Sermon - Fifteenth Sunday After Pentecost (9/22/2019)
Amos 8:4-7, Ps. 113; 1 Tim. 2:1-7; Lk. 16:1-13
“And so I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”
Jesus has just been at dinner, not with friends, but with critics: people who thought he ate with, and generally associated with, all the wrong people. Jesus tells his critics three stories: about a man with a hundred sheep who loses one, about a woman with ten coins who loses one, about a man with two sons who loses one, if not both, of them. And after the dinner, when Jesus is alone with his disciples, he tells them yet another story, the difficult and confusing parable we read today.
This is a story about a rich man who had a manager, who – some people claimed – was “squandering” his property. That’s the same word used in the story of the Prodigal Son, who took his share of the inheritance and “squandered his property” in the far country. So this is the story of the Prodigal Manager. Whose boss is not nearly as forgiving as the father of the Prodigal Son. There are rumors that the Prodigal Manager is squandering the rich man’s property – and rather than take the time to find out whether the charges are true, the rich man just fires his manager.
Which is a problem for the manager, since he’s basically been the rich man’s bill collector – which has not made him many friends in the community. And now that his boss has rewarded him for his loyalty by throwing him under the bus, what is the manager supposed to do? He has already burned his bridges with the community, where he’s basically one small step above the tax collectors in people’s estimation. He has no other skills – “to dig I am not able, to beg I am ashamed.” What is he supposed to do?
Well, he’s been given a brief moment to close out the books, so he has an idea. Maybe he has some time to make a few “adjustments” to the records that will earn him some friends among the many people who owe his master money. And that seems wrong – he’s basically stealing from the master on the way out the door. Even if he’s being treated unfairly, two wrongs don’t make a right, and it’s hard to understand why Jesus seems to praise what the Prodigal Manager is doing.
Except that what the Prodigal Manager is doing is forgiving debts. “How much do you owe my master? A hundred? Let’s call it eighty. Can we do a deal for fifty?” And as a general matter, forgiving debts is at the heart of the Kingdom of God that Jesus has come to announce. From the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus, in the synagogue at Nazareth, where he reads the prophecy of Isaiah: “The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor, to announce the year of the Lord’s favor.” In the Old Testament, the “year of the Lord’s favor,” or the Jubilee year, was the year when all debts would be forgiven. In the Kingdom of God the blind see and the lame walk and the oppressed are set free from the burdens and the debts that weigh heavily upon them. Jesus has come to proclaim a new age where the debts of the past are no more – the forgiveness of sins is one part of this more general forgiveness of all the debts human beings have incurred to one another and to God. That’s why Jesus teaches us to pray: “Your kingdom come, Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who are in debt to us,” which is the literal translation of Luke 11:4.
So the Prodigal Manager is living the Kingdom – forgiving debts, hoping to make friends who will show him compassion in the future. You might say that he has no right to forgive these debts, and that might be right. But then they said the same thing about Jesus, when he announced forgiveness and they said, “By what right does this man forgive sins? No one can forgive sins but God alone.”
And the thing is, in the story Jesus tells, the plans of the Prodigal Manager, like the plans of the Prodigal Son, turn out to work even better than expected. The rich man is impressed! Jesus is a bit vague as to exactly why, and there are many interpretations. Maybe, like Ebeneezer Scrooge, the rich man is inspired by the Prodigal Manager’s example and comes to see the benefits of forgiving debts over grinding out every last penny from his creditors. Maybe the rich man thinks the manager has turned out to be a pretty good crook and they’re more kindred spirits than he thought. Without knowing more about the context in which Jesus and his disciples shared this story, it’s hard to say for sure.
Now, for sure, the Prodigal Manager doesn’t start forgiving debts because he’s heard Jesus preaching about the Kingdom of God. He is not consciously thinking of the kingdom of God when he starts forgiving debts – he never mentions God or faith at all as a motivation for his actions. I’m reminded of the old story about Winston Churchill, when in the early days of World War II his advisors were worried about whether they could count on help from the United States. Churchill supposedly said, Don’t worry, you can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried all the other options first. Perhaps the prodigal manager did the right thing here, because he couldn’t think of any other options.
What he was hoping to do, according to the story Jesus tells, is to use his last minutes as the rich man’s manager to win friends and influence people. And this turns out to be the right thing to do – it not only saves the Prodigal Manager from his trouble, but many others were set free from oppressive debts and obligations, perhaps even the master himself. And, Jesus concludes, isn’t that how we ought to use the things of this world. What’s the point of hoarding money and squeezing our neighbors dry? We can’t take it with us. But we can take our relationships with other people – so why not use the things of this world that is passing away to win friends in the kingdom that is coming?
“And so I tell you,” Jesus said, “use the unrighteous wealth of this age to make friends for yourselves, so that when it fails you, these friends will welcome you into the dwellings of the age to come.” We are just the managers of our possessions for the time that we are here, and one day our time as a manager of the Lord’s household will be over, and there will be an accounting. And on that day, won’t it be great to have friends who are willing to stand up and say: This was a person who should be forgiven, because this person forgave me when I was in need. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to hear, I was hungry and you gave me to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me to drink, I was oppressed and weighed down and you used your resources to set me free.
This, by the way, was Martin Luther’s take on this parable. On the last day, Luther said, “when we come before the judgment seat of God, poor persons whom we have assisted here, will stand in heaven and say: he has washed my feet, she gave me food, drink, clothing, and the like. They will certainly be my friends and witnesses of my faith, whatever words they may use to declare it. Then a beggar will be of more use to me than St. Peter or St. Paul, for there none of these can help. But when a beggar comes and says, My God, this he has done unto me, as Your child! – that will help me, for God will say, Whatsoever you have done unto these, you have done unto me. Therefore the poor will not be our helpers but our witnesses so that God shall receive us.”*
So may it be said of all of us: that we heard the good news that the Kingdom of God was at hand, and that we believed it enough to allow God to set us free from our possessions so we could use them to set other people free. May the Lord who forgives us all of our debts enable us to forgive the debts of others who in turn will gladly welcome us into the tabernacles of the age to come.
* - Sermons of Martin Luther, vol. 4, pp. 292-301 (1983), http://www.lectionarycentral.com/trinity09/LutherGospel.html (slight modifications for inclusive language).