September 23, 2007
The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost (Proper 20, Year C)
Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 79:1-9; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13
I have to admit this story of the dishonest manager has perplexed me for years, and every time I read it I get a bit more befuddled. And I try very hard to understand what Jesus is getting at when he tells it. Then, this year, in a new commentary, I found a somewhat satisfactory explanation.
In it the author explains that in first century Palestine, in the Hebrew culture and in the Roman culture, honor was as important a sign of personal integrity as wealth and position are today. And if the dishonest manager had been cheating the accounts of his master, not only was the master unhinged because of the possibility of being cheated, he was even more distraught at the possibility that he had lost face, or his honor, with those with whom he did business on a regular basis.
So the manager’s quick maneuverings probably cost him a good portion of his healthy commission with his master’s customers, but those same maneuverings saved a whole lot of honor for both the master and the manager. The customers probably thought they had been selected for special treatment by the master, and therefore were impressed by the honorable way they were treated by both the master and his agent. Thus, when people in the first century heard this, it was a story about honor, and not so much about the dishonesty of the manager as his ability to in the end do the honorable thing.
Well, okay, that helps us understand the cultural and historical implications. Imagine if Honor were the highest form of wealth on our country, our culture, even in our churches! But, if we are honest, honor is something we talk about often; but, when it comes to understanding or proving what is truly valuable to us, we more often rely on material things. We understand money as a sign of our worth, our wealth, not our honor. Do we not do all we can to make sure we or our children have every opportunity to go to the best schools, live in the right neighborhoods, have employment that offers them great opportunities for advancement and what would be termed “success” in our modern world? What drives that desire is the knowledge that in our world today all these things, residence, education, occupation, income, are the measures of a person’s wealth.
I have been wrestling with this all week and I invite you into my wrestling because I would like to suggest that this troublesome parable is not about the cunningness of the manager, but rather is a warning to human beings, all of whom struggle with what they truly value. This story serves as an invitation to the followers to measure wealth as God measures wealth by using that which we have or consider our wealth in this life today as a practice field or “pretest” for using the wealth that Jesus teaches us is of God.
I wonder about this “pretest” because this year when I read this story again, the phrase, ”If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust you with true riches?” struck me like lightening. Is there a deeper and more immediate lesson for me, for us, today, in 2007? The stories of September and October that we will read from Luke often deal, as this phrase does, with this dichotomy between what is truly valuable to God and what we humans think of as valuable in our world today. Jesus was always teaching that the things that are valued in the Kingdom of God are not material wealth, power, or even education or position, but rather that God values relationships, love, honesty, kindness, respect, servant hood, caring for the poor and the outcast. So if we hear this phrase about being trusted with dishonest wealth, or the wealth of this world, are we not called to look at our own handling of the world’s wealth and how it prepares us to be entrusted with God’s wealth?
Like I would imagine, many of you, I often feel un-wealthy in material things, but I know that is really not the case. This week I discovered a web site everyone should know about. It is www.globalrichlist.com. This web site invites you to plug your annual income into a little box, and immediately it will tell you how you rank in the world’s wealth. Needless to say almost all, if not all, of us here would be within the range of the last two or three figures toward the top, the top 1 percent in the whole world. Then, as if that were not enough of a visual picture, a number comes up and tells you exactly how far you are from the top.
The site offers opportunities to share our wealth with those who would find themselves at the other end of the long line of figures. It reminds us that three billion people live on less than $2 per day while 1.3 billion get by on less than $1 per day. Seventy percent of those living on less than $1 per day are women. Having just returned from Tanzania where the average income is $500 per year, I find these numbers very believable. Having now been in the homes of the very poor in both El Salvador and Tanzania, I can say with deep sincerity, “We have no idea how very much we have.” Day to day we don’t think about it. We take for granted the wealth that has been entrusted to us by our birthplace and by the privileges that each of us has been so blessed to have come our way.
What this lesson says to me this time, this year, this story of the dishonest manager, is not about how the cunning get away with their cunningness or how suddenly turning around, repenting and treating people with goodness or fairness gets you an immediate pardon from God – though of course it does – but this year, at this time, this story speaks to me of the need for us to all examine our own attitudes toward what we have. To examine what honor really means to us as we compare honor to wealth and our quest for each in our lives. I think this lesson invites us to ponder the questions, “Might not the first century people have had it right?” “Have we somehow gotten off track?”
The undeniable truth is “to us much has been entrusted,” very much. The much-ness of our lives is staggering. How we hoard or give away that much-ness directly impacts, this story would say, and I believe Jesus said over and over again, directly impacts how we will be entrusted with that which God values. Further I think the implication is that if we set material things as the measure of our worth and value and meaning as people, and live our lives with them as our core value, then we will miss out on the richness that God offers us every day.
Now not for a minute can I point a finger at anyone, expect perhaps myself, and say YOU are valuing wealth, material wealth, more than the richness of God’s kingdom; but I can observe that in our culture taking care of ourselves and our own is an ideal that is held out for us over and over again, and one that, if we have the courage to be truly honest with ourselves, might be more pervasive in our core values than we would state if we were asked directly.
So this week I invite you to think about wealth, not as in dreaming of having more of it, but think about what it really is to you. Ponder the wealth of honor and how it plays a role in your choices day to day and in your overall life plan. Jesus invites us to the kingdom every day in many, many ways. I hope we all have the courage to accept the invitation, that we may let go of money as a measure of our worth and instead grasp at honor as those first century Palestinians did.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Gale Davis Morris
Church of the Good Shepherd