Sermon for September 22, 2019 - Proper 20 C - The Rev'd Elise A. Feyerherm

Amos 8:4-7 – Psalm 113 – 1 Timothy 2:1-7 – Luke 16:1-13

“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they many welcome you into the eternal homes.” Wait…what? What did Jesus just say? Did he just instruct us to embrace financial corruption in order to secure friends and a future for ourselves?

The short answer is, no, that is not what Jesus is saying. The longer answer, is, well, I’m not sure I know at all what is going in this parable and Jesus’ interpretation. And from what I can tell from other people’s blogs and commentaries, no one else knows either. So we can just toss this parable in the trash can along with all the other perplexing and possibly offensive passages in the Bible, right? Sorry – I’m not going there either.

This parable is one of the most perplexing, if not the most perplexing, story in the New Testament. It confounds us from the very beginning and does not stop until the very end. How tempting to consign it to the trash heap of esoteric scholarship. How much easier to fix on those seemingly simpler teachings, like “Love one another as I have loved you.”

One of my jobs as a priest and a teacher is to encourage us all to dig deeper, especially when the Bible or life throws us wild curve balls. It’s been my experience, and probably yours too, that digging deeper, although it’s a pain in the you-know-what, is how we uncover buried spiritual treasure, get spiritually stronger, and grow closer to God. Today is going to be one of those days I’m going to push us to lean in to the discomfort and confusion, because I believe God is in that discomfort, that confusion, and beyond.

So here we go. Right from the start, it’s not clear what we should make of this manager. Our translation says that “charges were brought” against him, but we don’t know if those charges are accurate or not. In this era of “MeToo” we know how much “innocent until proven guilty” and “he said/she said” can work to the advantage of those with power and privilege, and we are rightly wary of absolving the accused too quickly. It is also true that this story of Jesus doesn’t tell us one way or another. All we know is that the manager has been summarily fired, in a society where you either have wealth and power, or you don’t.

And the charge, that he has been squandering the rich man’s property – it’s the same word to describe the prodigal son in the chapter immediately before this one, as he squanders his inheritance. Other versions use the word “wasting.” Is the manager a criminal, or just incompetent? Or perhaps the strategy of reducing the amounts that those in debt to the rich man owe, maybe that’s not a new thing – maybe he’s been doing that all along. And to complicate matters even more, maybe in doing that he’s not hurting his employer so much as cutting into his own commission. Maybe that’s why the rich man ends up commending the manager when he finds out what he’s been doing – because really, the manager is making his boss look good by cutting debts.

I told you it was confusing.

With whom do you identify? The rich man, or the manager? Both? Or neither? Are there relationships in your life, professional or personal, that have foundered on the rocks of money? Perhaps the rift was necessary and unavoidable; perhaps it is a cause of sorrow and regret and the deep desire for a “do-over.” What we do know is that money, and how we deal with it, is powerful. It can do tremendous good, and bring people together, and it can do enormous harm as well.

Money, like this parable, is confusing, perplexing. Are money and wealth evil, albeit necessary? Or is money a divine gift, a sign of God’s blessing, as some TV evangelists would have us believe? Is money simply neutral, a tool that can be controlled and used honestly or dishonestly, to do justice or to oppress others? What do you think?

Does money even belong in our knapsack on the Way of Love? Do we carry it with us and use it as disciples, or does it carry us, sometimes in directions we ought not to go? Should we even talk about money in church, other than during pledge campaigns like the one we are kicking off next Sunday? Is our relationship with money purely a personal and private matter, something that no one else has the right to question? Or as Christians might we be called to consider and discuss the way we use money as an integral part of our life of faith?

I think we are afraid to talk about money in church – I mean really talk about it. One of the reasons we are afraid is that money in our society is tied to honor and shame. Those who have significant resources are lauded as successful and important – they must have done something right to accumulate all those riches. Those who have less, who perhaps are struggling, carry the burden of shame – they must have done something wrong, or not worked hard enough. We hear ourselves, or those we know and love, in the words of the manager who has just been fired: “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.”

Sometimes shame also accompanies those who have much wealth – the nagging suspicion that such good fortune is not really deserved. Or perhaps the family fortune was built on the backs of slaves, or plunder, or environmental destruction. Or perhaps, one’s affluence has come simply because one’s parents or grandparents were prudent and frugal, and because our ancestors were from Europe instead of Africa, Asia, or Latin America.

I know that my comfortable life, and my access to work that is fulfilling and pays more than minimum wage, are due mostly to the fact that my parents could give me and my siblings a good life and send us to good schools, and allow us to get an education without going into debt. I worked hard, but that would have gotten me nowhere without the parental leg-up I received. There is gratitude in my heart for all of that. And there is also shame.

So, wealth – it’s hard to talk about. It makes us vulnerable. And so, the thing we cannot talk about with our beloved family in Christ becomes our master, because in secret, its power over us can grow, fed by shame and fear and a culture that has made money its god.

Jesus makes it abundantly clear – you cannot serve God and wealth. You will end up devoted to one and despising the other. The terrain of money is just as convoluted and confusing as the parable Jesus tells about the manager, dishonest or not. So the only way forward is to bring everything into the open. What is this wealth, this mammon, that we cannot serve if God is to be our greatest love? How are we each, in our own way, learning to bless those who are in debt, caught in a system that worships wealth?

Let’s talk. Let’s share how we are trying to be faithful in a little, or in much. Let’s be honest about our failings, about the shame we feel because of our poverty or our riches or somewhere in between.

The good news is that our shame and fear about money, as real as they are to us, are but dishonest wealth, looming large and full of bluster and empty promises. These fake gods cannot hold us, because the way out of shame and fear, the Way of Love, has been traveled before. The Word of God, become human in Jesus Christ, has broken the power of shame and death, through his life, suffering, death, and resurrection. So we enter this mystifying parable with Christ, through Christ, and in Christ, as we learn what and whom to serve, as we journey this way of Love, beyond shame, beyond fear, beyond all that would enslave us. Thanks be to God.