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October 11, 2009—Proper 23

Lectionary Texts: Job 23:1-9, 16-17 or Amos 5:6-7, 10-15; Psalm 22:1-15 or Psalm 90:12-17; Hebrews 4:12-16; Mark 10:17-31

Sermon Text: Luke 16:1-15

Ripping Off the Boss

Anybody else here confused? I sure am. Jesus told some stories that didn’t make much sense. This one, however, takes the cake. Jesus also talked a lot about money, but I would never expect Him to say these kinds of things about money.

I just kind of wonder. Can I even say this? I just wonder if this story about the dishonest steward was the end result of the disciples playing the “telephone game.” I mean, imagine this: Jesus whispers something about a good man who tithed, gave generously to the poor, used his money to serve God and the Kingdom. We should all do the same. Down it goes, around the circle of folding chairs. About half way around, as the message is passed, there is a look of--are you sure? Really? Well, OK. Here goes--and they whisper in the next ear. At the end, the story has morphed into an accountant who rips off his boss. When the boss finds out, he slaps him on the back and tells him, “Good Job.”

Are you kidding me? This can’t be right! It’s got to be the telephone game. I mean, this is not at all the way the world works. It’s certainly not the way the world works today. No one has good things to say about:

• A CEO who ruins the company, yet walks away with a multi-million-dollar severance package when he’s finally fired.

• Private companies getting government contracts because of kickbacks to politicians.

• A multinational corporation discovered cooking the books.
No one has good things to say about someone who is blatantly cheating, openly stealing, and helping others to do the same thing. No one has good things to say about a person like that--except, perhaps, Jesus in Luke chapter 16.

The story Jesus told was told in a context that was very common 2,000 years ago in the Middle East. In that culture, there wasn’t much of a middle class. On the one hand, you had your filthy rich people--think Bill Gates and Warren Buffet. On the other end you had basically the people that worked for those guys--for the equivalent of pennies a day.

Now these rich folks, they had so much money and so much property, that they would hire people to oversee their various properties. They would hand over the business to a guy they would pay minimum wage, and then skip town. They might check in on them from time to time to see how things were going. But then again, they might not.

So while the fat cat was away, the poor mouse would go play. They would start living it up on the boss’s money. After all, in the scheme of things, it would never be so much to really make a difference in the boss’s wealth.

This is kind of like a story that I heard in high school. There was a guy going through the McDonald’s drive-thru. He got the bag of food and his drink, and the took off down the road. About a mile down the road, he reaches in for a Big Mac and fries, and pulls out a plastic bank deposit bag with about two grand in it, instead.

I don’t remember if the guy returned the money or not. All I remember is that the drive-thru clerk wasn’t fired for it. He gave away 2,000 dollars and he didn’t lose his job? Of course not. If you’re a company as big as McDonald’s, two grand isn’t even a drop in the ocean. Even to a local McDonald’s, it’s still only a small portion of the day’s take. But to me, man, that’s a lot of French fries!

So the steward, the slave in charge of the estate, would skim off of the top of the boss’s stuff. He would never miss it! This time, however, he went one step too far. The boss hears the rumors, comes back to town, and tells the guy to get the financial papers in order. If he finds that he’s been cheating him, he’s out of a job.

Now the guy is desperate. There is no way he’s going to find another job that pays like this one. There’s no way anyone else is going to hire him to run their property. The rumors are going to give way to actual documentation about how he ripped off his boss. So he cooks the books even more than he did before. He calls up the other people who bought and sold from his boss. See, they still think he has a job. He starts giving them kickbacks, rebates, discounts on the amount they owed his master.

We’re not talking about small amounts of write-offs. We’re talking about 450 gallons of olive oil. You can fry a lot of French fries in that. We’re talking about 200 bushels of wheat. That’s about 6 tons. We’re not talking about, “Oops, I forgot to ring up that bag of flour.” We’re talking about big time corporate fraud!
This guy’s boss is getting taken to the cleaners! Think about how angry this boss is going to be when he finds out. Think about how much those other guys--the guys pocketing the oil and wheat--think how much they’re going to love him! The steward knows that when he’s in the unemployment line, these guys won’t let his family go hungry. The least they will do is help him keep food on the table; they might even give him a job.

After all, what’s the boss going to do? Fire him? Guess what! He’s going to fire him anyway. He’s got nothing to lose!
In the final scene, as his boss looks over the paperwork, and sees exactly what happened, he slaps the dishonest steward on the back. The Greek word means he praised, commended, or even applauded. It’s like the boss just got done watching a really good movie, or just heard a really good joke. “Ah, I get it. Man, that was great! Way to go!”

If you read the text a certain way, it’s even weirder than that. Because the word translated as the slave’s “master” in verse 8 is the Greek word “kurios”--Lord. The same word in the Christian confession--Jesus is Lord. Sometimes, like we do in English, the word Lord is another way to talk about God.

So was it the boss applauding the dishonest steward, or could it actually be God? Which brings us full circle to the problem of the day. Why in the world does Jesus seem to be endorsing criminal behavior?

First of all, I should probably say that I don’t think the point of the story is that Jesus wants us to go into laundering money. The NIV translates the word “dishonest” to describe the steward, which fits the context. The word is the same word translated other places as “unjust” or “unrighteous”--both words with serious religious consequences. They’re words that say, “This is not how God acts; this is not how God wants God’s people to act.”

So what is the point? In the verses to come, there are four lessons from the story; four things that Jesus wants to say to us with this story.

