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Sermon – Genesis 12.1-4a, L2, YA, March 1, 2026

15 Wednesday Apr 2026

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We’ve been talking a lot about college in our house.  I recalled my own experience of that first year of college with my older daughter recently.  I was so ready to leave home and start my “adult” life, I was beyond thrilled to be able see Duke basketball games in person, I was eager to start my studies so that I could take on that big job, and I knew I would have a ton of fun.  As I packed my bags, I felt like the world was full of promise and hope and I just knew I was going to have an awesome college career.  In many ways, my college experience was one of the best experiences of my life – one where I learned so much more than I expected, I made lifelong friends, I experienced my first sense of call to ministry, and I did in fact enjoy many a basketball game.  But that first year of college was nothing like the picture looking back now.  I had an awful freshman roommate experience, I struggled with the rigor of classes at first, I had a hard time finding a group of friends I really liked, there were multiple things I either tried out for our wanted to be invited into that I was not, and there were times that I wondered what in the world I was doing there.

As I listened to our Old Testament lesson today, I wondered how much Abram felt the same way about his own journey.  The very short passage from Genesis today says, “The Lord said to Abram, ‘Go from your country and your kindred and your father’s house to the land that I will show you.  I will make of you a great nation, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.  I will bless those who bless you, and the one who curses you I will curse; and in you all the families of the earth shall be blessed.’”  At first glance, Abram’s invitation sounds awesome!  He is invited on a journey with God and he is promised God will bless him, will give him plenteous offspring and power, and he will essentially be famous.  Who wouldn’t want to pack up their earthly belongings and hit the road with that kind of invitation?  The upcoming journey sounds like one full of promise, hope, and abundant joy.

Of course, there are a few slight indicators of how hard this journey might actually be.  First God tells Abram to leave his country, his kindred, and his father’s house – all without a map of where they will be going.  Scholar Carol Newsome reminds us, “In traditional societies the kin group is the source of identity, economic benefit, security, and protection.  To leave such a fundamental social network is to put a great deal at risk.”[i]  And then there is the text we do not read today.  In the verses immediately preceding this text, we are told that Abram’s father has just died.  We all know what the death of a parent can do to a person, and can at least imagine the intense grief Abram is working under when he says yes to God.  And the text immediately after where we stop tells us that Abram is about 75 years old at this point.  So, a man well beyond the prime of life, who is freshly experiencing grief, who has probably long since lost hope of bearing any children should be able to guess that this journey will not be all roses and rainbows.

In fact, we know that the journey is not as hope-filled as our lesson makes the journey out to be today.  This man whom God says will be blessed and be great hits all kinds of bumps along the way.  If you remember, Abram passes off his wife as his sister several times to avoid danger to himself.  When he still does not have any offspring, Sarai eventually convinces him to sleep with her handmaiden Hagar.  Though Hagar bears him a son, Abram eventually casts Hagar and Ishmael out into the wilderness when his wife Sarai gets jealous.  And of course, we cannot forget that Abram is also forced to take his one son by Sarai, Isaac, up on a mountain to be sacrificed – believing all along that God intends for Abram to kill his only heir.  Sounds like a real journey of blessing, right?

That is the funny thing about journeys.  We are not often promised that our journeys will be blessed.  But even when we hope that they will be blessed, the blessing never comes immediately and is often masked by long intervals of pain and suffering.  We have lived that life here at Hickory Neck.  Almost three hundred years ago, people from Williamsburg were told, “Go.  Go from the conveniences of town and settle in a rural, farmland that I will show you.  I will make of you a great church, and I will bless you, and make your name great, so that you will be a blessing.”  At least, that’s how our histories of Hickory Neck read.  We too were a people of hope and expectation – at least until a certain war broke out and our side lost.  The building had its own adventure with students, residents, and injured soldiers.  And then, over 100 years ago, the dream emerged again.  We took a stab at the dream:  first with a small group of families, and then more and more friends, and slowly strangers gathering.  We had lots of clergy – some staying longer than others – some vicars, some rectors, some associates, and deacons.  We built buildings, bought more land.  We experienced church growth and church decline, budget surpluses and budget deficits.  We welcomed new ministries, a school, and joined the digital world.  When God said, “Go,” who would have ever guessed the journey would play out the way the journey has.

