Monday Morning Matters

Photo by micheile dot com on Unsplash

I took a class last summer that was designed to help preachers engage the sermon text more spiritually. One of the main questions to answer was “What is the good news about God in the text?”  I tried to apply that to this week’s text in Luke 16:1-13 The Parable of the Dishonest Manager. It’s hard to come up with a good news statement for this one without making it very broad and generic.  So I’m wondering if all texts can give us an answer to that good news question?  Is it sometimes the wrong question?

One of the sticking points in this week’s text is the frequent use of that word dishonest. Luke 16:8 says that the master praised the dishonest manager for acting shrewdly.  Many of the commentaries work hard to make that verse make reasonable sense, especially if they’re putting God in the story as the master.  But does God always make reasonable sense?  Does grace make reasonable sense?  Or is it illogical?  Isn’t love often illogical?

The Greek word for “dishonest” is alikia which also means unrighteousness or injustice. Alikia is used to describe, not just the manager, but also the money in verses 9 and 11. “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth…” (v9). It almost sounds like this verse is encouraging us to manipulate people with money.  Or maybe the verse is simply pointing out that this is something we already tend to do.

A common saying is that to find someone’s motivation one must follow the money. Where is it coming from and where is it going?  Often in business and politics the result will be that someone is making money from whatever they’re encouraging us to do or buy or believe.  I don’t think we can know that with this parable, but it is telling that we can do that with so much of what happens in the world.  Money really is too often our driving force.

So what if the point of this parable is to derail money from its power by using it in unreasonable and illogical ways?  Or to apply some logic by using it for a purpose – the purpose of making friends?

And once again this parable has me going in circles.

Today I am thankful that I have money for buying coffee, sundaes at Dairy Queen, books, and air conditioning.

Thanks, God.

Testify - Some Afterthoughts on Luke 16:19-31

“Then he said, ‘I beg you therefore, father, that you would send him to my father’s house, for I have five brothers, that he may testify to them, lest they also come to this place of torment.’” --Luke 16:27-28 NKJV

Last Sunday I preached about the parable of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16.  So often after the sermon, there’s still more to be said.  We just can’t fit everything into one sermon or we’d be there all day, right?  One area I didn’t cover is this request that the rich man makes for someone to go warn his brothers so that they don’t end up in eternal flames like he has.  It’s the rich man’s first act of selflessness.  Sadly it comes just a little too late.

The rich man’s request is that someone would go give solemn testimony to his brothers, to go be a witness.  Abraham points out that they have already heard the testimony of Moses and the prophets; they just need to listen better.

The final line of the parable is wonderfully rich with irony.

“And [the rich man] said, ‘No, father Abraham; but if one goes to them from the dead, they will repent.’ But [Abraham] said to him, ‘If they do not hear Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rise from the dead.’” –Luke 16:30-31

The gospel stories are our witness, the testimony passed down through the ages, that Jesus died on a cross and was raised from the dead.  Jesus, the one who rose from the dead, is the one telling this parable.

How often do we fail to testify because we have the same thought as Abraham, “they won’t listen”?  And, sadly, maybe they won’t, but how sad not to try, even if we die trying.  Maybe that’s the idea, actually.  The Greek word Luke uses here is diamarturomai.  The root of that word is martýromai.  The English cognate word is martyr, a person who is killed because of their religious beliefs.  Sending someone to be a witness means whoever goes to tell must have seen and heard for themselves that what they have to say is true…and be willing to be killed for their message.

Hmmmm….this makes telling sound even harder.  Willing to die?  Is the message of the gospel really worth dying for? 

If it’s not, then what Jesus did was unnecessary.

One of the common conversations among Christians living their faith is that we can’t imagine how people without faith can handle all that comes with living this life. How do they have hope?  The reality is that it’s hard to know what you’re missing if you’ve never experienced it, or never heard about it.  People won’t be asking to hear about the gospel.  But they will ask how we handle life, and why we continue to have hope.

Honor Christ and let him be the Lord of your life. Always be ready to give an answer when someone asks you about your hope. –1 Peter 3:15

This is our testimony.  Not everyone will ask, and not everyone will listen, but if we tell, then at least we will have tried.  And who knows what will come of having planted the seed.

May God bless you as you testify to the resurrection through your words and your life.

Generous Opportunity - A Sermon on Luke 16:19-31, Ephesians 2:1-10

Read Luke 16:19-31, Ephesians 2:1-10

What comes to mind when you think about heaven? 

