Foothill Congregational Church The Rev. W. Matthew Broadbent

United Church of Christ 17^th Sunday after Pentecost

461 Orange Ave., Los Altos, CA 94022 September 23, 2007

IN JESUS’ NAME

1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13

Sometimes the scriptures chosen for the lectionary readings seem to – not exactly contradict but – contraindicate one another. First Timothy encourages the church to pray for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity (1:1-2). That is a comforting and conventional message. But, then we have this funny little parable in our gospel reading this morning of the dishonest Steward. Jesus seems to be condoning dishonest behavior by a steward (a farm manager) who is trying to save his skin by acting “shrewdly.” (I tell you our Bible Study had a lot of trouble with this parable.) How do you teach this to your children? It seems to be saying “It’s alright to be dishonest, as long it is in a good cause.” What in Jesus’ name is going on here? What do these scriptures have to say to us this morning, and do they speak with one voice?

A parable, you know, is a short fiction that Jesus tells to illustrate a truth. This parable was, like most of Jesus’ parables, set in the context of the Galilean villages, and to his first listeners it must have been very familiar and understandable.

Jesus said that there was a landowner who had a farm manager, which was a common in the first century. These landowners had large holdings that provided them with income to live in comfort and leisure. They would hire stewards to manage the businesses and look after the property while the owner was off living in some place like Caesarea or Tiberias or Joppa, or even Rome, coming only occasionally to check on the books.

So, when Jesus began this little fictional tale, everyone could relate to it because they were most likely tenants of one of these landowners. There was no love lost between the poor of the land who did the work and the absentee landlords who lived off their labor.

Jesus tells us, the landowner learned the steward had been squandering the property. Well, what else is new? We are not told exactly what the squandering was all about, but it has something to do with “cooking the books” to the stewards advantage. The land owner calls in his steward and says to him, “Make an accounting of the books because I understand you are squandering my property and you can’t be my manager anymore.”

The steward was the legal agent of the owner and, according to the Mishna, the Jewish Oral Law, his job was to collect the rents – a fixed amount of produce from each of the farmers irrespective of the yield. The steward expected a gratuity from the farmer on top of his salary from the owner. Some stewards made a handsome living, as you can imagine, because they wrote the contracts, and a farmer, living a hand to mouth existence, depended on the mercy of the steward for the life of his family. A dishonest steward had many ways to cheat. Every time he bought or sold he could take his “cut,” and all these extra tips were “off the record.”

At this point in the parable things get a little goofy. If you are wealthy and you have a steward to manage your assets, and you receive evidence that this steward is cheating you – Do you ask this person to do the audit? And yet that is exactly what the landlord does in this parable. He said, “Bring your books up-to-date because you can’t be my manager any longer.

In Middle Eastern village life, the steward is always fired on the spot. There is no assumption of innocence, or due process. The owner would be afraid of exactly the kind of thing that happens in the parable. The Mishna, again, explains that legally his authority as an agent is immediately canceled. The steward would have been asked to surrender his books not balance them.

This shows a certain level of mercy - or stupidity - by the landowner. He is giving the steward a chance to make things right before he leaves, when, by rights he could have had him severely punished.

So this dishonest steward went out not knowing what he was going to do or how he was going to live from that point on? Then he comes up with a clever plan. He goes to all the folks who owe money to the estate, and he asks them what they owe. One of them says he owes one hundred jars of olive oil and the manager says “Make if fifty.” He goes to another and asks what he owes and he replies that he owes one hundred measures of wheat and he is told to “Make it eighty.” In this way he went from debtor to debtor ingratiating himself to all of them because now they were indebted to him for saving them and their families from starvation and, possibly, death by reducing their debts to the owner. People still live in this world by such slim margins that a decision made in a distant business capital can have life or death consequences to people in the villages.

The story gets even goofier, because the landowner calls back the steward and commends him on his shrewdness. I wonder if they teach this in business school?

It is hard to know what to do with this story, isn’t it? It would appear that Jesus is praising dishonesty and that can’t be right. Yet, that is how it appears. The hero of this story is a slick, dishonest manger who cooks the books so he can take care of himself later once he is out of a job.