Sometimes our Lenten journeys have that same feel.  We fill ourselves with pancakes, and then the next day, kneel with resolve to take on some discipline.  We look forward to the blessings of Lent – the intimacy with God the journey will bring, the learning will we do, the peace we will gain, or even the couple of pounds we might lose.  And when we hear a story like the Old Testament lesson today, we feel pumped up and ready for an exciting journey.  We may even imagine God making similar promises to us:  You will be blessed in this Lenten journey.  And yet, if we think back to any Lent in the past, we might remember how difficult our discipline became by week four or five.  We might remember how that cool discipline we chose did not really turn out to be as great as we imagined.  And depending on how stable we were at the time, that sense of failure could have brought more of a sense of curse than blessing.

How do we know that blessing awaits and what do we do in the meantime?  What do we do when those days come – because they will – when we feel discouraged and lose that sense of promise and hope that God gives today?  If we look to Abram, we see that our only option is to go – to keep putting one foot in front of the other.  The lesson today says, “So Abram went, as the Lord had told him.”  The journey for Abram is risky, full of potholes, and ultimately full of some wild twists that might have turned Abram back at any point.  And yet, “Abram went.”  We are lucky enough to know that Abram becomes Abraham – the man that would eventually become a father of entire people – in fact of several faith traditions.  But Abraham never got to see the fullness of that blessing.  His life was more one of blessing in hindsight, not really an everyday blessing-fest.

In some ways, that is all we can do too.  God constantly calls us into a journey – whether during Lent or in whole phases of life.  God promises to bless us and love us along the way.  But we know the journey will be hard at times, and leave us feeling discouraged.  And when that happens, all we can do is put one foot in front of the other, and keep on going.  Of course, we have each other along the way, much like Abram had Lot.  In fact, the last words of today’s lesson are, “and Lot went with him.”  So, whether you are in that blessed state of bliss, or you are already struggling in your steps, God still tells you to go.  Our response is difficult, intimidating, and profound, but also extremely simple.  We go, knowing the journey will be blessed.  We go, knowing friends will journey with us.  We go, knowing God is with us.  We go.  Amen.

[i] Carol A. Newsom, “Exegetical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. A., Vol. 2 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 53.

On Delight and Sabbatical…

06 Tuesday Jun 2023

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Photo credit: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-you-need-help-schedule-sabbatical-asap-kadi-cole-rn-ms/

Toward the end of my second week of sabbatical, it dawned on me what a different space sabbatical creates from vacation.  The beginning is quite similar:  a flurry of activity, trying to tie up loose ends, ensuring all systems and coverage are in place, and maybe, clearing off your desk.  But at the end of the second week of sabbatical, I noticed a distinction from vacation.  Usually at the end of vacation, even a two-week vacation, tension in my body begins to return.  The wheels in my mind start to churn, even if I know they shouldn’t.  “Work mode” creeps into vacation mode and spoils any deep relaxation I have established.  I was delighted to realize that creep is not happening as I enter week three of sabbatical.

Part of my delight in this realization is how restorative these last two weeks have been.  It’s been such a joy to slow down and reconnect with God, with my family, and with friends.  When I was on retreat at the monastery, I turned off the notifications on my phone, and I was amazed at how much tension released from my body.  In times of quiet, I have been able to stop talking so much, and be more focused on listening:  to God, to my family, to those around me.  And in the differently paced time of sabbatical, I am finding so much love:  finding “space” to remember how powerfully life-giving the loving relationships are in my life.

I am not likely to have twelve weeks of sabbatical again for at least another seven years, which has left me wondering how to hold on to moments of sabbatical time in “real life.”  How might I find harmony between my natural full-speed self and my intentional sabbatical self?  It is my hope in the coming weeks to learn that harmonic practice.  I would love to hear what tricks you have developed for that harmony in your own life!

