Staying on the Path (Week 3)

Amos 8:4-7 

Luke 16:1-13 

I asked my wife this week if we were doing ok financially.  Yes, she said.  Why?  Well, I just wondered if times were tough, I said.  I see that we’re filling the bottles of hand soap with water so that we don’t waste the last bit of soap.  It’s true - the pump mechanism doesn’t quite get all of the soap out.   If you want to get the last little bit of soap, you unscrew the top and slosh some water around.  That way, you make sure you that you get all the soap you paid for.  So it made me wonder whether we were worse off financially than I’d thought.

I am making fun of my dear wife here, but I do the same thing.  When I take our dog Molly for walks, I frequently walk on the golf course just so that I can look for golf balls in the woods.  Often I can find ten or twenty balls on a walk.  And I am embarrassed to admit how much joy this brings me.  When I play with someone who opens a new sleeve of balls they’ve purchased and places a $2 ball on the tee, I secretly hope that they smack it deep into the woods so I can find it later.

Maybe you don’t lengthen the life of your hand soap or collect golf balls, maybe it’s something else for you.  Some people wash out and reuse Ziploc bags.  Some people wash their own cars or change their own oil because they don’t want to pay somebody else to do it.  Some people are bad tippers.  No matter the flavor of your own personal hangups regarding money, most of us, on some level, are worried that we won’t have enough.  Or we think that we’d be much happier if we had a little more.  With just a little more money, we’d feel safer, more secure, more relaxed.

Maybe there have been times in your life when you had to worry whether there was enough food.  Maybe there were times when you worried whether you had enough gas in your tank to get where you’re going.  Maybe you worry, like lots of other people, whether you’ll be able to pay the bills next month, or help your kids go to college, or have money so that you can retire. 

And penny-pinching is only one side of a problematic relationship with money and wealth.  Some of us spend too much.  We spend money to entertain and distract ourselves.  We stave off boredom by shopping.  We keep acquiring things we don’t need even after we’ve run out of room.  The storage business is booming, I hear.  Just like being addicted to saving, we can also be addicted to spending.  There is a kind of life that cannot imagine ever getting off the roller coaster of getting, buying, spending, acquiring, and storing.  Like theologian Walter Brueggemann says, what we “possess” can end up “possessing” us!

These worries about money are probably unavoidable.  Having these worries doesn’t make us sinful or unfaithful or greedy people.  But there is a blunt and difficult conversation we need to have.  According to Jesus, the biggest obstacle to staying on the path to which God has called us is the love of money.  So when we talk about “staying on the path” for the long run, we have to talk about how the love of money can distort our lives, bend our desires, and twist us away from the abundant life that Jesus offers. 

I’m just going to go ahead and admit that I don’t fully understand the parable we read today.  It’s tricky.  Here we have a story about a dishonest employee who loses his job.  And at the end of the story, Jesus says to his followers, “Now go be like this guy.”  What?  Why is Jesus teaching us to imitate the manager who got fired for being a cheat in the first place, and who then selfishly looked out for himself when he got caught?

So let’s back up and take a running start at this parable.

There’s a rich man who has lots of people in his debt.  This rich man employs a manager or steward to collect payments for him.  We’re not told how the manager gets compensated.  Maybe he’s paid a flat fee for his work.  Maybe he earns an agreed upon percentage of what he collects.  Maybe he cooks the books a little, and sometimes skims even more for himself when he can get away with it.  We don’t really know.  All we know is that the rich man has heard that the manager is wasting money.  And while it’s hearsay, the manager doesn’t appear to protest when he’s fired.

The rich man asks for a final accounting from his employee.  He wants to see a spreadsheet of where everything stands, of who owes him what.  So the manager is thrown into a crisis and he needs to make some quick decisions.  He’s lost his job as a bill collector for being dishonest, so no one else is going to hire him to keep their books.  He also he can’t go get a labor job – he’s not physically strong enough for anything like digging or bricklaying.  And he’s not going to just go around begging.  So he has an “aha” moment.  He’ll offer to trim down the amounts owed by those in debt in the hopes that they’ll return the favor when he needs help or money or a place to stay.  “I know what I’ll do,” he says, “so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.”

So he calls all of the rich man’s debtors into his office.  We don’t know how many debtors there were.  But if you employ a full-time bill collector, you probably have quite a few accounts.  We don’t witness every single transaction.  But we witness two of them.  The first debtor owes the rich man 900 gallons of olive oil.  “How about we cut that in half?” says the manager.  “I hope this helps.  But just remember, I might need some help from you some time soon!”  The second debtor who comes in owes a thousand bushels of wheat.  “How would you like me to reduce that right now by twenty percent?” the manager asks.  “And then maybe you can do something for me when I need it.”

