September 23, 2007
Reaching beyond ourselves, living the gospel. That’s the theme of this fall’s stewardship campaign; you may have noticed these small, inconspicuous signs proclaiming it. The great thing about this theme is that it’s applicable on more than one level. First, it speaks to each of us personally. I am to reach beyond myself; I am to live the gospel. In fact, it is in reaching beyond myself that I start to live the gospel. You are to do the same thing. Personally. Then, it can speak to us as congregation, as a community. St. George’s is called to reach beyond ourselves; St. George’s is called to live the gospel. One way for us to do this – not the only way, but one way – is to look at how we allocate our resources, our financial resources. How much money do we as a congregation set aside in our budget to give to outreach – to reaching beyond ourselves? Your stewardship team and vestry felt like we, St. George’s, need to challenge ourselves to do more on this particular point. We, St. George’s, need to make in clear, in how we share of what we have, that we are committed to live out the gospel in our actions as a parish. So, to demonstrate our commitment as a congregation to reaching beyond ourselves, the vestry has voted to have the proceeds from the 2008 spring and fall yard sales go strictly to outreach, instead of our current practice of having those proceeds go to our operating budget. All of what we make in those two fundraisers will go to outreach. The spring yard sale profit will go to a national or international need; the fall yard sale profit will go to a local need. There will be more about that upcoming, and when the time comes you will have input into what needs we meet with our donation. This is a tangible step we are taking as a community to reach beyond ourselves. And we are doing it because it is a way to live the good news as we understand it, that Jesus came to offer life to all people, and to offer it in abundance. We are Jesus’ heart and hands and feet in the world; we are charged with loving God and loving our neighbor, with caring for orphan and widow, with sharing our resources with the poor. Us. You, me, St. George’s. So this is the beginning: reaching beyond ourselves, living the gospel.
Well, given this theme, today’s lesson from the gospel of Luke is somewhat . . . paradoxical. An odd juxtaposition, you might say. Let’s get this straight: the main character in the story Jesus tells us this morning engages in lying, cheating, and stealing. Huh. Not the usual strategy Jesus uses, holding up to us someone – the manager of a rich man’s estate, in this case - who lies, cheats, and steals. So much for living the gospel. Kind of an interesting choice. It would be fair to ask, what’s going on here, in this gospel text? Not that these behaviors are new to us. Lying: let’s see. I would be hard pressed to think of a high-ranking elected official in recent years who hasn’t engaged in lying. I could give specific examples, but we would be here all day! Stealing: well, the example that came to mind for me is the Enron scandal of recent years: CEO types end up with all of the money and working people lose their pensions. And then, there’s cheating. For this, we don’t need to look farther than the athletic arena. Barry Bonds is vilified – rightly, in my opinion – for cheating that goes back years, and can be tracked by his expanding head size. It’s gotten so that a biking fan doesn’t even care to watch the Tour de France, given all of the doping scandals. And the head coach of my beloved Patriots gets busted and rightly criticized for breaking the rules. Those are just a few national examples; we could easily think of local examples, and then of course the even less flattering personal examples.
All of which is to say that we – sadly - may no longer be surprised at this behavior of lying, cheating, and stealing. But what we don’t expect is for Jesus to hold it up to us. So what’s going on in this story we hear from Luke this morning? I’ve spent a lot of time this week with the commentaries, reading what has been said about this particular story, but I have to say I don’t know that much more than when I started. There’s not a lot of agreement about its meaning. It’s a tough one. But to start, let’s look at the story. There is a rich man, who has a manager to take care of his estate. Turns out that the manager has been doing illicit things, gets caught, and is going to be fired. His response? He goes to those who owe his boss money, and cuts down their debt. Why? To ensure that they feel indebted to him, and will do him a favor later, when he’s out of a job. It’s an odd story, in that the moral isn’t really clear. It appears that the dishonest manager is being held up as an example. . . but that can’t be it –unless it’s as a negative example. It almost seems as if he is being praised for his perfidy . . . but that has to be wrong. It’s a story that’s hard to figure out. Which is why I spent some time reading the biblical commentaries, so see what the ‘experts’ have made of this story. But the truth is, they haven’t made much of it. This particular comment is my favorite: “The parables of the good Samaritan and the Pharisee and tax collector commend a certain type of behavior. They are ‘example stories.’ But the parable of the dishonest manager belongs to a different category. There is nothing edifying about it. The manager’s conduct was characterized in the beginning by incompetence and in the end by flagrant dishonesty. If it is a true parable, Jesus must have used it to make one truth vivid and memorable; but since we do not know its original context, we can only guess what that truth was.” I like the honesty in this assessment. But I like it too because it at least makes sense. The original point to this particular story has been lost, and we are left to do the best we can to make sense of it.