On Finding Family…

23 Thursday Apr 2020

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Families are a funny thing.  We are born into them, and have no choice about their makeup.  Some of us are blessed with large or small families that nurture and care for us.  Some us are born into hurtful, abusive families.  And some of us navigate our way as we age, realizing who in our immediate and extended family build us up, and who we can minimize time with or avoid altogether because they do not know how to love us.  As we age, we redefine family – perhaps with friends and lovers who love us better than the family members we were born into, or perhaps with groups of people who understand us and create a sense of “home.”

For some of us, that group is Church.  Now I know churches have been some of the worst offenders – places of pain, abuse, or just meanness.  But Church can also be the family you choose – the place where you are loved unconditionally, feel a sense of belonging, and discover a sense of purpose and meaning.  Church is the place where an unrelated elder can offer care and wisdom you have longed for, where a child teaches you what joy, laughter, and love feel like, and where a once (and maybe still) stranger can pray for you in ways that reaches your soul like never before.  The people of Church can be the vehicle through which we experience the unconditional love of Christ.

What has struck me about this time of separation is how much the separation has made it easier for us to invite people into that family of Church.  Whether a neighbor sharing about their seriously ill parent leads us to invite them to join us for online prayers; whether a friend is struggling with their children and finds our invitation to enjoy online Godly Play or accessible teaching materials; or whether someone who has not been able to step foot on a church property feels less threatened by a Sunday online worship service – we are finding invitation to be a much more organic, genuine experience – because we need that sense of family, we need that love of Christ.

But what has struck me even more deeply has been the shifting dynamic within our Church “family.”  Instead of inviting people “in” to the church, this has been a beautiful time of us being invited “out” – finding how much malleability our family has.  Invitation during this time has not simply been about inviting people into “the family” so that they can experience the blessings we have, but has also been about inviting people into the family because our family is not complete – there are people we did not even know could make us feel whole who we are meeting because Church looks so different right now.  That kind of role reversal can create a sense of imbalance and vulnerability – but it can also create a richer sense of family and loving community.  In our separation from the body of Christ, we are learning just how vast the body of Christ really is.  We may not have been looking for it, or even realized we needed it, but I am grateful for the ways this crisis is growing our family, and expanding the ways we can experience Christ’s love.

Sermon – Luke 16.1-13, P20, YC, September 18, 2016

21 Wednesday Sep 2016

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Often when we talk about Jesus, we marvel at his parables, and we encourage each other to follow his teachings.  We ask questions like, “What would Jesus do?” as if the answers are obvious.  We describe Jesus as illuminating God, helping us to understand God in an incarnate way.  We even say that all things necessary for salvation are found in Holy Scripture.  And for the most part, all of those things are true – until we get to today’s parable.  Most of us listen to the lesson for today and can only say, “Wait….what?”

Here’s the problem.  Unlike many of Jesus’ parables and sayings, most of us come away from this one completely confused.  Jesus starts off simply enough.  A rich man has a manger, or steward, and the manager is accused of squandering the master’s property.  The master threatens to fire the manager, and so the manager goes off and talks to all the debtors of his master.  Knowing he is about to be fired, the steward strikes deals with the debtors, decreasing their debts, in the hopes of making some friends who will feel indebted to him and may take him in once he is fired.  But what happens next is where the parable gets confusing.  When the master finds out what the steward has done, instead of being angry, he commends the manager for being shrewd.  And to top off this odd response, Jesus completes this whole parable with an instruction that all of us should be like the shrewd manager, making friends by means of dishonest wealth.  Jesus concludes the story by telling us that no one can serve God and wealth.

Confused yet?  You are in good company!  Even most scholars disagree about what the parable is trying to do.  Though we all might understand the part about our loyalties being torn between God and money, the parable hardly helps us get there.  The manager is a schemer – he is about to be fired because he has mismanaged things.  But instead of righting the situation with his master, he confesses that he is both lazy and proud.  He sneakily makes deals with the master’s debtors in the hopes that the debtors will see him as an ally and will help take care of him when he is fired.  But what is most confusing about the whole story is that Jesus says we should go and do likewise.

