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Christ Church Uniting
Disciples and Presbyterians
1300 Kailua Rd.
Kailua, HI 96734
262-6911
Luke 16:1-13
Look at this passage. It contains a story told by Jesus (about the actions of a dishonest steward.) The boss’s response to his steward’s actions blends into an application by Jesus to his disciples (children of this age, children of light). There is a wisdom saying about being faithful in small and large things. There are two questions which contrast dishonest wealth with true riches, and there is a flat out challenge to choose whom you will serve: wealth or God.
Verse 10 (the wisdom saying: faithfulness in small and large things) and verses 11-12 (the wisdom questions contrasting wealth versus true riches) appear to be later first century attempts to spiritualize Jesus’ teachings about the use of wealth. They seem even unrelated to each other and may have been added at different times by different interpreters. To deal in a focused manner with Jesus’ principal teaching here, I will therefore remove verses 10-12 from consideration this morning. If you want to delve into the possibilities for Christian understanding presented by the later additions, please call me during the week.
To comprehend the meaning of this Jesus story, you and I need an idea of the first century CE social conception of wealth. In our own times, attention has been given to ways to increase the total amount of wealth available to society. One way to get a bigger slice of the pie is to increase the size of the pie. Put another way, a rising tide raises all ships. One way to balance a projected budget is to project more income. Ta da.
Remember the trickle down effect? A concentration and accumulation of wealth at the highest levels for a few people was believed to be beneficial for people whose lives were being lived lower down the ladder.
We say "ladder" because in theory with right values and hard work, any good soul might climb into the realm of the American dream: extra cars, cottages, and 401k retirement plans. Given the economic downturn into which we are now headed, even those with right values and hard work, those for whom it seemed true in the past might begin to doubt the myth of equal economic opportunity for all.
Nevertheless, in first century CE, there was no ladder. Those impoverished and grounded into dust at the base of the economy would have regarded the trickle down theory as a cruel and cynical hoax. It was a zero-sum picture. Goods and riches, largely agriculturally based, existed in fixed amounts. If you had enough to live, food, shelter, clothing, you were blessed indeed. Most people did not have enough.
If you, perchance, had more than enough, you were wealthy. All wealth, everything in excess of what you needed for food, shelter and clothing, was considered ill gotten. Wealth was dishonest, considered stolen, taken from the labor of peasants who did not have and would never be granted enough. This is hundred of years before Karl Marx. This was first century Christian experience in the Roman Empire.
Now we come to Jesus’ story about the dishonest manager. The context is first century Palestine under Roman occupation. The question has to do with wealth. What good is it?
It is not a teaching for Jesus’ first disciples is it? They had no wealth. It’s not a teaching for the Apostle Paul, the tentmaker evangelist, or Lydia the Christian woman who traded purple cloth. Merchants and craftspeople were blessed if they had enough. They seldom did have enough. Also, they lacked land. They lacked security. They lived from transaction to transaction.
The Christian movement was inclusive. It reached across many barriers. It brought together men and women, Gentile and Jew, the few who were rich and the many who were poor. The question of wealth had to come up. Jesus was teaching about material wealth even before those who were wealthy responded to the Gospel.
Remember the Rich Young Ruler? Scripture says he went away very sad when Jesus said, "Salvation: Yes. Sell all that you have. Give all your money to the poor. Come and follow me." And in the early church, according to Luke’s Acts of the Apostles, "believers put their resources at one another’s disposal. No one had need." The New Testament has more to say about material riches than just about any other subject.
Jesus, and the emerging Christian movement, had experience and insight about material wealth. "Use it to make friends," Jesus says. "Give it away now to build up community, because you can’t depend on always having wealth, and, in fact, you won’t always have wealth, but you will always need community, you will always need friends, you will always need people who can share with you shelter, food, clothing."
Jesus doesn’t say, "Wealth is bad." Rather he says, "O.K. Wealth, more than you need to live day to day. Some of you have it. If you intend to serve God (and you can’t serve two masters), be like the dishonest steward and use the power of your position to settle debts now, forgive debts, use the power you still have (while you have it) to improve other’s lives. Do it now. There will be a place for you in the new world you help create."
This practical approach to wealth was biblical. In Hebrew Scripture, in Leviticus 25, we read of the Jubilee Year. After forty-nine years in the land, the king was to declare a Jubilee. This meant that all debts were to be forgiven, indentured servants were to be released, family lands were to be returned to their original owners.
The Jubilee provision recognized that wealth would tend to accumulate over the years. People were not, after all, equally intelligent or fortunate. Things happen. Nevertheless, to overcome the evils that arise from entrenched inequity, there was in the Jubilee Year regulations a provision for a periodic redistribution of land and wealth and consequently a renewal of God’s covenant with the people.
Some scholars believe that Luke’s story in chapter four when Jesus went into the synagogue and read from the Isaiah scroll "the spirit of the lord is upon me, to bring good news to the poor, sight to the blind, release to the captives and to proclaim the year of the Lord" that he was announcing a Jubilee Year. His teaching about wealth would tend to support such an interpretation. Even his prayer sounded Jubilee themes, "forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.
Now, where does the preacher want to go with this? The preacher would like to stop here. When Jesus was understood to proclaim Jubilee his own townspeople attempted to throw him over the cliff.
We are the wealthiest nation on earth. The poorest among us, it is believed, have a higher quality of life than the vast majority of people in any other country---and who is not glad to live in the USA? Yet, what does it say about our nation’s relationship to wealth when some families in our armed services, and not a few others in public or uniformed service, qualify for public welfare assistance?
There is an enormous gap between the most well to do among us and the least. The question of what you and I must do about our personal wealth is real and pressing. It will be a millstone around our necks if we do not find a Christian way to relate to abundance.
Nevertheless, the largest questions put to us by this Gospel today are social and national.
The issue of living wage is pressing. In a growing number of cities and counties now there is a law that companies with taxpayer funded contracts must pay their employees enough to live on without public assistance.
The issue of universal health care cries out for attention. How can it be that so many women, children and working families are without basic health care coverage in our great land? How is it that such an obscene percentage of the American health care dollar is spent on extraordinary measures in the last days of people’s lives while funding for preventative health care goes begging?
Is it possible that we might reinstitute a military draft before our nations moves to provide for compulsory national community service for our youth? Why is it easier to send young people off to die than it is to expect of them, and ourselves, a year or two of public service building up the peoples and communities of our country?
Today’s gospel lesson invites us to consider ways to seek social security in community building and friendships, as did the dishonest steward, rather than in tightly held (and now rapidly shrinking) personal and national wealth.
In biblical terms, merit is opposed to grace, punishment is opposed to justice, and that the so called profit motive is antithetical to love.
In light of the September 11th attacks, as the nation prepares to order uniformed young men and women into harms way, we ought to ask how Jesus’ guidance on wealth might be applied in international relationships.
Is it possible that the Roman Catholic and ecumenical Jubilee 2000 movement to forgive international debt represented a Christ inspired alternative to war?
There is much upon which to reflect in these days. It is a new day. It is a time for new decisions. Will we be as shrewd, as wise, as the dishonest steward?
Must we serve and expend our energies trying to preserve wealth? Or, might we renew our decision today to serve God, to use wealth shrewdly building human community, friendships. On this path lies the Realm of God.
We will do this together. I am confident, says the Apostle Paul, that God who began this great work in us, in this nation, and upon the earth will bring it to completion in Christ Jesus our Lord.
So it is. And so may it be.
The Rev. Fabian M. "Buddy" Summers, preached at CCU , September 23, 2001
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