Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 17 2013

Amos 8:4-7
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13

I wonder if you’ve ever had one of those email moments, when you or someone you’ve written to has misunderstood something written in an email. The trouble with email is that we tend to write in conversational style, short and to the point, but elements of conversation such as tone of voice and facial expression are missing. Those can be as important as the words themselves for conveying meaning, and in their absence we can miss the humour in the voice or the twinkle in an eye which can tell us that someone is joking or being ironic.

Today’s gospel reading is difficult to understand, as Jesus seems to be commending dishonest behaviour. But read it with an inflection of humour and a different meaning emerges. The manager and the rich man in this parable are a couple of shady characters engaged in dodgy deals and underhand practices, and they both come unstuck. They are perhaps the Del Boy and Rodney of first Century Palestine. 

Jewish law in the first century forbade lending money at interest, because it would have been unjust to do so in a zero inflation economy. A few sharp traders, however, got round the ban by lending goods at interest, corn and oil and so forth. I’ll lend you ten measures of wheat, and you have to pay me back fifteen. No money changed hands, so technically it didn’t break the ban on lending money at interest. But it did break the spirit of the law. It was unjust, a means of enriching yourself by getting other people into debt and impoverishing them.

And this may be the situation envisaged in this parable. One suggestion is that the master and his manager have been conniving together to lend goods at interest, and when the manager discovers he’s going to be sacked he makes friends with his master’s clients by cancelling the interest they owe on their loans. When the master finds out, he can’t criticise the manager, because to do so would be to expose his own dishonesty and corrupt practices. So the dishonest manager has wrong-footed the dishonest master. And by ingratiating himself with the clients he has boosted the master’s reputation - so it’s now much more difficult to sack him!

This story needs to be read alongside the parable of the prodigal son which comes just before (though in the lectionary it was read out of sequence in Lent). In both parables the main character squanders the property that had been entrusted to him, and comes to his senses only when faced with the dire consequences - starvation or losing a job. Both then talk over with themselves what they are going to do. Both discover a need for forgiveness, arising from merely practical motives, which results in them receiving more than they had expected. The prodigal son is welcomed back into the family, the prodigal manager is praised by his master.

Forgiveness, even when sought from compromised motives, enables a new beginning and the healing of broken relationships. Sorrow for sin arising from the love of God is called contrition, and reconciles us with God straight away. But even if we are just sorry for our sins out of fear of the consequences, it can still be a beginning for God’s grace to work on us, turn us around and bring us back into the relationship of love in which we are reconciled.

So far that’s fairly straightforward. But, watch out, there’s a twist in the tale. This is a parable, and parables test our understanding, challenge our consciousness. Just when we think we can read this story as a straightforward analogy Jesus says “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes”. What does that mean?

This parable is told to the disciples, to those who already believe, and not to the Pharisees, who we are told in v14 are “lovers of money”. Luke’s gospel consistently says how dangerous it is to be attached to riches and possessions, a point that is reinforced at the end of today’s reading. 

This is of course part of the scriptural tradition which these Pharisees seem to have forgotten. Some words of Psalm 62 are worth reading alongside today’s gospel:

The peoples are but a breath, the whole human race a deceit;
on the scales they are altogether lighter than air.
Put no trust in oppression; in robbery take no empty pride;
though wealth increase, set not your heart upon it.

So here I think is a test, to see if we have understood correctly. The disciples of Jesus should be on their way out of the old way of living, the way of possessiveness, rivalry and greed. They should be learning to inhabit the new life of the Kingdom of God, the Kingdom of unlimited and overflowing generosity, love and forgiveness. 

If you are learning to live according to the Kingdom, then this story about riches and dishonest profits will not be a snare to you. You will see the point of forgiveness, but you won’t feel caught in the attachment of possessions. But if you do feel that attachment - watch out! Jesus goes on to tell the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, which we’ll hear next week. That parable reminds us that there are two possibilities for “the eternal homes”, and attachment to riches and neglect of the poor leads to one of them.

For Christians, our attitudes to forgiveness and reconciliation, and to wealth and debt, are closely bound together. Both need to be governed and transformed by God’s overflowing generosity. Forgiveness cannot be simply a “spiritual” attitude with no connection to the realities of people’s lives. Reconciliation is vital for fractured relationships and communities to be rebuilt. And financial debt is growing all the time and is a destructive and oppressive force in many people’s lives. The stand that Archbishop Justin has taken about pay day lenders, wanting to put them out of business, and encouraging churches to support credit unions, is one example of how God’s economy of generosity and forgiveness bears upon the realities of daily life.

There are few people who are called to radical renunciation of property, though there are some who do give up all their possessions, monks and nuns, the sannyasi of the Hindu tradition. But most of us need to follow a different path, though arguably just as challenging, to use money and possessions prudently and for good purposes, without becoming attached to them. 

This applies to us as individuals and as a church community. We do need to make financial provision according to our responsibilities. For ourselves, for our families if we have them, for the mission and ministry of our church. And, Luke reminds us, for the poor and those in need. But all this must flow from God’s generosity transforming our lives, from the knowledge that everything we have is God’s gift. And all this knowing that money and possessions, though we may do good with them here and now, are passing away and will be gone in the blink of an eye. 

Some Christians today, like the Pharisees in Luke’s Gospel, seem to ignore this. There are preachers of a “prosperity gospel” who claim that if you are a good believer God will reward you with wealth and possessions. If you are rich it is because God has blessed you, so enjoy it. But this is completely contrary to the teaching of the Gospels. It is always the poor and the marginalised whom God favours, and the rich who come under God’s judgement. 

We do need to handle money prudently, to be good stewards of our possessions and resources. But we do so honestly, without attachment, and for a purpose, which is the good news for the poor. Part of the good news for us is that everything we have is God’s gift to us. And that comes with the call and the challenge to imitate God’s generosity in expending ourselves, our substance, our lives, for the Kingdom. The people of God should be characterised by a generosity that speaks of God. As Pope Francis has reminded us, it is a poor church for the poor that is the best manifestation of that generosity in the world.