What might be helpful in getting our heads around Jesus’ strange parable is to understand the economics of “Roman-occupied Galilee in the first century.  Rich landlords and rulers were loan-sharks, using exorbitant interest rates to amass more land and to disinherit peasants of their family land, in direct violation of biblical covenantal law.  The rich man … along with his steward or debt collector, were both exploiting desperate peasants.”  Wealthy landlords of the day would hide interest charges in the money owed by the peasants.  According to scholars, someone like the wealthy steward could be charging the average peasant anywhere from 25-50% for the landlord, an additional cut for the himself, and then a Roman tax on top of all that.[i]

Now before we get too self-righteous about the injustice of the Roman economic system, we have to remember the economic system we operate under today.  Think about modern college students, who not only attend colleges with soaring tuitions, but also are being offered student loans with higher interest rates that ever before.  Add on top of that a weak economy and you see our young people being buried under unfair debt.  Or think about predatory payday loans.  Those scraping by to make ends meet start slipping behind.  Bills are due and they do not have enough to make ends meet, so they get lured in by the immediacy of a pay-day loan.  But by the time all is said and done, they lose more of their paychecks to the interest charged by loan sharks than if they had just kept their money.  And just in case we think we can get away with blaming student loan and payday lenders, we cannot forget our own country’s lending policies with impoverished countries.  Leaders of third world countries agree to harshly austere loans we make, but the poor of the country end up bearing the brunt of the burden.  In fact, “the Lutheran World Federation calls oppressive debt terms imposed on Honduras and other Latin American countries ‘illegitimate debt’ and likens such debt itself to ‘violence,’ because of its crushing effects on people’s futures.”[ii]  Though we may not have everyday contact with stewards or managers, their economic system is more familiar than we may realize.

What is unclear about the steward’s actions is how he is able to forgive some of the debtors’ debts.  In forgiving the debts of the debtors, the manager may have been forgiving his own cut of the interest being charged.  In that way, his actions seem a bit more noble.  Obviously, he is cutting out his own salary, but he is doing so in a way that seems to, at least outwardly, condemn the system.  Or, the steward could have been eliminating all the hidden and prohibited interest in the contracts.[iii]  This would have been a bolder move, as he would have been denying the master his typical amount due.  But because he is enforcing Jewish laws around interest, he would have ingratiated himself to the local Jewish peasants.   This is why the steward may receive commendations from the landlord and Jesus – not because he is noble per se, but because he manipulates the unjust system to curry favor with his neighbors – the very ones who might lend him a hand when he is fired for doing something supposedly just.[iv]  Whatever the self-interest of the steward is, what he is able to do, and perhaps why his master calls him shrewd, is use an unjust system against itself.  Just or not, the steward is able to see that the power of mutuality, of relationship, is the better bedfellow than the unjust economic system of the day.

One of my favorite classes in college was a class called “Social Dance.”  We spent the semester learning the Fox Trot, Waltz, Tango, Cha-Cha, and Swing.  My class happened to have more men than women, so I never had to sit out a dance.  I just switched from partner to partner, trying to adjust as each lead learned the steps.  There were many hard lessons in that class, not least of which was learning how to let the man lead.  But the hardest lesson was learning that no matter what dance we were doing, and no matter how intertwined our bodies were, my frame was a vital component to the dance.  Even in a dance like the Tango, where bodies seem to be intertwined, each partner is holding on to their frame, protecting their space.   I was fascinated to see how two bodies could function in such unison, looking like one unit, and yet, be two differentiated, separate units.

As I studied our gospel lesson this week, I wondered if Jesus’ lesson about wealth is not unlike a couple dancing the Tango.  Living in the world that we do, there is no way for us to escape the dancing partner of wealth.  Given that wealth has the power to corrupt, we will always need to keep our frame in place – keeping the dance going in unison, but never letting ourselves forget to be differentiated from dishonest wealth.  Though the steward seems unseemly and self-interested, he shows us an intricate tango with wealth – how to manipulate wealth so that wealth only hurts itself, not those most in need.

