"Called to Adventure" Pentecost 19C

 Saint Luke :1-4 & 24:44-53

In the second of his two part series on the adventures of Jesus and his disciples Saint Luke, whom we celebrate this day, after he describes again the ascension of Jesus puts an important question on the lips of a couple of angels: “Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky?’”1  It is a great question because that was probably what they were doing, gazing up into heaven.  

At this point they may have suffered from what the French call, l'esprit d'escalier, or in English “wit at the bottom of the stairs.”  It is that pithy comeback to a snarky comment made to you that you think of not at the moment, but when you are driving home, or two days later, or literally when you have cleaned up all the dishes and are at the bottom of the stairs heading for bed.  It is that moment when the witty rejoinder comes to you and you snap you fingers, or slap your forehead, and say to yourself, “I wish I had said that.”

Excellent scholar that Saint Luke is he records no reply except that they returned to Jerusalem where they might have replaced staring at the sky with staring at the ceiling. 

So, as the self-proclaimed master of the quick comeback to people who are being snarky, and with almost two thousand years to think about it, I’m going to begin by taking up the disciple’s cause and suggesting what they should have said to that know-it-all pair of angels.

"Why are we gazing up into heaven?  Why are we just standing here looking up into the sky?  I’ll tell you why!

“At an impulse we tied ourselves to this man Jesus and his mission.  We had three wonderful years with him and watched him do some amazing things.  He healed countless sick people!  He catered a banquet for a few thousand with provisions that were meagre at best.  He reached across boundaries and talked to people, helped people, that we would have never thought to speak to much less heap.  These were high times.

“Sure, on occasion, he upset the political and religious apple cart and called into question some long held and cherished beliefs of both state and church, but we never thought that would be enough to get him killed, crucified.

“Then, listen our two fine winged friends, he came back!  Not in spirit, not as a ghost, he came back, and we had resurrection parties.  They started when two people, dressed a lot like you two, told us he had risen. 

“Sure, he was not with us all the time like he used to be, but two members of our group met him when they sadly took a hike to Emmaus and he came to them, broke bread with them and blessed them and it was if their hearts were on fire with new life, new hope.

“Then, later that evening he showed up again!  He invited us to look at the scares in his hands and feet!  He had supper with us.  Had a little broiled fish that he seemed to enjoy a lot.  

He was in and out of our lives countless times.  Ask Thomas who couldn’t believe but now does!  Ask Peter, and the rest of the fisherman who saw him and ate breakfast with him on a beach.

“Now he’s gone ‘vanishing into the fog like the end of a dream too good to be true.’2”

The disciple’s had that “deer in the headlights” stare because they didn’t know what to do with all this and they faced a societal, political and religious landscape that was openly hostile to Jesus' message.  

Here we might be able to begin to understand them better because the landscape we face is not so much hostile but indifferent.

I can think of no better example for this than last Sunday’s sermon preached by Dr. James Keck, at Plymouth Congregational Church in Lincoln, Nebraska.  He told the story about a student who had just graduated and was struggling with what career to go into.  “At one point,’ Dr. Keck reported, he suddenly said to me. ‘I want to do what you do, but without all the religious stuff.’”3

The young man wanted to do a lot of wonderful stuff that should be commended – tutor after school, serve in a soup kitchen or overnight shelter, even build houses with Habitat for Humanity – he just didn’t want all the religious baggage that went with his good deeds.

There are so many people like this young fellow that we even have names for them.  They are the “Spiritual But Not Religious” or they may be the “Nones”. {N-O-N-E-S} who seem to be a fast-growing group.  

“In a Pew Research Study of religious participation in America ... Nones now make up 23 percent of adults, up from 16 percent in 2017.” 4

People who answer the question that way are probably our friends and neighbors.  They are some of my best friends and sometimes I enjoy their company infinitely more than of the people that I know who are churched.  They too, like my churchy friends, are moral men and woman, active in their communities, kind to children, puppies, and older people like me who need help with our coats every once and awhile.  They are not only good people, but they are fun, great fun.

