Wealth and Relationships

Luke 12:16-21

Luke 16:1-13

     Alistair Sim as Scrooge     

There are certain Sundays when it is particularly important that the hymns are sing-able, the prayers be meaningful, and the refreshments be plentiful.  For on these special Sundays much is needed to redeem the very confusing biblical text and the quite possibly more confusing sermon that accompanies it.

            This may well be such a Sunday and I am happy to see the requisite elements are in place.  And we are not alone.  This parable from the gospel of Luke excites the social networks of preachers like few others.  Tweets and posts fly back and forth, each with the essential question: what on earth are you doing with this passage this week?  This week lectionary preachers have felt more like mathematicians seeking to solve the centuries old equation.  We hope to unlock the secret.

            There is, however, no secret.  Just a parable and the one telling the parable—our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.  And because it is Jesus speaking we are compelled to lean in and listen a little harder.  What did we miss?  What is happening here?  He didn’t say that did he?

            It appears he did.  “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.”  Jesus is encouraging those within hearing range of his parable to act as the man in the parable acts—shrewdly by means of dishonest wealth.  How much more satisfying this whole parable would be if it were to end with, say, the voice over announcer we hear in Luke 12.  Perhaps you recall this story from a few weeks ago—the story of a wealthy man who runs out of room to store his harvest.  His response is to build even bigger storehouses.  Having stored up sufficient supplies for many years, the subject of this story proclaims that he will sit back, eat, drink, and be merry.  Now the Jesus of today’s parable might be inclined to commend this man for his shrewd ability to save and secure his future.  But in that story God speaks to the man.  “Fool,” God says, “This very night you will die.  Now who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?”  Jesus concludes this parable by announcing that such a fate awaits all who “hoard things for themselves and are not rich toward God.”

            So given that precedent,  we should well expect Jesus to tell a tale of a cheating manager who, because he was interested only in himself and his own wealth and wellbeing, got his comeuppance.   Perhaps God should be in this story, too, calling the man a fool.  But no.  This is not the case.  Not only does Jesus seem to offer him as a positive object lesson, the manager from whom he steals commends him for his behavior.  We scratch our heads and look to see what the hymn after the sermon is.

            But maybe, if we spend some time with it, there is something here.  And, perhaps, the parable in Luke 12 gives us a hint as to what to look for.  In the story of the man and his oversized barns, the question posed at the end is this: “Who will get the things you have prepared for yourself?”  The question suggests that the man has made no provision to share his wealth.  His sin seems rooted not in his wealth but in his selfish attitude toward his wealth.  It appears never to have occurred to him that the answer to his abundant crop may not be bigger barns but a bigger heart.

            And so we have our dishonest manager who has finally been found out by his rich boss.  The manager is at a crossroads.  He is about to lose his job and, for the first time it seems, understands that his job and its ill-gotten gains is the only thing in the world that he does have.  And this is where he acts shrewdly—of cleverly as the common English bible describes it.  The dishonest manager exchanges his wealth for relationships.  The dishonest manager, in his crisis, realizes that the only way forward is to forgo his material wealth for a wealth of relationships.  The dishonest manager has a new outlook on life: people are more important than wealth.

            This insight might not have kept the man with the big barns from dying, but it would have kept him from dying as the parable suggests he dies: outside of God’s barn… or what is called in this parable eternal homes.  The parable in Luke 12 provides this summary statement: This is the way it will be for those who hoard things for themselves and aren’t rich toward God.”  This parable provides this summary statement: You cannot serve God and wealth.  They sound a bit alike.  They seem complimentary.  For both statements, and both parables, are suggesting there exists a tension between serving wealth and serving God.  To serve God is to serve others.  The great commandment makes that clear: Love the Lord your God with all of your heart and your neighbor as yourself.  We serve God by serving the neighbor.  We serve the neighbor by sharing the resources that we have, among other ways.  So, after a fashion, the dishonest manager has learned this much.  At least he has learned more than the man with the big barns.  The dishonest manager learned that his long-term interests were going to be served by building relationships and not wealth.  So it is in the Kingdom.  Our long-term interests in the Kingdom—our entre into the eternal homes—is based not upon our possessions and our wealth but upon the quality of our relationships and whether those relationships are rooted in the expression of love that is at the heart of the gospel.

            Ebenezer Scrooge, as compensation for the pain of loss and abandonment in his life, sits in his money changing hole day after day counting his money while his clerk Bob Cratchit literally starves in front of him and Cratchit’s son Tiny Tim dies unseen by him.  It is only after Scrooge is visited by the Christmas Spirits that he comes to understand that the way to deal with pain and loss is not miserly indifference to the fate of others, but to reach out in love, build relationships, and share of one’s abundance for the common good.

            The Montagues and the Capulets, like Scrooge, live on hate.  But whereas Scrooge found redemption before the tragedy, in Romeo and Juliet the redemption follows the tragedy.  Romeo and Juliet die and only then is the cycle of hatred broken and the birth of relationship possible. 

            In the two parables about which we have been speaking this morning, we also have a story of redemption and a story of tragedy.  And each, like A Christmas Carol and Romeo and Juliet, have, as the final lesson, the imperative of relationships.  The man with the large barns dies tragically.  His wealth comes to nothing principally because he dies alone.  He has no friends, no family, no web of relationships with which to share not only his wealth but his heart.  To share with others is to share with God.  To be rich toward others is to be rich toward God.  For the dead man and his barns, time ran out.

 The dishonest steward may be short on ethics, but he is long on redemptive possibility.  Before it is too late, this man comes to understand that it isn’t the wealth it’s the relationship.  And true, he is not the greatest exemplar of Kingdom living before or after his transformation.  But that is really Jesus’ point.  If this sad man, who has a long way to go before he truly understands what it means to serve God, can understand that wealth buys little and relationships buy much, how much more should we, the “children of light” be increasing our stores of relationships in anticipation of our eternal homes?  

The Common English Bible translates the word “dishonest” as “worldly”.  This translation puts a slightly different slant on things.  Dishonest implies, well, dishonest as opposed to honest wealth.  Worldly suggests all wealth in this world is the same—neither honest nor dishonest.  It is simply wealth and, as wealth, should serve the singular purpose of building up the Kingdom of God.  One cannot serve wealth and serve God.  But one can use wealth to serve God.  After all, this is what Scrooge did.  He didn’t declare bankruptcy the day after Christmas.  He gave Bob Cratchet a raise and used his resources to help Tiny Tim get better.

Who knows what happened to this manager after his time ran out.  Apparently he didn’t die like the man with the oversized barns.  But this question is not of interest to the parable.  What is more of interest is what happens to you and to me.  How will we use our wealth, no matter how large or meager it may be?  Jesus hopes it will be in service to God, which is to say in service to the Kingdom, which is to say in service to each other—those known and unknown—whose debts like ours, and those of the parable—have been forgiven.