This sermon was preached for Sunday, September 18 at St. Mark's East Longmeadow. The texts for this sermon were: Jeremiah 8:18-9:1, Psalm 79:1-9, and Luke 16:1-13.
Today’s parable is a notoriously difficult one. There is no consensus among commentators about what Jesus is trying to say here or why the second bit about being faithful with other’s property seems to contradict the message of the parable so directly. Some commentators argue that this is two different sayings mushed together with the same loose theme - Luke does that in other places. Some commentators don’t believe that Jesus told this parable - it goes against so much of what we know about what Jesus encourages in us. But the majority of Biblical scholars and historians will argue that it is the most confusing and startling sayings that are the most likely for Jesus to have said - they would be the most memorable and there would be no incentive to falsely attribute them to Jesus. So in the end, like all parables, this one has no clear meaning for me to declare to you this morning. And yet, I believe it still holds wisdom for us today.
One way to read this parable is that Jesus is critiquing his followers for not being as shrewd as the rest of their society. Like many Lukean parables, the story starts with a rich man. He learns that his manager has been squandering his wealth, so he threatens to fire him. The manager, afraid for his livelihood, decides that his best course of action is to strengthen his relationships with his master’s debtors so that he can rely on their generosity when he’s sacked. The scandal of the parable - because there is always a scandal in every parable - is that the master is impressed with the manager’s cleverness! Jesus then points out that the children of this age know how to play the game well enough to get by and get ahead, unlike his followers. Jesus is reminding his followers that in order to survive and thrive in this world they will need to participate in the surrounding society in all sorts of ways that require them to compromise their virtues. The key is to remember the ultimate purpose. The key is not getting so lost in the game that it begins to own you. The key is to do it all in service of God, not your boss, not wealth, and not the rules of the game itself.
Last spring, my confirmation class challenged my previous parish to raise funds for a charity that works to free low-income families from burdensome medical debt. The charity, RIP Medical Debt, was actually founded by two former debt collector executives, folks who had played the game long enough to know its ins and outs. They knew just how exploitative the intersection of American healthcare and debt collection can be. They had seen just how easy it was for a sudden, drastic diagnosis to upend a family’s life and bury them in an inescapable mountain of debt through no fault of their own. So these two executives decided to step away from the endless pursuit of profit and used their knowledge of the way debt is bundled and sold to benefit the struggling families instead.
The genius of RIP Medical Debt is that the charity is able to use $100 of donations to relieve $10,000 of medical debt, precisely by exploiting what’s exploitative. Over the course of Lent, my parish raised over $10,000 dollars, which translated into $1 million dollars of debt relief. So one day in May, out of the blue, dozens of families received a letter from St. Andrew’s Church explaining that their debt was instantly forgiven. They were free.
Everything we know about Jesus and Christian ethics teaches us that honesty, responsibility, and faithfulness are virtues. We don’t even have to look far for Jesus to affirm this; the next paragraph states it quite plainly. "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?”
Yet there is something about the choice that the shrewd manager makes that I think is important for us to commend. The manager chooses to invest in the relationships with the folks who matter over his job, over his social superior. He understands that money is a tool, not a master. He values money for what it can do, and values relationships over employment or wealth.
This stewardship season we’re talking about how the fear money brings up in us can be paralyzing, controlling - can be part of how money has power over us, getting in the way of generosity and joy. Part of that fear comes from experience of how money can damage relationships through dishonesty and exploitation. Again and again, Jesus tells us to give away what we own when it starts to own us, starts to break our relationships with God, our neighbors, and ourselves. If Jesus is advising anything to his followers with this parable, it might be this: learn how to use money and power to love God, love neighbor, and love self - but don’t let yourself be used. Notice how dishonesty with money leads to dishonesty in other things. Notice when a focus on saving, earning, stockpiling wealth overcomes everything else in your life.
Money matters because of what it can enable us to do. It can be a means to an end - God’s end. When God is our master, that end is fulfilling God’s will in the world.
In the end, I don’t think God cares much about whether we waste money for the money’s sake. God is most concerned with us squandering our love. My guess is that God cares about squandering wealth only insofar as it means squandering opportunities to be grace to others. When we encounter an opportunity to use money to build community, to spread love, and to be Christ’s hands and feet in the world, we are not to pass it by.
The founder and head of the outdoor clothing company Patagonia made the news this week when he made the remarkable choice not to squander his enormous opportunity. Yvon Chouinard and his family gave over their billions, control of their successful company, and any annual future profits to a trust dedicated to the preservation and rehabilitation of natural wildernesses around the world and a nonprofit supporting movements for combatting the devastating effects of climate change. In doing so, the Chouinard family bucked the usual trend of billionaires these days: enough philanthropy to be respectable and avoid taxes, a few vanity projects, rewards to investors and backers, and all the rest amassed and invested to pass down to heirs. Chouinard played the game well enough and long enough, then made a different choice. In giving away the vast majority of his assets as well as future potential personal earnings, he declared that his relationship to creation and humanity's relationship to the environment, mattered most, much more than rising in the rankings on a list of world's richest folks. “I feel a big relief that I’ve put my life in order,” the 83 year-old said in his interview with the New York Times.
No one in this room is a billionaire. But each of us does need to decide to whom we are ultimately accountable with our resources. As Christians, we are not ultimately accountable to our bosses, to shareholders, nor even to man-made laws. We are ultimately accountable to the Jesus Christ we met in the suffering and the poor, the lost, the last and the least. We are ultimately accountable to God.
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