Pentecost 17 (Proper 20) (9/23/07): “Loving Money, Loving God” Peace Lutheran Church Grass Valley CA

Pentecost 17 (Proper 20) (9/23/07): “Loving Money, Loving God”

Text: Luke 16.1-13

This morning’s gospel lesson offers what is widely described as the most difficult of all Jesus’ parables—and particularly by pastors who have to preach on it! Several of the parables, of course, are difficult in terms of what they ask of us. This one is just plain difficult to understand. On the surface it appears that a dishonest servant is praised for his clever dishonesty, and offered as a kind of example for Christians. That’s pretty tough to comprehend! Many sermons on this text have been devoted to showing that it isn’t quite as bad as it sounds. I’ve preached some of those sermons myself over the past thirty-two years!

But perhaps that’s not the best approach. Maybe we should tackle it head on this morning, with all its problems. And the place to begin is to say that the parable is about money. Our modern translations try to soft-pedal this a bit, using more abstract words like “wealth” or “riches.” The word Jesus used, as recorded by Luke, is “mammon.” “You cannot serve God and mammon”—an odd word, to be sure, and one that carries a whiff of greedy immorality.

But it doesn’t do us any good to sweeten up the words; the parable is still about money. “The leading role,” Helmut Thielicke puts it, “is played by ‘unrighteous mammon.’ What does this thing mean, or better, what does this power mean in the life of a person who wants to be obedient to God? How should he handle it? . . . [For] our destiny with God is rarely decided by our reflecting upon dogmas and all kinds of otherworldly problems. Our destiny,” Thielicke goes on, “is rather decided by what we do with the altogether real worldly questions and temporal problems which play a part in our life, such as sex, money, and personal relations.” Yes, all those real worldly things—the things we don’t really want to talk about or hear about in church, and yet the things that we face every single day, the decisions that we face every day, the real worldly things. If we cannot find guidance in those matters from God, then our faith is really not much earthly good.

And so it is significant, first of all, that Jesus is willing to talk about this, and talk about it honestly. How do you use your money? That’s the question he raises here. How do you use your money?

You know, it isn’t entirely obvious that Jesus would talk this way. Money, after all, is often the cause of great corruption—just read the newspaper accounts of politicians of both parties who are presently accused of financial irregularities. Money can be a dangerous and ignoble thing. Jesus could just as well have told us to abstain from using money—to take a vow of poverty, and thereby keep our hands clean. But he doesn’t. He assumes that money is part of the real world, the world in which we live. He assumes that we’re going to handle it, one way or the other; and so his concern is that we use it properly and righteously.

And that’s where the steward in the parable comes in. His job is handling money. He does it, so the parable suggests, dishonestly, cheating his master by settling his accounts at a loss—but that is not Jesus’ point. What he wants us to see is that this man is consciously using money for a particular purpose. Now the purpose, it turns out, is to save his own neck, but again that’s not the point. The point is that money is to be used—not hoarded, not wasted, and certainly not worshiped, but used with a view to the future.

One clue to this is verse 14, which is unfortunately not part of our lesson today, but it comes right after it. Jesus tells this parable, gives his instructions, and then immediately Luke says this: “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him.” “Lovers of money.” You know, it kind of startles me that the Pharisees are described in this way. Pharisees, of course, are generally portrayed negatively, but not because they loved money. Usually it is because they are too wrapped up in the trappings of religion, too zealous in keeping the law and especially in making sure other people keep the law. They are self-righteous, hypocrites, all kinds of bad things—but their faults all stem from the fact that they are really, really religious! They are like us—the good, upstanding, religious people. And here Luke tells us that they were “lovers of money”! It sort of gives one pause, doesn’t it? Religious people like us are just as prone to be lovers of money as anyone else.

I recently read a novel, Getting Mother’s Body, by Suzan-Lori Parks. In one scene a couple of people need to come up with some cash for a reasonably noble purpose, and they are considering whom they might ask for help. One relative who probably could help is immediately disregarded, with the comment, “She’d never do it. She and her money have a ‘till death do us part’ relationship.” I thought that was a great line!—“till death do us part” is, of course, part of a marriage vow, a pledge of love. There are some people who love money as if they are married to it, “till death do us part.”

But you see, a “lover of money” is one who sees money in precisely the wrong way. Jesus, I said, wants us to learn how to use money; a lover of money is one who is being used by money. Jesus wants us to learn how to allow money to serve us; because if we don’t learn that, then we end up serving money. That’s the thrust of the last verse, you see: “You cannot serve God and money. Either you serve God and use money, or you serve money and try to use God.

Now in the parable, the steward very deliberately uses money to ensure that he will have some friends who will take him in after he’s lost his job. That’s a pretty low use of money, of course—but again, it’s not really the point. The point, Jesus says, is to think about eternity. “Make friends for yourselves by means of your money,” he says, “so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Well, the friend that does that has to be God, doesn’t it? Who else can welcome us into an eternal home? So then he’s saying that money—as earthly, as mundane, as potentially dirty and even dangerous as it may be—money is to be used with an eye to eternity; used, that is, with an eye to God. Money is to be used in a way that is pleasing to God.

Now notice that I’m not just talking here about money that one contributes to the church. Stewardship includes that, but it is much, much bigger than that, because God is interested in a lot more than just the church. I was talking not long ago to someone whose children are young teenagers, starting to think about college. College is expensive these days, no question. These parents were trying to figure out what the cheapest way to get their kids an education might be, and I gently suggested that maybe that wasn’t quite the right approach. We had kids in college for seven years in a row, and it was a sacrifice. But we don’t regret one dollar invested in their educations. I’ve never heard one parent later say, “Boy, I wish I hadn’t spent that much on my kids.” We chose to use that money for a purpose in which we believed was pleasing to God—trying to make money the servant, you see, not the master.

So how do you use your money? It’s a “real worldly” question, but it’s also a spiritual question because it is in the real world that questions of faith really get raised. Whom do you serve? You cannot serve God and mammon—if anything is clear in this strange passage, it is that. So whom do you serve?

Johanna called the other day. She is taking a preaching class in seminary this semester, and she had signed up for her first sermon assignment. She has to preach on next Sunday’s lesson, which is the parable of Lazarus and the rich man. She was bemoaning what a difficult text it is—I told her she should be glad she didn’t have this week’s text. But her question was, “Where can I find some hope in this passage?” That’s usually the right question for a preacher to ask, and maybe we should ask it. Where is there hope in today’s rather strange and troubling parable? Where is the grace?

I think it probably comes in verse 10: “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.” Being faithful starts with little steps. Faithful stewardship starts with little steps, with being faithful in little matters. Then we grow. That’s the promise, the hope. That’s one thing I’ve learned over the years—faithful, generous giving and living isn’t a sudden thing for most of us, and it isn’t a static thing for any of us. It’s a matter of growth.

Those who are lovers of money hear the words of Jesus and laugh. But those who set their hearts on serving God hear his words and give thanks—thanks that we have a God who cares about even earthly things like money; a God who offers us guidance and direction about how to use it; and God who walks with us, one step at a time as we grow from faithfulness in little things to faithfulness in greater things—growth that continues all through our lives, until at last he welcomes us into our eternal home.