The problem, the always wise and wonderful, Dr. Lillian Daniels points out in her book, I’m Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don’t Belong To, is how some church leaders reacted to the revelation of their existence, which wasn’t really a revelation at all.

“What’s wrong with these Nones?  Why aren’t they joining the church” many asked. When it was pointed out that if you are under thirty, there is a one in three chance that you’re a None, the religious leaders responded with predictable blame casting, “What’s wrong with these young people?  What’s wrong with their parents?”5

Oh yes, that will bring them back!

I’ve had people say this to me on more than one occasion.  “Where are they?  Why aren’t they here?  What’s wrong with them.” Like it is all their fault.  

In business you know you have a disaster on your hands when you start blaming the customer or potential customers.  

Once, after I was leaving another church after saying in a sermon that some of my best friends were unchurched, a member said to me as I was walking out the door, “Why don’t you get some of your unchurched friends to come here, we sure could use them.”  Never one to suffer from a lack of wit at the bottom of the stairs or at the door of a church I responded, “I think that’s your job. I’m not even a member here.”

All of us need to remember that the church of 2022 is not the church of the 1950 when, to put it in crass terms, we lived in a seller’s marker.  Now there are many choices to make both religious and secular.  

Walk around this neighborhood or any neighborhood and you will see them. The days when there were just a limited assortment of churches – Lutheran, Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, United Methodist, United Church of Christ, are long gone.  Now there are non-denominational churches, almost too many to number, and wonderful other faith traditions and communities added to the mix.

Many of us are old enough to remember when things virtually shut down on Sunday mornings. You could barely find a place to buy a bottle of milk or get a prescription refilled.  Now there are a host of options for people, and they are exercising them.  Everything from Health Clubs to Starbucks, to boozy brunches.  Not that I am against any of those things. {Especially the boozy brunches!}  But they are our competition and it’s a good thing to know what we are up against.  

Just as Saint Luke remembered in Acts the time when Paul stood on Mars Hill just a few meters from the Parthenon and said: “People of Athens! I see that in every way you are very religious.”6  And that you even have a shrine with the inscription: “to the god nobody knows.”7  Or, as President Eisenhower once really said, "In other words, our form of government has no sense unless it is founded in a deeply felt religious faith, and I don't care what it is."8

That may what the church in Saint Luke’s day and Saint Luke church in our day faces.

It may be well to think of where we are in light of the two books Saint Luke wrote. The first, Luke’s was about what Jesus did and the second, was about what his followers did because of Jesus. 

Right before Easter I heard a podcast that featured Dr. Amy-Jill Levine who holds the very unique position of being both the Professor of Jewish Studies, and Professor of New Testament Studies at Vanderbilt Divinity School.  She was asked by a United Methodist Pastor, Dr.  James D. Howell, what she believed about the resurrection, and she said: “It isn’t about whether you can catch it on a camera, but can you see what the payoff is?  I think the followers of Jesus genuinely experienced him as being alive and it changed their lives.”

“Look,” she went on, “I’ve seen Elvis twice on West End Avenue pumping gas, but it didn’t change my life.  The people who saw Jesus [the resurrected Christ] it changed their lives.”8

That’s Luke’s story.  That is the disciple’s story.  That is our story.  And we can only tell it if we let go of the past.  Stop mourning the glory days of times gone by when churches were full and all of God’s people were, as Garrison Keillor used to say, made up of “women are strong, the men are good looking, and the children above average.”9 

We can only honor all of Saint Luke’s hard work if we, like the disciples: “Don’t stand gazing into heaven.  Or, in other words, let go of that distant spot in the sky now fading from your vision. Don’t try to live off your sweet memories of the past, as though God has nothing to do in the future.”10

God had lots for them to do just as God has lots for us to do.   

Lillian Daniels said it is all about the difference between being a tourist and going on an adventure.

