then we’ve got this Gospel where we think we hear Jesus telling us to be dishonest in order to win friends and influence people. Any text I chose to preach this week felt like it basically went in a loss category for me, kinda like playing Eli Manning in Week 2 of Fantasy Football.
Anyway, these are some hard texts, and I couldn’t really get away from any of them. It’s not like I can just come along and insert my own hobbyhorse into the readings. When the lectionary committee got together, they put these readings together for a reason, and that reason wasn’t likely to make the pastor’s job more difficult, though sometimes it does. The reason is that they’re all about stewardship and they’re all about mercy.
You see, even your pastor struggles with these texts. And you know why? It’s because, sinfully, I’m looking for the linchpin in them that revolves around me. Even I forget sometimes, because my worldview is utterly sinful. It all revolves around me. But, if I am the center of the text, if I’m the reason that Jesus is telling the parable, then, quite honestly, I’m missing the point. Remember that, after the Resurrection, on the road to Emmaus, Jesus tells the disciples that the whole of the Old Testament, the Law and the Prophets, and even for us now, the New Testament, testifies about Jesus. It doesn’t testify about us. It isn’t about us. It’s about Jesus for us.
And it’s no different here. To give you a bit of context, the parable of the dishonest manager comes to us after the beautiful parables we all love from Luke 15, namely the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin, and the Prodigal Son. All of which are misnamed. After all, the sheep who gets lost doesn’t do anything, the shepherd does. The coin doesn’t find itself, the woman finds it. And the son, while he returns to the father, is greeted by his dad who runs to him from a far distance and it’s the dad who ultimately ends the parable. These parables aren’t focusing us on the ability to be found, these parables are focusing us on God and His self-sacrificing love, that He would do anything to win just one of us back. And so He did, Christ sacrificed even His very life so that He might bring us back to His fold, His keep, His guard. So, why are we expecting today's parable to be any different?
Don’t get me wrong, we’re in the parable, and yes, we’re the lost sheep, the lost coin, the prodigal son, we’re the dishonest manager, but we aren’t the main actor. We’re not the ones who are earning our way. We’re the ones who get lost, who wander away from God, who squander all He gives us, who deal dishonestly with Him and others. But the parables don’t focus on us, they focus us on Jesus.
This parable isn’t about using dishonest wealth to gain friends. Not at all. It’s about the master’s mercy that he has on his servant. It’s about Jesus showing us greater mercy than we deserve in our dishonesty and sin. We should expect that the master would look at the dishonest manager and fire him, put him in jail, anything. Instead, he commends the manager. Now, this is what bugs us because we are looking for what we expect in the world.
But in the prior three parables, we had a stupid shepherd who left 99 sheep so he could find one, a loopy lady who should’ve left the coin lost because the party she threw was more expensive than the coin anyway, and an folly-filled father who takes back his son who just lost a third of the father’s total wealth and then gives him even more. So, this parable isn’t about what we expect to see in the world. This isn’t about what the world expects of us. Rather, Jesus is telling the parable to show us that, as sons of light, we need to be as shrewd as the sons of darkness, the sons of this generation are.
That doesn’t mean that we rip people off. It doesn’t mean that we do dishonest things. That's not what Jesus wants. What it means is that we take the things that we are to steward in this life, the vocations that God has given to us in order that we might serve our neighbor in justice and righteousness, and steward them well. Shrewd means to be discerning. It doesn’t mean to be evil. So be shrewd. Has God given to you a wife and family? Be discerning with them, steward them, take care of them the way a father and husband does. Has God given you students? Teach them. Has God given you a next-door neighbor? Look after them. Whatever the role is where gives you a neighbor, someone you know by name, someone you can serve, steward that person and that role.
And it means to take care of all the things God gives you. Goods, fame, child, and wife, as the song goes. Yes, that means your money. Yes, that means your reputation. Steward them.
And what does that mean? See, you’re a steward of every gift God gives you. You’re a manager. That means that everything you have belongs to God; it doesn’t belong to you. When we care for our families, we’re managing God’s possessions. When we give back to the Church, we’re giving God back His own stuff. We think it’s ours, but it’s not. And herein lies the problem of today’s text. We’re forgetting that the Master owns all that we have, just as we’re forgetting that the manager in the story realized that the master was in complete control over the money and all things the manager touched.
What the dishonest manager had, however, wasn’t a bad understanding of money, but an overabundance of understanding of the master’s mercy. He knew that his master was a merciful master, and so he used the resources at his disposal to make sure he was taken care of.
Jesus isn’t telling us to be dishonest with things; He’s telling us to use the resources at our disposal to make sure that we are taken care of, namely, in the gifts that God brings to us. Use the resources to make sure that you will receive mercy. Use them. Use the Word, seriously, use the Word. Use your baptism, I am baptized and therefore receive God’s mercy. Use the Lord’s Supper, I am eating the flesh and drinking the blood of Jesus that redeemed me and saved me and preserves me into everlasting life. Use the resources, use the things that God gives you that He uses to show you mercy.
And then, go home. Go home and steward your family, show them mercy. Steward your students, show them mercy. Steward your money, show others mercy. Steward your possessions, show your neighbor mercy. When we show others mercy, we are saying we’re doing it because God has shown us mercy. You remember the saying, “We love because God first loved us?” We show mercy because God first showed mercy to us.
We don’t deserve it. We don’t earn it. We don’t steward things well. We don’t take care of people as we should. We don’t love our neighbors as ourselves. And we certainly don’t love God with all our heart, mind, soul, and strength. We don’t do anything but sin. We don’t do anything, really, but abuse the mercy that God shows us. Yet, even when we abuse it, even when we don’t truly honor it, God continues to delight in showing you mercy. AND He strengthens you further to do more stewardship and do things as Christ would do them.
Again, you don’t earn mercy. You earn wrath. You don’t deserve mercy. You deserve God’s justice. But you have received mercy. And you will continue to receive mercy until the day you die. Why? Because you continue to repent of your sin, you continue to be forgiven of your sin, and you continue to be strengthened in the true faith that leads to understanding and trust in Jesus Christ as your only Savior, the only one who can show you mercy on account of what He has done for you.
Jesus died for you, He lived perfectly for you, He stewarded all of creation for you, because it was given to Him to do by His Father, who knew that you would fail, who knew that you would sin. And this Lord, this Jesus, He shows you mercy in your bad stewardship. That’s the point, that’s where we look. This parable isn’t about using wealth in a dishonest way. It’s about us using God’s gifts to us wisely and shrewdly, and when we fail to use them thusly, God has mercy on us through Jesus Christ who died and rose again from the grave for you. That’s the point, that’s always the point.
So, when the parables get hard, when the texts don’t make sense, remind yourself, as I often have to do, that we look for Jesus first. We see Him in the text first, and from there, all the words of Scripture are open to us, showing us always God’s ownership over all things, including His great mercy towards you on account of Christ. In Jesus’ name, amen.
Now may the peace of God which passes all understanding keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, our Lord! Amen.
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