The way that we keep that firm frame is by being in relationship – by making friends as Jesus tells us.[v]  When we invest in friendships (not just friendships with people we like, but kingdom friendships[vi] – the kind of relationships that are unexpected, but feed us more than any wealth can), then wealth begins to lose its power to weaken our frame.  Kingdom friendships are those friendships with people at church or in the world with whom you thought you would never have anything in common.  Kingdom friendships are those relationships you develop with those who are different – either socioeconomically, racially, or ethnically.   Kingdom friendships are those relationships that develop when you realize that despite the fact that you are trying to help someone else, they are actually helping you.  The steward may have made kingdom friendships out self-interest, but the results are the same.  He realizes once he sees the humanity in those he is oppressing – once he makes kingdom friendships, the wealth he is pursuing no longer matters.  That is what Jesus invites us into today – that is how Jesus knows that we can hold onto our frame when dealing with the master of wealth.  Jesus invites us to nurture our kingdom friendships because when we nurture those friendships, we strengthen our sense of self, ensuring our frame never slips in our tango with wealth.  Amen.

[i] Barbara Rossing, “Commentary on Luke 16:1-13,” September 18, 2016, as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2982 on September 14, 2016.

[ii] Rossing.

[iii] Rossing.

[iv] G. Penny Nixon, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. C, Vol. 4 (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2010), 95.

[v] David Lose, “Pentecost 18C:  Wealth and Relationships,” September 14, 2016, as found at http://www.davidlose.net/2016/09/pentecost-18-c-wealth-and-relationships/ on September 15, 2016.

[vi] Thomas Long, “Making Friends,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 30, no. 4, Pentecost 2007, 57.

Sermon – John 15.9-17, E6, YB, May 10, 2015

20 Wednesday May 2015

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One of my favorite television shows was a show called Gilmore Girls.  Gilmore Girls captured the story of the quirky relationship between a single-mom and her teenage daughter, and the funny adventures that happened to them in their small town.  One of my favorite scenes from that show was an episode in which the daughter was celebrating her birthday.  First thing that morning, the mother tiptoed into her daughter’s room, snuggled in her bed, and began her yearly ritual of retelling her birth story.  “Once upon a time, a long time ago, a scared, pregnant woman entered the hospital with contractions.”  Based on the way the story begins and the tone in the mom’s voice, the viewers all think this is going to be a tender moment between mother and child, where the mom will describe the way her heart filled with joy when she looked into her daughter’s eyes.  Instead, the mother proceeds to tell the gory, painful story in graphic detail, basically intimating that the daughter should feel indebted to her mother for the great burden of her birth, and every year the child should celebrate the work her mother did to birth her, instead of the mother needing to joyfully celebrate the daughter.

The audience chuckles at the scene because we all know that mother.  This is the mother who says, “I was in labor for 60 hours with you…the least you could do is…”  Or the mother who says, “Oh you think that is hard?  Try giving birth naturally to a nine-pound baby and then tell me what hard is!!”  This kind of guilt-based love never really feels like love.  The response guilt-based love gets is something done out of obligation, not out of joy or devotion.

The funny thing is that in many ways, that guilt-based love is what we hear from Jesus in our gospel lesson today.  Jesus says, “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.  No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.”  When I think about Jesus, I do not think of him as a coercive parent.  And yet, his language, especially about his death and resurrection can sound exactly like that.  You can almost hear the nagging parent, “I hung on a cross until midday and died for your sins.  The least you could do is love one another as I loved you!!”  And what is so frustrating is that there is no comeback line to that logic.  There is no way for us to come back to Jesus and argue, “Well, that was a different time period.  If you had lived today, that would not have happened.”  Or, “But your death wasn’t all that bad, and you did rise again, so really, we don’t need to feel that guilty because your death was a necessary evil.”  Those whining excuses do not hold water, and we are left manipulated into a sense of obligation, because, really, who can argue with Jesus?  He did die for our sins, and there is no way to repay him.

