Huh?!

Sunday September 19 2010

Ordinary 25 C

Jerusalem Baptist Church (Emmerton), Warsaw VA

Text: Luke 16:1-13

Theme: deciphering parables

Then 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. ²So 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.’ ³Then 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. ⁴I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ ⁵So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ ⁷Then 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.’ ⁸And 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. ⁹And 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. ¹⁰“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. ¹¹If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? ¹²And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? ¹³No 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.”

I have a friend from seminary, Laura Hord-Albovias, who has time and again reiterated the need for there to be a font – a style of print – a typeface – that communicates sarcasm- it is desperately needed, especially in this age of instant communication and text messages on our mobile phones or instant messages online.  Any of us who have had the misfortune of having our messages misinterpreted due to the LACK of that particular font understand how easily it can happen – we do things to try to communicate the ‘tone’ of the comment – a wink and a smile, a pursed-lips smile, or a between brackets to show that we are not being serious, but one way or another, the message is misunderstood, and lengthy explanations must follow.

The same holds true for text that is maybe not so instant – as is, for example, our text this morning, and the lack of that font is part of the reason for the title of the message this morning- “Huh?!” which was my initial response to the parable as a whole, but especially to verse 9. 

First, a brief contextualization:  the writer of the Gospel according to Luke places this parable in line after the three in chapter 15 – the parable of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the prodigal son, and just before the parable of the Rich man and Lazarus.  The running theme in all of the parables has to do with how God values and what God values, over and against how humans value and what humans value.  While Jesus is telling some of the parables to the religious leaders of the temple, others he is addressing to his disciples, but the religious leaders are still within earshot, and the points he is making are directed at times to one group and at times to the other. 

To summarize it, Jesus tells the story of a manager who has been caught red-handed pilfering from his master’s wealth.  The way the story is presented, it is a given that he is guilty of the charge.  We are given a peek into what this manager does when he is discovered… we hear his thoughts: “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.” 

And what he does is this:  he calls in the folks who still have outstanding debts to his master, and he reduces those debts – significantly in one case, partially in another… estimates are that a jug of oil held between 8 and 9 gallons, so to reduce a debt of 100 jugs by half meant that somewhere around 438 gallons of oil were written off… and with the wheat, a container of wheat held between 10 and 12 bushels, so reducing 100 containers to 80 translates into roughly 220 bushels… a not insignificant amount in an age when the pressing and the harvesting was all done by hand, or with minimal mechanical assistance.

Up until this point, the text seems to be an example of a pretty ordinary parable … surely this manager is getting ready to receive his ‘reward’ … but just when  we expect to read of that punishment, we read instead,

“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.

That’s the first ‘Huh?!’ for me. 

The next comes in the very next verse:

“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.”

What the…?  If we were to leave this parable as it comes to us today – somewhat independent from the surrounding text, it would be something of an enigma, don’t you agree?  Here we have Jesus breaking into the story at the end and telling his disciples to make friends by means of dishonest wealth so that they will welcome you into the eternal homes … what’s he talking about??  

Is Jesus really telling us to do that?  To emulate the actions of the dishonest manager and his master, who, in the end, commends his servant for the shrewdness with which he acted in his own self-interest, even though it was at the master’s considerable expense?

It is here that we need to take a step back and gain a little perspective.  Jesus used parables in different ways.  Some parables were allegorical.  That is, the characters within the story being told represented individuals or groups in the real world.  In other instances, the story was told to exaggerate and highlight a point Jesus was trying to make.  In yet others, the story being told is designed to underscore the contrast – the differences between the point Jesus was making and the reality described in the story. 

This parable is an example of the last case.  Jesus tells the story.  The dishonest manager is crooked at the beginning of the story, is crooked in the middle, and remains crooked at the end.  His master, aware of his dishonesty, nonetheless commends him, congratulates him for his … shrewd handling of the situation.  The Master understands the manager’s motivation – understands that he is not in any shape to take up manual labor and is too proud to become a beggar, and recognizes that what he did with the debtors – these two are only examples – was designed to secure a soft landing once he got booted out the door, as well as created a no-win scenario for the Master, in that it would now be impossible for him to go around to those debtors and tell them that no, they actually DID owe the original amount.  Even though both the master and his debtors knew that the manager was operating outside his authority in reducing the debt they each had, it was a matter of maintaining appearances. 

One commentator stated that it is very likely that Jesus, being aware of what was going on around him and knowing what was going on in the lives of his audience, very probably took an example of something that was taking place or had taken place in the immediate past and was using it as an example … of HOW NOT TO BE. 

Jesus’ comment at the end of the parable, in verse 9, is essentially saying ‘yeah, go ahead and make friends this way, they are the ones who are REALLY going to be able to welcome you into your homes that ultimately matter – your eternal homes’ … the point being, that it was obvious that those fair-weather friends WEREN’T … and for us today, AREN’T the ones who are going to make a hill of beans’ difference in the eternal scheme of things. 

Verses 10 through 13 are another summary, a compendium, if you will, of statements that telegraph for his hearers what Jesus is trying to communicate about the perils of allowing riches and material possessions become your god.  It is simply a contrast between worldly wealth and heavenly treasures.  The little consists of the material goods for which a person is responsible in the use of which he must prove that he can be trusted with much – that is, the eternal riches that God will give him.  Dishonest wealth is the false, illusory wealth of the world in contrast to the true riches that God bestows on faithful stewards beyond this life.  An individual’s earthly existence is thought of as the testing ground in which his character is revealed.  A basic test is his attitude toward material possessions. 

There is one parallel in the parable between the earthly and the heavenly reality and that is in regards to the true owner of the wealth.  In the parable it is the master.  In our reality, the true owner of all that we have been entrusted with is God.  We are entrusted with the care of what we have during our time here on earth, but God remains the ultimate owner.  

A person’s concept of the values of life is determined by the master which he or she serves.  The verb translated “serve” in verse 13 is literally ‘be a slave to.’  The principal is that no one can be enslaved to two masters at the same time, that is, we cannot give our ultimate allegiance to two persons at the same time.  We do not have the privilege of deciding whether we will be a servant – that is determined by the fact that we are created beings and are therefore not masters of our lives.  We are only free to decide which master will receive our ultimate allegiance.

What does this mean for Jerusalem Baptist Church at Emmerton? 

At the risk of sounding too simplistic, life can go in one of two directions, but it can’t go in both at the same time.  We can find our values and goals within the narrow limits of birth and death and in the things that are definable by vision, taste, and touch.  On the other hand, we can give ourselves to goals that transcend the demands of body and ego.  If we make things our gods, we will very likely spend our lives and energy acquiring, guarding, and selfishly using them.  But if we make the Creator of all things our God, we will be freed to devote ourselves to higher and more meaningful values.    

May we be so faithful.

Let’s pray.