Sermon Tone Analysis

The steward, however wanting in fidelity and care, showed great prudence in the use which he made of present opportunities as a means of providing for the future.

16 Then 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.

2 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.’

3 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. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’

5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’

He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’

7 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.’

8 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.

9 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.

10 “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.

11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13 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.”

This month, we’ve been working through a series of Jesus’ parables from the Gospel of Luke.

Parables are stories told to illustrate a teaching, object lessons or riddles of sorts that aren’t always about the story they tell, but a deeper truth or unveiling of an issue of faith and the nature of God.

A parable is a story that must be looked through - like a lens or through a looking glass.

These are Jesus’ wisdom teachings, his way of talking about much more than what the story itself says.

I’ve been playing with these parables as an exercise in reading through them in order to see Jesus’ wisdom for us as we face rising seas, melting ice caps, and increasingly dire reports about the future of our world’s climate.

As people who share this common home, earth, how do the parables of Jesus impact us, teach us, open us up to wrestle with these problems faithfully, with conviction and purpose and dare I say hope?

Some parables are downright difficult to stomach.

They’re difficult to understand, because they swim upstream, sail against the prevailing winds.

They…disrupt our way of life, at least how we would like it to be or how the world would have us believe it is, apart from God’s reign.

And some parables are downright difficult to stomach.

Today’s parable is just such a parable.

Honestly, it’s one of the most difficult texts I’ve studied and preached.

It’s confusing and feels like it doesn’t align with what I want it to say.

It disrupts me.

And I expect it will disrupt you.

For how we consider wealth, relationships, the use of our capital and resources, the role of truth and the role of smart (wise) commerce.

With this in mind, let’s hear our second Scripture reading.

The Parable of the Dishonest Manager

16 Then 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.

2 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.’

3 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. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’

5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’

He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’

7 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.’

8 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.

9 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.

10 “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.

11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13 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.”

Pray

Rather than leave it to the end and deliver the punch line — I want to tell you right now what I think this parable is teaching us, with regards to our ethics and faithfulness to God’s way and in response to the crisis we face as a world.

This parable is teaching us to be willing to disrupt the systems of money and power for the benefit of relationship, community, participation, and belonging in the eternal Reign of God.

It undermines wealth and power as the primary measure of success.

Faithfulness — to the way of Jesus, to the bonds of Christian friendship, to the stewardship and care of the earth — faithfulness in even the smallest things matters and it reflects later on how we steward greater things.

We cannot serve wealth and serve faithfully the way of Jesus, which requires us to give it up.

Instead, wealth becomes the tool to leverage, to make deals, to shrewdly get ahead so that we might deepen and expand and strengthen the work of disrupting all that tells us to hoard, to divide off, to shelter what is ours at the expense of the poor, the displaced, the marginalized.

The way of Jesus is disruptive.

To get where we’re going, we need to change our perspective on wealth from what we might commonly believe about it in our Western capitalist society.

This parable needs to disrupt our relationship with wealth — we are not bad people for having wealth (there are countless places in the Scriptures where God’s people are rewarded with earthly possessions because of their faithfulness).

But what we’re looking at here is how we prioritize and manage wealth.

Who is the rich man?

Who is the rich man?

The rich man requests an accounting of the steward’s management.

So…he doesn’t have the facts in front of him, but he’s heard the steward is squandering the property.

Who is the manager?

Who are the debtors to the master?

Connections to the Prodigal Son story — I can’t dig, I’m ashamed to beg (the opposites of the Prodigal’s thought-response)

We typically want to look at the accumulation of wealth as a good thing, because that’s what happens in Western capitalist society.

But for the moment, let’s assume that we take the closing wisdom statement from this text (You cannot serve God and wealth) as a binding truth — it’s one or the other.

God or wealth.

So we serve God, which means we are no longer aligned with wealth — wealth is the bad guy.

Or at least the accumulation of wealth at the expense of other things of value is the villain.

Follow me here.

Key words: commended/praised, squandering, shrewdly

Master commended

because he acted shrewdly

Let’s put wealth in the position of the villain.

We typically want to look at the accumulation of wealth as a good thing, because that’s what happens in Western capitalist society.

But for the moment, let’s assume that we take the closing wisdom statement from this text (You cannot serve God and wealth) as a binding truth — it’s one or the other.

God or wealth.

So we serve God, which means we are no longer aligned with wealth — wealth is the bad guy.

Or at least the accumulation of wealth at the expense of other things of value is the villain.

Follow me here.

If wealth is the villain, then the rich man is praising the steward for operating with a different ethic, one that focuses on building a strong network and solving the problem through shrewd ways.

Why would the rich man do this?

We might balk at Jesus using a parable to praise dishonesty.

We think the manners of the Christian must only be upright and righteous.

But we have to question our reaction in the light of who the actions of the steward ultimately serve.

Do they serve wealth and the furtherance of it for the rich man?

It seems like the rich man ultimately doesn’t care or know enough about his wealth for it to matter that much to him — he didn’t have the accounts before him in the first place and his concern comes up because of some hearsay about the steward.

What if we are supposed to be surprised by the rich man’s response?

Why does he allow this?

Well, perhaps he is a rich man — and it doesn’t matter to him whether its 100 or 50 jugs of olive oil.

For this man, he’s dealing in such large sums of a wealthy commodity that 50 or 100, it isn’t going to matter all that much.

Or maybe the rich man is foolish — and so, par for the course, he foolishly lets his steward get away with cooking the books.

Or maybe, just maybe, this rich man knows something more about what matters in the world and is praising the steward for his actions because they are disrupting the balance of power that wealth is supposed to have in their relationship and the relationships of their community.

The rich man talks about how the children of the age are shrewder than the children of light.

“Children of Light” is a figure of speech that gets applied to Christians a few places in the New Testament.