A Sermon from First Church, Scarborough… 

A sermon offered by the Rev. Ian F. “Jack” Steeves in the public worship of the First Congregational Church of Scarborough, Maine on Sunday, September 23, 2007.  The principal reading was Luke 16:1-13. 

“For the people of this world are shrewder in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light” (16:8). 

“Thinking like a Caveman” 

The parable of the dishonest steward is a strange story that seems to support dishonesty and shrewdness, yet, Jesus uses it to teach his followers about total commitment to a singular goal, faithfulness in serving God.  
 

Sometime back, a newspaper cartoon depicted a primitive caveman community gathered around a fire.  One ecstatic member of the tribe, hands waving above his head, shouts, “I’ve done it!  I’ve invented something that will solve all our problems.  I’m going to call it ‘money.’” 

We chuckle: how foolish, how naďve.  Then, we fold the newspaper, take the last sip of coffee, grab the keys, jump in the car, and battle the traffic of the early morning work force in order to earn – more money. 

There is nothing wrong with this familiar activity unless we believe that money will solve all our personal and earthly problems.  Trying not to do so, we move quickly from the cartoon to today’s Gospel lesson.   

It is a difficult parable to interpret.  It is a story about as dishonest a set of characters as one could meet anywhere.  We will concentrate on the lead character, the dishonest, embezzling steward.  The difficulty of the parable is also found in the fact that Luke tells the parable and then attaches no less than four sub-lessons or points to the parable.  We will be looking at one of them. 

In telling the parable, Jesus shocks his listeners into looking at a familiar subject from a new perspective.  The subject is not money but the larger issue of disciples living faithfully. 

This parable works like a metaphor.  It takes two seemingly opposite things and places them together.  Godliness is the opposite of dishonesty. A disciple is to be the opposite of a dishonest servant.  And yet, there is a lesson here that we might understand what living faithfully means.   

In the verse 8 of the parable, we read: “For the people of this world are shrewder in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light” (16:8).  To borrow Luke’s term, “the people of the world” are committed to saving their hides, making a quick buck, increasing their own comfort, and they do so at the expense of those who have integrity. “The people of the light” tend to play it safe, to act prudently.  They like to stay within the church budget.  They don’t like to spend what they do not have, or commit themselves unless they know they have the resources to succeed.  People of the light do not tend to be shrewd, cunning, and calculating.  They tend to be careful, cautious, and conscientious.  Jesus’ followers have a lot to learn from the secular world about things like commitment or stick-to-it-iveness. 

An important aspect of faith is missing in Jesus’ “people of the light.”  It is the absence of a total commitment: to do anything that God asks to step out on a limb of faith, to rush forward to do something that needs to be done, to scramble and act in love in the face of danger.   

In Luke’s Gospel, 6 chapters earlier, we are taught: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with your entire mind; and your neighbor as yourself” (10:27). To do that requires a total commitment. 

Every time a person follows a call of God, it is a “leap of faith.”  If you have left one job or career for another, you do not know the ways that you will succeed or be rewarded.  If you have moved from one part of the country to another to pursue God’s leading, you cannot know if your move will take you to a safe place.  It feels like a commitment but it does not feel secure.  Following God’s call can make you feel terribly vulnerable.  Caution obviously becomes your watchword.  BUT…. 

Today’s parable is a lesson in total commitment.  We need to grow in faith and commitment.  God wants us to give ourselves, not because it is good for the church, but because it is good for us.  When we focus on people and things outside of us we become more alive.  We learn by doing, to scramble not for our own survival, but for the life and well-being of all people.   

That is the nature of the Gospel.  God loves us, though we do not deserve God’s grace.  Jesus died for the sins of the world, though he himself never sinned.  We lose our lives when we cling to them; we gain our lives when we learn to give them away.  To be honest and cautious and prudent; to be shrewd and cunning and quick on our feet – these things do not seem to go together.  They create a paradox.  They are, however, metaphors for the life of faith. 

Commitment begins with receiving that which God is generous enough to give, and from those gifts all faithfully living issues. 

When Harvard University’s famous preacher and teacher (and a graduate of Bates College in Lewiston), Peter Gomes was starting-out in Alabama, he was often invited to speak in small, rural black churches.  He always refused the guest preacher’s honorarium on the grounds that the poor folk and the poor church needed the money more than he did.  He had a salaried position at Tuskegee College.  Word of his repeated refusals reached Dean Hattie Mae West Kelly.  The Dean was not impressed by him.  Declaring him to be arrogant, she exclaimed, “Who are you to refuse to accept the gift of these humble people?  You have given insult by refusing to let them do what they can for you.”  Kelly concluded her lengthy, scathing critique by saying, “You will never be able to give until you learn how to be a generous receiver.” 

At first glance, Jesus seems to praise personal craftiness, managerial dishonesty, and bad ethics.  There is a real difference between commending a dishonest steward for cleverness and commending a clever steward for his dishonesty.  The steward had a problem and he seized the opportunity to solve his problem. 

Like the steward, the Church cannot remain separate or aloof but must risk whatever is necessary to become a part of the solution to society’s many needs, issues and problems.  The dishonest steward with the dubious ethics offers us a lesson in crisis management:  Be willing to admit a mistake; don’t be too proud or ashamed to realize it is time for a change of course; be willing to make a decision, take corrective action, and see it through to completion. 

Before God in Christ, each of us is a steward with a dubious past.  The parable calls us to assess the situation and our options, and get into the fray.   

This is a time to reassess our core values, so that our biblically inspired hopes do not go sour.  This is a time to assert once again that freedom and justice for all is a prophetic call in the Congregational Way.   

We proclaim, as Jesus did, that the compassionate, just God is the center of our lives in the Church of Jesus Christ.  Our presence here is our promise: we say to the world that what we celebrate here will make a difference in the quality of life for all men, women, youth and children, when we leave this place of worship. 

Elsewhere in the Gospels, we are told, “where your treasure is, there will you heart be also.”  The heart that makes the love of God and all other persons its only medium of exchange will spend both time and talent and treasure well.  For all the rest, a general interest and constant vigilance will suffice. 

Christ himself left all property behind when he exchanged the carpenter’s shop for the mission field.  And as to time, he had only thirty or perhaps thirty-five years in hand, when he spent the whole lot at a single throw, to purchase our eternal salvation.  Nothing is ours, indeed, we are not our own.  We, too, were bought with a price paid in full. 

We are called to avoid thinking and acting like a caveman.  We are called to take a closer look and learn from one bad steward’s good example.