When you are a tourist, you approach the trip with a certain set of expectations. I want to see the Taj Mahal and get my picture taken in front of it.

When you are on an adventure you have to relinquish your expectations. If faith is an journey, you may need to accept that you may not know how this journey is going to turn out.

The early followers of Jesus may have started out as tourists. But they discovered that faith in him was a nonstop adventure. There was no playbook... No itinerary {and} when he died, they had the biggest shock of their lives.  death did not swallow him up, but he was raised from the dead. Talk about a whole new travel itinerary.

Before that they thought they knew where the journey ended. But in the resurrection, they realized that {his} death {and resurrection} might be the beginning of the biggest adventure of their lives.11

Jesus is still calling us to join him on that adventure.  It’s our turn now.  It’s our turn.  The same Holy Spirit who blew the roof off the place at Pentecost and has sustained the church through good times and bad over the centuries is with us.  And we just might need that Spirit more than ever.

So, I guess the only question then are?  Will we wait at the bottom of the stairs for just the right words to come at just the right moment?  Will we stare at the sky or at the ceiling waiting for a sign or a signal.  Or will we heed Christ’s call and, like the disciples that Saint Luke so wonderfully told us about, follow him to new adventures.

Shall we continue to follow him down paths yet to be taken, and journey’s unknown? Shall we continue to trust in his promise to always be with us even to the end of the ages?

Looks like our adventure with Christ is just beginning.  It’s a great offer!  It’s a great adventure!  Maybe we should all stick with it and see where it goes.    

________________

1. Acts 1:11a. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

2. Barbara Brown Taylor, Gospel Medicine (Cambridge, MA: Cowley Publications, 1995), 80.

3    .James Keck, Sermon, Morning Worship at First Plymouth Congregational Church in Lincoln, Nebraska. (October 9, 2022) https://www.facebook.com/FirstPlymouthChurch/videos/1038529783489785.

4. Lillian Daniels, Tired of Apologizing for a Church I Don't Belong to: Spirituality Without Stereotypes, Religion Without Ranting (New York, NY: Faithwords, 2017), 27.

5.      ibid.

6. Acts 17:22b. (NIV) [NIV=The New International Version]

7.   Acts 17:22-23. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, with Topical Concordance (NavPress, 2005).  

8. Dwight Eisenhower, “Quotes,” Eisenhower Presidential Library (Eisenhowerlibrary.gov), accessed October 14, 2022, https://www.eisenhowerlibrary.gov/eisenhowers/quotes#:~:text=%22In%20other%20words%2C%20our%20form,t%20care%20what%20it%

9. Drs. Amy-Jill Levine and James D.  Howell, “Jesus And...Holy Week,” Myers Park United Methodist Church Weekly Bible Study webcast (Charlotte, North Carolina, April 6, 2022).

10.     Garrison Keillor, “Garrison Keillor Quotes,” BrainyQuote (Xplore), accessed October 14, 2022, https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/garrison_keillor_137097. 

11. Carol Marie Noren, “Ascension: An Inside Story,” Pulpit Resource 29, no. 2 (2011): pp. 39-42.

12. Daniels, op.cit., p. 175.

Sermon preached at The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

16 October 2022

https://youtube/uB-VGJTqv34

"Little Things" - Pentecost 18

 2 Kings 5:1-3 & 7-15c

Saint Luke 17:11-19

Anyone who has had any exposure to theatre has, at least once, heard the colloquialism, "there are no small parts, only small actors."1

That is most certainly true in the case of Gavroche in the play Les Misérables. He is a small actor, with a small part, who plays a large role in moving the plot along.

Don’t worry if you didn’t recognize that name.  I had to look it up in the Playbill cast of characters.  

Gavroche is the trouble making, but kindhearted, street urchin who wanders around Paris, eats what he can find, and sleeps where he can.  Because he is so small he can move with impunity to spy on Javert, the obsessed police inspector, and the forces bent on destroying the revolution.  He is continually bringing back important information even though both friend and foe dismiss him because of his size.