According to studies, about 90% of us believe there’s a heaven, and about 85% of us think we’ll go there when we die.  Here’s something that is odd to me---80% of women think they’re going to heaven, but only 69% of men do.[1]

I’m betting just about 0% of us think of heaven as going to sit in the lap of Abraham.  Am I right?  But that’s what happens to the man in this parable we just read from Luke 16.  That’s just one of the reasons this is an interesting parable.  In it, we get three different scenes – one on earth at the rich man’s house where we see Lazarus laying outside his front door, and then two scenes of the afterlife – Lazarus in heaven with Abraham, and the rich man in hell in eternal torment.

Luke gives us vivid descriptions of both the richness of the rich man and the poorness of Lazarus:

·        The rich man is clothed in purple, the color of nobility or royalty, and in fine linen.  He eats sumptuously, feasting every day on fine food.  He lives in the lap of luxury. 

·        In stark contrast, Lazarus apparently has little or no clothes.  We know this because we can see his skin that is covered with sores.  He longs to have even just the crumbs from the rich man’s feast.  His only friends are the dogs who come to lick his sores. For the rich man it’s feast and for Lazarus it’s famine.

Notice that Luke doesn’t tell us the rich man’s name, but he does tell us the poor man’s name – Lazarus, which means “God is my help.”  Lazarus is the only character in any of the parables that gets a name.

In this parable, there are two great chasms. The rich man is in agony in the flames of Hades and calls out to Abraham in heaven for some relief.  But Abraham cannot help him because of the great chasm that separates heaven from hell.  Abraham tells the rich man that this chasm is uncrossable.  There is another chasm in this story. It is between the rich man and Lazarus in life.  This one isn’t uncrossable but it might as well be because the rich man does not cross it.  Maybe he doesn’t even see it, just like he doesn’t seem to see Lazarus.

Life and afterlife. 

This has been a busy week for my DVR recording TV shows.  Maybe it has been for yours, too.  This was the week that many TV shows started their new seasons, and some new shows premiered.  One of the new shows is called “The Good Place.”  It’s on Thursday nights on NBC (or any night on my DVR) and stars Kristen Bell as a woman who has died and wakes up to find herself sitting in an office.  Ted Danson is sitting behind the desk and reassures her that she has come to “The Good Place.”  The show doesn’t use the words heaven or hell, but that’s definitely what they want us to think.  Kristen Bell’s character is surprised to find herself in the good place for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that she wasn’t a very good person in life.  In the show, she keeps trying to cuss and the words will only come out as sanitized versions.  For example, she says fork a lot!  When Ted Danson explains to her how people get to the good place, he tells her that a remarkably small percentage of people are good enough to get in there.  Admission is entirely based on good deeds.

What’s wrong with that premise?  For a TV show, nothing because it’s fiction and you can do whatever you want with fiction.  But in real life, admission to heaven is not based on good deeds.  Salvation comes through faith in Jesus Christ, and even that faith is a gift from God.  That’s what our reading from Ephesians 2 is talking about.

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God. ⁹ Salvation is not a reward for the good things we have done, so none of us can boast about it. ¹⁰ For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. (Eph 2:1-10 NLT)

We might be tempted to think that the story of the rich man and Lazarus is telling us that it’s the rich man’s lack of good works that kept him out of heaven.  It’s not his actions, although his actions are certainly telling.  They reveal a man whose heart was far from God, otherwise he would have been concerned about what God’s concerned about, namely people in need, like Lazarus. 

We have to be careful not to mix this up.  Through faith, the Holy Spirit renews us and guides us and helps us to do the good things that God has planned for us. We cannot earn salvation through good works.  But we find that our faith  and our gratitude for salvation prompts us to action. 

We see this sequence in the greatest commandment as well.  The first part is to love the lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength. (Luke 10:27 et al).  That’s what gets us started, and what prompts and equips us to love our neighbors as ourselves.  Without the love of God, we will not be able to sustain the love for our neighbors.  The first part provides the motivation and the strength for the second part.

We see this in another parable – the story of the sheep and the goats.  Jesus says to the goats, “Away from me.  I never knew you.”  The goats ask for explanation, and he explains that when they didn’t feed the hungry or give water to the thirsty or welcome strangers, it is as if they didn’t do these things for Jesus himself.  The point is that those who love God and are seeking to do God’s will would have loved these people.  Our good works are the outflow or symptom of our faith.[2]

It’s like taking your computer in for repair.  For the technician to be able to figure out what’s going on in the computer, you have to give him access to it – the password to get in.  Otherwise he won’t be able to do anything at all and it’ll just stay like it was.  If you give him access, he’ll get into it and clean things up and get them running right again.  And it’ll run great for awhile and do lots of good things, but every now and then you’ll need to take it back for more clean up.  It’s like that for us, too.  For God to work in our lives we have to give him access – use the gift of the faith that he’s given us to accept the grace and forgiveness being offered, and accept the new life Jesus brings us.  And he’ll get inside and clean some things up and get us back on track and running right and doing good things, and the more we give him access, the more he can do in us.