Just when this parable seems impossible to understand, Jesus offers us a little help with a proverb he tacks on the end. But, before I say the proverb, let me first remind you that Jesus’ listeners would have been laughing at this point. They would have gotten the joke, the ironic twist. We miss it because we always read scripture as if it, or we, are holier-than-Thou. But they would have been laughing at the dumb landowner, the Roman doofus. “It serves him right for taking advantage of all of us.” They would have been smirking at the cleverness of the shrewd steward who pulled his butt out of the fire and got the better of his superior.

With everyone laughing, and slightly off guard, Jesus then says: for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And this proverb is the key to unlocking the puzzle. The children of this age are more shrewd than the children of light.

If by “children of this age” Jesus means all who depend on material wealth in temporal world for the meaning of life, and if Jesus means by “children of light” those disciples who are following Christ by investing themselves in matters of eternal and ultimate value, then I think he is talking directly to us, as well.

We sit at the center of the information hub of the world. If information is power and power is money, we are in the vortex of that powerful energy storm of new ideas. We are a people caught up with, some say obsessed by, creating wealth. We are people who will commit our lives, our families, our health and well-being, our national security in the search for wealth. We put faith in all those things that are, in the end, temporary - like buildings and businesses and bank accounts and borders. We will expend enormous amounts of energy and capital to protect non-renewable energy sources, and then, find ourselves without the resources or time or energy to give to those things which are permanent. Think about it. The children of this age are more clever than the children of light.

We come to worship and glorify God, to declare what is truly important to the state of our soul, and to nurture eternal values. Then we go out and live in the world as if temporary things are of ultimate importance.

The children of this world are more shrewd than the children of light. This is true. We teach our children this spiritual imbalance. In our High Schools there are counselors, and computer research labs, and all kinds of resources to help a young person find their career path in this world. The resources will help them choose the right courses, get the proper remedial help, become prepared to take the right tests, and take them again and again until they achieve the proper entrance scores. Young people are driven in this community to achieve. There are libraries of material to tell a young person what it will be like if you choose Job A, how much money you will make, what the people who work at these jobs are like, what the retirement benefits will be, what kind of time off you will have.

We have an enormous amount of human and informational and material resources to help people choose jobs based on a value system of what-is-best-for-me. Our own son told us in High School his future goal was to make money, so he didn’t have to live like his parents. He got lots of support from his teachers who saw great potential. Now he is a minister. I don’t know what went wrong with him?

We would like to say it was his parents influence but we are like the rest of you who have little time to help our children ask the fundamental question, “For what purpose were you born? For what purpose did God give you life?” (Fortunately, we had the church to help us ask these questions.) The children of this age are more shrewd than the children of light, more intentional and better equipped.

You have heard it said that we bring nothing into this world and we take nothing out. It is interesting that in Jesus’ parable for this morning the Greek word, oikonomous, is translated as manager or steward. The word steward (which is the same root as economy) means “care for the world.” This reminds us church people that everything we are, everything we shall be, everything that we will ever have is temporary. The world is gift, not entitlement. We are just managing it for someone else and that someone else is God. We bring nothing in and we take nothing out and, for a time, we manage energy and time and talents and resources. We are stewards, managers, not owners, ever.

Therefore Jesus teaches those who manage: Whoever is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest [unrighteous] wealth, who will entrust you with true [spiritual] riches. And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another [belongs to God], who will give you what is your own[your soul]?

The question then and now is: “Where is your ultimate loyalty? Who and what do you truly love? To whom or what do you devote your time, your energy, and your soul? Where is God in your life? And where are you in God? These are the questions of ultimate concern.

This was the dilemma of the church at Ephesus, to which Timothy belonged. It was a persecuted church, forced to choose between ultimate loyalty to God or Rome. And this is where the two passages come together. Timothy and his church are encouraged to pray or everyone, kings and rulers and all those in high authority, so that the community might be left in peace in all godliness and dignity, which is the shrewd thing to do in their world; would that we were as shrewd, as careful, as intentional about where we place our loyalties and our ultimate faith.