Luke 17:7-10

[Jesus said,] “Who among you, when your slave comes in from plowing or tending sheep in the field would say to him, ‘Come here at once and take your place at the table.’? Would you not rather say, ‘Prepare supper for me. Put on your apron and serve me while I eat and drink. Later you may eat and drink.’?” And do you commend him for doing what he was ordered to do?

“So you also, when you have done everything you were commanded to do, should say to yourselves, ‘We are worthless slaves. We have done only what we ought to have done.’”

We have two hounds at the Havel house. Rosie, our pandemic rescue and surprise cancer therapy puppy. And Stella, Rosie’s much older, gives no ‘you know whats’ anymore, 14 year-old, geriatric big sister. Rosie is here already. I’m not sure if Stella will make it – even though Stella is the one who needs the blessing, these days.

Stella needs a blessing because she’s started a new thing over the course of the last month or so, where she decides every night – somewhere in the middle of the night – that she needs to go outside. It might be midnight. It might be 3 a.m. (It’s usually 3 a.m.) Whatever the case it’s some time after the humans in the house are fast asleep when Stella sits by the front door and barks. Just one, sharp, staccato “woof” that apparently only I can hear.

So almost every night – sometimes twice a night – in the last month or so, I have been roused from a deep slumber to let the old girl out to do her thing. I say “almost every night” because there have been one or two – literally just one or two nights – over the course of the last month or so, that she HAS NOT woken me up for her midnight potty break.

And I have been so pleased on those rare occasions that I’ve thanked her for it… maybe given her a little extra love when I saw her in the morning – as if she has any idea, or cares one bit, about what I’m talking about.

But it made me think of this Gospel story where Jesus is talking about what it means to follow faithfully, to do God’s bidding, to live in ways that we are called to live as disciples in the world.

Now, Jesus’ rhetorical bit about what we might do or say where our slaves are concerned – when they come in from a hard day’s work in the field and continue to do what is asked of them – is an outdated and irrelevant object lesson for the likes of you and me.

But some of us might be able to relate as parents … like what parent hasn’t had a child act like they deserve a pat on the back or an allowance or some measure of deep gratitude because they took out the garbage, or emptied the dishwasher, made their bed, or ate their vegetables? NO! That’s them doing only what they ought to have done!

Or what about teachers … and those otherwise capable students who act like they deserve a gold star or extra credit for writing their name on their paper, or doing their homework on time, or for not starting a fight on the playground? NO! That’s them doing what they were asked, instructed and expected to do.

Or what about employees or co-workers … do we commend or reward people or expect extra accolades for doing the bare minimum?

Or Stella, Rosie’s geriatric big sister … does she deserve extra love and attention, pats and gratitude and treats for NOT waking me up in the middle of the night? NO! It’s literally the least she could do … the bare minimum … it’s pretty much all I ask of her these days.

And it seems like this might be something like what Jesus is talking about where discipleship is concerned.

Do we expect thanks, gratitude and accolades for loving our enemy?

Do we look to be acknowledged or seek special accommodations for giving our offering?

Do we want some kind of cosmic credit for showing up to worship? For reading our Bible? For working in the nursery … teaching Sunday School … serving in any way?

Do we long to be recognized for showing mercy, for offering forgiveness, for acting like a neighbor to someone in need?

At some level, all of this is just what we’ve been commanded to do. And the reality is, when we do what we’ve been commanded to do … when we follow God’s lead … when we model our lives after Jesus … we are blessed in ways we never deserved in the first place, anyway.

When we follow faithfully and with true humility, discipleship is its own reward and blessing.

So, today’s Gospel is about doing God’s will for the sake of doing God’s will – justice for the sake of justice; generosity for the sake of generosity; kindness and love for the sake of kindness and love.

It’s about returning the favor of it all because God, in Jesus, has done it all, first…already…for our sake and for the sake of the world.

Amen

Luke 16:1-13

Then Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.'

Then the manager said to himself, 'What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.

I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.'

“So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' He answered, 'A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' Then he asked another, 'And how much do you owe?' He replied, 'A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill and make it eighty.' And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And 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.

"Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."

This is always a tricky parable, for a bunch of Christian Capitalists, like us. Jesus seems to be commending someone’s dishonesty, or “shrewdness,” as the story goes, for the sake of saving face and for the sake of saving his own behind. On the surface it looks like Jesus is inviting us to celebrate a shyster who was bad at his job, about to get fired for it, and who cooked the books in order to save his reputation and earn some favors – to set himself up for opportunities and prospects once he was out of a job, in a financial pickle, and looking for work.

But that can’t be, can it? I’m not sure Jesus would encourage the dishonesty or the book-cooking or the money-laundering of a 1st Century white collar criminal, would he? So I’ve begun to wonder over the years, if Jesus isn’t talking as much about money or business deals or management practices as we like to assume, Christian Capitalists that we are.

So, I think it matters that all of this starts out as just another parable, in a string of parables. And a parable, we know, is nothing more and nothing less than a story about one thing that is often used to teach us about something else, entirely. Last week, when Jesus talked about a lost coin being found and about a stray sheep being brought back into the fold, he wasn’t actually talking about coins or sheep, was he? He was talking about lost souls, and sinners and outcasts, being welcomed into and cared for by God and God’s people.

