Monday, September 26, 2022

The Kingdom Tool of Wealth

Sermon for Sept. 18, 2022
Luke 16:1-13

OK, does anyone else find that Gospel reading to be, shall we say, less than helpful?  Maybe downright confusing?  I mean, I prefer stories like the Good Samaritan, where you come to the end, and Jesus says, “Go, and do likewise” (Luke 10:37) – and then we do.  Well, this isn’t one of those.  This is a complicated story reflecting the complexities of human life.  

Looking at this parable, we start with a temptation to read it as an allegory and equate the rich man with God, right?  I guess the character of the rich man might be one way to view God’s nature – an absentee landlord, someone accumulating holdings, growing wealthy from them, and only passingly concerned with the people involved.  You could see God that way, but I don’t think our Scripture and tradition see God that way.  So, who is the rich man?  Well, maybe he’s … a rich man – a wealthy landlord overseeing the performance of his on-site managers.

OK, then, what about the manager in the story?  As we meet him, we learn he’s been “squandering” the landlord’s property (16:1), so the landlord fires him.  But what’s interesting is his response to being fired.  The manager works with the master’s debtors to cut their debts and win their friendship, building a new circle of support to help him through the crisis of being fired.  The landlord finds out about this and grudgingly commends the manager for being shrewd enough to engineer a soft landing for himself.  It’s a very human story – maybe a parable not so much about God as it is about us.

So, what might we take away from this very human story?  Perhaps that we have grudging admiration for a person clever enough to skirt the law and beat the system.  Perhaps that we cheer a little when the underdog debtors get an unexpected break at the expense of the rich landlord.  Perhaps we’d like to find ourselves in that kind of situation.  I probably wouldn’t argue too much if someone from my credit-card company called and said, “Listen, the computer system has credited you with double payments for the last year, so your balance now is only half what it should be.”  Would I ask to speak with the supervisor and insist my full debt be restored?

Well, if this is a story about people more than a story about God, why is Jesus telling it?  It must have something to do with what it means for us to follow him, right?  Like all Jesus’ parables, this story must be a window into what God’s reign and rule can look like, in contrast to the world as we construct it.  So, what does Jesus say as he reflects on this parable?  He says, “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.” (16:9)

What?  That seems like about the most un-Jesus-y thing Jesus ever said.  So, how do we make sense of it?

Well, you could argue that the Gospel tradition just got this one wrong.  Nobody was shooting video of Jesus on their phones, so all the Gospel writers had to draw on was decades of memory as they put pen to papyrus to share the Good News.  Maybe decades of telling this story had worn it away, confusing the meaning of Jesus’ words like a game of spiritual “telephone.”

Or, you could argue that Jesus is being sarcastic here.  Turning oral tradition into written, translated, and retranslated documents doesn’t capture tone of voice or facial expression.  Maybe what Jesus said was more like, “Yeah, right, sure – make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it’s gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.  Really?  You think that’s my point?”

You may be comforted to know that scriptural commentators ancient and modern have struggled with this reading and don’t agree about what it means.  Some say the manager isn’t dishonest but good because he’s cutting out his commission when he cuts the debtors’ bills.  Others say the manager is playing Robin Hood, taking from the rich to give to the poor, so even “dishonest” means justify those ends.  Hmmmm.

Well, if the scholars aren’t certain what this story means, I won’t pretend to be either.  This is one of those readings no preacher wants to draw.  But I do think maybe there’s a principle here from which we might benefit, now and eternally.  So, try this on.

Our Scripture and tradition are pretty clear that wealth and possessions can have an insidious effect on us.  They can become our focus, even consuming our hearts and minds.  We can spend much of our time and energy building and managing wealth.  We can indulge our desires for things we clearly don’t need, using resources that come from God in ways we’re pretty sure God would never suggest.  The potential power of wealth is so great that Scripture warns repeatedly about the danger of its becoming an ultimate power – that if getting more becomes our prime directive, that means we’re worshiping “more” rather than worshiping the God from whom all things come.  Spiritually, that’s skating on pretty thin ice.

