Broadway Christian Church
Columbia , Missouri

Morning Worship
October 10, 2004

Prayer of the Day

Gracious God, we come today very aware of our condition as humans.  We thank you for loving us and accepting us and seemingly rejoicing in whatever progress we make toward being who you intend us to be.  Receive, we pray, the worship we offer this hour.  Amen.

Scripture 
Luke 16:1-13

Jesus said:

There was a rich person whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions.  So he called in the manager and asked him, “What is this I hear about you?  Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.”

The manager said to himself, “What shall I do now?  My master has taken away my job.  I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg.  I know what I’ll do, so that when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.”

So he called in each of his master’s debtors, and he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?”

“Eight-hundred gallons of olive oil,” he said.

The manager said, “Take you bill.  Sit down quickly and make it four-hundred.”

Then he said to the second, “How much do you owe?”

He said, “A 1000 bushels of wheat.”

He said, “Take your bill and make it 800.”

The master commended the dishonest manager, because he had acted so shrewdly.  For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.

“I tell you,” said Jesus, “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.  Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much.  And whoever is dishonest with a little will be dishonest with much.  So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who can trust you with real riches?  If you have not been trustworthy in using someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?  No servant can serve two masters.  Either they will hate the one and love the other, or they will be devoted to one and despise the other.  You cannot serve both God and money.”

Message
What To Do When It’s Late In The Game
Rick Frost

For those of you who are new with us today, Clarence Jordan, the great preacher from Georgia, use to say, as I have said to this group before, “The parables of Jesus are like Trojan horses.”  Do you remember me saying that?  “They look really great on the outside, but then you let them in, and then bam, they get you.”  Today’s parable is one of those parables.  It is outrageous.  So, to begin with, to make sure we get the story straight…

Jesus said there was a rich man who owned all kinds of stuff.  Just think of the wealthiest person you can think of, maybe someone like Bill Gates.  He has so much he has to hire all kinds of people to be his managers, his stewards.  Those two words mean exactly the same thing in the Scripture – people who are responsible for taking care of other people’s assets.  You know… maybe like the C.E.O. of Microsoft.  A key person, their job is to care for and manage properly all of the resources of the one who owns.

This manager, evidently in Scripture, messed up.  It doesn’t tell us exactly how that took place.  All we know is the words in the Scripture are, “he squandered his owner’s wealth.”  Actually the word is “wasted.”  In fact, the exact same word Luke uses a couple chapters earlier in the Prodigal Son story, when the son took his father’s inheritance and went off into the far country and wasted, squandered, his inheritance.  Luke uses the exact, same word here.  Evidently somehow he wasted what someone else owned.  He gets caught.  He gets called into the boardroom.  He gets called on the carpet.  He gets fired.  He’s done.  He’s unemployed.  And he does what any unemployed person does.  What do we do?  We start to scramble.  We try to figure out what in the world we are going to do to make a living.  We try to think how we are going to survive. 

He could have gone, I guess, to Coil Construction to see if Randy would give him a shovel to dig some foundations.  But he was too old, too weak.  His body couldn’t take it, would be my guess.  I can relate to that.  He probably wouldn’t make it to lunchtime, working in that environment.  It says also, he was too ashamed, too proud, to beg.

Then, just like in the Prodigal Son story, it comes to him.  “I know what I’ll do.  I’ll go to the people who owe Bill, the boss man, all this money, and I’ll make a deal with them that will cause them to think they died and went to heaven.  Then in return, I’m going to make myself some friends that are going to open those doors for me when I really need them.”

And you thought the “good-old-boy system” started back in the South somewhere.  This has been going on for a long, long time, folks.

That is exactly, according to the text, what he does.  He holds this crazy fire sale.  He discounts all of the debts, some of them up to 50 per cent.  All of a sudden, he has more friends than he knows what to do with. 

Now, here is where it gets interesting.  When the boss finds out what Sammy, the steward, has done, most of us would think the boss would get a little upset.  You know… like seeing to it that Sammy joined Jimmy Hoffa in some concrete house somewhere.  But, not so.  In verses 8 and 9, we get one of the most surprising statements in all of the New Testament.   According to Luke, Jesus says, “The owner commended the dishonest manager, the steward, because he had acted so shrewdly.  ‘I tell you,’ he said, ‘use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourself, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed in eternal dwellings’.”  That is the same word he uses later for heaven.

Gotta ya!

Mothers, cover the children’s ears.  My goodness, don’t we teach our kids to be honest?  Don’t we expect them to be thrifty?  Don’t we try to teach them to be hard working, and here Jesus is commending waste, dishonesty, shrewdness?  Earth to Luke: come on, guy, what has happened here?  Did you doze off when you were writing this thing down?  Did something get missed in the translation?  What in the world was Jesus thinking of?

Folks, this really dicey parable has kept scholars and preachers puzzled for centuries.  So what I want us to do is to see if we can get an angle on it today.  OK?