Look at the second part of verse 8, “For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” This is a word of critique to those of us who follow Jesus. Essentially, Jesus is saying that people of the world work harder and smarter than God’s people do. They know what they want more than we do, and they’re actively working harder to get what they want, than we are working to get what we want.

When I worked at UPS, we knew why we were there. Everybody on the payroll was there to make sure the packages got delivered by the time we said they would be delivered. We could look and see if we did it, or if we didn’t do it.

So let’s take a look. What do you want? What is your purpose and calling as a Christian? What is our purpose and calling as a church?

We can go back and look at the commands of the Great Commission.

1. Jesus tells us to “Go into all the world”--are we living our lives as a mission, or are have we grown content and complacent? As a church, are we concerned more with God’s mission to reach the lost and broken people in our world; or do our meetings and activities reflect a preoccupation with maintenance--just keeping the organization afloat?

2. Jesus tells us to “make disciples, baptizing them.” How long has it been since we have seen someone come to faith in Jesus Christ? What particular things are you doing to influence your friends and family for Christ? How long has it been since you have told someone the story of what Jesus has done for you?

3. Jesus tells us to “teach them to obey everything [he] has commanded [us].” Jesus set the bar pretty high for discipleship. Are we holding ourselves to Jesus’ standard for us? Are we willing to give and receive accountability for the way our lives reflect His character and teachings?

Well, how are you doing? How are we doing as a church? That leads into Jesus’ point number two. It’s a lesson about having an appropriate view of our money. Money and wealth is not an end in itself. The one who dies with the most toys still dies. Money and worldly wealth is a tool to accomplish God’s purposes in the world.

My eighth grade social studies teacher used to say, “Tools are to be used, people are to be loved. When we start loving our tools, the Bible calls that idolatry. When we start using people, it’s manipulation.” Tools are to be used, people are to be loved. Jesus says we need to use our worldly wealth to gain and build friendships for the glory of God.

Lesson number three can be found in verses 10 through 12. Honesty and dishonesty don’t change with the amount of zeros after the number. If you’re dishonest with a little bit, you’ll be dishonest with a whole lot. If you’re dishonest with a whole lot, chances are you cut corners in the little things, too.
Integrity of character really matters. If you’re not tithing right now--if you’re not giving ten percent of your increase to the Lord’s work like it says in Malachi--you’re probably not going to start tithing when you get a raise. If you’re tithing right now, whether you get a raise, or take a pay cut, or keep making the same amount, you’ll probably keep tithing either way.

Someone said that money doesn’t help you make good decisions. It just gets you down the road you’re on faster. If you’re wrecking your life, getting an influx of cash just helps you wreck your life a little bit faster. Just look at some of the high-profile people who have won the lottery. Some of them were already on the path of destruction before they won the money. The money helped them wreck their lives even faster. But if you’re making yourself and the world a better place, an influx of cash will help you get there faster, also.

Finally, you can’t work for two bosses at the same time. Back in the Bible times, they didn’t have part-time jobs that they worked in the evenings when they got home from their “real job.” As a servant, you were always on the clock, whenever the master needed you, day or night. You couldn’t work for two people at the same time.

God says you can’t give your life in service to God and to “mammon”--the biblical word for means money and wealth. This gets back to the whole problem of loving your tools. When you give your life to money and wealth and stuff, you’ve entered into a love relationship with it. You can’t have a right relationship with God if you’re in love with stuff.

You know, that last point has helped me make a little more sense of the story Jesus told about the dishonest steward. Serving money is kind of like trying to serve the rich boss that’s coming down the hallway to fire you. You see, one of these days, this assignment on earth is going to be finished and done. Our heart will stop beating, our body will grow cold, and we’ll be dead.

At that point, we pass into the world of the eternal. The things of this world we only have for a short time. Either they wear out, or we wear out. There is no way we can keep this job, this earthly life, this connection with our “stuff.” Just like the dishonest steward wasn’t going to keep his job. So what are we going to do about it? Do we really understand how important it is to take hold of the things of God--getting into the Word and spending time with God in prayer? Do we really understand how we need to be letting go of the things of this world?

Hebrews chapter 12 uses the image of an athlete running a race. We should throw off the things that hinder our walk with God, the sin that is killing us, so we can live the life that God wants us to live. What is it that you need to let go of today? What is it that has a hold on you? What are you serving instead of giving yourself entirely to love and serve your King, Jesus Christ?

Before we close, I want to share with you, over the past couple of months, I’ve had two wonderful, unexpected conversations with two different people in the church. These conversations really illustrate what it looks like to not be tangled up in our stuff, but to be tangled up in God, and using our stuff for Him.

Two different people have come to me recently, and neither one knew of the other one’s conversation. One said, “Pastor, our family has had some extra money come in recently. We don’t really need it. We could do some stuff with it, spend it on ourselves, or something. But you know, I’ve been thinking about someone I know that has a financial need. Do you think it would be OK to give it to them?” The other one began the same way, but ended with the question, “Do you think the youth ministry could use it?” Do you think I needed to call the NYI President to ask her response?

Now, I’m really glad to see that family and the youth ministry receive some assistance. That’s cool. It’s even better to experience the joy of coming across someone with an attitude like that, an attitude of using earthly resources to accomplish God’s purposes. Those folks aren’t trying to serve two different masters. They’re serving just one--the right one.

Closing Song: #455, Take My Life and Let It Be

Benediction:

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith. And may the peace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all.