Sermon at Parish Mass Trinity 14 2019

Photographs by Gnangarra...commons.wikimedia.org 

Amos 8:4-7

1 Timothy 2:1-7

Luke 16:1-13

When I was an undergraduate student, many years ago, there were glossy posters that you could buy from the Christian Union stall. They featured photographs of lovely scenes, a landscape, a sunset or a field of flowers, with an inspirational scriptural text emblazoned over the top. You might, for instance, have a picture of a mountain, majestic and snow-capped, with the text “The Lord God is an everlasting rock”.

These days, you can see the same sort of thing as memes on social media. A tranquil scene, an inspiring text. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself. The beauty of nature is inspirational. But when we read the scriptures in depth we come across a message that is bigger and more challenging than that.

For starters, posters are still life pictures. But in the Gospels Jesus gives us parables. These are never still images, but always a story of something happening. Jesus says, “the Kingdom of God is like this…” and then tells a story of change and transformation. God’s Kingdom is not still life, it is something happening.

The parables are often challenging, even disturbing. At first glance, you think you are looking at a scene in daily life, but look more closely and there’s always something odd about it, a twist in the tale. A sower who sows seed in obviously unproductive places; a mustard seed that grows bigger than a house; a shepherd who abandons 99 sheep to go off and look for just one.

And then there’s today’s parable. What are we to make of the dishonest manager who plays a trick on his employer, to buy favour with his clients? Parables were stories told to ordinary people. There’s perhaps a hint of stand-up performance about them, a touch of humour. The rich man and his manager could be the Del Boy and Rodney of first century Palestine, dodgy dealers wrong-footed by their own crafty schemes.

But it’s a humorous story with a point, and a sharp one at that. The rich man has lots of debtors, and look at what they owe: olive oil and wheat. They are ordinary people living off the land, just like the people Jesus was addressing.

At the time of Jesus Roman taxation on farmers was heavy, and those with smallholdings often got into debt and had to sell their land. Meaning that a small number of rich people got to own more and more of the land. The former owners stayed on, now as tenants, paying rent from their produce, effectively trapped in bonded labour. Like those denounced by the Prophet Amos in our first reading, the landowners “trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land”. Jesus’s story describes a situation of injustice and inequality that would have been very familiar to his hearers.

But, this is a parable. Not a still life image but a story of change and transformation, revealing the possibilities and new beginnings that are signs of God’s Kingdom.  

The change at the heart of this story is that of the manager. He changes sides. He starts the story on the side of the rich landowner, operating his economy of greed and exploitation. But he ends the story on the side of the oppressed debtors, inhabiting a new economy of generosity.

It is, in fact, a story of repentance, which means changing direction. The manager moves from oppression to liberation. Yes, his motives are mixed, his habits of dishonesty and sharp practice are hard to break. But repentance does not mean arriving at the goal all at once. It means changing direction. For the manager, that means beginning from the thoroughly messed-up place he had got himself into. That is where the possibility of a new life has met him, even amid the disaster that has overtaken him. For him also repentance means a change in attitude towards money and material things. Formerly, his life had been driven by them, now he uses them to bring freedom to others.

Like the manager in the parable, our attitude to material things, money and possessions, can reveal uncomfortable truths about ourselves. Whose side are we on? Are we serving our own comfort and wealth and privilege, regardless of the cost to others? Or are we serving others, using what we have with generosity to break the bonds of oppression and bring freedom? But the parable, as well as asking these difficult questions, brings us hope. Like the manager, grace meets us where we are, bringing new beginnings even in the midst of the ways we have gone wrong. Grace brings the possibility of change, not only for us but for those around us.

Climate change has been much in the news this weekend. We know that climate change is impacting the poorest regions of the world with drought, rising sea levels and extreme weather. If nothing is done, most scientists agree, eventually catastrophe looms. The young protestors around the world ask us the same uncomfortable questions as today’s parable: whose side are we on? Our own comfort and convenience, or the side of the poor and of future generations? In the midst of the mess we have got ourselves into, how are we going to change? What we choose to do with the material resources of the earth tells us where we stand in relation to God’s Kingdom values.

We can choose to change, and that choice brings change to others, the possibility of a new beginning. It is possible to inhabit this world in a way that enables all to flourish. But we have first of all to notice how we are complicit in exploitation and oppression. If we use the resources of the earth as though they were ours to possess, and without limit, then we are actually taking away from other people what they need to live.

Repentance opens to us a new beginning, a fresh start. It reveals to us afresh the beauty and fragility of this world that we must receive as God’s gift, and share with all his children. That is not a still-life picture of a beautiful scene, but something living, changing, growing. This world is the place that is given to us in which we can encounter God’s grace even in the midst of the ways we go wrong. It is in this world that we must cherish God’s good creation, and one another. It is in this world, and in the community of all its peoples, that we can make the choice for God’s Kingdom.