First of all, let’s talk about what we know.  What we know is this is a parable, a teaching of Jesus, about money.  It’s about assets.  It’s about property.  It’s about wealth.  More accurately, it’s about those of us who have been managers of those things, because you and I have been taught that what the Bible teaches us is that all of us are managers of all we have.  In fact, all that we have, and all that we are, and everything that surrounds us, we believe, belongs to God.  Now this is not just for rich folks.  It’s not just for middle-income folks, or low-income folks.  This is not just for Christians.  It’s not just for Jews.  It’s not just for Muslims, or Buddhists, or Hindus, or New Age, or atheists.  The Christian view is our money, our assets, our resources belong to the Creator of all that is.  God is the owner, and we, all of us – not just Christian folks, not just believers, everybody in creation – are managers.  Did you know that?

Now, I know there are a few folks here today who are genuinely noble and holy people.  I know there are persons in this room who are incredible stewards and managers, and they always do God’s will.  So this sermon is not for them.  OK?  In fact, there are doughnuts and coffee in the fellowship hall, and if you want some…

Let me say, up front, this parable and our attempt to interpret it is really for all the rest of us.  When, in fact, almost all of us in this room are a lot more like that manager, in the parable, than we like to admit.  Somewhere along the line, almost every person in this room made a commitment to follow Christ.  Almost all of us decided we wanted to serve God.  Almost all of us know God calls us to take care of God’s world – that we are suppose to live in such a way that God can use us throughout our lives for God’s purposes. 

But quite frankly, let’s be honest with each other.  Most of us live pretty much for ourselves.  We do.  We are envious about some things.  There are some things we see other people have, and other people get to do that we really want, but we are not going to have or get to do.  We have envy about that.

Some of us, deep down, have an abiding passion for money and all it can afford.  There are those of us in this room, myself included, who eat a lot.  We drink a lot.  We work a lot.  We play a lot.  There are some of us in the room who are doing everything we can to arrange a life on some sunny beach where we can kick back, and not have a care in the world, and wrap our lips around a “cheeseburger in paradise.”  “I like mine with lettuce and tomato, and Heinz 57, and French-fried potatoes, a big kosher pickle, and cold draft beer.  Well, good gosh, almighty, which way do I steer?”  Who said that?  That’s right, we always quote the saints here.

But not only that, in truth, there are those of us in this room, when we get hurt, we try to get back at the person who hurt us.  There are persons in this room who work at keeping our sexual energies inside appropriate boundaries. 

You know… the church once called these things the seven deadly sins.  You know that.  Pride, envy, greed, lust, gluttony, sloth, anger.  They’ve been around forever.  We struggle with those things.  Most of us in this room do.

Prayer?  Not one of the deadly sins, but quite frankly, most of us don’t know how.  We just never learned.  Some of us, not all of us, might give ten minutes a day.  But most of us, not really that much. 

Reading and reflecting on Scripture?  Not that much.  Most of us in this room hear the Scriptures when they’re read here on Sunday when we come to church to hear it, but we really don’t spend that much time with Scripture.  Let’s face it.

Serving the needs of others, especially the poor?  Well, occasionally we do.  We write checks.  We donate here and there.  We take part in this fundraiser, that fundraiser.  We sometimes, one or two times a year, get involved in a hands-on effort, but not nearly what it costs to have parking privileges at Faurot Field, or seating privileges at Jesse Auditorium, or the new Paige Center.

Giving generously to the ministry of the community of faith?  We have some amazingly generous people who are part of this community, right here in this room.  But did you know that the average gift to the community of faith of main- line Protestants in America is less than two per cent.  It’s 1.87 per cent, to be exact.  One in 50 make a provision for God in their will.  And I think that is generous.  I don’t think it’s that high. 

Point?  As managers, gang, we’ve squandered.  We’ve spent foolishly.  We’ve spent extravagantly.  We have wasted the owner’s, the Creator’s resources.  We live in a culture that is way, way, way out of hand.

I think the manager in Jesus’ parable is pretty much exactly what most of us experience following Christ to be like for most of us in many ways.  Perhaps, just perhaps, it’s time for a little belated ingenuity on our parts.  You know… actually doing some things differently even though it may be late in the game for some of us, maybe for all of us, which, according to today’s text, might actually, surprisingly, be pleasing to God.  Isn’t that interesting?

Now let’s admit it.  Probably not too many in this room are going to become Mother Theresa or Desmond Tutu by tomorrow.  OK?  It’s just not going to happen.  I mean… tomorrow we are going to wake up, and most of us are still going to be capitalists, and materialists, and consumers.  It’s just in the air we breathe, folks.  But everybody in this room has a brain.  Everybody in this room has the capacity for being clever.  We can take some steps – some important steps – if we choose to toward God, even though it may be late in the game.

I think the point of the parable is not that Jesus says good things and commends dishonesty, and craftiness, and shrewdness as virtue, but I think it is a parable, thanks be to God, that somehow God leaves the door open for the manager who has been foolish, for the manager who has squandered, for the manager who has wasted the master’s resources.  This parable, I think, is one of the most gracious parables of Jesus. 

Imagine several scenarios. 