Jesus teaches us many ways to break that habit of worshiping the power of “more.”  Give to all who ask of you, he says (Luke 6:30).  If someone takes your shirt, give them your jacket, too, he says (Matthew 5:40).  Feed the hungry and clothe the naked, he says (Matthew 25:35-40).  Recognize that, in God’s eyes, the poor are at the top of the priority list, coming in first in the Beatitudes as Jesus begins, “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God” (Luke 6:20).  I sense a theme here.  The power of “more” is so great that we have to act intentionally against it.  The reign and rule of God is not something Jesus is going to bring in with the flip of a switch – not in our hearts nor in our world.  Both for our eternal well-being, and for the well-being of the poor person standing in front of us, we have to choose to say “no” to the power of “more.”

So, maybe one direction Jesus might be going with this parable is this:  People with worldly priorities are really good, really creative, at maximizing their wealth.  What if we “children of light” (Luke 16:8) got more creative, more intentional, about using the wealth God provides to reveal and build up the reality of God’s kingdom among us?  What if we prioritized getting more wealth to those who have less of it?  That might be a pretty practical way of “making friends for [our]selves” (Luke 16:9) with the folks whose well-being is at the top of Jesus’ to-do list.

So, how would we do that?  If we were at a conference right now, this would be the time when you all would break into groups and come up with solutions, because here’s my confession that you already know:  I don’t have the magic answer for bringing in the reign and rule of God.  And in my view, at least, Jesus doesn’t hand us a specific program for it either.  Faithful people would advocate many different ways to use wealth to help the poor.  Some would say, transfer wealth through government policy.  Some would say, incentivize training and hiring people whom our economy has historically left behind.  Some would say, raise up social entrepreneurship like the Grooming Project, which teaches people skills for success in private enterprise and, by the way, graduated another 21 students here last week.  Some would say, make educating children in poor households our national “moonshot” initiative.

Maybe part of the reason today’s Gospel is so opaque is that we’ve spent so little time taking seriously the notion that wealth is neither good nor bad.  Wealth is a tool, one that can build our own addiction to “more” or one that can build our hearts for an eternal future.  Just as Jesus says here that “you cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:13), so he says elsewhere that the wealthy man Zacchaeus is saved when he gives to others (Luke 19:1-10) and that a hated Samaritan is holy when he pays for a beaten traveler’s care (Luke 10:30-37).  In the Gospels, it’s wealthy women who support Jesus and the disciples financially (Luke 8:1-3).  In Acts, the believers pool their resources to support everyone in their community equally (Acts 2:44-45; 4:32-35), and new converts in distant lands send back offerings to Jerusalem for the relief of the poor (11:27-30).1 

Wealth isn’t inherently bad.  What makes it good or bad is how we use it.  If we hoard it and worship the god of “more” – well, that’s pretty clearly idolatry, and God tends to frown on worshiping things that aren’t God.  So, maybe in this crazy parable today, Jesus is asking us to expand our view of wealth.  What if it weren’t just a potential idol, drawing our hearts away from the God who provides it?  And what if it weren’t just another issue to polarize us, spurring arguments over who’s right and who’s wrong about how to use it?  What if, instead, we saw wealth as a tool for building the kingdom among us – for helping the poor and for changing our own hearts?  Not only would that bless the poor, but it would bless us as we prepare to spend eternity with the God who puts the poor at the top of the list.

1.      Craddock, Fred P. Luke. Part of Interpretation: A Bible Commentary for Teaching and Preaching (43 vols.). Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990. 189


Stepping Down to Heaven

Sermon for 9/11 Anniversary and Holy Cross Day, transferred
Philippians 2:5-11; John 12:31-36a
Sept. 11, 2022

Today is the 21st anniversary of 9/11.  For many of us, this date takes us back to where we were that morning – how we heard the news, who we were with, how we grieved.  For some of us, especially first responders and those close to them, the day is harder than the rest of us can know, as the trauma of 9/11 reopens other wounds incompletely healed.