Surprisingly, when the rich man finds out what the manager had done, he “commends” him for acting “shrewdly” (v. 8).  Notice, he doesn’t commend him for being ethical or honest or trustworthy.  He commends him for being “shrewd.”  Jesus then adds in his own voice, “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (v. 9).

It sure appears like Jesus is suggesting that we are to imitate the actions of the dishonest accounts receivable employee.  But notice, Jesus doesn’t pretend that the employee is a good person, or righteous, or truthful, or trustworthy.  There is no attempt to whitewash this scoundrel’s character.  Jesus just says, “This guy figured out how to disperse his employer’s wealth in ways that would lead to a welcome into the homes of others.”  He was savvy about how to deal with money.

Now I’ll point out one clue to the story that might be hard to notice if you’re reading the NIV translation.  Jesus urges us to use money, wealth, and possessions to prepare for what’s next.  But what he says is that we should aim at being welcomed into “eternal dwellings.”  That’s not a very good translation.  The Greek word here is the word for “tents” – as in flimsy, non-permanent, moveable, temporary tents.  The manager aimed at finding a secure home.  What Jesus promises us instead is the life of disciples and pilgrims.  He promises us abundant life, but one that might be simple, modest, and shared with lots of others. He calls us to a life that’s simple and light, where we loosen our grip on possessions and rethink how much we really need so that we can put our trust in the God who provides.

In the teachings that follow the parable, Jesus emphasizes that the love of money and wealth and financial security can cause us to leave the path.  It’s important to let our financial lives express our deepest values.  And that’s true whether we have a little or a lot.  What we do have – our income, our savings, our assets, our benefits, our healthcare – all of it is a gift from God.  And we are responsible stewards, caretakers who find joy in seeing how widely we can spread what we have.  Our reading from Amos reminds us that our economic lives are our spiritual lives.  And our spiritual lives are our economic lives.  These aren’t different compartments or categories.  Like Jesus says, we can’t parcel out our deepest passion and our first loyalty.  The only way to stay on the path is to put our full trust in the God who provides enough for everyone.

These teachings about the impossibility of diving our loyalties between God and money create a productive tension for us as a congregation.  We will celebrate our 160^th anniversary this November.  You don’t last 160 years as a faith community without a long legacy of generous, committed people.  We have resources.  We have resources for our operating budget each year because of your generous giving.  We have an endowment that funds our mission and our future because of your generous giving.  But let’s keep practicing generosity.  I commended all of you last week for giving over $800 in a single offering to support the compassion ministries of our Deacons.  Let’s keep giving, and giving it away.  We can’t always share the details of how our mission giving, how our Hack Memorial Fund, how our Deacons help those who are in need.  Just know that you are part of a congregation that is committed to meeting the basic needs of our neighbors who struggle.

On a personal level, today’s teaching might prompt some questions that can move us to some healthy changes.  Hearing the good news of living life Jesus’ way always has the power to free us from whatever is holding us captive.   So I encourage you to take some time this week to think and pray, journal if writing helps, talk with friends and family about things that matter to you.  Sometimes just asking ourselves questions can let some new light in.

When I take an honest look at my expenses, do they reflect the kind of person I want to become?  Do my financial commitments express the values of a person learning to live life Jesus’ way, a person working to trust more in God, to live simply, and to share with others?  Have some of my financial decisions made me less free than I’d like to be?  If so, can I make some changes?  Are there things I want to let go or get rid of?  Am I so focused on “having enough” that I am missing opportunities to be generous, to enjoy life and share it with others?  Am I avoiding an opportunity to experiment with something new in my life because of financial worries?  If so, is there a way I could live on less so that I could say “yes” to this new opportunity?

Parents and grandparents, are we modeling for our kids and grandkids the joy of a generous and simple life, free from the worries of getting and stockpiling and comparing ourselves to others?  Let’s make sure to communicate to our young people that pursuing a career with a high salary and to adopt a lifestyle like everyone else in your income category is not a very good strategy for becoming happy and healthy.  The truth is, they might be happier doing something they love, living a simpler life with less stress.  We at least ought to tell them that there are many different things that make up a rich and wonderful life.

Scolding and shaming people doesn’t usually change behavior in the long run.  You can yell at people for their mistakes.  You can try to motivate them by pointing out all that they’re doing wrong.  I sometimes fall into this trap as a parent and as a pastor.  But it never works.  That’s not how people change.  We change when we see something that’s beautiful; when we see something that appeals to us in some deep way.  We change when we know that changing is the only path to the joy and satisfaction we want more than anything else.

So some of you are here today and you want a simpler, freer life.  You want to worry less about money and wealth and possessions.  You want a lighter, more mobile, more stress-free life.  You want to be more open to the moving of God’s Spirit in your life.  You want to be less attached to your possessions.  You want to be a better friend and neighbor.  You want to share more, give more, do more things with and for others.  So let us put our trust in God, open our hearts and our hands, and see what happens.