September 18, 2022 St. Andrew Church Rev. Anne McAnelly
First Lesson: Psalm 113
1 Praise the Lord! Praise, O servants of the Lord; praise the name of the Lord.
2 Blessed be the name of the Lord from this time on and forevermore.
3 From the rising of the sun to its setting, the name of the Lord is to be praised.
4 The Lord is high above all nations and his glory above the heavens.
5 Who is like the Lord our God, who is seated on high,
6 who looks far down on the heavens and the earth?
7 He raises the poor from the dust and lifts the needy from the ash heap,
8 to make them sit with princes, with the princes of his people.
9 He gives the barren woman a home, making her the joyous mother of children.
Praise the Lord
Second Lesson: Luke 16:1-13
1 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. 2 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.’ 3 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. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7 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.’ 8 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. 9 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.
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. 11 If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13 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.”
College debt relief has been in the news of late. Cooper, my older son, has been waiting for that since the campaign trail when college debt relief was fist floated. I promised my sons that they would not have more than $10,000 in college debt, because I think it is good for them to learn responsibility, but I did not want to cripple them with a huge burden. Cooper had been good about paying down his debt and was grateful for the reprieve during Covid when payments were put on hold. Several times he wanted to just pay off his debt, but he waited. And his waiting paid off. The remainder of his debt will be forgiven once he gets through the red tape.
I understand that there are many ways to interpret the college debt forgiveness program. Some see it as helping the next generation. Some see it as a response to the ballooning costs of higher education. Some say it helps people of color who bear a larger portion of this debt. Some say it is morally wrong, because “I paid off my debt,” so why do millions of people get this handout? So much of this is in our perspective on the matter. Are we fixing a broken system of soaring costs for higher education or are we giving handouts to those who got in over their heads?
Our gospel lesson is about debts and perspectives, money and God. Even the varying Biblical titles given to this parable, which only appears in Luke, tells us a lot. Is the parable about an unjust steward or the shrewd manager? Read Luke 16:1-13.
The moral of the story is you cannot serve God and wealth. We have heard that many times. The Bible tells us repeatedly about the dangers of money. Jesus teaches, “It is easier for a camel to fit through the eye of the needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God (Matthew 19:24). Later in scripture we hear, “Love of money is the root of all evil (1 Timothy 6:10). Even though we have heard this several times, we often hedge our bets, because we strive to be good Christians but who doesn’t want to be wealthy? Do we give away our wealth in solidarity with the poor? Or become wealthy and then use our resources in service to God and our fellows? We struggle with this as people of higher means. Compared to most of the world we are wealthy. How do you square these competing teachings? Then hearing about being faithful in little and being faithful in much just makes the whole thing harder. We want to do what is right.
Today I want to focus on the parable Jesus tells his disciples. It is a confusing story and one that has many interpretations. Let’s start with the basics. People with means often sent managers to collect their debts and the managers would inflate those numbers to line their own pockets. The entire system was feudal in that peasants worked and then had to pay large portions of their goods in taxes. The parable opens with this manager getting caught stealing, mismanaging. He does not challenge the cheating claim, only plots to have a means of survival after he is fired. He reasons he is too old to dig and too proud to beg, so he concocts a plan. The manager then goes to each one of the people who owe his master money and reduces their debt. Slashes the debt drastically. He is banking on these people’s hospitality later when he would otherwise be on the streets. I am trying to imagine what it would be like if the loan agent at Bay Federal who holds the debt to my car came and slashed the amount I owe. I wonder if I would then take him into my home if he lost his job? Seems farfetched and yet this was the manager’s plan. The big difference is that in Jesus’ time hospitality was a much bigger expectation and opening your home to someone in need was more common. Especially someone who just slashed your debt. Somehow the dishonesty within this process does not really get addressed. Almost the contrary.
When the master discovers the manager had reduced their debt, he does a strange thing. He does not get mad or yell or have him thrown into prison. Instead, he calls his manager shrewd. The master compliments the manager for his shrewd business practice. Shrewd here could also mean wise or prudent. So why?
Let’s look at this in three ways, macro, micro and spiritual.
On the macro level we can see this entire system of oppressive debt as systematic oppression. The elite get wealthier off the labors of the poor. One commentator writes, “We need a mini-course on the economics of Roman-occupied Galilee in the first century. Rich landlords and rulers were loan-sharks, using exorbitant interest rates to amass more land and to disinherit peasants of their family land, in direct violation of biblical covenantal law. The rich man or “lord” (kyrios, v. 3, 8), along with his steward or debt collector, were both exploiting desperate peasants” (Working Preacher, Barbara Rossing). So given this corrupt system, when the master sees the corrupt way his manager responds to this situation, he might think it was a wise move, a shrewd business dealing. Interestingly Jesus is encouraging his disciples, the children of the light, to be more shrewd. Not in a corrupt way, but so that they, and we, learn to be in this world and hold tight to God’s laws and teachings as we navigate this money driven society. Some liberation theologians have said that the manager is only giving back the part of the bill that he had been adding for his profit, rather than stealing from his master. Or better yet just giving the peasants what they fairly deserve, because of how corrupt the system is. That is the macro interpretation.
On a micro level we see that the manager wanted to find a way to curry favor with people who might help him. His job was what separated him from the peasants, so now that he is unemployed, he hopes their sense of hospitality and gratefulness will help him live. We see a reversal of status for the manager which is a common theme in Luke when Jesus and the kingdom of God appear. He was once a corrupt manager, now he is a humble person depending on others for his wellbeing.
Finally let’s look at how we relate to money on a spiritual level. The term used in the parable is “unrighteous mammon” meaning the monetary gains at the expense of others or unjust business dealings. Chasing the financial dream or getting ahead at the expense of others is spiritually destroying. According to Martin Luther, mammon serves as a personification for the acquisition of wealth, the “most common god on earth,” (Large Catechism, Explanation of the First Commandment). It was true then and it is still true today. So I ask you, What is the thing that trumps your devotion to God? Who or what holds your spiritual debt that corrupts your ability to be faithful to your Lord? Money, status, even our chasing our health concerns can be all consuming. My new mammon is the pursuit of health and searching for the right answer to chronic ailments. Do I follow this doctor’s advice, or do I listen to my body? Something I know many of you have gotten much more adept at. Chasing any kind of mammon pulls us away from following God, hence “No one can serve two masters!” One commentator writes, “The final verse is clear, even if the intricacies of life’s choices are not. Devotion to God, faithfulness in stewarding God’s gifts, is the priority for a follower of Jesus. But it is never easy in a world full of negotiation where wealth demands our loyalty. Recognition of this challenge drives us again to our need for Christ to reconcile us to God and to one another, and the response of mercy and forgiveness at the heart of the Gospel” (Working Preacher, Kendra Mohn).
Some might say the debt relief was shrewd on Biden’s part. Some say he was buying votes. But once again how we tell the story of money and who we place in charge of our system matters! As Christians we always want God to be our Lord and master and serve him first and foremost, even when the world tries to get us to pursue unrighteous mammon. Bob Dylan sings, “Gotta serve somebody.” But let’s remember “You cannot serve God and wealth! (13). Amen.
