Sermon: Trinity 9 – 2023

30 July 2023

Text: Luke 16:1-13 (2 Sam 22:26-34, 1 Cor 10:6-13)

In the name of + Jesus.  Amen.

Our Old Testament reading was written by King David as a song celebrating how God delivered him from King Saul.  And David reflects on how God seems to us poor, miserable sinners: “With the merciful you show yourself merciful; with the blameless man you show yourself blameless; with the purified you deal purely, and with the crooked you make yourself seem tortuous.”

So in a way, how we see God is a reflection of how we are.  I recently heard a Christian say that everything that is fun is considered to be a sin.  And that is more a reflection of the person saying it than it is of God.  I also hear atheists claim that God is cruel – which is a strange thing for an atheist to say – even as this same atheist quotes Scripture to try to tell Christians to change and be more like the atheist. 

Yes, indeed, the way we see God is often how we ourselves are.  In other words, we sinners make God in our own image – and we have a lot to complain about.  So if you are angry with God, you’re probably angry at yourself.  If you think God is unfair, you might want to see how you are, in fact, being unfair.  Apparently Dr. Luther once said that we should “let God be God.”  And that is what faith is, dear friends: to see things as they are, and to trust that God’s will is being done – even in our fallen world.  “All I commit to Thy Fatherly hand,” as we sing with the hymnwriter.

God understands this character flaw that we all have according to our sinful nature: that we want to treat God as one of us.  And so, in order to save us, God actually does become one of us: “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us.”  And we see David’s observations in action.  The hypocrites accused Jesus of hypocrisy.  The gluttons and the drunks accused Jesus of their own sins.  The people who manipulated God’s commandments accused Jesus of that very thing.  The power-mad accused Jesus of being a false king.  Liars accused Jesus of deception.  Those who tried to cast out demons by means of demons accused Jesus of casting out demons by means of demons.  As God in the flesh, Jesus becomes an even clearer mirror of our own sinfulness.  We project sin upon the sinless one.  And God projects our sins and our guilt upon Jesus, so that the Father sees us as His Son really is: the Blameless sees us as blameless.

In other words, God sees Jesus as a sinner in order to save us sinners.  And we who are being saved, we whose sinful hearts have been declared blameless, we, in turn, see Jesus as blameless.  And this, dear friends, explains why the scribes and Pharisees saw Jesus as a crook, while the ones who were dismissed as sinners saw Jesus as merciful.  If you don’t think you need a merciful God, you won’t see God as merciful.  But if you know that you are in need of mercy, you will see God’s mercy in Jesus.

And this may help explain why Jesus teaches us about God’s kingdom by means of a story in which the hero is a crook.

In this Parable of the Dishonest Manager, Jesus introduces us to a man who is about to be fired for being “wasteful” with the boss’s money.  Managers are called to be good stewards, but this guy was only doing the job to serve himself.  Finally, his crooked ways caught up to him, and he was being let go.  And so, being the crook that he is, he cheats his boss even more.  He changes the contracts of the boss’s clients to forgive their debt.  He had no right to do it, but he figured that after he was fired, he could call in favors from the people he “helped,” and maybe land on his feet.  Of course, this is how a crooked person thinks.  He doesn’t act with honor, but is always looking to improve his own situation.  The boss looks at the audacity – the shrewdness of the dishonest manager – and he is amazed at how bold he is. 

And this is our Lord’s lesson: not that we should be dishonest, but that we should be shrewd.  Jesus says, “The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.”  The dishonest manager was a crook, but we can learn a lesson from how clever he is, how he is willing to act boldly and take risks in order to get what he wants.

But we Christians often don’t even know what we want.  Do we consider God unfair because we want to sin?  Do we get angry at God because He doesn’t just do what we want Him to do?  Do we see God as tortuous because we ourselves are crooked?  What if we were to realign our wants with what God wants.  For God wants all men to be saved.  God wants the Good News of Jesus Christ to go out among all nations.  God wants all of us to live in harmony with Him and with one another.  God wants you to hear His Word, to be forgiven, to receive the Lord’s Supper week after week, and for you to see Him as merciful and blameless – and as you do, you will be increasingly merciful and blameless yourself.

God wants you to see Jesus the way grateful, forgiven sinners saw Him in the Gospels: as a lifeline, as a second chance, as your only hope in a crooked generation, in a world in which God is seen as unfair.  And in taking flesh and dwelling among us, in dying for us on the cross, in shedding His blood as a sacrificial offering for us, and in sharing His body and blood with us, Jesus is willing to become sin for us.  And God the Father sees Jesus bearing our sins, and accepts that pure offering on our behalf.  He sees us as blameless.  He sees us as righteous.  And He treats us mercifully.

And this, dear friends, is why we can pursue the good of God’s kingdom with the same shrewdness as our dishonest manager – taking risks and making the kingdom of God our priority.  Jesus teaches us to make friends in high places – even in matters of money.  That is being a good steward for the sake of God’s kingdom.  The dishonest manager’s problem was not his boldness, his audacity, his shrewdness – but rather his dishonestly, his love of money to serve himself.  And this is a second lesson from this story: “No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve God and money.”

So let us be shrewd like the dishonest manager, but let us serve God rather than our own wants.  Let us not serve money, but make money the servant of God.  Let us be even more shrewd than the sons of this world, and let us see God for what and who He is: merciful, blameless, one who saves us for the sake of love, the one who is shrewd in dealing with the devil, the world, and our sinful nature.

So let us see God as “faithful,” as St. Paul teaches us.  He warns us not to imitate the wickedness of the Israelites in the desert, but rather, to look upon God knowing that He isn’t here to stifle our fun or to be tortuous, but rather to be faithful in His mission to save us, that He will provide a means of escape against all temptations.  And in seeing Him as faithful, He also sees us as faithful.

And as King David sang, so let us confess: 

For you are my lamp, O Lord,
    and my God lightens my darkness.
For by you I can run against a troop,
    and by my God I can leap over a wall.
This God—his way is perfect;
    the word of the Lord proves true;
    he is a shield for all those who take refuge in him.

 “For who is God, but the Lord?
    And who is a rock, except our God?
This God is my strong refuge
    and has made my way blameless.
He made my feet like the feet of a deer
    and set me secure on the heights.”

Amen.

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