C, Post-Pentecost 15, Proper 20 - Luke 16:1-13 "Management Mastery"

Luke 16:1–2 (ESV) Jesus also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’”

We hear about mismanagement every day. We experience mismanagement in every facet of life. We see mismanagement occurring everywhere around us.

Fraudsters seem to have their fingers in every pie these days—Internet scams, overpricing, double-dipping, half-truths, con artists painting false pictures of the real situation, and political pork-barrelling to get votes and seize power.

We only have to look at our roads, the debt governments have incurred, and the increasing profits of multinational companies, executives, and politicians. We don’t have to look too hard to hear, see, and experience mismanagement in the Western world.  Managers not managing to manage!

Occasionally, we have the power to remove managers from their positions—at the polls, through motions of no confidence at meetings, or via legal proceedings. Despite this, there still seems to be a golden handshake for those who’ve mismanaged their responsibilities. So, in the scheme of it all, there’s a growing sense of helplessness in our society as “the rich get richer, and the poor get the picture.”

Today and next week, we hear about two rich men from Luke chapter sixteen. Today, the rich man is the master who removes his manager from management. Next week, we will hear about the rich man and Lazarus, who die and stand accountable before God.

So, I put this question to you: “What is being rich?” Or, “How much does one need to have to be considered wealthy?” “Do you consider yourself to be a rich person, a person of wealth?” In my experience, most people look to someone else who is rich—or richer than them. Often, we think of wealth in monetary terms or in one’s number of possessions.

Although we might consider someone else richer or wealthier than ourselves, that doesn’t necessarily mean we see ourselves as poor. This says much about the reality of our riches and how proud we have become of our wealth and possessions.

But whose possessions are they? We only need to be reminded of the rich fool and Jesus’ warning to us: “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.” (Luke 12:15 ESV)

I don’t believe anyone would enjoy hearing God say to you, “Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?” Jesus concludes, “So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.” (Luke 12:20–21 ESV)

This rich fool mismanaged the possessions and life given to him. And when God required him to return the management of his life, he was found foolishly short in being rich toward God.

In the parable before us today, the manager is not the rich man, but only the manager of his master’s riches.

The master says, “What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.” (Luke 16:2 ESV)

Just as we hear, see, and experience mismanagement by those called to manage our society today, the master’s attention is turned to the mismanagement of his dishonest manager in the parable. The master is about to end his management.

Although the manager may not have thought of himself as wealthy, he feared losing the management of his master’s wealth and becoming poor. Like the rich fool who did not recognize he only managed the riches of a greater master, the manager was about to lose his life and the riches of his master.

Humanity, from the beginning until now, has been called to manage the common wealth of God given to us in His creation. It’s always easy for us to see and point out the potholes in others’ mismanagement. But every one of us will be called upon to turn in our management and give an account.

How have you managed the riches God has given you?

In the parable, the dishonest manager takes the bill of one debtor and cuts it in half. For another, he reduces the debt so that only eighty percent needs repaying. And when Jesus tells us the master commends the dishonest manager for doing this, it’s easy for us to see the injustice and question: How can this be? Does the manager have the right to cut the master’s debt when one hundred percent should be paid back? It’s understandable that our sense of righteousness kicks in over the seeming injustice of the master’s commendation and the dishonest manager’s continued mismanagement.

Again, we can ask ourselves: “How have I managed the riches and wealth that God has given me?”

These are not just the riches of money and possessions, but the wealth of our time and our freedom too. Then there are the riches of ourselves—our talents, our relationships, our communications, our sexuality, our desires, and our deeds. Each of us can measure our management of God’s gifts by looking within to see where the glory of our management is going!

Going by our own sense of justice, shocked by the parable of the dishonest manager, one hundred percent should be given back to God for all the things we’ve mismanaged. That means every mismanaged feeling, desire, interaction with others, false witness, lustful glance, hateful thought, misuse of authority, and failure to submit to authority, requires one hundred percent repayment.

When God recalls your management at the end of this life, He requires an account. And by our own judgment, fifty or eighty percent repayment is not good enough. The debt of mismanagement must be repaid one hundred percent.

We feel the sting of our own justice bite us when we begin to contemplate the truth of our management. The reality that the removal of our management occurs in death is enough to grab our full attention. But having to give account of our management on judgement day, to receive a room in the house of God causes all to cry out over our mismanagement: “What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.” (Luke 16:3 ESV) More so, digging or begging our way out of death and judgement is not possible either!

Unlike the dishonest manager who used unrighteous wealth to make friends and be welcomed into their houses, we can also use the righteous riches of God to receive others into his kingdom. We can cut the bill of others by forgiving them their sins. We can take what they owe and clear their debt.

