11.11.07 You Can t Take It With You, But Luke 16:1-13 Douglas Scalise, Brewster Baptist Church Web sites and newspapers frequently tell a familiar tale. A person with power and authority exploits his position to steal or cheat and through his corruption enriches himself while failing his boss and organization, workers or stockholders and betrays the public trust. This is happening right now in a number of places as you may know. I read this week about a mid-level manager who was fired because of his incompetence and while he was on the way out the door he went to a number of the most important accounts of his employer and reduced their bills in exchange for future consideration. The interesting thing is I didn t read this story in the Wall Street Journal, it is found in The Gospel of Luke 16. 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.
This parable of Jesus is not as well known as The Good Samaritan in Luke 10 or those in Luke 15 about the lost sheep or coin or the loving father with two sons. The central character in this story is a manager who squanders property that doesn t belong to him and then shrewdly insures his own future when his mismanagement is brought to light. Jesus doesn t praise the man for his dishonesty; that is not what we are supposed to take from this parable. Jesus commends the man for shrewdness. All of us are a mixed bag of the commendable and the less than flattering. Some of us are more mixed bags than others. Jesus is lifting up a positive feature in a dishonest man and that feature is not one we commonly associate with saints or disciples. Patient as a saint, kind as a saint, roll off our tongue they go together like peanut butter and jelly. Shrewd as a saint, just doesn t seem to fit the same way, to our ears it sounds like peanut butter and pickles it is odd and unfamiliar and we question putting the two together. However, shrewdness, The possession of a keen, searching intelligence combined with sound judgment. An intuitive knack in practical matters, 1 is a very desirable quality in followers of Jesus. Jesus is quoted in Matthew 10:16 saying his followers are to be as wise as serpents and innocent as doves, meaning we are to be smart, shrewd, and decisive and to have pure and godly motives. Today s scripture is about the management of possessions and money so it is important to underscore that Jesus is commending having keen insight; being astute, artful, cunning, sharp and penetrating. 2 Jesus wants us to be as shrewd as the dishonest steward about using possessions and wealth so that when our life is over we will be welcomed into eternal homes. The parable urges us to use our possessions and wealth to gain and not lose our future. To use our shrewdness to acquire more and more possessions and wealth for our selves alone and for our own ever increasing consumption while neglecting God s purposes, the spreading of the gospel, and assisting the poor is to make a serious mistake. Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric was one of the most admired persons in American business for years. He was praised for his leadership skills and wrote his autobiography. Sadly his first marriage failed and subsequently his personal 1 Definition from The American Heritage Dictionary, Second College Edition, Houghton Mifflin Co. Boston, 1982. 2 Ibid.
financial stewardship came out in the news. In a financial affidavit he filed in court he claimed total monthly expenses of $366,114. He also claimed he needed to spend monthly almost $9,000 for food and drink, close to $2,000 for clothes, $52,000 for gifts, and over $51,000 for housing. This man with a total monthly income after taxes of $1.41 million dollars made charitable and political contributions totaling guess how much? A mere $614. 3 Wesley Wilmer in his book God and Your Stuff: The Vital Link Between Your Possessions and Your Soul points out: 17 of Jesus 38 parables were about possessions. Possessions are mentioned 2,172 times in Scripture three times more than love, seven times more than prayer, and eight times more than belief. About 15 percent of God s Word deals with possessions. Why is that? Marshall Shelley says, Not because God thinks our stuff is the most important thing about us. But because how we handle our stuff, especially our money, is a diagnostic tool that reveals how we re doing with the things that truly are important. And where we invest our treasure on earth plays a huge role in our spiritual health. Jack Welch by all means deserves to share appropriately in the wealth and profits that his strong leadership helped to create. Like the shrewd manager in the parable, just because there is an area of his life that is less than flattering, that doesn t mean there aren t other aspects of his life that we cannot learn from, such as some aspects of his leadership. To Welch s credit, he voluntarily reduced his compensation package as a result of the public scrutiny he received. I don t know where Welch is in terms of being a person of faith, however to be spending so lavishly on oneself while sharing so little seems to miss the lesson Jesus teaches so frequently about how we use God s resources. I admire the generosity of Bill and Melinda Gates whose foundation in 2005 and 2006 gave $1.6 billion dollars in grants to help impoverished communities with innovations in health and learning. According to their web site, the foundation is based on two simple values, All lives no matter where they are being led have equal value. To whom much is given, much is expected. Those sound like the values of Jesus to me. The privilege of wealth, whether in the billions like the Gates, the millions like Welch, or the thousands like most of us, brings with it responsibility. The handling of our wealth and possession reveals the nature of our faith more clearly than virtually any other issue in life. Our church is more interested in your soul than your 3 Associated Press story, Bridgeport, CT, November 2002.
