The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 22, 2013 - Pastor Adam Moline
Amos
8:4-7 1 Timothy 2:1-15 Luke 16:1-15
Grace, mercy and
peace to you from God our Father through our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Our text today is from the Gospel lesson just read, especially these
words, “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that
when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” Thus far our text for today.
Dear friends in
Christ, Jesus tells us another parable this morning, and at first glance it
seems a little confusing. It’s an almost
Robin Hood like story. A rich man has a
manager, who has been mishandling his affairs.
So the rich man tells the manager to turn in his books, and to clean out
his office by the end of the work day, because, to quote Donald Trump, “You’re
fired.”
They are terrible
words to hear. The manager knows it will
be difficult to find a new job. He knows
he will not have a good reference. His
income is disappearing, and he has nowhere to turn for help.
So what does he
do? He uses his position to his advantage. He calls in every person who owes his soon to
be former boss money, and he forgives their debts. “What’s that, you owe the boss $400? Make it $200 – a special gift from me to
you. And you, you owe the boss
$1000? Make it $100 instead.” And so the manager gains the favor of all the
debtors of the master, by forgiving their debts. Or to put it in a common colloquialism, he’s
robbing Peter to pay Paul!
And here’s the
confusing part. When the master, who has
lost hundreds of dollars in income by the actions of the manager, finds out
what has happened, he commends the manager because of his shrewdness. He’s glad that the manager paid off the debts
owed to the master with the his own funds.
And then to close the parable, we have these words, “Use your
unrighteous wealth to make friends, so that when it runs out you may receive an
eternal dwelling.”
Having heard the
parable, it’s tempting to say, “ok, this means you should give your money to
the church, give it to the poor. Give it
away to whoever needs it. Be like the
steward, be like the manager, a veritable Robin Hood, stealing from the rich
and giving to the poor. And if you give
away all your stuff, if you are the best steward that exists, then you will get
to heaven.
And yet, when we look
at our lives we fail to do that. We
don’t give as we’re supposed to. We
don’t help other people with our unrighteous wealth, but instead we help
ourselves. Furthermore, if we take the
parable literally in that sense, it would seem that God wants us to steal from
the rich, to take from those who have a lot, and then to give THAT to the poor. And yet God also says, “You shall not
steal.” So how can he say, “Don’t
steal.” In one place, and then say, “Its ok, as long as it’s a rich person your
are taking from.” God doesn’t work that
way, that can’t be the way we understand this parable.
Because the truth
is, this parable is not telling us to be a good steward, or how to share, or
how to steal righteously. This parable
isn’t about us doing anything at
all. Rather, as all parables are in the
end, this parable is entirely about Christ.
It’s Jesus who is the manager.
He’s the one who gives up all his wealth to forgive the debts of us
sinners.
Because of our
sins, we are in debt to God. Because of
all those terrible things we’ve done against God’s word, we owe God, not just
money, not just time, we owe him our life.
We must die. We must suffer hell
because of how we’ve turned against God.
We pray it even in the Lord’s Prayer, we are debtors, we are
trespassers, we owe God because of our sin.
And God will make us pay what we owe him.
But instead of us
footing the bill, we have Christ, who takes God’s own glory and righteousness
and uses it to pay our debt. He pays it with
his own blood, poured out from his body on the cross. He pays it with his own life, taken from him
on the cross. And because of Christ,
your debt to God is paid, just as the manager paid the debts of the debtors to
the master in our text. And so because
of Jesus, you are sin free before God.
Because of Jesus you owe God nothing, but instead have the promise of
eternity with God in heaven.
Your debt is
paid. Christ has paid it in full. Your sin is forgiven, forgiven by the blood
of the lamb. You belong to God, because
of Jesus. He’s the shrewd manager, who
paid your debt. In his name. Amen.