So here in church, how do we mark this day?  In our Episcopal tradition, 9/11 falls within a few days of the feast of Holy Cross, so we’re transferring that feast to today.  It seems right as we still find ourselves trying to come to terms both with the power of evil killing 3,000 people in a morning and the power of the cross to defeat evil and exalt Jesus as Lord.

But why would Christians observe Holy Cross Day in the first place, honoring an instrument of brutal death?  If it seems strange to us, it would have seemed offensive to someone of Jesus’ time and place.  Honoring the cross would have been like us wearing little electric chairs around our necks.  Crucifixion was how you punished the lowest of the low – slaves, murderers, thieves, insurrectionists.  Crucifying someone was the ultimate example of adding insult to injury.  Not only did the process slowly drown you with the fluid collecting in your lungs, and not only did the authorities break your body in the process.  The punishment was not just inhumane but inhuman, proclaiming that the person hanging on that cross was beneath the respect given to actual human beings.

Yet we know Jesus walked the way of the cross willingly.  Just before today’s Gospel reading, Jesus says, “Now, my soul is troubled.  And what should I say – ‘Father, save me from this hour?’  No, it is for this reason that I have come to this hour.” (John 12:27-28)  And commenting on that reality, in the Letter to the Philippians the apostle Paul writes that Jesus “did not regard equality with God as something to be exploited, but emptied himself, taking the form of a slave….  [H]e humbled himself and became obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross” (2:6-8).  So this was not simply justice perverted.  It was a decision Jesus made – the second person of the Trinity choosing to be counted among the lowest of the low.

Why would he have chosen that?  Because of the central paradox of our faith: that as we make our heavenly pilgrimage, we step down to step up.  Take a minute to visualize the pattern laid out in that Letter to the Philippians because it’s the map for our journey, too.  Jesus begins “in the form of God” but empties himself, stepping down into the form of a slave.  And “being found in human form,” he steps down again, humbling himself in sacrificial obedience.  And that step leads to another, down to the “the point of death” – and stepping down just that much further, “even death on a cross.”

But then, having taken that journey to the criminal’s grave, Jesus begins stepping up into exaltation.  He rises in triumph over sin and death, breaking the power of evil that sent him to the tomb.  Having risen in resurrection, he ascends back to the glory of the Trinity and receives “the name that is above every name” (Philippians 2:9).  And in God’s heavenly time, which wraps around our linear notions of days and years, “every knee [bends] in heaven and on earth under the earth,” the whole cosmos confessing that “Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of the Father.” (Philippians 2:10-11)  That title, Lord, meant something even more specific for the people of Paul’s day than it does for us.  Lord, or in Greek, kyrios, was a title the Roman Emperor claimed, the divine sovereign of the day.  But because of the victory over evil that Jesus wins on the cross, the cosmos instead proclaims he is Lord, the one who defeats the pretender to the throne in Rome.

And it’s this path of downward mobility that our Lord Jesus calls us to follow, too.  “Whoever serves me must follow me,” Jesus says before today’s Gospel reading, “and where I am, there will my servant be also.” (John 12:26)

What does that look like?  I’d say one example is someone whose face we’ve seen often in the past four days: Queen Elizabeth II.  As Episcopalians, members of the worldwide Anglican Communion of churches descended from the Church of England, many of us might feel a particular twinge of grief at her passing after 70 years on the throne.  The sovereign of the United Kingdom is officially the “Supreme Governor of the Church of England,” appointing archbishops and other leaders1 and setting the bar for the pomp and circumstance many of us know and love.  Of course, the Crown has no real authority over the Church of England and certainly not a bit of authority over us.  But Queen Elizabeth did have influence.

