Bad stewards for the good Kingdom

Sermon for the Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Proper 20, Year C (September 18, 2022).

View the scripture readings and the Collect of the Day: Proper 20C (Track 2)

Preached at Christ Episcopal Church, Jordan, New York

Like what you hear? Subscribe to the podcast on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or Stitcher.

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. 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.' 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. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.' So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, `How much do you owe my master?' He answered, `A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, `Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' 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.' 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. 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.

"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? 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." (Luke 16:1-13)

Edited Transcript

May only truth be spoken here and only truth be heard: in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit.

I invite you to be seated. All right. So if you are a little bit confused, that's fine. Well, we're all a little confused by this parable. And ever since this parable has been available to people, people have been arguing about what it means and feeling confused about what we're supposed to learn from it. So it's okay.

I thought that it might be helpful to start just by bringing the parable into today, I just want to feel the impact of like, what Jesus is talking about here. So I'm going to tell you the story of the dishonest loan officer at the bank. So there was a loan officer, he was getting on close to retirement. And it came to the attention of the board of the bank that he had been embezzling for who knows how long. So they called him in to a meeting. And they said to him, give us an accounting, you know, show us the real books because we know that you've been dishonest, you've been stealing from the bank for all this time. And this loan officer, he said to himself, oh, man, I am I'm really in it now. I've finally been caught. And he said, I don't know what I'm gonna do, because I'm getting close to retirement, but I'm not really ready. And, I'm getting up there in years. So it's not like I can go out and get a job like cleaning the bank or paving roads. Being a bank officer is all I know how to do. And I've been the one running the show here for so long. I've been telling people who can have money and who can't have money. So it would be really embarrassing if I had to come begging to them, instead of them begging to me.

So he said, I know I know what I'm gonna do. And he starts ringing people up he says, you know, Joe, how much how much do you have left on your mortgage? And Joe says oh, about $130,000 and the loan officer says, make it 65,000 And he calls up Jeanne, he says, Jeanne, how much do you owe on that car loan I gave you a couple of years ago? She says, Oh, I'm underwater. I still I owe 14,000. And you know, Carfax is saying it's only worth 10. And he says, Take that loan, cross out the 14, make it three. And so on and so forth. And he says to himself, now I don't have to beg. Because when I lose my job, people are going to be on my side. They're going to invite me into their homes, they're going to share with me.

And the board gets wind of this. And they're like, well, we don't like this, but we gotta hand it to you. You know, you sir, made out good for yourself.

A crazy story. The reversal: the master telling the dishonest manager, well, you know, I gotta hand it to you, I commend you. For stealing more, basically. And when you bring this story into the present, you can just, I mean, imagine what the papers would be saying about this loan officer...

And yet, Jesus says, Make friends make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth. It's almost like he's joining in condoning or encouraging this dishonesty by the steward.

This story is usually titled the parable of the unjust steward or the parable of the dishonest manager. And you could say it's the parable of the bad steward. He did not do the job he was supposed to do. He was supposed to take care of the money for his master. He was supposed to make more money. Instead, he frittered the money away, he started handing out his master's money, right and left. He's a bad manager, he's a bad steward.

And interestingly, in the Gospel of Luke, this story is the fourth in what I would say are four parables of bad stewardship.

—You know, we think about the church. What does it mean to be a good steward of the resources of the church? If we have money, we want to kind of keep that balance up. We want to kind of grow that balance. We want to grow things, we want to have more money, we might be a little bit hesitant to spend the money, because we want to see that balance grow. And I think often in church, we think this is what good stewardship looks like—

But with these four parables, which I'm gonna run through really quickly. It's almost like Jesus is saying, "bad stewardship" is more what the kingdom of God looks like. And this is really hard to understand.

But look, last week, the first two parables, the parable of the lost sheep, and the parable of the lost coin. And in both of those, you have someone who's supposed to be managing the asset, leaving 99% of the asset to fend for itself and running off after the smallest part, leaving 99 sheep to fend for themselves in the wilderness to go look for the lost one who shouldn't have left in the first place.

Or the woman who has her 10 coins and she spends all day looking for one that rolled under the table. And then when she finds that she throws a party, which I'm sure cost her money. It's not super smart management of the assets, the assets are not growing, the assets are being squandered.

And then the next parable, we kind of skipped over in our lectionary... But you all know the parable of the prodigal son. And again, there's this story. Basically, this kid says to his dad—really insultingly—Hey, I know you're gonna die someday, but I can't wait. So can I have my money now? Then he gets his money, what he would have inherited, and he spends all the money, and then he's got nothing left and he's got nothing to eat. And he goes back to his dad, like basically ready to beg (which the dishonest manager was not willing to do). He's ready to beg just to have a job. Like the crummiest job on the estate, just so he can have something to eat.