bank account, but because we re interested in your soul, we have to talk about your check book. That s part of being a fully devoted follower of Jesus. How we develop people as stewards or managers of their time, money, spiritual gifts, and volunteer service is a measure of our effectiveness as a church. I am very pleased with how our church has responded this year to a number of challenges. We increased our budget by $60,000, we took on the goal of trying to raise $100,000 on top of that to sponsor Habitat Houses in Brewster and Haiti and to fix up our parsonage next door, and we still have continued to stretch ourselves in our mission giving. All those things have been successful or will be as we finish out the year strong. Consider in just two weeks of November how many members of our church have been involved in the Holiday Fair, Operation Christmas Child, a work day here at BBC, providing a baby shower, helping a family that lost its home in a fire and the Business Persons lunch this Thursday. It is amazing. The way we use what we have reveals who we serve. Whether we are shrewd as the dishonest manager depends on whether we use our material goods, great or small to help those in need. When we worship God instead of ourselves or our stuff, we will use our possessions to shape our future and find we truly have friends in high places. Jesus says, 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? If we are faithful in the small tasks and jobs in life, then the Lord will give us greater tasks and responsibilities. Until we get the smaller ones down, we shouldn t be expecting or looking for greater ones. A wise preacher observed, Life consists of seemingly small opportunities. Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, end a war, appoint a cabinet, dine with the queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake. More likely the week will present no more than a chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote for county commissioner, teach a Sunday School class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor s cat. 4 If we are faithful in the area of our finances, God will entrust us with greater riches than material wealth. How we handle our money and our stuff reveals how we re doing with the things that are truly important. Where we invest our treasure on earth plays a significant role in our spiritual health. 4 Fred Craddock, Luke, Interpretation Series, (John Knox, Louisville, KY, 1990), p. 192.
After worship today you can pick up an envelope in the lobby that has a letter and a pledge card asking us all to prayerfully consider our giving to the Lord through this church in the coming year. I hope you will plan to give cheerfully and freely, as the Lord has blessed you and that you will use your possessions to shape your future before God, who is worthy of our love and loyalty. I really like the following description of second century disciples by Christian Philosopher Aristides in the year 125 that demonstrates how they used their lives and their resources to make friends for themselves by means of worldly wealth. They walk in all humility and kindness, and falsehood is not found among them, and they love one another. They despise not the widow and grieve not the orphan. He that has distributes liberally to him has not. If they see a stranger, they bring him under their roof, and rejoice over him as if he were their own brother; for they call themselves brethren, not after the flesh, but after the Spirit of God; but when one of their poor passes away from the world, and any of them see him, then he provides for this burial according to his ability; and if they hear that any of their number is imprisoned or oppressed for the name of their Messiah, all of them provide for his needs, and if it is possible that he may be delivered, they deliver him. And if there is among them a man that is poor and needy, and they have not an abundance of necessaries, they fast two or three days that they may supply the need with their necessary food. There is a sense in which we are all like the manager in the parable. Everything we have will be taken away so we might as well use our resources to bless others. The old saying, You can t take it with you, is true in one sense. But it is also true to say, You can t take it with you, but you can send it on ahead. Prayer: Grant, O God, That we may never lose the way through our self-will, And so end up in the far countries of the soul; That we may never abandon the struggle, But that we may endure to the end, and so be saved; That we may never drop out of the race, But that we may ever press forward To the goal of our high calling; That we may never choose the cheap and passing things,
And so let go the precious things that last forever; That we may never take the easy way, and so leave the right way; That we may never forget that sweat is the price of all things, and That without the cross, there cannot be the crown. So keep us and strengthen us by your grace that no disobedience and no weakness and no failure may stop us from entering into the blessedness which awaits those who are faithful in all the changes and chances of life down even to the gates of death; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen. By William Barclay Notable Quotes: There cannot be a surer rule, nor a stronger exhortation to the observance of it, than when we are taught that all the endowments which we possess are divine deposits entrusted to us for the very purpose of being distributed for the good of our neighbour. John Calvin (1509-64), French theologian and reformer I have held many things in my hands, and I have lost them all. But whatever I have placed in God s hands, that I still possess. Martin Luther (1483-1546), German reformer and theologian "God is the owner of everything. Christ is the chief steward and we who are in Christ share this stewardship with him. It is into the prior stewardship of grace that Jesus initiates us into. Stewardship is not a matter of law, something we ought to do. It is, rather, of grace: we participate in Christ's gracious stewardship in our ongoing process of identification with him." From The Steward: A Biblical Symbol Come of Age, by Douglas John Hall