At a crucial moment when inspector Javert has infiltrated the ranks of the revolutionaries it is little Gavroche who spots him, identifies him, and exposes his treachery.  After the larger-than-life inspector has given his false information, the little fellow reveals the true identity of the spy by singing: 

Good evening, dear inspector,

Lovely evening, my dear

I know this man, my friends,

His name’s inspector Javert

So don’t believe a word he says,

‘Cause none of it is true

This only goes to show

What little people can do.2

Little people, doing little things, can bring great men to their knees as Gavroche did to Javier or lead them to restoration as the unnamed little people did for a mighty commander named Naaman in today’s first reading.  

This proud and powerful man is about to be felled by a little thing.  

They didn’t know it then, but we know now that Leprosy is caused by a simple slow growing bacterium with a very long name.  Now it is manageable with medication, but for Naaman it would mean total isolation from his friends, his family, his community.  He would not only lose his position in the army but everything and everybody he held dear.

We know what that is like!  Better than ever before we understand what Naaman was facing.  

He was going to have to stay away from the people and places he loved. We know what that is like. While we had to limit our indoor gatherings to eight or ten his limit was zero unless it was with fellow lepers in his “bubble.”   

He was going to have to keep his distance. We know what that is like too. Naaman however was not only going to have to stay six feet from others it would be more like 60 feet at best.  And he would have to shout, like the lepers in the Gospel, “Tamei! Tamai!" Unclean! Unclean!” as he walked down the street to warn others that he was contagious.  We had to isolate at home.

And he didn’t just face a mask mandate, he would have to keep his whole body covered in clothes that were essentially rags.  Just think about what some would have said about that!  

His life looked bleaker than ours’s did when his was infected by something as small as a bacteria and our lives were infected by something as small as a virus that caused the whole of society to, at times, seem like it ground to a halt.

Little things can have profound effects.  It can even cause the proud and powerful to listen to the little people around them.  Naaman is about to find out what little people can do but first he must put aside his pride for an instant and listen to the voice of a slave girl.

For reasons I do not understand some verses got left out of the story.  They are important because while “little voices” can lead us in the right directions sometimes it is the voices of the powerful that can lead us astray.  The slave girl says “prophet” and the commander and his king hear “potentate.” 

Naaman goes to his king who not only sends a letter to the prophet’s king with a request for healing but includes a treasure trove of what can only be called “bribes” to convince the King of Israel to heal an enemy who just defeated him in battle.  Is it any wonder that when Naaman tells his king what the little girl had said  the king totally misunderstands the whole situation.

“Go and visit the prophet,” the {Naaman’s} king told him.   “And I’ll send a letter of introduction to the king of Israel.”

So he went off, taking with him about 750 pounds of silver, 150 pounds of gold, and ten sets of clothes. 

A big-time bribe that backfires.

Naaman delivered the letter to the king of Israel. The letter read, “When you get this letter, you’ll know that I’ve personally sent my servant Naaman to you; heal him of his skin disease.”

When the king of Israel read the letter, he was terribly upset, ripping his robe to pieces. He said, “Am I a god with the power to bring death or life that I get orders to heal this man from his disease? What’s going on here? That king’s trying to pick a fight, that’s what!”3

Leave it to the powerful to almost start a war! When the little voices get shut out terrible things start to happen.

Only a prophetic voice can stop the potential carnage and lead to healing.  

So enters God’s prophet who hears that his king is having a melt down and tells the king to just send the ailing man to him.

With the great fanfare and bluster that the powerful are so proud of Naaman shows up at the prophet’s house with horses and chariots and, no doubt, a great cloud of dust.

Elisha is having none of it. He ignores Naaman’s attempts to control the narrative through coercion or seduction. Instead, Elisha takes Naaman’s peacock presentation and raises it to the level of the divine, where a Living God needs none of his show.4

He offers a little solution, not in person but through a servant, another little person with a small voice.  “Take a bath in the Jordan” the message reads. “About seven times should do it.  You’ll be as good as new. If there is anything else call the prophet in the morning.”

