Amos 8:4-7

 Psalm 113

1 Timothy 2:1-7

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."

Let us Pray

Merciful God,

You have prepared for those who love you

such good things as pass our understanding;

pour into our hearts such love towards you that, loving you above all else,

we may obtain your promises,

which exceed all that we can desire;

through Jesus Christ our Lord.  Amen.

Oi!  What are we to make of this weeks gospel?  What is going on here?  How can we unpack this parable that will, at least begin to make sense?  Is this parable one that is read to make sure that we are paying attention in church?  In this part of Luke we hear a series of parables.  Starting with Chapter 15 we hear the parable of the Lost Sheep, followed by the parable of the lost coin then the lost sun (the prodigal son) and now the story of the crooked manager.  If I could choose any one of the four parables to use as text for a sermon it certainly would not be this one! 

What is Luke trying to tell us in relating this story?  Its OK to be a poor steward of the masters money, and when fired to be dishonest, cook the books and then be praised for doing it?  What about honesty?  This story just does not lend itself to casual reading.  We don’t get nice easy to digest sound-bytes and tales of righteous living from this gospel lesson.  Of course one way to approach this reading would be to ignore the story of the crooked manager and just preach on the concluding text “"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."  But focusing on the ending still begs the question of “What is up with the crooked manager?  How do we apply it to our world?  In one of the many blogs and on-line commentaries I read this week I finally came across one that seemed to help me understand this, at least a little.  Dylan’s Lectionary Blog [www.sarahlaughed.net/lectionary/] had this to say:

“Q: What, precisely, is it that the steward does, albeit without authorization and with deception?

A: The steward forgives debts.

The steward forgives. He forgives things that he had no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, for personal gain and to compensate for past misconduct. But that's the decisive action that he undertakes to redeem himself from a position from which it seems he couldn't be reconciled, to the landowner any more than to the farmers.

So what's the moral of this story, one of the stories unique to Luke?

It's a moral of great emphasis for Luke: FORGIVE. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason you want, or for no reason at all.

Remember, this (Luke) is the guy whose version of the "Lord's Prayer" includes the helpful category confusion, "forgive us our sins as we forgive (the monetary debts of -- it's clear in the Greek) our debtors" (Luke 11:4). I could point to at least a dozen moments off the cuff at which Luke raises this point: the arrival of the kingdom of Godis no occasion for score-keeping of any kind, whether monetary or moral.”

Interesting thoughts?  Can it be that Jesus is trying to get us to understand that its all about love and forgiveness, even in this parable?  Dylan continues this theme

“Why forgive someone who's sinned against us, or against our sense of what is obviously right? We don't have to do it out of love for the other person, if we're not there yet. We could forgive the other person because of that whole business of what we pray in Jesus' name every Sunday morning, and because we know we'd like forgiveness ourselves. We could forgive because we've experienced what we're like as unforgiving people, and so we know that refusing to forgive because we don't want the other person to benefit is, as the saying goes, like eating rat poison hoping it will hurt the rat. We could forgive because we are, or we want to be, deeply in touch with a sense of Jesus' power to forgive and free sinners like us. Or we could forgive because we think it will improve our odds of winning the lottery.

It boils down to the same thing: deluded or sane, selfish and/or unselfish, there is no bad reason to forgive. Extending the kind of grace God shows us in every possible arena -- financial and moral -- can only put us more deeply in touch with God's grace.”

This week our Bishops are Gathering for the fall meeting of the House of Bishops.  There has been a lot of score keeping and tallying of who is right and who is wrong on both sides of the issues that are before the Bishops.  The self proclaimed orthodox are certain that God is on their side and they are keeping score of who is worthy to serve Gods’ church and who is not.  The self-proclaimed liberals are sure that God is so full of radical grace that all people are welcomed to serve God?  I tend to land on the side of the liberals in believing that God’s grace does not have the kind of boundaries that some folks like to erect.  So what is our House of Bishops going to do at their meeting?  There are some who are looking at this meeting as the defining moment in our worldwide communion.  Some who have said that if we do not accede to the Global South demands that our church repent and turn back from what they see as sinful, that it will destroy our global communion.  I certainly hope not.

I hope that somehow all sides of the arguments can come to the realization that none of us can speak with absolute authority for God.  That all of us need to forgive in the radical way that Jesus does.  Perhaps some of the actions that have brought our church to this point have not been as scrupulous, on all sides, as we would like. Perhaps all of us, at one time or another, have acted like the crooked manager. But perhaps we can use Gods amazing grace to go forward with forgiveness just as in the story of the crooked manager Jesus finds hope and forgiveness. True forgiveness happened regardless of motive.  Can we as a church trust that, through God forgiveness and grace are so big as to be incomprehensible?  A god who forgives sins even when we don’t think they are his to forgive?  A god whose mercy and grave will not be contained?  After all we've got more important things as a church and as individuals than scorekeeping to think about and act on: the work God has given us to do, to love and serve Him, with gladness and singleness of heart, through Christ our Lord. It is more important to serve Christ and to forgive and heal this broken world than it is to keep our score cards up to date.

Amen