Sermon – Luke 16:1-10 – Called to Service

Rev. Jeffrey T. Howard
Sermon – Luke 16:1-10 – Called to Service
Beaver Dam and Pitts Creek Churches
September 19, 2010

Today I will be continuing with my third sermon on the subject of our calling from God. Two weeks ago we looked at our call to discipleship and considered the cost. Last week we looked at our call to repentance and found that this causes great joy in heaven and on earth when we turn from sin and turn toward God. Today we will look at our call from God to serve others. But before we get to this important work please pray with me.

Grant unto us, O Lord, to be occupied in the mysteries of thy Heavenly wisdom, with true progress in piety, to thy glory and our own edification. Amen.” (John Calvin)

Luke 16:1-13 NIV Luke 16:1 Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.' 3 "The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg-- 4 I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.' 5 "So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' 6 "'Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied. "The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.' 7 "Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?' "'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he replied. "He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.' 8 "The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. 10 "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? 13 "No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money."

The traditional interpretation of this Scripture goes like this. An Estate Owner hires a new manager to care for his affairs. The new manager is dishonest and squanders the Estate Owner’s resources. The Estate Owner decides to fire him. But first the new manager writes down the debts of his customers feathering his own nest and squandering even more of the Estate Owner’s wealth. And the Estate Owner and Jesus commend him for acting shrewdly.

This parable from Jesus is one of the most difficult to understand. In it Jesus seems to be commending a dishonest manager. Jesus seems to be saying that we, children of the light, should be shrewder with money like the children of the world. Jesus seems to condoning both theft and lying provided that you use your ill gotten gains to make friends and take care of yourself. Jesus seems to be telling us to be unethical. How does this make any sense? Why would the preacher choose a passage like this for Sunday worship?

Let me tell you the story in a little different way to illustrate what I think Jesus is trying to say.

A wealthy Estate Owner enjoys the view from his penthouse apartment on Park Avenue in New York City. After checking in with the office Friday morning he intends to join his wife at their home in the Hamptons. He has come a long way since growing up on a farm in rural Virginia as the son of a poor farmer.

Through some very shrewd land deals he has been able to buy up most of the small farms around the one he inherited from his father. He did it in this way. He gained control over the companies that supplied the farmers in that community and the companies that brought what the farmers grew. The farmers, many of them his old friends, went heavily into debt paying the Estate Owner high prices for seed, fertilizer and feed, and receiving low prices for their crops, chickens and eggs. And when they could not pay their debts they lost their land. As a result many of the farmers were now leasing, from the Estate Owner, land they had once owned, and they were still accumulating debt.

The Estate Owner rarely went back to Virginia. He knew that he had taken advantage of his old friends and that he would not be welcome back home. So he hired a new manager to supervise the estate and make sure that the money needed to support his lavish lifestyle continued to flow.

The job of the new manager was to carry on all the business of the estate. He was to make sales and loans, and collect, forgive and pay off the debts of the Estate Owner. He would maintain the relationship with customers, and collect receivables and rents. He would be paid by a commission on these transactions. And he was required to make careful records of each transaction.

The new manager saw how the tenant farmers were suffering with high costs and low revenue. He saw how they were going even deeper into debt every year. And he tried to help his friends. He changed contracts to be more favorable to the tenant farmers. He forgave rents in bad years, and he paid top dollar for the grain and chickens that were produced.

Because of this the Estate Owner saw a decrease in his revenue and ordered an audit of the entire operation. The new manager knew that what he had done would be discovered and he would be accused of squandering the Estate Owner’s resources. He knew that he would be fired from his job for being dishonest. But he also knew that somehow he would have to remain friends with the people of the community who had been cheated by the Estate Owner and saw the new manager as the face of an unjust system. So he came up with a plan to protect his reputation and restore the relationships he had with his friends. Before the auditor arrived and before he would be fired, he would write down all the debts owed by the tenant farmers to the Estate Owner to manageable levels. And that is exactly what he did.

After the audit was complete the Estate Owner returned to his rural home to fire the new manager for squandering his resources. He was apprehensive about returning home knowing how many of his old friends now hated his guts. But he had to take control of the estate if he was to continue living in Manhattan with all the perks he was used to. So he flew in his private jet to Salisbury where his Bentley was waiting for him.

When the Estate Owner arrived home after an absence of many years he was shocked by what he saw. His old friends came up to him to thank him for forgiving their debts, lowering their rents, and charging lower prices in his store. His old church threw a party in gratitude for what he had done. The Estate Owner realized that his new manager had restored the relationships he had with his friends that had been broken years before, and now he was welcome at his old home.

By forgiving unjust debts the new manager had been a faithful to his responsibility to the Estate Owner because he had protected the assets that really mattered, the love shared by the Estate Owner and his friends. And so the Estate Owner commended his new manager for a job well done.

What the new manager had discovered was his calling from God. God had not called him to serve the interests of money. Rather he was called to serve the interests of the people in his community as a disciple of Jesus Christ, and accept the high cost of this calling. In doing so was able to restore the relationships that had been broken. He helped the Estate Owner to recognize his own sins and accept his call to repent which resulted in great joy in heaven and in his old community. Both the Estate Owner and the new manager realized their true calling from God. This was God’s call to serve not money, but to serve one another in love.

In twenty first century America we take a very short term view of the world. We are focus on quarterly financial reports that tell us how we are doing. Our goals are to maximize the income on each of those quarterly reports as we build up our own wealth. So we pour over quarterly mutual fund and bank statements and try to find ways to generate a little more investment income. We also try to maximize our income from our farms and businesses and jobs. Obtaining maximum income and investment returns is an obsession with many people. But God is not calling us to serve money. Rather we are to keep our attention forward toward the heavenly kingdom where all debts are forgiven and old friends live together in harmony. And the promise of scripture is that we can have a piece of this new kingdom right now. But first we must love our neighbor even more than we love our money.

The Estate Owner sold his Manhattan Condo and house in the Hampton. He built a new home
on his father’s farm near the river. He bought a boat and a golf cart. He started attending his old church and committed the rest of his life to caring for the people in the community who had been harmed by his business practices. And he experienced the great joy of being a repentant sinner and a disciple of Jesus Christ. Amen.