The powerful man looking for a power show is not only not impressed he is furious.

“Look,” he said, “I thought at least he would come out and talk to me! I expected him to wave his hand over the leprosy and call upon the name of the Lord his God and heal me!  Aren’t the Abana River and Pharpar River of Damascus better than all the rivers of Israel put together? If it’s rivers I need, I’ll wash at home and get rid of my leprosy.” So he went away in a rage.5

What we have here is a powerful man pouting which is a recipe for disaster.

Once again it is the small voices of his servants who puts there commander on the right track to healing.  Servants who took orders and didn’t give them.  Servants who Naaman told what to do and not the other way around.  Unnamed servants who, in the grand scheme of things, were little people who were supposed to keep silent end up saving the day.

“Just do it!” is their advice perhaps being the first to utter the now famous slogan.  “Just do it! What can it hurt!  If it works, it works, and if it doesn’t it doesn’t.  Just do it! Stop fussing and fuming and give it a shot.”

There is more resignation than faith at work here.  Naaman has no more reason to believe that the waters of the Jordan would do the job than some people thought that a simple shot in the arms of enough people would return a country to normalcy. Unlike Naaman’s servants we all knew and still know, people who balked, and hesitated, and make up excuse after excuse for not getting “the jab” all because they were listening to people with political power who had no idea what they were talking about. 

Naaman listened.  He listened and we are told when he emerged from the river he looked down and saw something amazing.  The little, simple act of taking a bath gave this powerful man the biggest and the best news ever.

He had commanded large armies and because of his status roamed the halls of power but as he saw himself, perhaps reflected in the waters of the river he was emerging from, he noticed that his skin was, the Good Book tells us, “like the flesh of a little child, and he was clean.”6

A big important man became like a little child and for that he gave thanks.

Just like the Samaritan leper did with Jesus.  Another powerless outcast who serves as an example. 

With no priest to show himself to or no family and friends nearby had nowhere to go. He was not like the others who could immediately show themselves to their priest, be certified, and then go home.  This guy had only one option, so he returns to his new best friend in the world, Jesus, who not only healed him but made him whole by allowing him to return to his family, his friends, his community.  He gave thanks, a little thing, but a big thing really.

Powerful people tend to think they know everything and that they are in complete control of their lives. They think that they can order the world to give them exactly what they want and that all the little people around them are only there to do their bidding, be their servants. They put their faith in the power and get caught up in the fear of losing it. They become enslaved to their chariots, fine clothes, palaces and their bribes thinking they, and they alone, can bend the world to their will.

But to all of that this story offers a big, “no”, a big “not so fast” and reminds us that it is the small actors, the little things, that can make all the difference.  

We should know this because not more than a few years ago a small, microscopic virus entered into our world, just as a bacteria entered Naaman’s, and caused enormous havoc.  It wasn’t those in power {some of whom only added to the confusion} but doctors, and nurses, first responders and researchers, and lab technicians whose names we will never know who saved our lives and the life of the world.

It was the little people, the nameless lowly servants of God who, like the unnamed young girl enslaved to Naaman’s wife and bound to her service, remembers that there might be a prophet in her home country that saved the day.  

Or the unnamed messenger of that very same prophet who brings the general his marching orders and points him in the direction of his healing.  

Or the servants of the commander who urge their master to follow through on the advice he was given even if it didn’t come from an important person, and go down to the river and “just wash, will you?”

The little people are the heroes of Naaman’s story and ours. Today we are reminded that we all have a part to play.  In the wise words of the late Dr. Fred B. Craddock:

Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, end a war, dine with the queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake. Most likely this week will present no more than a chance to give a cup of cold water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote for a county commissioner, teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor’s cat.7

If nothing else today’s story reminds us that all of us have a part to play. It may be a small part, but we are to play it and play it well. Play it as if we were center stage at the Lyric Opera or headliners on Broadway. If we do, we just might discover that Gavroche was right and it will go a long way to show what, in the service of God, little people can do. 