When we let God have access, we get a generous opportunity, which is to do the will of God and to know the blessings that come with doing God’s will.  In the process God helps us change from a perspective of entitlement to one of stewardship.  We see entitlement in the rich man[3] – all this is mine and I’m entitled to enjoy it.  Instead, he could have been thankful to God for giving him all that he had and used his richness to bless others. 

God gave the rich man a generous opportunity.  God was generous to the rich man, and God generously put Lazarus right on his doorstep, a most convenient opportunity to share his blessings.

Whenever I read this story about the rich man and Lazarus, I get to thinking . . .  Who is on our doorstep?  It can be easier to be generous to different organizations, to send money off to different countries, and fail to notice the need right in front of us.

There’s a pastor who tells about a time when he was about to send away the stranger at his doorstep.  He lived in the house on the church property and a young man came to his door asking for help.  The young man turned out to be the son of one of the church families.  He struggled with alcohol and had gone away and come back so many times that his parents had given up on him.  The pastor was trying to keep up with a busy agenda that day and was feeling somewhat sorry for himself, so he wasn’t feeling very charitable.  He said to God, “Lord, I can’t take care of every drunken beggar in this town.”  In response, a voice seemed to say, “I didn’t ask you to take in every drunk—just this one.”  And so he did.[4]

What opportunities is God putting on our doorsteps to share the blessings that we’ve been given? 

·        Are we responding with cheerful gratitude or grudgingly minimal response? 

·        Or are we turning a blind eye, looking past those right before us to do something easier or more acceptable? 

·        Have we allowed a seemingly uncrossable chasm to exist between us and someone who needs our help?

One thing that is very clear in this parable – we don’t have an unlimited supply of opportunities to be generous.  The ultimate reality is that life is finite, and so are the opportunities.  Opportunity is on our doorstep, but so is death.  I don’t know if your week was like mine, but it seemed that death was in view daily.   There was a lot of it this week on my Facebook feed.  Three friends lost their mothers this week, and one her father.  We heard a lot this week about people getting shot.    Life and death is our reality.  Both are always happening. 

The juxtaposition of death and life this week got me to thinking metaphysically.  In our parable we see life and death almost overlapping, as both are in view in the telling of the story.  And I got to wondering….

 What if heaven isn't a place or a time (future) but a dimension that we only intersect with in fleeting moments in this life . . .because we are bound to this place and time and linear thought . . .but that we get glimpses of when we worship and when we touch sometimes heart and when we do something that impacts eternity?

And is so often the case, I discovered I’m not the first person to think about life this way.  You might already be thinking of some stories or movies that play with this idea.  Some ancient people had a theory about this idea.  The Celtic spiritual tradition says that heaven and earth are actually rather close together and that there are thin places where the distance between them is much smaller, where the veil between heaven and earth is quite thin.[5]  In those places it is easier to feel the presence of God and to have glimpses of heaven, and to see God’s glory.[6]

I do believe thin places exist, but I don’t think they are always static places.  There are certainly places that are special because they show us the glory of God through their beauty or because special things happen there.  But we ourselves have the ability to create thin places whenever we give God complete access to our hearts and lives.  We make thin places when we pray and sing and worship God with all our hearts.  We make thin places when we reach out to other people and touch their hearts.  We make thin places when we do the will of God.

“And the world is passing away along with its desires, but

whoever does the will of God abides forever.”

 –1 John 2:17

·        Churches can be thin places but they aren’t always. 

·        St.Vincent’s House is often a thin place for me, and for people who come there looking for hope and reassurance. 

I found a thin place this week watching the season premiere of the TV show The Voice.  This is a show where people come and sing for a panel of judges who can hear them but can’t see them.  The judges will accept or reject them based on their singing alone, and often based on some rather intangible qualities that can come through in a performance.  Many of these performers see this as their one chance to live their most deeply heartfelt dream.  Some of these performers have known incredible heartbreak and that comes through in their singing and allows their performance of that song to be a thin place.  Most of them don’t mention God, but I felt like I was hearing the heart of God through them. 

Where and when have you experienced thin places?

