Proper 20 Year C 2013 Frazelle COTC 9, 11:15, 5:15 Buying Friends Jesus said, Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it is gone they may receive you into the eternal homes. PBS Black box investing. Ched Myers, a well-known biblical scholar, introduced this term to me a few years ago. According to him, black box investing describes how most people invest the money that they set aside for investing. It works like this. We have a sum of money. We give it to professionals so that they can put it into investment vehicles. We have no idea who controls our money from that point forward. We might see the names of their companies on a prospectus, but we have no idea what those people are doing with our funds. The only thing we know about them is that they are people of means, and that therefore they don t need our money that badly to live. That s the black box. At the end of the investment period, we hope to receive our sum of money back out of the black box, along with something extra. I would venture to say that most of us are deeply entrenched in this way of investing. I do it. Parishes and dioceses and seminaries do it. The Church Pension Fund is built upon it, so my future financial security is currently predicated on black box investing. Some members of this congregation do this type of investing for a living and contribute to the church budget and the capital campaign fund out of money that returns from the black box. We are taught from an early age that it s prudent, even patriotic, to invest this way if we have money to invest. According to Ched Myers, black box investing is not necessarily wrong - it just has serious limitations from a biblical perspective. And the chief limitation is that individual members of the community are investing in a way builds no
2 solidarity with each other or with the poor. In other words, black boxes don t make friends. Jesus s parable from today s gospel passage seriously challenges our conventional way of handling money. The rich man in the parable practices something fairly close to black box investing. We know that he is rich, and we know that the nameless people to whom he lends money are also rich. The amount of property that they owe him indicates that they own about 25 times the amount of land that a typical family farmer would own. In other words, the rich man is lending money to unknown people who don t really need it to live. He lends through a professional intermediary - the steward, or manager - who cannot keep track of his own system of investing. And he lends in hopes of a big return from this black box. The rich man s manager understands this economic system better than anyone. Faced with financial and social ruin, he knows that if he can reduce or eliminate the interest rate on the clients loans, those clients will return the favor by taking care of him - it s a kick-back. He knows that money and favors are exchanged between social peers based on self-interest, so he manipulates the system and bends the rules to secure his own comfort. The rich man admires this steward and calls him shrewd. Jesus calls him dishonest. Jesus says that the rich man and the steward s way of investing belong to this era, the era that is passing away. This parable of the economic culture of first-century Palestine mirrors the economic picture in the rest of Luke s gospel. It s an economic system where the rich build large, private barns for their grain and their wealth, where the elite exclude the poor from their banquets. And, as we ll hear about next week, it s an economic culture where the wealthy man Dives lets the homeless and sick man
3 Lazarus languish and starve outside his gated community. It s an economy without friendship. Jesus ends his parable of the economics of this era with a challenge and a command to his followers. The challenge is this - the sons of this era, he says, are more shrewd than the sons of light in their respective generations. By sons of light, Jesus means his followers who belong to a new generation in a new era of the coming kingdom of God. This era, this coming kingdom, has a very different economy, and Jesus has been talking until he s blue in the face about this new, divine economy. In Luke s gospel, sons of light sell their possessions and give alms and lend with no expectation of return. The sons of light combine all they have and distribute as any has need, so that according to Luke there was not one needy person among them. The sons of light don t have to worry about what they will eat or drink or wear, because God provides for them through a community of solidarity, where Jesus s followers invest in each other and in the poor. In other words, sons of light literally value their friends! Why, Jesus wonders out loud, why aren t all my followers as shrewd and savvy in the divine economy as the sons of this age are shrewd in the economy of this world? Jesus follows that challenging question with this command: I m telling you, he says, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it is gone those friends may receive you into the eternal homes. The dishonest steward in the parable was smart enough to manipulate wealth for his own security and comfort in earthly homes. Jesus is telling his followers to use wealth for the benefit of the whole beloved community, so that rich and poor together may feast in their heavenly homes. Use wealth, he s saying, to make friends like the destitute prodigal son. Use wealth to make friends like the despised Samaritan. Use wealth to make friends like Lazarus the sick, homeless beggar who goes to his eternal home ahead of everyone. Use your wealth, you
4 sons of light, to build solidarity with one another and with the poor who have nothing to give but your eternal salvation as a return on your investment. Joel Greene, the renowned Lucan scholar, summarize the thrust of the parable this way in his commentary: Faithfulness to God, he writes, is demonstrated in the extension of hospitality to the poor. Such hospitality occasions the redistribution of wealth to those incapable of reciprocation, underscores the importance of... friendship across social boundaries, and secures an eternal home. 1 So what do we do with the challenge of this parable? As children of light, as followers of Jesus, how do we make our economics look more like the divine economy of the coming era of Christ? The short answer is, I don t know. Frankly, all of this makes me really uncomfortable. As I said, I m thoroughly entrenched in the economics of the era that s passing away. All I can do is invite us to imagine. First, imagine if we were free enough to rationally evaluate our economic practices and ask whether they are the best practices? Are they the best for our own security? Are they the best for the poor? Do they build the beloved community? Do they separate and isolate us? Do our practices reflect a greater trust in Wall St than in our neighbors? Do they help us make the right kind of friends? Second, imagine what we could do differently and ask, why not?. We have the teachings of Jesus and the practices and traditions of the Church at our disposal, and we have inspiring, faithful examples of Christian stewardship all around us. We founded and still support the Johnson Intern Program, an intentional Christian community with a rule of life and common housing and possessions. Their economics looks a lot like Luke s gospel and the Acts of the Apostles. What could we learn from them? New monastic communities attached 1 Green, Joel B.. The Gospel of Luke volume of The New International Commentary on the New Testament. Eerdmans, Cambridge, 1997, p. 588
5 to St. Joseph s, Durham have parishioners, divinity school students and the downtown poor living, eating and praying together. Why not in Chapel Hill? Sewanee has a land trust where people of varied wealth and poverty can live. Why not here? What would it be like if it were as easy for Episcopalians and their parishes and dioceses to invest through microcredit as it is for them to invest through the black box? Finally, what would it be like if the whole community decided that it was worthwhile to commit to proportional giving, with the tithe as the gold standard? What could we do with the resources to build corporate solidarity and security and friendship with one another and with the poor of our community? Why not? It s worth imagining, for Jesus says, I m telling you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it is gone they may receive you into the eternal homes.