Holy Trinity Episcopal Church

 Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost

Year C, RCL

September 22, 2019

North Fork Ministries

Gospel:

Luke 16:1-13

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."

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Perhaps you’ve heard the story of the elderly and very wealthy man who told his wife that he wanted to carry all his money with him to his grave.  He said that he didn’t want to leave any of it to charity, to the church, even to his family.  “I insist that you follow my wishes,” he told his wife.

Shortly afterwards he died and despite the urgings of family, friends, even her priest, the faithful wife insisted on carrying out her late husband’s desire to be buried with his wealth.  On the day of the funeral as the casket was being lowered into the grave, the priest turned to the grieving widow and said, “How can you possibly go through with this?”

“It’s easy,” she replied, I wrote him a check.”

Clearly, this wife was a shrewd manager of her husband’s property. In today’s gospel lesson, a similarly shrewd manager is about to lose his job, so in order to gain favor with his master’s customers, he reduces the amount of olive oil or wheat they owe to the master. And surprisingly, the master praises the dishonest manager for his shrewd business dealings.

It is a most bewildering parable, a story filled with contradictions. The passage feels a bit like Luke, in crafting his gospel, had heard this seemingly nonsensical story and chose to surrounded it with all the sayings on money that had ever been attributed to Jesus. Sayings like: "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” or “No slave can serve two masters”  or “You cannot serve God and wealth."

“You cannot serve God and wealth." I wonder if that is exactly what we, as church-going Christians, are trying to do – maintaining a careful balancing act, trying to be both faithful to God and faithful to the pursuit of wealth.  But Jesus is telling us we can’t have it both ways, saying to his disciples,  “No slave can serve two masters.”

Unfortunately, the way we usually think about stewardship assumes that we can happily serve two masters.  In a month or two you will receive a card in the mail asking you to support the work of the church by committing to give a portion of your income during the year 2020.  That will be an important asking, and without those of us who tithe, who promise to give 10% of what we earn, or those who pledge 5% or 2%, the important work we are doing here in this community could not continue.  But in this passage from Luke, Jesus is asking us for a great deal more. 

Jesus is describing what I heard Ethics Professor, Scott Bader-Saye, call “an economy of love.”  Real stewardship, he says isn’t just about the 10% of our income that we might give to the church, but what we do with the other 90%.  The goal of an economy of love is to maximize the good in all our exchanges.  We hope and assume that we are doing good with the money we give the church, but do we have that same hope, that same desire to do good, with the rest of our resources?  

When we give to the church, or to other charities, we don’t expect much, or perhaps anything in return.  When I use my discretionary fund to buy groceries, or a tank of gas, or pay the utility bill for a person in need. I have established an unequal relationship.  The giver and the gifted are kept at a distance by the nature of the interaction. We can’t be in true relationship, because there is no reciprocity.  In contrast, in an economy of love, we expect a return on our investment. An economy of love seeks an exchange that is mutually beneficial, not one that merely maximizes return on the giver’s investment.

In saying that, “No slave can serve two masters, that you cannot serve God and wealth, Jesus is saying that a follower of his can not make an artificial distinction between what is done with your time and money on a Sunday morning and how you live your life and distribute your resources the remainder of the week.  

Practicing an economy of love would call on us to maximize the goods, that which is good, for everyone who participates in the exchange.  What would an economy of love look like? It would mean that we would give careful consideration to all the ways that we spend and save and invest.  It would mean that when we make a purchase we would consider whether the exchange was a fair one, and whether the worker in the factory that made the shoes you bought, or the employee in the fast food restaurant who handed you your hot coffee was making a living wage. It might mean that your choice of an automobile was not made strictly on price or style or the amount of comfort it provided, but on what effect the engine’s carbon emissions has on our shared environment.  

Our purchases of everything from coffee to carpet to cabbages have an effect that reaches far beyond fulfillment of our own desires.  To practice an economy of love is to not remain indifferent to the far-reaching impact of what and how we purchase, save and invest. All our economic choices touch others.

And it’s not just the way we spend our money, but do we earn our money in a way that doesn’t require us to serve two masters?  Is the world a better place because of the work we do?  Is the world more beautiful, more peaceful, cleaner, healthier, better fed, better educated, more creative because of the way we earn our paycheck?  In God’s economy, in an economy of love, that makes a difference. 

We have been called into relationship.  An economy of love began when God recognized that it was not good for Adam to live alone and that he needed Eve.  A mutually beneficial relationship was established in the Garden of Eden. Love is a relationship. Love desires. Love can be freely given, but reciprocity is anticipated. Love is not indifferent to the hope of having that love returned. It is a mutually beneficial kind of love. An economy of love isn’t one in which one wins and the other loses.  In an economy of love, all stand to benefit.  

I won’t pretend that choosing to participate in an economy of love, means that choices about how you pass your working and leisure hours, and how you spend, save, and invest your money are then easily made. The world is a complex place and it is often difficult to determine who benefits and who is hurt by our economic decisions.  But the complexity of the decision doesn’t let us off the hook. And a decision to give a portion of our time, talents and treasure to God’s work, doesn’t mean that we can then thoughtlessly squander all else that we have been entrusted by God to nurture, protect, and use wisely for benefit of all creation.

We will most certainly fail in the effort to be good stewards, but we are called to try.  It is a struggle to know what economic choices are right and just and good. Most of the world has given up on the struggle and chosen, consciously or unconsciously, to serve wealth alone. As Christians we are called to serve a different master.