Rev. Martha Koenig Stone Jeremiah 8:18-9:1

Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost – 9/23/07 Psalm 113

Henrietta UCC Timothy 2:1-7

If I asked you, “What is Jesus’ favorite topic in scripture,” what would you say? What’s the thing he talks about the most? What would you guess? It’s not love, or righteousness, or family values or faith or sexuality; it’s money. Money!

Jesus knows that money is important, even though he doesn’t have much of it himself. And he knows that money is misunderstood, misused and in much too short supply for most of the people in the world. And he knows that the ways in which people use their wealth say a lot about their relationships with God and with other people. So Jesus repeatedly calls people’s attention to how they use what they have.

Take, for example, today’s reading from Luke. Once upon a time, Jesus says, there was a rich man. Not as rich as Bill Gates or Tom Golisano, probably, but rich enough to have lots of debtors. Rich enough to lend out large quantities of grain and wheat and oil. Rich enough to need a manager to take care of his accounts. Rich enough.

So he’s got this manager, or steward, as some translations say. The manager is responsible for overseeing the business. He’s given great freedom to run things however he sees fit. He’s a kind of middle man, responsible for ensuring his master’s wealth, but also free to make a bit of a profit for himself on the side. Now, in the economy of the times, this kind of job was often given to a slave from the master’s household—someone who didn’t have much choice about what kind of work to do, but who did have some privileges—sort of like a trusted member of the family.

Things are going along pretty well for this manager, until one day when charges are brought against him. Someone tells the rich man that the manager is squandering the property, mismanaging the accounts. The Bible doesn’t say just what he’s been up to—it’s not really clear in the story. Maybe he skims a bit too much off the top when he collects the payments. Or maybe he’s lending to people who aren’t credit-worthy. Maybe he just has shoddy accounting procedures—like the problems they’re having right now in our Department of Homeland Security! You know, lots of money, hard to keep it all straight.

Or maybe he hasn’t done anything wrong at all, and the accusation is false. We just don’t know from the text.

But because he’s accused of wrongdoing, the boss calls him in and says, “What’s this I hear? Wasting my property, eh? Get the books together, and turn ‘em in—you’re fired! You can’t be my manager any more.”

No warning, no investigation, no second chance, just a pink slip, a rude dismissal.

Well, the manager is in dire straits. There isn’t much mobility for a guy in his career. He doesn’t own any land, and he hasn’t learned a trade. No marketable skills here. He’s pretty much out on the street, in a market where no one is hiring. “What am I going to do now?” he says to himself. “I’m not strong enough to do any heavy labor. I don’t have any advanced degrees. Now that I’ve lost my job, I’ll be completely dependent on charity! But I’m ashamed to beg. Maybe I could go door to door and look for some odd jobs…but the people living here are so poor already. Oh, I knew something like this would happen. I’ve been living high on the hog, but now I’m down in the pig pen.”

If this were a modern-day story, you might expect the manager to try to put some quick capital together before he turns in the accounts. You know, maybe put the screws on some of the creditors, and take his cut early. Cook the books so that no one notices how he’s robbed the pension funds. Or maybe you’re not that cynical and you ‘re thinking about what you ‘d do yourself in that situation—how you’d look for ways to cut down on your own expenses and stretch your rainy-day funds until you found a new position. But the story has a surprising twist; instead of trying to gather some emergency funds for himself, the manager does something different. He works on making some new friends.

He calls his master’s debtors in, one by one, and asks them, “How much do you owe my master?” One owed a hundred jugs of olive oil—that’s about 900 gallons, or the oil from 146 olive trees. Another one owed a hundred containers of wheat—that’s 1100 bushels, or the yield of about 100 acres of land. These are huge debts! Was Jesus exaggerating a bit here? These are debts that the borrowers can’t really pay back. Add an exorbitant interest rate, and these people would be pretty much bankrupt. So the manager goes out on a limb, and one by one, he reduces their debts. He tells them to mark down their bills, some by as much as 50%! He is essentially giving away big chunks of his master’s assets!

“This isn’t so bad,” he thinks. If I just reduce the people’s bills a bit, they’ll be really grateful to me. I’ll just cut down the profit margin—some from the extra interest I would have collected, and some from the part that would benefit the owner. It’s not quite honest, I guess. But hey, these people need a break, and God knows the boss doesn’t need all that money. Besides, I’m going to need some friends now. I’d better make sure they’re in my court. We’re all going to need some help now.”

Well, the debtors must have been thrilled! Imagine having your credit card bills cut in half! These folks are going to be pretty thankful to the manager. But the real genius of the scheme is that it makes the rich man look good, too. The story says that the rich man is actually pleased about what the manager has done, even if it is a bit unorthodox. He actually praises the manager for being so shrewd! It doesn’t seem to bother him at all that his assets have been diminished. It’s a win, win, win situation. Debtors, manager, rich man—everyone is happy.

Then there’s a tag added at the end of the story, maybe by Jesus, maybe by the gospel writer, we don’t’ really know. But the text says, “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”

Whoa, just a minute. Is Jesus advocating dishonesty here? Is he saying you can buy your friends? And what does this have to do with eternity, anyway? Is Jesus saying that the ends justify the means, even if you have to break the rules a bit? Probably not, given the other teachings in the gospels.

