God and wealth and wealth and God

Text: Luke 16:1-13

Do you wonder what on earth is going on with Jesus today? Four out of five preachers I talked with agree, this story is a head scratcher.  (The fifth preacher told me he wasn’t preaching this week anyway.) But here we are, so let’s see what we can discern about our life of faith through this story, which, as we will see, actually resonates with several other stories that we know.  

The trouble begins when other people tell the master that the steward is squandering the master’s property. They disapprove of something he’s doing - we don’t know what. Interestingly, in the famous story just before this one, we are told about a younger son who goes out and squanders his inheritance. Same word - squanders. That son realizes what kind of trouble he is in and comes up with a plan by which he might be able to save himself and at least have a place to live - by returning to his father and asking for a job as a hired hand.  

Perhaps the younger son was shrewd enough to know that his father was too generous to allow his son to work as a hired hand, but at any rate, his plan worked even better than he had imagined, and he was received into his father’s home with great fanfare. His debts were cancelled and everyone except for his older brother, who disapproved of the father’s generosity, rejoiced.

So now we see some things that match up - squandering, people disapproving, seeking after a secure home, someone recognizing that he is in trouble and devising a plan to get out of trouble, a plan that hinges on generosity and forgiveness. We see that people have different opinions about what squandering actually is - if the son squandered his inheritance, did the father also squander in his response?

And we see a major contrast - the prodigal son squandered his father’s money on himself, but the steward squandered his master’s property by forgiving the debts of others, and thereby lessening their burdens.  

The steward’s response to the master’s pronouncement is to use what power and influence he still has to make things easier for others, knowing that by his actions he is assuring a place for himself in the future when his current situation is history.

Jesus then draws the connection for the disciples, for he is addressing them in this passage and not the Pharisees, who Luke tells us are lovers of money: “Make friends for yourselves by means of worldly wealth so that when your current life is history, you’ll be welcomed into an eternal home.”  

And Jesus goes on to flesh this out: “Because if you haven’t been faithful with worldly wealth, then how can you be trusted with the true riches of heaven? Remember that you can only serve one master and that master is God, and not worldly wealth.”

Maybe you recall some other things Luke says about money, such as from the beginning of Luke’s Gospel, when Mary sings in the Magnificat that God will lift up the lowly and send the rich away empty. Later we hear Jesus warn that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom, which itself is Jesus’s commentary when the rich fool builds barns to keep all his grain for himself. And today Jesus states plainly: you cannot serve God and Mammon (or worldly wealth or dishonest or unrighteous wealth, depending on your Bible translation).

Then there’s what really is the climax of this thread, Luke’s story of Zaccheus, the wealthy tax collector and wee little man who climbed the sycamore tree in order to see Jesus passing by. Jesus called him down and told him he was going to eat at his house that very day. Zaccheus, having been sought out by Jesus, at once responds by declaring that he will give away half his money to the poor and make restitution to anyone he has cheated. 

He will make friends by way of his money - he will use his money to support the poor and needy, the lost, and those who have no one to stand up for them - and thus be faithful with worldly wealth. He will use it for the benefit of others - to free them from their own bonds - so that he will not end up serving money as if it were his god. For if he is faithful with worldly wealth, then he can be trusted with the true riches of salvation.

And Jesus then tells everyone that salvation has come to Zaccheus as a result. Having encountered Jesus, Zaccheus makes proper use of his money and now is freed from bondage to it and will be able to enter the kingdom.  

So it may be really really hard to enter the kingdom if you have wealth, but it’s not impossible, as Zaccheus shows. 

And now the picture takes shape. We must not serve worldly riches - money, power, influence - but we should use them for the benefit of others, to lighten the loads of those who are burdened, who are under the thumbs of the powers that be, who are suffering or caught up in calamity. Our place in the kingdom, our common life now, depends upon this - not to earn a place in heaven later but to reveal the kingdom of God to the world now.

Even so, we will face the disapproval of others, others who will see our generosity as wastefulness, who will hard-heartedly equate the prodigal son’s squandering with the squandering his father engaged, disapproving that he threw him a feast instead of throwing a fit.

So through this story Jesus reminds us that yes, the stuff of this world - money, influence, power - is nothing compared to the riches of the kingdom. But while we are in this world, we should use this world’s stuff to come to the aid of the poor and the powerless and the resident alien. Not just pray for them, not just remind them that while they may be oppressed in this world they’ll be rewarded in the next, but use our influence and power and riches of every kind, including the coin of the realm, to lighten the load of others now. We can’t serve God and wealth, but we can make our wealth serve God. 

So there it is my friends. Neither you nor I can serve God and wealth, but we can make our wealth serve God. And since our Lord Jesus Christ said from the beginning that there is good news for the poor, then there must be good news for the poor ….. and you and I - well, you and I are it.