________________

1. Essay Writer, “There Are No Small Parts, Only Small Actors,” literatureessaysamples.com, May 15, 2019, https://literatureessaysamples.com/there-are-no-small-parts-only-small-actors/.

2. Alain Boubide and Claude Michel Schonberg, “Les Misérables Script,” Google (Word Press, 2011),https://docs.google.com/viewera=v&pid=sites&srcid=enBzLm9yZ3xtaWNoYWVsLWNvc3RlbGxvfGd4OjYzOGEzMGE3ZmFiYTNhOGY, 70.

3. 2 Kings 5:5-7. (MESSAGE) [MESSAGE=Eugene H. Peterson, The Message: The Bible in Contemporary Language, with Topical Concordance (NavPress, 2005).

4. Rachel Wrenn, “Commentary on 2 Kings 5:1-3, 7-15C,” Working Preacher (Luther Seminary, September 9, 2022), https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-28-3/commentary-on-2-kings-51-3-7-15c-5.

5. 2 Kings 5:11-12.  (TLB) [TLB=The Living Bible.  (Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1971)]

6. 2 Kings 5:14b. (NKJB) [NKJB=The New King James Bible]

7. Fred B. Craddock, Luke. A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), 192.

Sermon preached at The Evangelical Lutheran Church of Saint Luke

9 October 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sO8MEE26Nj0

Sermon begins at 15:00

"Shrewd! Very Shrewd!" - Pentecost 15C

 

Saint Luke 16:1–13

Every night, at the conclusion of his program on MSNBC Jim Cramer, {who probably would be very surprised to hear his name mentioned in a sermon}, promises his viewers: “There is a bull market out there somewhere and I am going to find it just for you.”

He had a little trouble saying this last Tuesday night when the stock market had its worse day since 2020.  The sea of red across most major indexes may have caused some investors to panic.  They may have looked at their portfolios and began to wonder what they should buy, sell, or hold.  They may have made the mistake of looking at their 401k online summary and come to the conclusion that they were going to spend the rest of their lives living in a shoe.  Or, they may have decided to just throw in the towel, sell it all, and put their money in a mattress.

Cramer and his cohorts did none of this after Tuesday’s brutal day of trading.  On Wednesday morning they got up and went back to work.  They may have been licking their wounds from their losses but still the next day they were back to the business of making money.  

I am sure that many brokers were calling their clients and telling them that there were some stocks that were “on sale” today at prices that are far less than they were yesterday.  “That stock you have been looking at for weeks and thinking was a little overpriced” they might have said.  “Well, it got knocked around quite a bit yesterday and is now selling at a price that you can afford.  It may never be this cheap again.  How many shares can I put you down for?” 

Cramer and his clan are not being crooks they are being “shrewd.”  And the truth is, men and women, we want them to be!  

While we may bemoan the fact that there is a statue of a bull on the corner of Wall and Broad in New York we want that bull to take our retirement funds, and our pension funds, and our stock portfolios, and run with them as far as he can as fast as he can.  We want whoever is managing our money to be shrewd.  

I attended two bible studies this week and have read more than a few commentaries on this passage and almost everybody, scholar and students alike, are confused.  They can’t get over the fact that Jesus has made a crook the hero of this parable.  They can’t get over the fact that the manager (Who had better not represent God!) heaps praise on this charlatan.  They can’t get over all of this because they can’t admit that deep down in their heart of hearts there is a grudging admiration for this steward who is shrewd, really shrewd.

In the beginning of Jesus’ confusing little story, he doesn’t look so shrewd.  He looks more like a crook who got caught.

