September 1, 2016, Messiah UMC, Shippensburg: Rev. Steven Livermore The Disciple and Stuff Luke 16:1-13 (NIV) 16 Jesus told his disciples: There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer. 3 The manager said to himself, What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I m not strong enough to dig, and I m ashamed to beg 4 I know what I ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses. 5 So he called in each one of his master s debtors. He asked the first, How much do you owe my master? 6 Nine hundred gallons[a] of olive oil, he replied. The manager told him, Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty. 7 Then he asked the second, And how much do you owe? A thousand bushels[b] of wheat, he replied. He told him, Take your bill and make it eight hundred. 8 The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. 10 Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else s property, who will give you property of your own? 13 No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. How much do you think about your future? 5 years from now, 10 years from now or 25 years from now? What about your future do you think? If you re in high school what college? If you re in your 20 s or 30 s career
advancement, marriage, family, house? 40 s 50 s thinking about retirement planning? 60 s retirement living and estate planning? 70 s 80 s 90 s funeral arrangements? We think about our futures in different ways depending on where we are in life. How much do you think about God in your future? Do you think about the future of God s kingdom and your role in it? That is what this weird parable is about. Why weird? The characters are anti-heroes. These are not the kinds of people you would expect Jesus would tell us to emulate. The manager is an embezzler or a lousy manager at best and his rich boss must be out of the same cloth because when he catches wind of his manager s schemes against himself he congratulates him for his shrewdness! But what s that got to do with the future? What is the point Jesus is trying to make. What he is not trying to say: the point here is not that any form of theft, cheating, swindling, or dishonesty is a good thing. You cannot turn this passage into some legitimation of business as usual -type practices. You expect Jesus to say something like, Verily I tell you, cheats such as this will one day find themselves in a place of much weeping and gnashing of teeth! So what s the point. We need to remember to read scripture in context and the context here in Luke 16 is following right after Luke 15 which begins with Jesus being criticized by Pharisees for hanging around at a party with sinners. Jesus response to their judgy attitude was to tell three parables: about a lost sheep a lost coin and a lost son. Each parable ends with rejoicing over the lost being found. So after teaching the Pharisees the right way to look at lost sinners a individuals over whom heaven rejoices when they are found he turns to the disciples in Luke 16 and tells them this story about a embezzling manager who is caught by his boss and about to lose his job and quickly works to ingratiating himself with his bosses debtors by cutting what they owe the rich man in half and instead
of throwing the cheat in jail the owner of the business commends the manager for being shrewd. He may even have let him keep the job or promoted him. Francis Ford Coppola must have read this parable. The second installment of Francis Ford Coppola s Godfather trilogy of movies tells two stories simultaneously. While viewers watch the moral and familial demise of the mafia don Michael Corleone in the mid-1950s, they see intertwined with this flashbacks from the early twentieth century when Michael s father, the original Godfather Vito Corleone, steadily rose from a penniless Italian immigrant to a powerful, respected, and feared figure. The key moment when young Vito s life turned the corner from poverty to (illgotten) riches is curious. Vito and two friends had begun to do well for themselves in thievery and stealing things like designer dresses so well, in fact, as to attract the attention of the local mafia boss, Don Fanucci, who was known as the Black Hand. Don Fanucci approaches Vito and says, I hear you and your two friends were recently involved in some shenanigans which netted you $600 each. The don then demands some protection money, telling Vito that he needs to wet his beak a bit to the tune of $200 from each of the three men. The subtext of this request was clear: Pay up or else! Upon hearing of this development, Vito s friends immediately and fearfully decide to pay up. But Vito has a different idea. He tells his two friends to pay him $50 each. Vito, in turn, will give the don this money plus his own $50 and Vito will do it in such a way that Fanucci will accept the $150 instead of the $600 he had initially demanded. When his friends ask Vito how he s going to pull this off, Vito tells them Never mind that, but just remember I did you a favor once. Vito then tells his friends that they are to go to Fanucci the next day, tell him that they respect him and that through Vito they will pay the don whatever he wants. The next day both men go and tell the don just that. Later Vito meets privately with Don Fanucci but pays him only the $100 he had collected from his two friends. When the
don demands to know where the other $500 is, Vito smirks and says he needs some time seeing as he was rather short of money at the moment. Don Fanucci then comes to believe that Vito has shaken down his own two friends. Based on what the two other men had told Fanucci earlier, the old don assumes Vito had already received $200 from each friend but is now pocketing most of it even as he courageously winks at the don, who becomes an insider to Vito s little fake scheme. Surprisingly, the Black Hand turns velvet. He smiles approvingly, openly admiring Vito s courage. You ve done well for yourself, he says. He then accepts the $100 as sufficient, offers to let Vito work for him, and even adds that if he can do anything for Vito, to let him know! Fanucci respected Vito as a fellow wheeler-and-dealer, a fellow sneak and cheat who knew how to work other people to his own advantage. The shrewd manager and Vito Corleone in facing a crisis thought about the future their future and worked in such a way as to secure it. Jesus says at the end of the parable in verse 8: For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. Shrewd how? Securing a future for themselves. What are the people of the light (that is you and me- disciples of Jesus Chritsuppose to be about? Securing a future for ourselves? Hasn t Christ already secured our future? YES! He has! What are the people of the light to be about then? Securing a future for the lost. The context is this story follows after the lost parables and the rejoicing in heaven. What was insecure and lost is found. Who is doing the find? God. Through whom is the search being conducted? Through the people of light search lights really you and me. So when Jesus says in verse 9: I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. He is not saying buy your way into heaven so God will welcome you. He is saying: Use your stuff what you ve got and maybe
what you haven t got yet, use whatever you can to gain friends who currently are lost so that you can share with them the greatest thing you have the gospel of Christ, so they may believe and be found. And when you die and go to heaven they will be waiting there for you with a welcome and a thanks for what you shared with them to enable them to be in heaven also to welcome you. Jesus is saying be strategic with your stuff, not to ingratiate yourself with God, but to win people to Christ for their reclaimation and salvation! He is saying use your stuff, your skills your abilities for the future of the kingdom of heaven so that as many lost souls as possible will be found and populate God s heaven! Verse 10 12 isn t about us getting wealthy for ourselves, is it? 10 Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else s property, who will give you property of your own? It seems to me in this context that Jesus is focus on us being entrusted with what he calls true riches the gospel by using the stuff has placed in our hands as his stewards, or managers in thoughtful effective ways not only for ourselves but for the work of the kingdom of God. He wraps up the whole idea in verse 13: 13 No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. It was never meant that any human being should live for this world alone; that we exist to accumulate stuff as though we were enslaved to owning as much for ourselves as we could, enslaved to getting more. We were created to know and love God and to be part of what he is doing in the world by what we do with our time, our talents, our gifts and our stuff. The greatest thing being finding and bring home what s lost people God loves.