You know, I could have changed the readings for Founder Sunday, no one would have balked or complained…
but instead I stuck with today’s parable commonly called the Parable of the Dishonest
Manager, or, perhaps more positively the Shrewd Steward…
This parable is like a rose, both beautiful and thorny.
This story of Jesus is one people
struggled with from the start
—just look at Luke,
he gives three different interpretations,
right here in today’s reading.
My own foundational assumption about
parables is that they’re not proof texts, but truth texts.
They are always meant to be chewed on,
until they begin to chew on us.
They are stories that will wake you up at 4am and you’ll say, “Wait a minute!
That applies to me!”
The key I am using to read this
particular parable is pretty simple really
—I believe that 16 comes after 15…
In chapter 15 the religious authorities accuse Jesus of squandering God’s good
will and mercy by associating with sinners, tax collectors, and other ne’re-do-wells.
Jesus is told that he is being a bad steward of God’s kindness,
and he replies with three stories about lost things, animals, and people.
He insists that:
“God is like a woman scouring her house for a single cent.
God is like a shepherd leaving all his sheep alone to find a single lost one.
God is like a father embarrassing himself in order to embrace his sinner son.”
I believe today’s parable continues
on this trajectory,
perhaps the disciples just needed a little more convincing… don’t we all?
At any rate, Jesus continues to
explain why he sups with sinners, by telling today’s parable, about this Shrewd
Steward, this Risky Squanderer.
Prayer
To the disciples’ hard hearts,
worries that perhaps the religious authorities are right about their Rabbi,
wondering what their neighbors will think about them dining with
undesirables.
Jesus says, “Okay, fine, let’s think through what the Pharisees and Scribes are
accusing me of doing with God’s grace.
Let’s assume God is a god of
limits, who, like Smaug, the Dragon in the Hobbit, hordes his gold
—or rather his grace and welcome
—and kills any poor beggar or fool who tries to so much as touch his treasures.
That kind of God, has put me in
charge of his great pile of mercy,
I’m the steward, the manager.
And soon enough I screw it all up and am called to account.
This god of limits, calls me
into his office and rakes me over the coals.
“Why aren’t you charging interest on my grace,
and looking out for my bottom line?
Show me your books at once!”
So, I rush to the office
and shoot off email after email to every customer I’ve came into contact with,
I make so may phone calls that the numbers get worn off the buttons.
I call them all,
the unclean man with a demon,
the pile of people I healed at the house of Peter’s mother-in-law,
the lepers and that paralyzed fella,
the centurion and slave, the widow and her son…
You get the idea, all those who
I’ve been generous to on behalf of God…
And I say to one, “You owe God
100 jugs of oil, pay 50.”
To another, “100 bushels of
wheat? Let’s make it 80 and call us even.”
And to all this generosity, the
people:
praise God,
rejoin community,
repent and are relieved,
find abundant life…
And the product of this risky
generosity,
this squandering that is salvific
—it is noticed, even by the kind of god who the Religious Authorities think
exists.
If the Pharisees are right, that
God is Smaug-like…
my gracious representation of him has brought in more praise and transformation,
than all the tight fistedness of the Scribes.
Our risky way of honoring God,
seeming to squander God’s goodness by the way we spread it around,
is still the most “profitable” way of doing this God thing…
even playing by the Pharisee’s rules…
And
how much more faithful is our open handed generous way of being, because
God IS a God of risky mercy,
IS a God who searches out for the lost,
a God who squanders His very self for the sake of those he seeks.”
What a parable, right! Jesus pointing
to the tension between:
Squandering and Generous Abundance,
Risk and Hope.
They balance like an unstable playground
seesaw.
They are like those pictures that are either a duck or a rabbit,
depending on how you look at ‘em.
Think about it, back in 1756,
the Fritts family built a log cabin out here in the wilderness
—certainly that was an act filled with both risk and hope.
Or in 1795,
the act of donating quite a bit of property to house a congregation and pastor and
bury ancestors here
—people could have seen it as squandering family property…
or a generous act done out of recognition of the abundance on hand.
Or in 1861,
our country was in a little bit of turmoil then (That’s Norwegian for those of
you who have not yet met me),
1861 when Spruce Run hosted the inauguration of the Ministerium of New Jersey
—a new church body!
That’s risky…
and that’s hopeful!
Or in ’46, the congregation hosted
the “Young Christians of Spruce Run” a group that included plenty of young
people who weren’t “ours” in a strict sense,
but we didn’t care,
they were our neighbors.
That kind of welcome could be called squandering, but I think we chose to call
it generous.
Or in ’91, when we founded the food
pantry,
or in ’94 when we started housing homeless folks,
or 2023 when we started the North Hunterdon Ecumenical Fellowship.
Because we have a history of hope and abundant generosity—we can
understand these things as not simply good,
but as pointing to the God we meet in Jesus Christ
—ever faithful,
always gracious,
quick to save
and merciful beyond words.
Amen.