At this point we are right with the master in firing the guy.  We know all about him and his kind.   They are the ones who overinflate the earnings of their companies.  They make the profits seem bigger and the loses smaller than they really are.  When tax-time comes around their returns could win the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. They have no second thoughts about “ginning the books.”

At first there are only rumors for the wayward manager.  Who knows where these charges are coming from but then the audit committee is called in.  They are going to try to add up figures that don’t add up.  These outsiders will try to reconcile books that cannot be reconciled no matter what kinds of Voodoo accounting practices are used.  Instead of rolling in dough they will find out that the company is actually drowning in debt.

The guy is in big trouble, and he knows it.  He also knows his limitations.  

In my favorite line is all of scripture he sums up his skills perfectly when he says of himself: “I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.”1  He frankly and honestly assesses his skills and determines that he doesn’t have any. All he has is left is his shrewdness and he puts that to work full bore. 

 I don’t know about you, but I am beginning to like this guy.  He could have stood around staring at his shoes all day and wondering what is going to happen to him but instead he goes to work with the only skill he has left – his ability to be, let’s just call him this to be polite, a creative accountant.  It is what got him into this mess perhaps it can get him out.  So, the shrewd guy gets to work.

“Ah, I know what I’ll do so that when I lose my position people will welcome me into their homes!"2  he says to himself. While money may not be able to, in the words of the Beatles, “buy him love” it might be able to find him a warm place to stay on a cold night.

Up until now when he has called one of his master’s debtors into his office, he has been the bearer of bad tidings.  Now he is Mr. Good News.

“Listen!” he says to the first.  “We’ve been going over the accounts and there has been some mistake.” You can feel the tension rising.   “It says here you owe $100,000 but I think someone has programmed in too many zeros.  It can’t be that much!  Let’s make it $50,000.”  The tension is gone as suddenly there are handshakes all around as he asks, almost as an aside, “By-the-way, do you still have that coach house out back of your place that you are not using?”

The next guy comes in and it is the same story.  “I’ve been looking over your accounts and that statement we sent you is all wrong.  That $50,000 you owe us should only read $25,000.  That’s it!  That’s all you owe!  Look for me at the pub and buy me a drink.  Winks and nods this time because everybody knows what is going on.

So it goes as one by one people come in and find their debts being magically reduced.  Before long the whole town owes the conniving manager a favor.  His shrewdness is fast becoming the stuff of legend.

The unseemly steward is handling his misfortune by spreading good fortune all around and thus making certain that, at the end of the day, if he hasn’t made a few real friends at least he’ll have more than a few people who will owe him big time.  This guy is shrewd, very shrewd.

From little on we have been told that parables are earthly stories that have a heavenly meaning but this one seems to have a lot of ungodliness thrown in.  While we may expect a good shepherd carrying a sheep home, a woman searching for a lost coin, or any other figure from any other of Jesus’ parables depicted in a stained-glass window we will probably never see this guy leaning over his desk and with a sly look saying, “Let’s make a deal.” 

We expect that when the rich man found out what his manager was doing the police would be called, a grand jury would be impaneled, and the manager would be indicted.  There would be handcuffs for the man and maybe even a perp-walk but, much to our amazement, this isn’t what happens at all.  Proving once again that Jesus always shrewdly surprises us.

When the manager is finally called on the carpet, he discovers that his boss has rolled out a red one.

Dr. William H. Willimon envisions the conversation between the man and his boss going something like this:  

“You, you business genius you!  I wish all these priggish sons-of-light in this company showed as much individual initiative, worldly wisdom and commercial creativity!  You are one shrewd operator.  I’m moving you up to the front office.”3

Why was the manager so effusive in his praise?  Listen to me very carefully now otherwise you are going to miss something very important.

Those people downstream who were receiving the write-off didn’t know who it was coming from.  We know it was the steward, but they didn’t.  For all they knew he was acting at the behest of the boss.  So, the rich guy got credit too.

All of a sudden, as he walked around town where once there were scowls now there were smiles.  Now, when he strolled down the street instead of hiding from him people were coming up to him to thank him for his kindness. 