Sometimes a hospital room is a thin place.  There was college student doing an internship as a chaplain at a hospital.  It’s a tough internship at first because the student has very little training before they start visiting patients and their families.  In one of this chaplain’s visits, she walked into a room where a man sat beside the bed of his wife who was unconscious.  The man had just been told that his wife had very little time left.  He was angry at God and not much interested in talking to the chaplain.  He told her, “Unless you can tell me where God is in this, you can leave.”  The chaplain stood there unsure what to do or say.  She said a silent prayer.  “God, help me.”  And suddenly she was overcome by the man’s grief and she began to weep.  In that moment, through that chaplain, the man was able to see the heart of God.  God was there weeping with him.  And the chaplain stayed and sat with him for quite awhile.[7]  That was a thin place, a generous opportunity to encounter heaven on earth.

God gives us a lifetime of opportunities to know him personally, to know his generous grace, and to be a part of heaven on earth. Once we are dead, the opportunities have ended, but the most amazing thing about life is that every day, every moment is a new opportunity to have a fresh start and to find and create thin places through our heartfelt seeking of God and of sharing God’s love and grace with other people.  Sometimes it might seem like there are uncrossable chasms between us and God, and between us and other people, especially between us and people who are different from us. 

Every moment until we breath our last moment is an opportunity to cross those chasms, and to find or create thin places.

Let us thank God for all of these generous opportunities.

---

[1] http://abcnews.go.com/US/Beliefs/story?id=1422658

[2] http://www.gotquestions.org/parable-sheep-goats.html

[3] Bruce Larson, The Communicator’s Commentary: Luke (Word Publishing)

[4] Bruce Larson, The Communicator’s Commentary: Luke (Waco, TX: Word Books, 1983), 236-7.

[5] http://www.christiancentury.org/blogs/archive/2015-03/thin-places-week-s-readings

[6] http://www.explorefaith.org/mystery/mysteryThinPlaces.html

[7] Borrowed from Roger Nishioka who told a similar story to the Presbytery of the New Covenant at one of it’s meetings in 2015.

Wait….Jesus, What? – A Sermon on Luke 16:1-13

Read Luke 16:1-13 here.

---

A man came home from a church meeting and walked into the house panting and almost completely exhausted. “What happened, honey?” asked his wife.

“It’s a great new idea I have to be a better steward of our resources,” he gasped. “I ran all the way home from the stewardship committee meeting behind the bus and saved $1.50.

“That wasn’t very bright,” replied his flustered wife. “Why didn’t you run behind a taxi and save $10?”[1]

---

We can imagine the husband’s response to this might have been, “oh, yeah….wait, what?”  Running behind a taxi sounds logical until you think more about it.  Today’s parable from Luke 16 is kind of like that.   Maybe the disciples as they were listening to Jesus were nodding in agreement because this is Jesus talking…but then got to thinking about what he was saying.  “Wait….Jesus, what?”

It’s an odd story.  A manager gets in trouble for squandering his master’s resources, so then the manager does one last act of creative bookkeeping, and then instead of getting mad, the master commends the manager.  Wait….what?

Actually, what the manager is praised for is his cleverness, his shrewdness.  It’s an interesting choice of words, because shrewdness can be both good and bad.  Cleverness can be used for both good and evil.  The serpent in the Garden of Eden is also described as shrewd.  Genesis 3:1 says that the serpent was the shrewdest of all the animals! 

Realizing that cleverness or shrewdness can be used for both good and evil actually helps us with the meaning of this parable.  Cleverness is just one of the many things that God has given us.  We can use this gift for good or bad.  Everything that that we have and everything that we are can be used for selfish gain or for greater good.  We are the stewards of our lives, and we get to choose. 

We tend to think of stewardship in terms of money more than anything, and in this parable we see money as well, but there are some clues here that this is about much more than money.  We already identified one of those clues – the manager is praised specifically for his cleverness.  Money is just the tool for his cleverness. 

Scholars have long debated over whether there might be something going on in this parable that we aren’t able to understand because we don’t live in the same time and place as the people who originally heard these words from Jesus.  That is always a challenge.  We are hearing this story with 21^st century ears.  We are no longer a farm-based economy.  We no longer consider it a sin to charge someone interest.  We no longer accept payment in the form of jars of oil or baskets of wheat.  But I don’t think we need to get too caught up in trying to justify the actions of the manager or the master.  Jesus tells us in the beginning of the story that something funny is going on.  The manager is getting fired.  If everything the manager was doing was good, he wouldn’t be getting fired.  In this case, the story speaks for itself.  The manager is doing some questionable accounting, but the story is about more than that.  The manager is not commended for cooking the books, he’s commended for using his head. 

