Sermon: Trinity 9

9 August 2009 at Salem Lutheran Church, Gretna, LA

Text: Luke 16:1-13

In the name of + Jesus. Amen.

Desperate times often call for desperate measures.

The threat of losing one’s job is one such motivator. In the face of the loss of income and the loss of face, people who are facing the loss of work can sometimes resort to clever, if not illegal, ways to keep their jobs and incomes.

This is why the Lord’s story, “The Dishonest Manager,” is a perfect parable to teach us about the kingdom of God. For indeed, desperate times call for desperate measures.

In the Lord’s story, the manager is “wasting” the “possessions” of the boss. Whether he is double-dipping, or just plain lazy, we don’t know. But we do know this – the owner of the business has had enough. The owner tells the manager to clean out his desk and find employment elsewhere.

The manager’s options are slim, as he is not physically able to do manual work, and he is too proud to receive assistance. So, in order to try to win his income back, the manager hatches a clever scheme. He figures out a way to bring in a quick and substantial cash flow, perhaps even hoping to change the owner’s mind.

Without any authorization from the boss, the manager cuts deals with those who owe the owner money. He aggressively negotiates with the owner’s debtors. It’s a risky strategy, but the money rolls in.

Though we’re not told for sure, it seems that the owner is so impressed with the clever (and yet unethical) manager’s ability to bring in the cash flow that he “commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.”

Jesus then points out how lacking we Christians are by comparison to the world when it comes to being shrewd, by making friends with wealth – even unrighteous wealth – for the sake of the kingdom.

For desperate times often call for desperate measures.

When we consider the stakes, the fact that our effectiveness in proclaiming the Gospel has a direct bearing on the eternal destiny of those who come in contact with us – we should be anything other than complacent. Like the shrewd manager, we need to be brainstorming, desperately seeking how we can bring people into the kingdom before this age of grace comes to an end. Just as the threat of a loss of work would keep most of us awake at night, we should agonize over the fact that more people are not being reached with the Good News that our Lord Jesus has taken our debt of sin and paid the bill with His own blood.

For spiritually speaking, we are not strong enough to dig. There is no amount of labor that we can do to extricate ourselves from the hole we have gotten ourselves into. Not a one of us has sufficient strength or power to earn our way out of this debt – which is why we pray as our Lord Jesus taught us: “Forgive us our trespasses” – that is, our “debts” – “as we forgive those who trespass against us.”

For even as we seek the Lord’s renegotiation of our own debts, so too are we called to tear up the bills of others, and allow the Lord’s sacrifice on the cross to renegotiate the debts owed to us.

And like the dishonest manager, we too are “ashamed to beg.” And that is simply sinful pride. What choice do we have, dear brothers and sisters, but to beg, to plead “Lord, have mercy” and to go before the Owner with hat in hand: “I am heartily sorry… and sincerely repent… and I pray You of Your boundless mercy… to be gracious and merciful to me, a poor, sinful being.”

For we are all dishonest managers. We have all squandered the gifts our Lord gives us. We are all guilty of seeing our possessions as things we have earned, not as things the Lord has entrusted to us to manage for the good of His kingdom. We have all spent money foolishly when it comes to things we want, but refuse to give to the Lord from our first fruits, offerings to the Lord made out of a cheerful heart, in gratitude to Him who withheld, and withholds, nothing from us.

We are poor stewards of our time, a gift from God that marches ever forward. We allocate time to everything, work and play alike, ahead of prayer, of worship, of study, and of the giving of ourselves for the sake of the kingdom and of the proclamation of the Good News. We hardly ever consider that people may well go to hell because of our lousy stewardship with our time and our treasure.

And this, dear friends, is why our Lord tells us this parable anew. He isn’t just weaving a tale for our entertainment, or getting us hooked on a story so there can be commercial interruptions. Our Lord is teaching us about the kingdom, and especially, about ourselves. We are indeed dishonest managers, and what’s more, we’re not very good dishonest managers. We lack the shrewdness and the sense of urgency of the world’s crooks. And in this, we can learn from the dishonest of this world. For in order to survive, a crook has to keep his story straight, and he has to remember his priorities. For one slip-up can send him to prison.

Our Lord is telling us to keep our story straight, and to remember our priorities. For we can indeed gain the world and forfeit our souls. We can indeed be so preoccupied by the cares and worries of this life that the Seed of the Word of God is choked out. We are called upon to be both honest and shrewd managers, good stewards of our time and our possessions – keeping the kingdom of God first and foremost in our minds, hearts, and souls.

For the bottom line is that we cannot “serve two masters.” We “cannot serve God and money.” Money ought to serve us, and that means money ought to serve the Church. For we are the Church, and the propagation of the kingdom of God should be the top priority of the Lord’s people, of us as the Lord’s stewards and managers.

For like any employee, we re being tested and tempted on a daily basis. We can be good and faithful servants, or we can be lazy and unfaithful. We can be productive workers for our Master, or we can be worthless employees. We can, by our labor, get results for the greater good of the kingdom, or we can be so self-centered and greedy that we serve only ourselves and do the kingdom of God no good at all.

Dear friends, our Lord Jesus has done better than simply renegotiate our debt. He has liquidated it. He has torn up our bill, and paid the obligation of our sins in full. And now, as His managers, He gives us the power to show others – our families, our neighbors, our friends, and our co-workers – how they too can be relieved of debt and become members of the kingdom.

For we live in the gritty and grimy fallen world. Every dollar and every cent is tainted with sin. Even our best intentions are soiled with dishonesty, pride, and misguided priorities. And all that being said, we are still managers of the Lord’s creation. We still have been entrusted with the Word of God and with the responsibility to be “little Christs” to the world. How we labor in the Lord’s kingdom makes a difference, an eternal difference.

“One who is faithful in a very little,” says our Blessed Lord, “is also faithful in much.” Thanks be to God that He is always faithful, always calling us to repent, always beckoning us with His glorious Word, and always embracing us with His miraculous sacraments. And in light of the forgiveness He has won and earned for us by His own laborious passion, death, and resurrection, let us joyfully labor for Him and for the kingdom, presenting our very lives and treasures as a thank offering to Him who always serves God, who never serves money, who paid all of our debts on the cross, and who gives us His body and blood to eat and to drink unto eternal life.

For the desperate times of our sinful state and eternal peril impelled God to the most desperate measure of all, ransoming us “not with gold or silver, but with His holy, precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death” in order to “receive [us] into the eternal dwellings.” Amen.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.” Amen.