“Clear their debt! How can this be?” you say! The manager in the parable only dropped the debt to eighty or fifty percent—not one hundred percent! However, Jesus tells us to pray, “Forgive us our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors.” (Matthew 6:12 ESV) Jesus one hundred percent forgives you your sin as you’re called to forgive other people one hundred percent of theirs.

Again, the sting of our own justice returns to bite us—or better still, the reality of our own dishonest and unrighteous management haunts us. Only having to be half-hearted or fifty percent repentant, or eighty percent forgiving, now sounds not too bad when it is our mismanagement of richness toward God at issue!

The gospel in this parable is not immediately apparent, even though the master commends the dishonest manager. Therefore, the good news for us is that Jesus takes our dishonest management and manages it in the richness of God’s debt removal at the cross. Not fifty percent, not eighty percent—but your management is one hundred percent shrewdly forgiven, despite it being recalled in death.

God the Father commends Jesus as the shrewd manager of your salvation and mine. You and I are received into the rooms of God’s eternal house—one hundred percent guaranteed—only because of Jesus. Our efforts are dishonest at best. Yet trusting in Jesus is the shrewdest thing any human can ever do.

While we are called here to manage God’s riches, we continually cry out to God in our mismanagement: “Forgive me my sins as I forgive those who sin against me!”

If God the Father is great enough to forgive your debt through the shrewdness of Jesus Christ at the cross, and the Holy Spirit rests upon us as He did on Jesus, trust that the Holy Spirit is working the riches of God’s wealth within the forgiven management of yourself—your talents, your time, and your possessions—given by God, for you to shrewdly glorify him, repenting of sin, forgiving others, and shrewdly managing the daily existence he has given, as you wait for him to end this management. Amen.

C, Post-Pentecost 16 Proper 21 - Luke 16 "Rich in God"

In Psalm 116:12 the psalmist asks a question, “What shall I render to the LORD for all his benefits to me?”  Another way of asking the question. “What can I do for God as I ponder all that he is doing for me?”    The psalmist in answer to the question then looks out from himself for his answer,   “I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD,  I will pay my vows to the LORD in the presence of all his people.  Precious in the sight of the LORD is the death of his saints.”  (Psalm 116:12–15 ESV)

The psalmist thinks about his death.  He calls on God’s name as he ponders his mortality, lifting up God’s cup of salvation.  In the presence of his people, he peacefully can make promises to God.  A confession made, and paid with God’s peace, even while he remembers his forthcoming death.

Elsewhere in the Psalm he cries out to the Lord, “The snares of death encompassed me; the pangs of Sheol laid hold on me; I suffered distress and anguish.  Then I called on the name of the LORD: “O LORD, I pray, deliver my soul!”  For you have delivered my soul from death, my eyes from tears, my feet from stumbling;  I will walk before the LORD in the land of the living.”  (Psalm 116: 3–4, 8–9 ESV)

In the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, Jesus focuses us on death, heaven and hell, or Hades.  This parable follows on from the beginning of Luke chapter sixteen, where Jesus tells of another rich man who recalls the management of his dishonest servant.

Both these texts put life in context with our upcoming death.  In the parable of the dishonest manager, which we heard as our Gospel reading last week, the rich man says, ‘What is this that I hear about you?  Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.’  (Luke 16:2 ESV)

Jesus puts it to us that one day our management will end.  We hear how the manager reacts; how do you react as Jesus puts the question of your death before you?  What has your management of God’s gifts been like?  Digging or begging like the dishonest manager is not going to work.  After all, the more you dig the more you realise you are only digging you way further into dishonesty!  And begging seems shameful because of corrupt pride within.

The dishonest manager then decided to cut the rich man’s debts in half so the rich man’s debtors will receive the dishonest man into their houses.  The dishonest man can’t dig or beg, so he does what he is good at!  He is dishonest with the rich man’s money!

This parable messes with our heads, because we think the dishonest manager should be disciplined for his dishonest affairs with the rich man’s debtors.  But no!  The master commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness, his thoughtful actions.  Why does he praise him?  Why does it mess with our heads?

Jesus sets us up in this parable, to expose the reality of our human nature.  Our sense of human justice and the richness of our righteousness is cornered by our human-centred sense of right and wrong; good and evil.  This parable messes with our heads because our focus is on ourselves and money, rather than God or the rich man’s mercy.

The parable starts to swing into context when we realise, we are the dishonest managers and death recalls our management.  Payment of debt is not money, but rather the cost of sin before God.  The dishonest manager acts shrewdly by not exacting the full debt from the rich man’s debtors.  Likewise, we who have wittingly and unwittingly misused God’s gifts, dishonest managers in God’s eyes, forgive others their debts just as our debts are forgiven, by he who honestly manages our affairs.  

Jesus is the one true honest manager serving God in the face of death.  He ends by saying, “No servant can serve two masters, for 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 God and money.”  (Luke 16:13 ESV)

However, Luke reveals not just the disciples were listening to Jesus but also the pharisees who were lovers of money, and they ridiculed Jesus.  These temple men saw themselves as rich men.  Like us their focus and perspective was wrong.  Their sense of right and wrong was built on a richness other than the mercy of God and his love.

He addresses the pharisees with the Gospel reading for today, the parable of the rich man and Lazarus.  But in doing so introduces the parable with four very unusual verses. 

“The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all these things, and they ridiculed him.  And he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves before men, but God knows your hearts. For what is exalted among men is an abomination in the sight of God.  “The Law and the Prophets were until John; since then the good news of the kingdom of God is preached, and everyone forces his way into it.  But it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for one dot of the Law to become void.  “Everyone who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and he who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.”  (Luke 16:14–18 ESV)

Jesus, who brings the good news of the kingdom of God, speaks to those under the Law and the Prophets.  But their justification and righteousness was not looking for a Saviour through the Law and the Prophets.  Instead, the dishonest pharisees were seeking to force their way into the kingdom of heaven, through their own richness.

Then there is the strange inclusion of verse eighteen about divorce and adultery.  It seems completely out of place.  However, this is the link verse for the dishonest ones who don’t see God as the merciful rich man.  Those whose earthly management of God’s gifts has been dishonest and are seeking to violently push their way into his eternal dwelling.  All but Jesus Christ have divorced themselves from God and were yoking themselves in adultery to their riches.

Both parables have rich men in them, showing they are linked, but where the rich man in the parable of the dishonest manager is God, here in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, the rich man is not God but one under Abraham having descended into hell.  The theme is still death, but this parable speaks to the pharisees, and us, from the other side of death from two eternal  dwellings.

Here on the other side the rich man is nameless in Hades, literally the place “unknown below existence and on the bottom”.  He looks up and sees Lazarus with Abraham.  The poor man has a name in the parable, unlike the rich man unknown by God.  Lazarus is with Abraham the father of God’s promise, the father of Israel, who was rich in both possessions and faith.  Jesus sets the richness of the rich man against the richness of Abraham and now Lazarus.

The rich man appeals to Abraham to send Lazarus back, to be resurrected to save his brothers.  But Jesus ends the parable, saying, “If they do not hear Moses and the Prophets, neither will they be convinced if someone should rise from the dead.” (Luke 16:31 ESV)

Jesus has risen from death, and the Holy Spirit encourages us to hear these words of Jesus as we ponder our death, what our wealth and treasure is, and the great chasm that exists between eternal life with God and the eternal separation from God.

We cannot force our way into the Kingdom of God, the Law of God cannot be avoided, only those who are holy can be in the presence of a God who is holy.  However, we are received into God’s holy and eternal dwelling through the richness of Jesus Christ.  The Holy Spirit wants and wills each of us to turn over our management to Jesus Christ who has bridged death’s great divide, the great chasm between sin and salvation, with his cross.

The psalmist in psalm one hundred and forty-six praises God for his existence even while he is in the prison of death and a tired traveller on the road of salvation, from death to life eternal in ever-present richness of God.     

Praise the LORD!  Praise the LORD, O my soul!  I will praise the LORD as long as I live; I will sing praises to my God while I have my being.  Put not your trust in princes, in a son of man, in whom there is no salvation.  When his breath departs, he returns to the earth; on that very day his plans perish.  Blessed is he whose help is the God of Jacob, whose hope is in the LORD his God,  who made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, who keeps faith forever;  who executes justice for the oppressed, who gives food to the hungry. The LORD sets the prisoners free;  the LORD opens the eyes of the blind. The LORD lifts up those who are bowed down; the LORD loves the righteous.  The LORD watches over the sojourners; he upholds the widow and the fatherless, but the way of the wicked he brings to ruin.  The LORD will reign forever, your God, O Zion, to all generations.  Praise the LORD!  (Psalm 146 ESV)

Let us pray.  Heavenly Father infuse within us, the righteousness of Jesus, godliness, faith, steadfastness, and gentleness.  Continue to fight in us the good fight of faith with your Holy Spirit.  Help us to use the richness you have given to us to love and serve one another.  To your glory, Amen.