Sermon for Sunday, September 22, 2013: God is not the rich man (Parable of the Crafty Steward)

Sermon for Sunday, September 22, 2013

Luke 16:1-13

"God is not the Rich Man."

PREACHER: Pastor Carrie Smith

Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.

“The parable of the dishonest steward has baffled interpreters since the beginning of time.”

“The parable of the dishonest manager has puzzled many readers.”

“This parable of the Dishonest Steward is one of the strangest of the strange.”

“This one is variously titled as The Parable of the Dishonest Servant, or of the Unjust Steward, or of the Crafty Manager etc., etc. But always, universally, it is referred to as “the most difficult parable of them all.”

Thus began the various Bible commentaries I consulted this week in preparation for preaching on this text. Everyone says this parable is problematic, and not just because it means the pastor has to preach about money on a day when we’re celebrating baptisms and new members (although that does make this pastor tremble a bit!) Why is this parable so hard to preach and to hear? Because Jesus says “You cannot serve God and wealth”, but we consistently come to this parable believing we can.

When Robert was learning to serve God at Luther Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota, I became good friends with the wife of another seminary student. Kim and I loved to take walks around the neighborhood, mostly because walks were cheap entertainment (we were, after all, married to grad students!) One of our secret destinations was the convenience store a ways up the street, just beyond the seminary grounds. At least once a week we walked there for one purpose: to purchase a lottery ticket.

The most we ever won was a few dollars, which we promptly spent on more lottery tickets. It’s probably good we never won big, anyway, because we had the darnedest time determining what we’d do with the money. Kim suggested we should pay off student loans first (of course). We would make sure our parents’ houses were paid off and our future kids had college funds. But after that we got a little stuck. Our husbands were studying to be pastors! What congregation would call a millionaire pastor who had just won the lottery? Maybe it would have to be a secret. Or, maybe, it would look better if we gave some of the money to the seminary. We knew very well the student housing could have used some updating! We dreamed of putting in full-size ovens that would actually hold a casserole dish no matter which way you put it in.

These were fun walks, mentally spending money that wasn’t ours, but by the time we got home we were always reminded: You can’t serve both God and wealth. Any way we figured it, having all that money was incompatible with the lives we had chosen. If our idea of a happy future was willing millions, we were married to the wrong people for sure! We knew our hope did not reside in lottery tickets, but in God, and our lives were to be about sharing that Good News with others.

Hear again the words of Jesus, who said: “You cannot serve God and money. You will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other.” In other words, as people who seek to follow Jesus Christ in this world, we are constantly caught between two competing sets of rules. One says “Money makes the world go round” and gives us slogans like “American Express: My Life, My Card.” The other says “You shall have no other gods before me” and has as its only tagline: “Blessed are the poor.” (Luke 6) You can’t have it both ways. You cannot serve God and wealth. Who will you serve? And when you decide, what will that look like?

Well, in his usual helpful manner, Jesus tells the disciples a story to clear things up. Except that over the centuries, preachers, commentators and theologians have twisted themselves into pretzels trying to explain what it means.

They say:

God (the rich man) gives us the riches of the world to manage and we squander it all, but just like in the prodigal son story, God welcomes us back anyway.

OR…

God (the rich man) praises the dishonest manager because he collects the money owed (minus the commission) in order to get his job back.

OR…

God (the rich man) doesn’t want us to serve money and wealth, but does want to us to be shrewd with it, so he invites us all to a special presentation by Thrivent Financial after worship.

Each of these interpretations makes sense in a way. But I get nervous when my understanding of Jesus makes too much sense—because parables are more than just stories. Parables are crafted to subvert our thinking, and to surprise us with a twist. The parables of Jesus reveal to us a new reality and a reversal of our assumptions.

So let’s start with this assumption: God is the rich man.

Quick, call to mind your image of God. Don’t think too much about it: Just grab the first thing that pops into your head: the image you grew up with. Is God male? Is God white? What does God look like? Does God have a long beard and hair? What does God wear? Pretty white robes? A crown? Does God look powerful or powerless?