1.      Some of you, like myself, may have messed up a marriage along the way.  You remember the day when the word came down.  There was a desperation that came with it.  If you were like myself, you engaged in sort of a fire sale of your own.  What in the world can I do given the fact it is this late in the game to save the situation?  I know I’m not alone in that.

In November 1965, Linda Fuller told her husband, Millard, that she was leaving him.  Evidently he was so preoccupied making his millions, he hadn’t noticed that she was slipping away.  Panicked by her wake-up call, he piled his children and her in their Lincoln Continental, and they set out for Florida.  On their way, it’s reported, they stopped to see some friends in Georgia – some folks who had moved in with Clarence Jordan in a little experiment in Christian living called the Koinonia Community.  According to the story, Millard agreed to have lunch with Jordan.  They ended up staying a month.  He started what you all know as Habitat for Humanity.  A crazy scheme about how some of God’s children could actually have their own home at some pretty bargain-basement prices.  It was ingenious.  It came a little late.  It was belated, but it was ingenious.

2.      Some of us know some people who are struggling with addictions – alcohol, drugs, whatever.  They have connived, lied, dumped a bunch of garbage in their children’s souls, corroded their livers and their brains, and generally ruined their lives.  You know.  And yet they walked in to A.A. one day and began that long, slow, agonizing hard work of recovery.  No pretense about being a saint here.  No turning back the clock.  What’s done; is done.  But apologies start to be offered.  Pleas for forgiveness are made.  Living one day at a time starts to actually work.  There is that little hint, that little glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel called life, even if it’s late in the game.

3.      Or, like some of us in this room, things happen.  You lose your job.  Just like the steward did.  He lost his job.  Maybe not for the same reasons he did, but, hey, you’re unemployed.  How can you turn that tough situation, over time, that it might be God’s call to you to do something different with your life, that something God really wants you to do with your life?  Maybe it’s not for as much money, but, you know, in the world of Jesus’ parables, prices are getting marked down all the time. 

4.      Or let’s say you are a Christian businessperson or a Christian investor.  You know, we are polluting our water, and we’re fouling our air, and we’re devastating our natural resources, but you aren’t going to dismantle your business.  None of us are going to do that.  But you could decide to apply environmental standards that are actually beyond what the government suggested.  It’s going to mean less profit for you.  It’s going to mean less return for your investors.  But in Jesus’ world of parables, everybody is taking a hit in order to get it right, regardless of how late it is in the game.

5.      Or how about this one.  This is tough.  A terrorist strikes.  Like a sleeping lion who’s had its tail stepped on, we rise up screaming and bearing our claws and looking for a fight.  Indeed a war breaks out.  Unfortunately we’re learning it turns out to be the wrong one, but we’re already up to our eyeballs before we know it.  We’re pretty much going it alone.  We’re beefing up security here at home, but there’s not a person here in this room that doesn’t know we are all very vulnerable.  It hasn’t changed.  And everyone in this room knows that ultimately, ultimately more force, more violence is not going to solve this problem.  That’s because, folks, it is not just our problem.  It’s everybody’s problem.  It’s a problem that goes all around this globe.  It’s sort of like my little neighborhood watch program we have in our neck of the woods.  We neighbors need each other.  We have to watch out for each other.  We have to take care of each other.  We have to work together in our neighborhood for our mutual security and safety.  Now sure, it’s late in the game.  But who’s going to seize the opportunity to rebuild the relationships all around this world that have been really, really frayed?  Who’s going to cut some deals with the nations of this world?  I don’t care whom it is we choose to be in charge.  Don’t you think it’s time for some belated ingenuity here?  Thanks be to God, the door is still open, even though it’s late in the game.

Well…  The man here in Jesus’ parable has been found wasteful.  He did some things that weren’t right.  He’s clearly not a saint.  The amazing thing about this parable is God used him anyway.  I think that’s the way it has always been.  Jesus spent very little time with the squeaky-clean.  It was a bunch of rabble-rousing folks, men and women, who became his disciples.  But they changed the world. 

Consider people like Dorothy Day.  She was divorced, had an abortion, had a child out of wedlock, but then turned around and came roaring back into the church, writing checks at deep discounts, spent the rest of her life serving the poor, lifting up the workers of this community.  She reminded the church it is our privilege to pour ourselves out for those in need.  I believe, and I think most of us believe, God was pleased.  Even though it was late in the game, God was pleased.

Saints?  Not many of us.  I know, technically, the Bible says all of us who are believers are saints, but there aren’t too many of us who put ourselves in that category, would we?  Not really.  It’s just what you and I get to do if we are shrewd enough, if we’re smart enough, if we’re clever enough, even if it’s late in the game. 

“Use worldly wealth to gain friends,” said Jesus.  “Use it to gain friends for yourself, so that when it’s gone, you will be welcomed in eternal dwellings.”

And we all say together… “Amen.”

Benediction

Eternal One, thank you for meeting the less-than-perfect with an open door.  Help us to receive the invitation to turn around and enter into your grace.  Regardless of our blinding self-interest, enlighten us, God, and gather us in.  Amen.