And in a similar parable, just before what we heard today – the one about the Prodigal Son? – Jesus wasn’t talking about someone he knew, or someone who actually lived and breathed in 1st Century Galilee, necessarily. He was telling a story about what may have been a make-believe father and some make-believe sons. And he was showing how that father – who loved both of his boys, in spite of their selfishness and sin – was a picture of the God we’re called to know in Jesus, himself.

Are you with me? Jesus tells parables about pearls and fish; about mustard seeds and fig trees; about slaves and virgins; about weddings and wheat fields, wineskins and weeds. A parable is a parable … a story … nothing more and nothing less. And Jesus’ parables are very often – most often, perhaps – not at all about the things in the stories that he tells, in any kind of literal sense.

So what if, in this difficult parable of the shrewd, sneaky, dishonest steward we just heard, Jesus isn’t really talking about business management practices, or about debts of money or oil or wheat or other “things” valuable in the eyes of the disciples to whom he was teaching?

What if the “shrewd, dishonest steward” was being creative and crafty with the riches of the Master’s kingdom. And what if that “Master,” as in the rest of Jesus’ parables, represents the God of the Universe. And if that’s the case – and I’d bet you a hundred jugs of oil and eighty containers of wheat that it is – then the riches and resources of which he speaks aren’t oil or wheat or property at all, but things like love and mercy, justice and humility, repentance and forgiveness, and so on?

So, this might be a little theologically risky – and again, I could be wrong – but I read this week that Amy Jill-Levine (one of the most wise and respected Jewish New Testament scholars alive today) says this parable “defies any fully satisfactory explanation”, so I’ve taken it upon myself to re-write this parable, in an attempt to cut the confusion and to make Jesus’ parable say what I think he means and mean what I think he might be trying to say, without the mystery and confusion and consternation this parable has caused so many over the years.

So, what if the parable just went like this:

"There is this God, full – not of oil or wheat or things you can track in a ledger – but full of love and mercy and grace and forgiveness. And God had a disciple he charged with sharing those blessings with the world around him. When God found out the disciple was squandering what he’d asked him to tend to, to care for, and to share, God summoned that disciple and said to him, 'What is this I hear about you? That you’re being selfish and holding grudges and judging others; that you’re counting sins, and keeping people out, and pretending you have more power than you do or should? If all of that’s true – if you’ve been withholding grace and blessing and mercy and love – you cannot be my disciple any longer. I can’t have you going around pretending you do all of this in my name, for the sake of my kingdom.”

So the disciple said to himself, 'What am I gonna do now that God, my master, is taking this position and privilege away from me? How could I have been so selfish and blind to the needs of the world around me? How could I have withheld from so many others, what was so generously shared with me in the first place? I’m not strong enough to have earned this grace on my own. I’m as ashamed as anyone to need the forgiveness God offers. And I never earned any of it in the first place.”

“I know what I’ll do. I’ll do what I should have done all along. I’ll be as generous and kind and forgiving with others as I woulda/coulda/shoulda been all along; which is all that was ever asked of me in the first place.”

So, summoning God’s children one by one, the disciple asked the first, 'What is it you feel like you owe to God? For what sin are you holding onto such guilt?' And when this lost and broken soul confessed his sin, the disciple said to him, “Don’t’ worry about it another minute. Your God – our Master – is a gracious, loving God of forgiveness and mercy. Receive the good news of that, go on your way, sin no more and return the favor of this kind of forgiveness to someone in your life.”

And the disciple did the same with another fellow sinner, and another and another – extending grace, announcing forgiveness, and expressing love for the least of those in the world around him. He got so crafty and so creative, so generous and so extravagant with the love of God for all people, that some called him foolish… and reckless… and un-faithful, even. But God smiled, because the disciple had finally learned where true value and real riches and actual worth and new life are found in this world.”

Doesn’t that sound more like something Jesus might mean? Isn’t it more likely what Jesus was inviting his disciples – and the likes of you and me – to be shrewd and sneaky and generous-to-a-fault with the things of the Kingdom – with forgiveness, grace, love, and mercy? And once we see this parable through that kind of lens, the rest of it makes more sense, if you ask me.

Jesus said, "Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” In other words, even a little bit of faithfulness with a little bit of God’s love goes a really long way. And even a little bit of misuse or abuse of God’s goodness can do a whole lot of damage.

And he said, “…if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” In other words, if you can’t share, with generosity and grace, what is God’s in the first place, then you haven’t truly received it, yourself.

And finally, Jesus said, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." And all of this puts into perspective the truth of what is valuable and worthy in God’s kingdom vs. what is valuable and worthy in the eyes of the world.

And I wonder if that might be Jesus’ point with the parable. Maybe the story is about money, but only in-so-far as we see how money doesn’t matter much in God’s economy, unless or until it’s being used to bless and benefit God’s children in life-giving ways. But grace and forgiveness and mercy and the love of our creator, are another story. And Jesus is inviting us to be extravagantly careless with that love, to give it away – recklessly, with abandon, in ways that seem surprising, that go against conventional wisdom, that seem other-worldly, even, which is just the way our God lives and breathes and moves and is revealed among us … and through us … for the sake of the world.

Amen

Stella's Pet Blessing

A Different Take On a Difficult Parable