And the father, instead of teaching them a lesson or teaching him to be smarter, teaching him to be a better steward, the father kills the best animal. He throws a feast, throws a party. And the older brother, who has been the good brother, who was the good steward and did everything he was supposed to do, and took care of the estate and was loyal to his father didn't spend all the money, says, geez, I never got a party. And the father says, what was lost is found. That matters more to me. I love you, too. And you're part of the party, but what was lost is found.

So we've got these three parables about kind of squandering what the system of wealth would teach us ought to be kept, ought to be carefully kept.

I was listening to a podcast the other day. It's a podcast where the host interviews couples about their attitudes about money. And he was interviewing this couple. The husband said, Oh, geez, you know, it's really annoying, because I say, Hey, let's go out to eat. And my wife will say, can we afford it? And she's like, I know, I'm just joking. I'm just joking. And the host says, Well, what's your net worth? And she says, $12 million. And the host says, You're never gonna get any anywhere with money if you're not honest with yourself. And he says to her, how would you describe yourself like in terms of like your, your, your financial class, she says, Oh, middle class. This is a woman who doesn't feel like she has enough. She's trying to be a good steward by hanging on to what she's got and hopefully getting more of it.

And hopefully, this is starting to resonate. Remember the guy with the barn? Who builds the bigger barn? And God says, you fool! Your life is going to be demanded of you tonight. It turns out in this in this story, the host says to the woman, now I understand you had you had a major surgery recently. She says, Yeah, I had a lung plant transplant six months ago. And I probably have between one and five years left to live. And she's trying to decide, with a net worth of $12 million, whether she ought to quit her job so she can spend more time with her family. Her very life is being demanded of her. But all she can think about is that nest, that barn, and whether it's enough, and shouldn't she keep working so she can make it bigger?

After Jesus tells this story, about the bad— we can just call him like the crummy steward. Jesus tells the story about the crummy steward who didn't steward the money, and who ended up dispersing the money all over the community. By the way, when I read "100 jugs of olive oil," I have no idea what that means proportionally. But apparently, I read a commentary, it is quite a large debt. We're talking about like debts that could be not the debts of one individual, but the debts of a whole village. These are life-changing debts. And therefore the forgiveness that the crummy steward offers is life-changing forgiveness.

Jesus tells this story. And he closes with this little zinger that we all know. He says, You cannot serve both God and money. You got to make a choice. Either you serve one and hate the other. Or you serve the other and resent the one. But you have to choose. And in the context of these parables about poor stewardship, about giving away what the world would say you want to hang on to and keep safe and grow...

Think about what that means. You can't serve that system of "hanging on to" and serve God at the same time. You can't hang on and serve God at the same time. It's one or the other.

God is love. You cannot serve both the system of love and the system of wealth. And I don't know about you, but I really don't want to hear that. You can't serve both systems, you can't be under the power of the system of wealth. If you are, you will not be able to operate in the commonwealth of love.

Because love is not just, it’s merciful. It’s profligate. It cares as much about the bad one as the good one. It cares as much about the one as the 99. It cares as much about forgiveness as the justice of paying what you owe.

And you might notice...this steward: I don't get the impression that he's really a good guy. And he's operating mostly out of self-interest. But nevertheless, the way he handles money, after he finds out that he's in trouble... Do you notice that the way he handles money, it doesn't strengthen the master's barn, it doesn't grow the master's wealth, but it strengthens the bonds of love in the community.

Did you notice that he says, I'm gonna give away so that I might get back. He starts this system of reciprocity where people are taking care of each other. And again, I mean, the steward, you don't get the impression that he's doing this out of his big heart. But nevertheless, when he sort of bucks the system of wealth. He creates a system where people are caring for each other—at least where the possibility of caring for each other starts to be something we might glimpse.

You can't hang on and have an open hand at the same time. And it's hard because we live in the system where it's foolish not to hang on to what you've got.

But we also live in the kingdom of God where our hands are open to receive and to give and to let what is ultimately God's. It's all God's. It just flows through our hands. We're only here for a minute. But this good creation that God has made: we're called to steward it in the way that God sees stewardship, which is to allow it to flow in love rather than being held.

So this week, as hard as it is, I invite you to look for those moments where your hands that might be grasping or holding might become an open hand. And I invite you to practice this merciful and ridiculously generous stewardship. That is the system of love, the system of the Kingdom of God. And I will try, too. Amen.