I participate in a bible study on Wednesday mornings with a local group of Lutheran pastors; as we discussed this text recently the consensus from that group was that Jesus was engaging in a bit of irony-slash-sarcasm in telling this story. It certainly explains this statement of Jesus, after the description of the rich man commending the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. Here’s what Jesus says: “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.” First, the dishonest man is praised for his shrewdness; then Jesus says this. As one commentator pointed out, the words ‘shrewd’ and ‘saint’ don’t exactly go together. Could it be that Jesus is issuing a challenge to those who would see anything positive in the dishonest manager’s behavior? Is he saying, go ahead - if this is how you want to do it, you’ll have to live with the consequences? Maybe he is; maybe that’s as good an explanation as any.
What’s clear in this story is that the manager acts only for himself. He gets caught; he behaves in a self-serving way when he is caught. He had the chance to make it right, when his boss comes to him at the start of the parable, but he doesn’t. Instead, he tries to work his dishonest system to his own advantage. It is self-serving. It is certainly not reaching beyond himself. It’s definitely not living the gospel. Jesus is not holding this up to us as an example of how we should conduct ourselves, that much is clear. Lying, cheating, stealing . . . they don’t go with being a disciple. We are supposed to give up those behaviors – or at least work very hard at changing them - if we want to follow Jesus. Because here’s the thing: Jesus tells us as much. Towards the end of today’s gospel, he says some things that are easier to understand. "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?” Now we’re getting somewhere. This actually makes sense. This at least gives us an entry point. It gives us the opportunity to reflect on how the handling of small things might be an indicator of trustworthiness for the larger ones. When I was playing soccer in high school, and we had to do various sprints and drills, the coach would tell us to go all the way to the touch line – not near it, but to it– and then remind us that we were responsible for actually doing it right. If we chose to cut corners in practice, how would we do in games? If we can’t be trusted with the little things, God reminds us, how can we be trusted with the big ones? How can we act in a way that makes it clear that we are trustworthy stewards – caretakers - of what we have been given? That, it seems to me, is what today’s gospel is asking us, and giving us the opportunity to reflect on.
We start today and continue for the next several weeks a section of the gospel of Luke which really highlights something that we generally prefer not to think about too much, but which Jesus will not let us get away from. That’s our wealth. Our possessions. Our material goods. The things we have; the things we want; the choices we make. We are going to pushed, these next number of weeks – pushed by Jesus in the gospel of Luke - to really look at our attitude towards our money and our possessions. This may not be the most comfortable thing for us to have to reflect on, but it is one of the most important. Jesus lays it out for us right here, in fact: a slave cannot serve two masters; we cannot love both God and wealth. This tends to be a hard one for us. We don’t want to consider ourselves rich. But have no doubt: we are, and Jesus is talking to us. Not to make us feel guilty, but to push us to think about what role our wealth and possessions play in our lives. What is the proper use of money and possessions is the question that comes up more than once in the lessons upcoming, including today. How one handles possessions – wealth/money/property – has eternal consequences, we are being told.
So here is my hope: I hope that we will take Jesus up on his challenge. I hope that you, and I, and all of us, will take the opportunities given us to really look at, without defensiveness or explaining away, to look at the choices we make with our money. To look at the role our ‘things’ play in our lives. And to look at where we put God in our lives, in comparison with where we put our money. Is there tension there? Is there something out of balance? To be more faithful, to we have to make different choices? These are some of the questions we are being asked, and offered. Along with this one:
Does the theme of ‘reaching beyond ourselves, living the gospel’ have any help to offer us as we do this taking stock of our own lives and choices about our money and our possessions? That’s the question for our pondering this morning, this week, this fall. May we take up the challenge, and give our attention to this question.
Amen.