Shrewd

Charlotte Collins Reed

Christ Church Episcopal

September 18, 2016

20 Proper C

          When I was in high school, the youth group at our Episcopal Church in Little Rock wanted to take a trip to Six Flags over Texas.  We had wonderful youth group mentors who thought this was a great idea and were willing to help us raise the money we needed, make the arrangements, and chaperone the trip.  The youth group spent a lot of time trying to figure out how we could raise the money we needed with the least amount of effort possible.  Our brilliant idea was to have a raffle.  We would use the funds we had to purchase a television, then sell raffle tickets.  The winner would get the television and we would have the funds to go to Six Flags.  However, while we thought our idea was brilliant, the rector disagreed.  He suggested that perhaps we should actually do something to earn the money we needed.  Unlike the manager in this morning’s parable, we were strong enough to dig, and we were not ashamed to beg.  But if we were going to Six Flags, we needed a new plan.

          Fortunately, one of our youth group mentors was a rather shrewd business person.  Since a raffle was not going to happen, he suggested a car wash.  We groaned.  That sounded a lot like work.  However, our mentor’s idea was to sell the tickets on Easter Sunday when the church was full, then have the car wash the following Saturday.  His bet was that lots of people would buy tickets on Easter Sunday, but few would show up the following Saturday to have their car washed.  And he was right.  We sold enough tickets on Easter to pay our way to Six Flags, washed about 10 cars the following Saturday, and the rector was happy.  We had a win-win all the way around.

          This morning, Jesus seems to commend shrewdness and making friends by means of dishonest wealth.  We have a rich man with a manager who squanders his property.  The rich man fires the manager, which the manager deserves.  We already know that the manager is a person of dubious integrity, since he has been squandering his master’s property, so we are not surprised when he calls in those who are in debt to the master and cuts their bills.  Now the manager at least has friends he can stay with now that he has no income.  We expect that that rich man will be furious with the manager but instead, the manager is commended for his shrewdness.  Jesus makes the parable even more problematic when he says “Make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”  Jesus seems to have moved from commending shrewdness to commending dishonesty.   We should have a problem with that!

          But what if the manager had squandered the rich man’s property so badly that getting 50 to 80 percent of the debts recovered is actually a great bargain for the rich man?  Rather than getting nothing, he gets 50 containers of olive oil and 80 containers of wheat.  Now the rich man is happy to get something back, rather than have a total loss.  The debtors are happy because their debt has been reduced, and the manager is happy because he has friends and a place to stay, and doesn’t have to dig or beg.  Now we have a win-win.  In some bizarre way, the manager has been faithful in very little and will be welcomed into the eternal homes.

          Even if this parable can be seen as a win-win, what on earth is Jesus trying to teach us about our relationship with God?  On the one hand, Jesus seems to be telling us that if we can live with the values of the Kingdom of God, now, if we are faithful with what we have in this life, then we can be trusted with the riches of eternal life.  If we are dishonest, or unfaithful, with the riches of this life, then God has no reason to think we can be trusted with the riches of eternal life.  This makes sense, in the same way that I made sense when I would say to my children “If you use table manners like that at home, how can I possibly think you use better table manners elsewhere?”  The theological problem with this line of reasoning about Jesus’ parable is that we are then led to believe that we earn eternal life by being faithful with what we have in this life.  While that might make for a powerful stewardship sermon, and we could have competitive pledging to see who is the most faithful and who is most likely to earn eternal life, that is simply not the gospel.  The message of the gospel is that eternal life is a free gift secured by the death and resurrection of Jesus. 

          And that, I believe, is the point of the parable.  Life-all of life, this life and the life to come, the eternal life that begins with baptism- is a gift.  We have done nothing to deserve this gift.   Jesus is calling us to be faithful with that gift by living like the people God created us to be and using our lives to make the Kingdom of God a more present reality in the world today.  We squander the gift when we are selfish and believe that what God has given us-whether time or talent, or treasure- is ours to use for ourselves alone.  What would the world look like if we used our lives, our whole lives, to give God an 80% or even a 50% return on God’s investment in us?  Perhaps God would commend us for our shrewdness and the world around us would look a little bit more like the Kingdom of God.

                                                                                      Amen.