 

It’s no wonder, when Jesus starts telling this story, that we immediately identify the rich man with God. We know God is powerful, and money equals power, so obviously God seems to be the rich man in this scenario.

But try as I might, when I read this parable this way – with the rich man as God – even if it makes sense, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because it doesn’t meet up with anything else we know about who God is. Because if God is the rich man, then God praises the manager for bowing to his needs, grabbing as much money as he can, and kissing up so he can get his job back. I don’t know about you, but if this is God, then I might be an atheist.

Jesus clearly says “you cannot serve both God and money.” So where is the money in this story? It’s right there, in the beginning: There was a rich man. If this parable is about how we are caught between two masters (God and wealth) it seems to me the rich man represents wealth. Are you with me?

So who represents the competing paradigm? Who represents the other set of rules? If the rich man is where we see money and wealth, where in this parable do we see what it looks like to choose to serve God?

Hear again the Word from Luke 16, verse 4: “I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes,” said the crafty manager.

Desperate, soon to be unemployed, and caught in a dilemma of his own making, the manager decides…to serve the debtors. By lowering their debts, he chooses to stand in solidarity with the indentured servants, the folks on the edge of town, the people he formerly used to threaten and persecute, and from whom he once extracted taxes and payments.

Caught between two worlds, forced to make a decision, Jesus tells us the crafty manager chose to use what he had to serve the poor. After all, In Luke chapter 6 Jesus said “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of heaven.” The poor will welcome us into the eternal homes. As Pastor James Forbes once said, “Nobody gets into heaven without a letter of reference from the poor.”

Let me be clear: we’re not talking about charity. When we give charity to the poor we retain power. If we bring the casseroles and serve up the plates and then eat in the kitchen by ourselves, we’re still on top. We get to feel good about ourselves and our generosity. Making friends with the poor is different. It’s not nice: it’s shrewd. Why? Because these are the folks Jesus has said own the deed to the kingdom of heaven. We have heard, time and again, what Jesus has said about the poor, the oppressed, the ones who live outside the gate, and the ones who are so in debt they’ll never earn their freedom: They are blessed. Theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Furthermore, Jesus says he came specifically to proclaim the Good News to them.

This, then, is why the name of the parable is not “the unusually nice debt collector” or “the man who did nice things for the poor” but rather “The Parable of the Shrewd Steward” or the “Story of the Crafty Manager.” As Jesus tells it, the manager is commended for using what he was given, working within the system, and then subverting it for the good of the poor. Therefore, we, too, serve God when we choose to stand with the unemployed and underemployed, the uninsured and the undesirable. 

Sisters and brothers in Christ, this morning I hope you will hear that the Gospel of Jesus frees us from the filthy, rotten system which tells us “God is the rich man.” What Jesus does for us is challenge all those messages we’ve grown up believing: That to be rich is to be blessed. That money buys happiness. That to be poor is greater to be feared than all else. That using food stamps is a sign of weakness or laziness. That our credit score and fiscal health give us our identity.

Instead, Jesus frees us to identify ourselves not as who we are in relation to money, but who we are in relation to God. Rich or poor, head honcho, middle manager, or indentured servant, we are all, in baptism, claimed by God, sealed by the Holy Spirit and marked by the cross of Christ forever. This morning, when Amber Sheils and Madison Behrens come to the font, they come to the water the same as we did: as it says in Isaiah 55:1 –

“Everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and you that have no money, come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price.”'

Yes, this morning I proclaim to you the Good News that “God is not the rich man.” Say it with me: God is not the rich man!

And why is this Good News? Why does this give us joy and freedom? Because as long as we believe God is the rich man, we will twist and turn and contort ourselves in our efforts to serve both God and wealth. We will serve, and sacrifice and suffer for whichever god we choose.

So let it be the One who “raises the poor from the dust, and lifts the needy from the ash heap, to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people.” (Psalm 113). Let it be “the one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all.” (1 Timothy 2). And let the people say “Amen.”