And I think one statement we’ve heard many times since Thursday captures her royal servant heart.  On Elizabeth’s 21st birthday, this young woman who had served as a mechanic in World War II just a few years earlier2 told the British Commonwealth that her generation was now tasked with leading the world out of the “terrible and glorious years of the second world war.”3  So she took on the mantle of servant leadership for her generation, saying: “[M]y whole life whether it be long or short shall be devoted to your service….”3  And when she died 75 years later, she’d refused to stop serving.  From the start and to the end, Queen Elizabeth followed the lead of her sovereign, the One who’d said, “I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:27).

Of course, as the English grieve their Queen, we’re marking 9/11 on this side of the pond.  It was a day of many sacrifices, but I want to remind you of one particular story of downward mobility.  You may remember the name Mychal Judge.  Fr. Mychal Judge was the first of the first responders to die in the 9/11 attacks in Manhattan.  He was a Roman Catholic chaplain for the New York City Fire Department; so when they were deployed, he was, too.  Now, I want to pause for a moment of full disclosure.  Remembering Fr. Mychal Judge this morning was not my idea.  It came from our own first responder, Adam James, who’s also preaching this morning about 9/11 and about Fr. Mychal, just down the street at St. Peter & All Saints where Adam is serving his internship.  But Adam and I agreed that we would both raise up Fr. Mychal today because his story deserves to be heard.

          Stepping into what would become Ground Zero was hardly Fr. Mychal’s first step down into glory.  He was a Franciscan friar, a spiritual descendant of St. Francis of Assisi; and long before 9/11, Fr. Mychal had become known as someone who would go to surprising places with his flock.  People in his New Jersey neighborhood remembered how he “had a knack for showing up at crucial moments.”4  When a man held his wife and child at gunpoint, barricaded in their house, Fr. Mychal climbed a ladder to the window where the man was hiding, so he could talk with him face to face.  In the 1980s, when most people were terrified of AIDS patients and his own Church condemned the sexuality of most the people suffering from that disease, Fr. Mychal went to AIDS wards and rubbed the patients’ feet.  After leading a funeral and consoling the family, Fr. Mychal could be found with the cemetery staff, literally stepping down into a grave to talk with them.  There’s a movement now to make Fr. Mychal a saint, though the fact he was gay stands as a huge barrier in his own tradition.  

But what we remember most today is the image from the reporting on 9/11, the image of other first responders carrying out the body of Fr. Mychal.  He’d been standing there praying as his fellow firefighters and paramedics rushed into the North Tower, and he was killed by cascading rubble when the South Tower fell.4

There’s nothing I can say to honor that sacrifice.  He and so many others have already consecrated that ground and this day “far above our poor power to add or detract,” as Lincoln said at Gettysburg.5  What I can say is this:  Fr. Mychal Judge followed his Lord on the paradoxical path of stepping down to heaven.  

And what can we take away from his example?  Well, in the midst of all the conflict and venom stirred up in our culture to distract us, it’s easy to forget the path we’re called to walk.  We are people of downward mobility.  We are people whose one true Emperor hung on a cross like a scoundrel.  We are people who dangle our feet in the grave, finding there the most unlikely stairway to heaven.  We follow a Lord who stood with the folks at greatest risk and touched those whom others refused to see.  Now, we may well think, “I could never be Mychal Judge.”  Fair enough.  But I imagine Mychal Judge thought he could never be Mychal Judge either.  Instead, he simply followed where his Lord went first.

And so it is for us.  Let the same mind to be in us that was in Christ Jesus, and let us walk in his way.  For, though it’s complete foolishness to the world, the cross is the only power strong enough to beat evil at its own game and lead all the world into God’s light.  

1.      https://www.royal.uk/queens-relationship-churches-england-and-scotland-and-other-faiths#:~:text=The%20Queen's%20relationship%20with%20the,and%20government%20thereof%2C%20as%20by

2.      https://www.newsweek.com/queen-elizabeth-ww2-service-reign-jubilee-1711694

3.      https://www.royal.uk/21st-birthday-speech-21-april-1947

4.      https://www.northjersey.com/in-depth/news/columnists/mike-kelly/2021/09/10/father-mychal-judge-911-attacks-fdny-catholic-saint/4939813001/  

5.      https://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm