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 8 Proper 13 - Luke 12:13-21 "The Rich Merry Fool"

Luke 12:13–21 (ESV) Someone in the crowd said to him, “Teacher, tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”  But he said to him, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?”  And he said to them, “Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions.”  And he told them a parable, saying, “The land of a rich man produced plentifully,  and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’  And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.  And I will say to my soul, “Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.” ’  But God said to him, ‘Fool! This night your soul is required of you, and the things you have prepared, whose will they be?’  So is the one who lays up treasure for himself and is not rich toward God.”

When someone in the crowd says to Jesus, “Tell my brother to divide the inheritance with me.”  Let’s say Jesus says, “Okay!  I will.”  And they go, so Jesus can tell the enquirer’s brother to divide the inheritance.  The inheritance is divided, what then.  Does everyone live happily ever after?  Maybe, but most likely not!

What type of relationship do you think the two brothers had, after Jesus intervened in the dispute?  If the two could not settle their differences beforehand, there is a very good chance the relationship would have deteriorated even further after the fact. 

What would the two brothers’ opinions be of Jesus?  Both would have been wrong!  One brother would have been bitter and resentful for Jesus doing what he did, and the other although he may have been pleased with Jesus’ intervention, would have believed the wrong things about Jesus’ purpose for coming into the world.

But no!  Jesus is not a divider of inheritances, and nor is he a divider of relationships.  He came to be a reconciler, resolving each person’s relationship with God the Father.  And only in our reconciliation with God, can a person expect to have a God-pleasing settlement with another person.

Jesus does not name the person in the crowd, nor does he call him friend.  Rather, he impersonally and abruptly says, “Man, who made me a judge or arbitrator over you?” (Luke 12:14 ESV)

Jesus cannot be a friend of covetousness, justifying and mediating a person’s greed for riches that don’t allow God the Father to be first.

He says to the man and the crowd, “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)

Possessions here are literally, “things under which you submit first”, or the things you serve as your gods. 

These things we call goods.  But the problem with making these goods our gods, they destroy human relationships and ultimately our relationship with God the Father.

Jesus tells a parable to demonstrate to the crowd, what happens when we make gods out of his gifts by conserving them, trusting them for our security.  Or liberally using them, to extravagantly serve ourselves in pleasure.

If Jesus had helped the man to get his share of the inheritance, Jesus would have helped him become like the rich man in the parable.

Notice in Jesus’ parable to whom the rich man speaks…

“The land of a rich man produced plentifully,  and he thought to himself, ‘What shall I do, for I have nowhere to store my crops?’  And he said, ‘I will do this: I will tear down my barns and build larger ones, and there I will store all my grain and my goods.  And I will say to my soul, ‘Soul, you have ample goods laid up for many years; relax, eat, drink, be merry.’” (Luke 12:16–19 ESV)

Who does he talk to? No one!  In the culture of Jesus’ day this would have immediately stood out for the listeners.  Not so much for us today!  Which says something in itself for us who perhaps are more like the rich man than we would like to admit. 

In the middle eastern culture of the day, the rich man would  have discussed with his contemporaries, what he might do. 

Here though however, he only has himself to talk to.  No children, no brothers, no parents, no community, no one!

It’s here we begin to understand why Jesus does not do one’s bidding, telling the brother to divide the inheritance.  A lot more than the inheritance would have been divided if Jesus followed the wishes of the one whose life consisted in the abundance of possessions.  Jesus does not serve the sinful self in its sin.  Rather he serves the sinner in being freed from the power of death, freeing the sinner from the deeds and desires of sin.

The rich man in the parable has possessions and property,  but he is all alone.  The wealth he received from his land producing plentifully, reveals the poverty of his position in life.  He has made himself god of his dominion.  The rich man has taken the place of God, forgetting God the Father, and also fails to remember the problem humanity has, when it takes God’s place.

Because we are not God, we fear losing our identity as top dog, and to protect our position in life,  rid ourselves of the competition, and find our self only with our self for company.  As the saying goes, “it’s lonely being at the top!”  Humans were never created to be God or to be alone.

However, in our wealth-based society that’s exactly what’s happening.  The greater our wealth grows, the more we withdraw from our neighbours, the higher the fences and walls become around us.  Time is spent submitting to and serving our wealth, and in the fullness of time we find ourselves alone separated from God and from our neighbours.

The rich man finds himself alone talking to himself, focused on himself.  Self, I have my crops, my barns, my grain, my goods, with my soul.  But are they really his?  Are the goods you have really yours?  Can you have your cake and eat it too?

It seems Jesus is pointing us to Solomon’s deliberations written in Ecclesiastes, “There is nothing better for a person than that he should eat and drink and find enjoyment in his toil.”  But unfortunately, the rich man in the parable and perhaps us too, when we are presumptuously consumed by our possessions, overlook the next but most important part of the verse which continues, “This also, I saw, is from the hand of God, for apart from him who can eat or who can have enjoyment?” (Ecclesiastes 2:24-25 ESV)

But really, is the rich man content?  When I observe my goods to which I attribute worth and wealth, it’s not long before the mirage of “satisfied desires” moves and I am unsatisfied once again.  Our goods as gods cannot give us the peace which is only found in God.

Early church father Augustine, rightly says of God the Father, “My soul is restless until it finds its rest in you.”   When wealth and property control us, we get so easily caught up in the belief that our restlessness will stop once we have an overabundance of food and drink.  But it doesn’t.

Jesus knows this.  In fact, in the flesh of a human, he experienced the temptation in which we are tempted and fail.  But, although tempted, Jesus does not succumb to temptation as we do, but faithfully followed our Heavenly Father.

The rich man talking to himself is like a person who chases one’s own steamy breath that vanishes in a moment on a cold  frosty morning. 

“Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities!  All is vanity.  I have seen everything that is done under the sun, and behold, all is vanity and a striving after wind.” (Ecclesiastes 1:2,14 ESV)

To put it in today’s vernacular, “The rich man is full of hot air, and not much else!”  At the end of the day, he doesn’t even realise his own life is not his own.  Life is not a right but a gift to us – on loan from God.

The rich man puts his feet up in relaxation, eating and drinking in merriment.  Here Jesus uses a play on words.  The words “merry” and “fool” in Greek are both related to the word “diaphragm”.  We might say to be in a good frame of mind.  But diaphragm here suggests a good gut feeling in the torso or midriff.  Think of a relaxing sigh or breath when one has a contented tummy and is in a good frame of mind.

But in the parable God says, “Fool!”  “You, rich man, are hot air and deluded in your comfort.” When God says, “Fool”, Jesus is literally saying the rich man has no diaphragm. He doesn’t have a good frame of mind.  His gut feeling of security is vanity and a chasing after the wind since his goods and possessions are but a breath.  So too is his life!

The Psalmist says, “the ransom for a life is costly, no payment is ever enough — that one should live on forever and not see decay.”  (Psalm 49:8–9 NIV)

Our lives are on loan from God.  He is the source of life.  Our life sees decay and death because of sin.  But, despite this, God gives life through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit.  Jesus is our daily bread.  He is today’s bread, and he is our tomorrow eternal bread too.

Saint Paul tells the Colossians, “Do not lie to one another, seeing that you have put off the old self with its practices  and have put on the new self, which is being renewed in knowledge after the image of its creator.”(Colossians 3:9–10 ESV)

Jesus gives you your new self, the Holy Spirit comes to see the old self put off, destroy your false gods, and renew you in the knowledge of your new self, Jesus Christ the new Adam, in the image of your Creator, our Father in Heaven.  Amen.