The Unfaithful Steward
Today's
gospel lesson is a parable about stewardship, but it is a truly bizarre parable.
There was even a discussion among some of my Facebook friends about how to preach today’s
gospel. Elizabeth Kaeton described it as, “The Worst Parable Ever,” and expressed
the difficulty as follows:
I confess I am sorely tempted to break the discipline
I was carefully taught and preach on Jeremiah or Amos, or the Epistle or even,
as I've experienced some of what at least one of my professors would describe
as "lily-livered preachers" do: The Collect (gasp!). Anything but
this wretchedly confounding gospel. Well, I guess everybody's gotta do
something while waiting for the Parousia.[1]
In
the Palestine of Jesus' time, absentee landlords were quite common. In this parable, Jesus tells his listeners
about a property owner who gets word that the servant he has placed in charge
of his affairs has been squandering his property. The landlord confronts the
steward, demanding that the books be audited.[2]
"What
will I do?" the steward wails. He's
going to lose his job, because he's as guilty as sin. He's going to be thrown out of his cushy
position. He doesn't want to have to beg for a living, and manual labor seemed
just about as bad.
Then
it comes to him. "I know what I'll
do," he thinks, "I'll go to a couple of the people who owe my master
money, I'll reduce their debt, then they will welcome me into their homes when
my master throws me out." And so,
one by one he calls the property owners debtors in. These people were like sharecroppers who
would give the property owner a portion of their produce as rent for the use of
his land. And with the stewards help,
they reduce their debts from one hundred jugs of olive oil to fifty, and from a
hundred containers of wheat to eighty.
What
does the property owner do when he finds out what the manager has done? He commends the dishonest steward for acting
so shrewdly.
This
is where it gets a little tricky. At
first glance, it looks like Jesus is telling us to be crooks. Go ahead and cheat, lie and steal in
business, as long as you're shrewd about it.
Be creative in your income taxes, as long as you don't get caught.
But
in reality, this parable is a parody.
The story is meant to be humorous, and to make its point by being
outrageous. Jesus wanted his hearers to
be caught up in the absurdity of the steward's position and to laugh at his
creative solution to his plight.
This
is not a story about business at all, but about us. About how we should take care to provide for
ourselves with an eye toward God's kingdom.
"Make friend for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that
when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes," Jesus tells
us.[3] He is not telling us to be dishonest, but to
use the things we are given in this life to further the kingdom of God. We are very wise when it comes to using our
time and talents and treasure in providing for ourselves in this world, he
seems to say, but how are we using them to enable our spiritual growth?
The
gospel lesson today is about our stewardship of the time and talent and
treasure that God has given us, and how we use those gifts. Because, remember, the key to the concept of
Christian stewardship is that all of our time on earth, all of our talent to do
things, all of the treasure we may amass, all of this comes from God, and that
we are only managing it for God.
Unfortunately,
most of us are like the steward in today's parable. We are squandering our master's property.
We
are squandering the time God gives us. Years
ago, The Anglican Digest had a short
article entitled, "How You Spent It."
If God granted you 70 years of life, the article said, you would spend
24 years sleeping, 14 years working, 8 years in amusement, 6 years at the
dinner table, 5 years in transportation, 4 years in conversation, 3+ years in
education, 3 years in reading, and 3 years watching television. The pathetic fact is, if you went to Church
every Sunday and prayed five minutes every morning and night, you would be
giving God five months of your life.
Five months out of seventy years.[4]
And
we usually don't discover how valuable and how limited our time is until it's
too late. One of my favorite lines from
the movie Grumpy Old Men is by
Burgess Meridith, when he tells his son, "You know, the first ninety
years, they go by pretty fast."
Let's not squander that first ninety years.
We
are squandering the talents which God has given us to use. Most of us are quite
ingenious at what we do for a living, and we bring to our professional careers,
our hobbies, and other endeavors close to our hearts an energy that secures our
recognition as successes in the world.
But we're rarely as energetic in our endeavors for furthering the
Kingdom of God. In today's parable, one
of the points Jesus was making was that if the disciples put as much energy
into spreading the Kingdom of God as the steward did in securing his future,
they and the world would be a much better place.
But
we are reluctant to use our talents as God intended. This reluctance is evident from the dismal
participation in most of the activities parishes engage in, whether they be for
social justice actions in our communities, or even fellowship activities with
each other. No matter what the activity,
the same faces are the ones that show up. It appears that the depth of
Christianity most of us aspire to is sitting through a Church service once or
twice a month and singing, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible
tells me so." While it is perfectly
true that Jesus loves us, this is hardly the picture of the ministering
community that our Lord and Savior calls us to be.
Finally,
we are squandering the treasure that our God has bestowed upon us. At the end of our Gospel lesson, Jesus tells
us, "No slave can serve two masters . . . You cannot serve God and
wealth." Frankly, most of us agree
with Jesus on this and have decided to serve wealth. In our rush to secure the comfortable life,
or even in our desire to secure those things which we consider the necessities
of life, we have pushed God aside.
The
standard of Christian giving has always been and will always remain the
tithe. Ten percent of our income. Gross income, not net. It is the standard to which we should all be
working toward, if we are not there already.
Yet nothing makes people squirm in the pews more. Nothing raises more resistance. Ask someone if they tithe, and they will
respond, "what I give is between me and God." That means, "No."
And
the hardest thing to understand is that the concept of giving from your
treasure is not about securing money for the work of the Church, or for the
work of some charity. We all know that
money is needed by every organization in this material world, to make payrolls,
to keep a roof over our head, but we don't give to meet these physical needs.
We
give to meet our spiritual needs.
Time and time again, when the subject of money comes up in the Gospels,
Jesus points out that money and material things can get in our way, can get
between us and the Kingdom of God.
"Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you
will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me," Jesus says to the
rich young man. When the young man heard
this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.[5]
The
good news is that today's lessons are about stewardship. The bad news is that they are also about
accountability. We don't like talking
about stewardship. Especially about
stewardship of treasure. But we really
hate talking about accountability.
But
there it is. The rich man in today's
parable calls the servant in to him, "Give me an accounting of your
management." And in one of our Old
Testament readings, we hear the prophet Amos railing against those who defraud
and who live off the poor and swearing that God will never forget any of their
deeds.[6] Accountability is central to our faith.
We
are accountable for our actions, and we are accountable for our
stewardship. May our master find us
unashamed to stand before him and give that accounting.
[1]
Elizabeth Kaeton, Facebook, 18 September 2019, 11:45 AM.
[3] Luke
16:9.
[4] Op.cit.
[5] Matthew
19:21.
[6] Amos
8:4-7.
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