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The Dishonest Steward - A Sermon by Alicia S. Rapp
By Administrator | October 9, 2007
The Dishonest Steward
Luke 16:1-13
September 23, 2007
I. The church is a busy place.
There are many activities a person can choose:
there are dinners and fellowship events,
youth activities and Sunday school,
committees and service opportunities.
If you like, you can be here almost every day or night,
doing something for the kingdom,
or at least for the church.
Just ask.
We’ll get you started.
If your time is limited though,
if you’re looking to make that initial investment,
let me recommend.
First, worship.
Worship is always the core.
This is where we begin.
Then, Bible study.
How we read our sacred scriptures makes all the
difference in what we believe and then how
we shall live.
II. We offer two Bible study classes every week.
One is Wednesday at noon, for about an hour.
The second is Wednesday at 6:30, for only half an hour,
but it includes both adults and children and is,
for that reason, more fast-paced.
Today’s lesson from the gospel is a prime example of
why Bible study is so important.
This is a difficult parable.
If we take it only on the surface,
read it literally,
then Jesus here endorses white-collar crime.
Right?
Cooking the books.
Here is the beauty of Bible study:
we read this story on Wednesday night together and
I asked the group about it.
One of the youth raised her hand and said,
“it’s a metaphor.”
Another youth raised his hand and, in three sentences,
gave us a very plausible meaning for the story.
I thought to myself,
“Okay, these two just finished Bible study for
me but I have twenty more minutes to go.”
So, for the sake of the adults, we played with the words
and the phrases and Greek interpretations and such,
but the kids got it.
Children are not yet weighed down by politics and
prejudice.
They don’t much care about reputation, yet,
and they enjoy a little rebellion,
which makes them perfect Jesus-people.
Redundancies and scandal and sorrow, which may seem
just a bit of Good Friday pomp and circumstance to
us, can still bend them to their knees.
So, with the fresh mind of a child,
listen to the parable:
III. Jesus said to his disciples,
There was a rich man who had a manager,
and he heard that the manager had been
squandering his property.
The manager was called on the carpet,
sent an e-mail,
given a deadline,
told that he would be held accountable.
Judgment day was at hand.
Always happens.
No surprise here.
The accounts are eventually, but always, called in.
The manager knew this.
He was about to be fired.
Now this is my favorite part of the parable.
Not, probably, a preaching point, but a vivid image
all the same.
I need the help of the children in the congregation
for this part.
This is the magic question,
the one we practiced on Wednesday:
What did the dishonest manager say to himself
when he figured out he was about to be
fired?
(I am too weak (or not strong enough) to dig
and too ashamed to beg.)
I just love it. How Jesus knew the hearts of people,
and the prejudices of others.
Put the parable in context:
In chapter 15, which we explored last week,
Jesus was responding to criticism from the
wealthy and well-to-do Pharisees
that he spent time with tax collectors
and sinners, the dregs of society.
Now, in the presence of those same Pharisees,
Jesus turned to his disciples to tell a story which
those Pharisees would hear and which
would turn all of their well-held values upside down
and shake them loose.
For it is one thing to tell the poor to go down to day labor
and work all day in the hot sun for a dollar here
and a dollar there.
It was a quite another thing, at least to a well-robed Pharisee,
and perhaps even to a disciple, to do so himself.
A nice little poke in the parable told by Jesus.
But we’re taken back to the manager.
The well-to-do-manager. Caught. Dipping in the till.
Taking from the master.
Embezzlement.
By God if he would just give in,
hang his head,
call it a day,
surrender.
No.
IV. The unscrupulous manager made an unscrupulous plan.
He went to his master’s debtors and negotiated new terms.
He changed their accounts.
Forgave them some of their debts.
Erased the charges against them.
Cooked the books.
He figured, “What the heck?
I’m about to be fired.
But now these people will owe me and they will
be my friends and take me in when I need them.”
You’ve heard the old adage,
“It’s not what you know, but who you know.”
This was a shrewd manager.
The owner could not come back later and renegotiate
what his own steward, his own employee,
had promised.
The deal had been struck.
It was as good as gold.
And here is the surprise of the parable:
the owner,
upon finding out about the manager’s actions,
commended him.
V. Okay, it’s a metaphor, but what kind of crazy metaphor?
What does Jesus mean to tell us?
My young friend on Wednesday night suggested that we
should always make friends with our neighbors,
and forgive them those slights against us,
because we never know when we’re going to need
them.
It may not be the only interpretation of the parable,
but I thought that was a pretty deep insight,
especially as we tend to be a prickly,
vengeful bunch of folks.
It is easy to believe we will never need our neighbors,
those next door or across the street,
those across the waters.
We can convince ourselves that we are somewhere near
the top, close to the riches, and therefore will never
be faced with the prospect of utter devastation.
Yet it can happen in a moment:
we can fall to our own pride and slickness,
natural disaster,
the slipperiness of misfortune.
Just ask someone who’s lived through the Great Depression.
How well can any of us, really, secure our futures?
It is good to have friends, even, as the old country song says,
in low places.
VI. Perhaps that is why the owner commended the manager:
not because of his protection of himself,
but rather because,
even though his motives were misplaced,
he had stepped down from his pedestal
and met his neighbors,
even forgiven part of their debt,
never mind that it was not his to forgive!
Even Jesus was accused of doing the same,
forgiving the sins of others when
forgiveness was not his to offer.
And God was pleased.
A few weeks ago, there was an article in the Florida Today
newspaper.
I only glanced at it, but it was about a church community
which was making it their mission to go into some of
the “low places.”
That’s not news.
Churches have been going into bars and out into
the streets and alleyways to proclaim the
gospel for a long, long time.
This is what made news:
these people were going into bars and strip clubs to
apologize for the harsh judgments, the scars,
the pain inflicted by “the church.”
What is significant is that they were not “selling” anything,
not trying to evangelize or convert.
These folks were simply trying to make amends for all the
times a church has shut its doors or an otherwise
well-meaning pastor has spoken words of condemnation
or some Christian has passed by without a kind word
or a cup of cool water.
VII. Jesus, in his scandalous and shocking parable,
seems to suggest to his disciples,
in the presence of the Pharisees and
any other sinners who might be listening,
that there is a place for all of us in God’s kingdom.
Further, we would do well to make peace and settle
our debts with all of our brothers and sisters.
Who knows when our own accounts will come due?
If it is justice we want for all people, we may be caught
and cornered.
The almighty e-mail will come unexpectedly:
you are about to be fired!
For who among us can ever hope to be good enough,
righteous enough, to measure up to God?
But if mercy is our standard, we find ourselves willing
to re-write debts, change the books,
forgive others that which they owe to us and to
society and even, it seems, to God.
The surprise ending to that story is that God,
who is love and mercy itself, is pleased
and we find ourselves living in the presence of
the Holy.
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