When we think about our faith, more often than not the lessons we learn are guilt-based.  Even our most basic “Golden Rule:  Do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” is a lesson based on guilt.  When we are reminded of that rule, and we think about how we feel when someone hurts us, we guiltily stop our negative behavior.  But the guilt is not limited to our faith.  Our behavior in friendships is often dictated by guilt and obligation.  She always buys me a gift for Christmas, so I should buy her a gift too – even when we know neither of us needs gifts.  They had us over for dinner and served nice wine, so now we need to invite them to our place and pick up a similar vintage.  He gave party favors at his party, so we need to give party favors at our party too.  We get so caught up in the obligations of life that we lose touch with joy – the joy of our faith, of our friends, of our life.

Here’s the problem with guilt:  guilt creates a false sense of agency.  In other words, after we experience guilt, we come to believe that we have the power, and in the case of guilt, the need, to work harder to achieve something better.  When we first read our gospel lesson, the lesson seems laced with guilt.  Upon first glance, Jesus seems to be telling us over and over all the things we need to do to be better – to love better.  But that assumption could not be farther from the truth.  Jesus says three things that show us how his love is not a manipulative, guilt-inducing love, but a freely given and freeing love.  First, Jesus explains that he wants the disciples to abide in his love and to love others because he wants his joy to be in them, so that their joy may be complete.  I hear Jesus’ words this way, “Don’t love because you feel like you have to or because you feel like you should.  Love because loving will give you joy.  This joy is no ordinary ‘happiness’[i] – a fleeting feeling like the one you get from a great piece of chocolate.  This joy runs deep and can be a well that you can keep drawing from, even after happiness is long gone.  I know because I have this joy – and I want to give that joy to you.”  Jesus does not guilt us into a particular behavior because we should behave that way.  He wants us to know and feel the deep joy he has and he knows the way to get there – through love.

Second, Jesus renames the disciples as friends.  He says, “I do not call you servants any longer, because the servant does not know what the master is doing; but I have called you friends, because I have made known to you everything that I have heard from my Father.”  As one scholar explains, in Jesus’ day, “to be called a ‘slave’ of a good master was not denigrating, and it could even be a title of respect.  But still a ‘slave’ was not on the same level as a friend.  A slave’s status obligated him to support a master through difficult times, but a friend would do it freely, for reasons of mutual commitment and affection.”[ii]  Jesus is not offering a promotion in order to garner favor with the disciples.  Jesus is pointing to a reality that has already occurred, and that reality shifts the motivation behind all that they do.  The love Jesus talks about giving is not out of a sense of obligation due to an unequal relationship, but out of a sense of abundance that comes from intimate, loving equality and mutuality.

Finally, Jesus reminds the disciples that the love they experience in him is not out of a sense of obligation because of their relationship, or even because the disciples must do something to receive that love.  No, Jesus says, “you did not choose me but I chose you.”  This is different from the love of a mother or father for a child.  A child never chooses their parents, but parents also do not get to choose their children.  But here, Jesus chooses the disciples.  Jesus sees their inadequacies, their weaknesses, their imperfections, and he chooses them anyway.  They do not earn his love; they do not even earn their discipleship.  Jesus chooses them.  Jesus loves them first.  They do not earn that love or owe anything for that love.  Jesus chooses them – again and again.

When we hear Jesus’ words more clearly – when we hear the great abundance behind his words, suddenly our sense of guilt disappears.  When we understand that we are Jesus’ friends, that we are chosen by Jesus, and that Jesus simply wants us to know the same joy that he knows, all those commandments – which basically boil down to love anyway – are not burdens or actions done out of guilt.[iii]  Those commandments are what we do because we are so overwhelmed by how we are loved that the love spills out of us helping us to extend Christ-like friendship, love, and joy to others.  That behavior is not something we choose.  We do not choose to love our cranky neighbor.  We do not choose to love that parishioner who always seems to know how to irritate and downright anger us sometimes.  We do not choose to love that homeless person on the street.  We could not fake that kind of love if we were guilted or even if we wanted to give that love.  We can only approach that kind of love because when we know Christ – as his friend – the friend who chooses us before we ever choose him – the friend who longs for us to know deep, abiding joy – when we know that Christ, the love we need oozes out of us despite ourselves.  We find ourselves doing ridiculous things like taking that cranky neighbor a bowl of soup when we hear about their cancer treatments.  We do silly things like hug that frustrating parishioner really hard at the peace.  We do crazy things like giving our full wallet’s contents to the homeless person because suddenly how responsible they are with the money just doesn’t even matter anymore.  We cannot stop that love.  We cannot control that love.  We cannot even use that love judiciously.  That kind of love comes from a place in us unlike any other we know – a place free from guilt, obligation, and coercion.  Because although you were birthed through the waters of baptism, that birth will never be a reason for you to be guilted into anything.  Amen.

