Shrewd Stewards

Jesu Juva
St. Luke 16:1-15
September 22, 2019
Proper 20C

Dear Saints of Our Savior~

It has to be one of the strangest parables Jesus ever told: The Parable of the Dishonest Manager, which you heard a few minutes ago. Last week was easy: The Parable of the Lost Sheep, featuring Jesus as the Good Shepherd seeking and saving the single, solitary lost sheep. Sheep on the shoulders and home we go, rejoicing. We get that.

But money is the topic of today’s parable. Right away, that makes some of us uneasy. But there’s nothing wrong with money. Money is a good thing. It’s God who gives us our money. The love of money is the root of all evil. Idolatry is evil. Greed is evil.

Coveting is evil. But money—viewed rightly and managed wisely—is always a blessing for the Christian, not a curse. Abraham was both rich and faithful. David was both rich and a man after God’s own heart. Rich people—both men and women—are numbered among the very first followers of Jesus.

The main character in today’s parable is, in fact, a money manager. And nowhere are we told that that line of work is inappropriate (which I’m sure is a big relief to all of you with ties to Northwestern Mutual). This parable, in fact, tells us how we should use and invest our money—prudently, wisely, and shrewdly—for the good of our gracious Lord and Master. This parable teaches us that heaven and hell can have a lot more to do with our checkbooks than with our hymn books.

As the parable begins, our money manager is in big trouble. Instead of managing his master’s funds wisely, he’s been wasting them. He has squandered his master’s money. And when you squander money that isn’t yours to squander, that’s also known as stealing. The man is terminated with cause—fortunate that he wasn’t also prosecuted and imprisoned.

Then the parable takes a strange turn. For precisely when he should have been cleaning out his desk and uploading his resume, the dishonest manager makes a rather bold decision. Before word gets out about his being fired, he calls in his master’s debtors and starts giving them generous discounts. He knocks off 50 percent here and 20 percent there, collecting what he can at a deep discount—a shrewd and risky maneuver. If his master overrules his rogue manager, and rejects the deals he made, then he’ll look like a scrooge to all his business associates. But if he takes the deals hammered out by his shrewd manager, then the shrewd manager looks like a hero and has made himself a lot of new friends. And, in the end, the master commends his dishonest manager for his shrewdness.

That’s what makes this parable so strange. Doesn’t it seem just a bit odd when a dishonest, wasteful, conniving crook ends up saving the day and coming out on top? It’s not the ending you would expect. And that’s where we come in. For we too are managers, stewards of all the wealth that our heavenly Father has placed into our hands. The money and possessions we so casually call “ours,” aren’t really “ours” at all. It’s only ours to manage and invest for the short span of years we spend on earth.

One of the reasons Jesus gives us this strange parable is so that we take time to evaluate our management of the wealth God has placed into our hands. And while it’s true that there’s much more to stewardship than just money—while it’s true that God wants us to manage our families and our church and our citizenship for the glory of God—yet God’s Word in this parable focuses directly on our management of money. The olive oil and wheat in the parable were really functioning as a kind of currency—just like dollars and cents.

So how are you doing at managing the money God has entrusted to you? Is your money working for you? Or are you working for money? It’s not unusual for the average American to be carrying tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt alone. It’s not unusual for the average American to be a slave to money—a slave to paying off debt and interest.

When money becomes our master, that’s not just a financial problem—that’s a faith problem. No one can serve two masters. . . . You cannot serve God and money. And, by the way, it’s not just a matter of “putting God first,” as we often say. God doesn’t simply want to be first among our many gods; He demands to be our only God—at the center of every part of our lives, including the financial part.

At the heart of our money management is that portion we give back to our Master—the offerings we return to the Lord out of love and thankfulness. It’s not the amount of money we give that matters; it’s the percentage of our income that matters. Two people may each drop a five dollar bill into the offering, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. If one of those people is Warren Buffet and the other is a twelve-year-old who just made twenty dollars babysitting, then those “identical” offerings are not identical at all. God asks that, as His managers, we return a percentage of everything back to Him—and that we take that percentage off the top—or, in the language of the Bible—that we return our “first fruits” to Him.

My fellow managers and shrewd stewards, do you know what your annual income is? If not, just check your last tax return. Second, do you know what percentage of those earnings you are returning to the Lord through your offerings? I’m sure some of you know—be it 8% or 10% or 12%. But for every person who knows that percentage, I suspect there are many others who don’t have the foggiest idea—who simply determine the amount of their offerings based on some criteria pulled out of thin air—whether it’s been a good week or not, on what the economic forecast is, or because that’s just the amount we’ve always given. Not too shrewd!

So thank God for the dishonest manager. Thank God for the strange, yet shrewd, steward of today’s parable. For if even that shady, shifty, lazy fellow could double down and ultimately earn the praise of his master—then how much more should we be the best money managers ever? How much more should we who have been purchased—not with gold or silver but with the holy, precious blood of Jesus—absolutely excel at managing the blessings we have been given? How much more should we who are forgiven—we who are blood-bought, died-for, and redeemed from sin and death—be ever moved to manage the good things God has entrusted to us with wisdom, with care, with precision and devotion?

Thank God for the shrewd steward who shows the way for all stewards. Think about it: When was he most productive and effective at what he was doing? It was right after he was fired. For it was right at that moment that he realized he had nothing to lose. Then he lets loose with his “Hail Mary” pass to the end zone. That day was probably the most productive day of his entire career. But it’s only when he is fired—it’s only when his name is “mud,” it’s only when he doesn’t have a single good work with which to justify himself—that he becomes the manager he was always meant to be.

Beloved in the Lord, when it comes to money and possessions, you have nothing to lose. You have nothing to lose because Jesus Christ has given you everything—His love, His forgiveness, His righteousness, His body and His blood, His resurrection life. Money isn’t your master, Jesus is. And Jesus is a merciful Master. In Him you can live free, with nothing to lose. The kingdom of heaven belongs to you. The new you in Christ is not a slave to money, but a master of money. You can order it around. Tell it what to do. You can tell Misters Washington, Lincoln, Hamilton, Jackson, Grant and Franklin to get to work helping your needy neighbors, supporting the mission of the church to seek and save the lost.

Everything hinges on the fact that you have a merciful Master in Jesus Christ. He seeks out the wasteful and the dishonest, the shrewd and the savvy. He seeks out sinners. He rescues them from sin and death by His dying and rising. He baptizes sinners. He works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil and gives eternal salvation. Money can’t do any of that! Money can’t bring lasting peace or joy. Money can’t wash away sin or give you a clean conscience. But Jesus does all of that and more—does it for you out of pure mercy and grace. That’s why you have nothing to lose. For you have a merciful Master.

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.