No wonder he was so positive toward his crafty manager!  The rich man had gone from being a miserly pariah to being the “toast of the town.”  It cost him a ton of money but the goodwill he received in return might have proved to be worth it.

The people benefited, his boss benefited, and the steward benefited because he got off with a commendation rather than incarceration. 

“What!” we good God fearing, law-abiding church people shriek!

"Wait Jesus!  We’ve been life-long Christians trying to follow you as best we can from our youth.  We’ve sat through more boring sermons and Sunday school lessons than you can count.  We’ve been honest!  We’ve been caring!  We’ve been good!  Now you are praising this shrewd charlatan! What’s going on here Jesus?

We good, God-fearing folk misunderstand this parable because we want it to be a good, god-fearing story about money.  It isn’t.  It is about something more and what this something-moreness is can be found in the concluding sentence.  J.B. Phillips paraphrases it this way: “For the children of this world are considerably more shrewd in dealing with their contemporaries than the children of light.”4

Dr.  Thomas G.  Long said:

What Jesus wanted them—and us—to get out of this story [is that he wished] the people of God . . .  were as shrewd for the gospel as the wheeler-dealers out there in the world are shrewd for themselves.  In other words, there are people out there in the culture who get up every morning scheming for a buck, focusing every ounce of energy on feathering their nests, working in overdrive to save themselves and to scramble to the top of the heap.  "I wish God's people," Jesus says, "would be just as focused and energetic."5

We are the “children of light!”  We are the ones who have been redeemed by the Holy Cross of Christ that we celebrate this Sunday and every Sunday.  We have received the “true riches” by that very same cross and what Jesus is telling us is that we are to be as excited about that as we are about everything else.  

We are to be as excited as our broker is about selling stocks.  We are to as excited as a used car salesperson is about selling us a car.  We are to be as excited as a Bears fan after the first win of the season and any baseball fan is over a come from behind walk-off home run. We are to be as excited as the shrewd steward in today’s parable is about saving his skin.  We are to more excited about the Gospel than anything else in the world.

The reason so many are confused by this parable is that they think it is all about money and they are justifiably turned off by Jesus turning someone we would consider to be a shrewd little crook and turning him into a hero.  In the parable money is only a tool.  Money here is only a literary device.

What is key to understanding is to watch how the steward reacts.  He doesn’t just stand there waiting for the bottom to completely fall out.  He takes action!  He uses the only thing he knows how to use for not only his own benefit but for the benefit of his boss and even the entire community.

I think the basic point is that if God can use and praise someone who is a shrewd and shady as this cunning manager God can certainly use you and me.  God can even teach us something from him.

The steward takes the only thing he knows how to use and uses it.  All Jesus may be asking of us is that we do the same.  

What are the one, two or three things we do really, really well?  What are the tools in our toolbox that can be used to God’s glory?  What are the gifts we have been given?

To paraphrase Jim Cramer: “There is world full of hurting people out there and it is up to us find them.”

Find those people.  Use our gifts.  Give it everything we have! 

And in the end, we just might hear words that we never thought we would ever hear from the lips of our Lord: “Shrewd!  Very Shrewd!”

________________

1.  St. Luke 16:3c.  (NRSV) [NRSV=The New Revised Standard Version]

2.  St. Like 16:3-4 (PHILLIPS) [J. B. Phillips, The New Testament in Modern English.  (London: HarperCollins, 2000.)]

3. William H.Willimon,  “Dirty Rotten Scoundrels.” Pulpit Resource. vol. 41, no. 3 (2013): 49–52.

4.    St. Luke 16:8. (PHILLIPS)

5. Thomas G. Long, “Making Friends,” Journal of Preachers (University of Rochester, May 27, 2007), http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~tim/study/MakingFriends, 53.

Sermon preached at the Evangelical Lutheran Church of St. Luke

18 September 2022

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NSQpRUHcqNM&t=1443s