[i] Karoline Lewis, “Choose Joy,” May 3, 2015 as found at http://www.workingpreacher.org/craft.aspx?post=3608 on May 8, 2015.

[ii] Thomas H. Troeger, “Homiletical Perspective,” Feasting on the Word, Yr. B, vol. 2 (Louisville:  Westminster John Knox Press, 2008), 499.

[iii] Lawrence Wood, “Labors of Love,” Christian Century, vol. 120, no. 10, May 17, 2003.

Sermon – Luke 16.1-13, P20, YC, September 22, 2013

26 Thursday Sep 2013

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If you were following today’s gospel lesson closely, you are most likely wondering whether you heard Jesus correctly, as his words make little sense.  Jesus tells another one his parables about money.  When a scheming, dishonest, self-serving manager is about to get fired, he goes and does the unthinkable.  He forgives debts which are not his debts to forgive, hoping in the end to make enough friends who might support him once he is out of a job.  And so when the master returns and finds out what has happened, we expect judgment to reign down on him even greater than before.  But in a shocking turn, the master commends the manager for acting shrewdly.  In response to this turn in the story, Jesus says to the disciples, “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal home.”  We hear Jesus basically telling the disciples to use dishonest wealth in the same way as this manager, and our response is confusion, disbelief, and maybe even disappointment.

After years of economic downward spiral, after watching banks and individuals cheat their way to the top while pushing down the poor and middle-class, many of us find Jesus’ words confusing if not altogether offensive.  We want nothing to do with a life that encourages scheming and plotting behavior and the embracing of dishonesty.  Some part of us feels a bit betrayed by Jesus’ strange advice and we are not entirely sure how to proceed.

So for those of us stuck in a bit of a confused haze about dishonesty, money, and relationships, we are going to take a step back and look at what is actually happening in the parable so that we can understand Jesus’ comments a bit better.  First, we have a poorly-behaving manager.  The manager has squandered away the master’s money.  When he is caught, the manager takes a good look at himself and admits some honest truths – he is not capable of doing manual labor and he is too embarrassed to beg for money.  Having been honest about who he is, he connives his way into a solution:  he will engender goodwill among his neighbors by doing financial favors for each of them – forgiving portions of their debts in the hopes that they will sometime very soon return the favor.  Both the master and Jesus recognize the shrewdness or wisdom in the manager’s behavior because the manager uses his wits to get out of a devastating position.

After understanding exactly what Jesus is complimenting, next we need to understand what Jesus is saying about money.  When Jesus says to “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth,” Jesus is not saying to start behaving unethically.  Jesus is claiming that money itself is inherently a means, not an end.  This point is a little tricky for us.  We all have varying philosophies about money.  Some of us manage to care very little about money, with money holding very little power over us.  Some of us struggle with money, sometimes remembering how money can be used for good, but most times feeling like money creates stress and anxiety in our lives that we cannot seem to shake.  And others of us become narrowly focused on money – either in how we can acquire more or what ways we can spend and enjoy money more.  What Jesus knows that we often forget is that money is inherently “dishonest.”  Money creates systems of injustice and hierarchies of power; money can destroy marriages and friendships; and money can be the ruin of many a person.  So when Jesus says to make friends through dishonest wealth, he does not mean to become a dishonest people; he means that money is inherently luring us into dishonesty, and we can either throw our hands up in the air in resignation and a refusal to be associated with that dishonesty, or we can use that dishonest wealth as a means to something much more important – relationship with others.