It’s more likely that Jesus is using some shock value to get the attention of his audience—trying to get folks to start asking some tough questions, spurring folks to look carefully at how money is used and how people are treated in the household of humanity, in the economy of the world.

The story prods me, for example,

I remember a story a friend told me once about two children. The older sister was giving advice to her younger brother on his way to camp for the first time. She said, “When you first get there, make friends with someone right away, otherwise you’ll lose a whole day!” So he set about making friends right away. And later on when he was given a turn to ring the dinner bell, he gave his turn to his new friend, because he said, “I already got to ring a bell once at my church.”

Maybe Jesus’ parable isn’t so hard to understand after all. How hard can it be to see that God wants us all to have a piece of the pie, and that life together is richer than life apart? If our children can already see that making friends and sharing what we have are important, then surely we can see it too.

Some of you were at the workshop here yesterday, led by Dale Goldstein. Dale uses a method called “Heartwork” to help folks figure out what they really value, what they really want in their lives. Dale points out that if you spend your whole life planning, hoping, striving for what is yet to come, you can miss the wonder of life in the present. And so he helps people pay attention to what they know they need and want, and to begin living out those values right now. He asks questions like, “What do you want? What do you REALLY want? What would you do if you only had one year to live?” What would you do if you had only one month to live? What would you do if you had only five minutes to live?”

At first, those questions may sound selfish. But the amazing thing is that, for many of the people gathered, what they really wanted for themselves had to do with their relationship to others, their sense of connection with the world in all its fullness and with the people they know and love. So too, when the manager in Jesus’ story knew he had only a short time left in his job, he knew he needed to tend not only to the numbers, but to the neighbors.

What if, right now, we started using our wealth, wherever it comes from, not only for our own purposes, but also for the benefit of others? What if we used our money to make friends, to build community, to adjust the balance of rich and poor a bit? Maybe we could even be shrewd enough, clever enough, visionary enough, to do something that would catch the eye of the very wealthy, so that they would say, like the rich man in Jesus’ story, “Wow!” That was smart! Why didn’t I think of that? How could I get in on that action?”

The Presbyterian Church of Mount Washington, in Pittsburgh, has had a rebirth of sorts because they’ve taken this kind of approach. Their old building hadn’t been renovated since the 1950’s. They had no parking lot, and not much on-street parking. Their membership was down under a hundred, and their working-class neighborhood was hard hit financially. Still, they knew they wanted to maintain a presence there, a place of stability for themselves and a beacon of hope for the people of the neighborhood. They wanted to keep their church doors open as a meeting place for community groups and as a house of worship for the faithful. They didn’t have much income, and they didn’t know how much longer they could last. But they did have one tremendous asset: perched atop Mount Washington, and overlooking downtown Pittsburgh, they had a spectacular view of the city! So they decided to share the view.

They cut down the brush beside and behind the building, and threw down some gravel for a make-shift parking lot. They built a deck on the hill behind the church, so that people could gather outside. They planned a party for the 4^th of July and invited the whole neighborhood to watch the fireworks from their parking lot. They put up big signs and hired a jazz band to lead a short outdoor vesper service. They made hot dogs and popcorn and chilled some cans of soda to sell. And shortly before dark, the people began to arrive! Folks set up lawn chairs and shared bug spray. Kids built castles with the rocks and the gravel. People talked and laughed. And when the fireworks started, they oohed and aahed together. When folks went home, they took with them an experience of a place where people could gather and share. And that vision grew over time, until the congregation decided they wanted to create a retreat center, right in their church building! They imagined creating a place where people could come for quiet study or planning meetings or family celebrations. Then they hired a fund raiser and took their vision on the road. And within five year’s time, they had raised enough money from corporations in Pittsburgh who though their idea was really cool that they were able to begin construction on their dream. They called it the Urban Mountain Gathering Place. They understood that their church was meant to be shared, and that in that sharing they would all be enriched.

In the past few weeks, our congregation has begun talking about whether it might be time to update our church building. We’re not in a hurry, we’re not being rushed into any quick decisions like the manager in Jesus’ story, or like someone who only has a year to live. But we are embarking on a time of corporate wondering. What do we really want to be and do as a congregation? What are the values that drive our life together? In the next few months, we will begin to create a list of needs for our building—a kind of wish-list, if you will. No one knows what will come of these conversations. Will we find more efficient ways to use our current space? Will we decide we need to add on to our building, or even relocate? We just don’t know.

As this conversation begins to take shape, I find myself praying for insight and courage, and maybe even some shrewdness as we plan. I pray that we will find ways to get right down to the heart of who we are as a congregation of Christ’s disciples. But I also pray that we will find ways to use our resources to benefit others. Because I believe that when we use our wealth to build community, to make friends, to ease the burdens of the poor, to welcome the stranger, we are all more fulfilled. I am moved by the vision of a day when “sharing by all will mean scarcity for none,” as we say sometimes in our communion liturgy. I think it’s a pretty clever idea, and I want to get in on the act! And I believe that God can work through us to accomplish even more than we knew we wanted in the first place. So I invite you to join me in these prayers, to listen with me for God’s response, and to join together as a community of welcome for all of God’s children.

Let us pray…