So if we understand what the manager is actually doing, and we can see money as a means to an end, how do we get to the step of being comfortable with using something bad for good?  Jesus is not telling us to manipulate people with money in order to be in relationship with others.  Most of us believe the old adage that you cannot buy friends – or at least not good ones anyway.  But Jesus is not suggesting we try to buy friends.  Jesus is suggesting that instead of categorizing everything into good and evil, honest and dishonest, we become a bit shrewder in our thinking.  Jesus encourages his disciples to learn from the dishonest manager because the dishonest manager takes a pretty awful situation and manipulates the situation into something good.  The kind of shrewdness Jesus is encouraging is the kind of activity that we might call, “thinking outside of the box.”  If the disciples are to live in this world and thrive, they are going to have to think outside of the box and get creative not only with money, but all sorts of things.

As I have been struggling with this text this week, I did one of the things that I often do in Bible Study.  I started looking at other translations to see if I could make more sense of Jesus’ words.  This week, I found the most help from a translation called, The Message.  Now as ample warning, The Message is a very contemporary paraphrase of the Bible, which takes a lot of theological liberties that I am often uncomfortable with; but I do often find that the language from that paraphrase opens up the biblical text enough for me to start seeing the text with fresh eyes.  The Message translates Jesus words in this way:  “Now here’s a surprise:  The master praised the crooked manager!  And why?  Because he knew how to look after himself.  Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.  I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”

What Jesus is trying to say to us today is layered.  First, money has a corrupting force in our lives.  Jesus talks about money incessantly in scripture, from telling people to give away all their money, to scolding people about storing up their money in larger barns, to reminding people not to stress about money, to this odd text about money.  As Luke concludes today, Jesus tells us that we cannot serve God and money, because of the all-consuming way that money can corrode our relationship with God.

Second, we cannot escape money.  Money is a part of our everyday lives, and as we all know is necessary for functioning – for food, for shelter, for clothing, for comfort.  Even those monks and nuns who take on a vow of poverty still rely on the money of others for support.  Money, with all its potential for corruption, is inescapable in our lives.

Finally, once we understand the power and place of money in our lives, Jesus reminds us that when we are wise, keeping God at the center, we can use money as a means to goodness in our relationship with God and with one another.  The manager “transforms a bad situation into one that benefits him and others.  By reducing other people’s debts, he creates a new set of relationships based not on the vertical relationship between lenders and debtors (rooted in monetary exchange) but on something more like the reciprocal and egalitarian relationship of friends.”[i]  This kind of work is not about charity per se, but about making friends.[ii]

A commercial has been circulating around the internet lately.[iii]  In the video, a boy is caught red-handed trying to steal a bottle of medicine and a soda.  A woman is berating him in front of a marketplace, wanting to know why he would take these things.  He confesses that the items are for his mother.  A local merchant steps forward, and hands the woman a handful of money to cover the cost of the stolen items.  The man then quietly asks the boy if his mother is sick.  When the boy nods yes, the merchant has his daughter also bring a container of vegetable broth and other items, and sends the boy on his way.  The next clip of the commercial shows the merchant thirty years later, still working in his shop.  He collapses and is taken to the hospital.  The daughter becomes completely overwhelmed as the medical bills add up, even selling the shop they had once run together.  As she is found crying near her father’s bedside, she finds a revised copy of her bill.  The amount due is zero.  We find out through the video that the doctor who forgives the bill is that same boy who stole medicine thirty years ago.  He writes at the bottom of the bill, “All expenses paid thirty years ago with three packs of painkillers and a bag of veggie soup.”

Jesus knows how money corrupts our world.  But Jesus also knows that we can shrewdly utilize our money as a tool to create relationships that glorify God.  This is Jesus’ invitation for you today:  to examine how your relationship with dishonest wealth can be used for goodness.  Amen.

[i] Lois Malcolm, “Commentary on Luke 16.1-13,” as found on http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx? commentary _id= 1783 on September 18, 2013.

[ii] Thomas G. Long, “Making Friends,” Journal for Preachers, vol. 30, no. 4, Pentecost 2007, 55.

[iii] As found at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUM4Mb9rUTU on September 20, 2013.