The book of Proverbs is all about the importance of using our heads. Proverbs 1:4 says to “teach shrewdness to the simple, knowledge and prudence to the young.”

Jesus, in his first comment about this story explains that “the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of the light.”  (v8) Here we begin to see that it’s about more than money – it’s about how we deal with people.

Jesus explains further. He says “Use your worldly resources to benefit others.”  The manager used his remaining time as a manager to reduce the debts of the master’s debtors.  He used his position to help people, and to make friends so that they would be willing to help him when he needed help.

Proverbs 22:1 says, “A good name is to be chosen rather than great riches, and favor is better than silver or gold.”  A good name, to be in someone’s good favor, is more valuable than money.  Our reputations, our relationships with people, are more important than our money or our stuff.

The great philosopher Bob Marley said something similar: "The greatness of a man is not in how much wealth he acquires, but in his integrity and his ability to affect those around him positively"[2]

God has given us the honor of being our own managers.  We get to decide how we use what we’ve been given – our money, our health, our minds, our emotions, our positions, our time – everything about our lives is given to us by God and we get to decide how to use it.

”A father gave his little girl two dollars and said, “You can do anything you want with one of the dollars, but the other dollar belongs to God.”

With joy she ran to the candy store. On the way she tripped and one dollar fell into the storm drain. She got up and said, “Well Lord, there goes Your dollar.”[3]

That’s one way to decide.  Here’s another.

Back in the days before we all had cell phones, a man was jogging with his son. They stopped for a rest in a downtown park and began to talk about a pizza place in town that had just opened and the more they talked the better it sounded so they decided to phone ahead and have the pizza delivered when they got home.

As they were heading toward the pay phone a beggar, a homeless man approached them and asked if they could spare some change. The father reached his hand in his pocket, and pulled out all that he had. 

“Here take what you need.” 

The man couldn’t believe his good fortune.  “Can I have it all? The beggar asked.

“Sure,” said the father and the homeless man reached down and scooped the coins into his own hands, and went on his way.

It only took a second for the father to realize that he now had no change for the phone.

"Pardon me," he called out to the homeless man. "I need to make a call. Can you spare some change?"

The homeless man turned back and held out the two handfuls of coins.

"Here," he said. "Take what you need."[4]

Jesus is telling us to use our resources to make friends and help people.  He’s also telling us to think beyond today.  How will our actions and choices affect the future?  It’s easy to miss this part of the story because the clues here are subtle.  Jesus says to “make friends for yourselves . . . so that they may receive you into an everlasting home.”  Jesus says, “If you have not been faithful in the use of worldly wealth, how will you be trusted with the true riches?”

Our choices have consequences, both for today and for eternity.  Everything we have and everything we are is a gift from God.  We can use it any way we choose.  As we are making these choices, we need to consider our impact on the people around us, our impact on the world around us, and our impact on eternity.  What kind of legacy will we leave?  Will people be glad to see us in heaven?  Or will we look back seeing missed opportunities to help build the kingdom of God?  And how can we use what we have to make friends, to help others, to impact eternity?

We are stewards.  All that we have and all that we are is a gift to us from God.  All of it is God’s, and he’s given us the freedom to make choices about how we use all that we’ve been given.  We are stewards of our lives, our health, our stuff, our abilities, our time, our environment, our children, our pets – what else?  What am I forgetting?

Maybe our greatest responsibility is to be stewards of the faith that we’ve been given.  It is our relationship with God that sustains us, that has the greatest impact on the people around us, and that we will carry with us into eternity.  In verse 8 of our parable, Jesus is encouraging us to put as much effort into being stewards of our faith as those without faith put into worldly things. He says, “for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

I spend time every Thursday at St. Vincent’s House – answering phones, doing whatever is needed.  They have lots of encouraging words on their walls.  One of them says this:

[5]Remember the gap –

·        When you are in a rut

·        When it seems too hard

·        When you feel like you are at the end of your rope

·        When you have fallen and you can’t get up

Remember the GAP – God Always Provides[6]

How do we remember?  We remember by writing it down, to document our faith.[7]

We are told in Deuteronomy 6 to do this as well.

^"4 Hear, O Israel: The Lord is our God, the Lord alone.^[a] 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might. ⁶ Keep these words that I am commanding you today in your heart. ⁷ Recite them to your children and talk about them when you are at home and when you are away, when you lie down and when you rise. ⁸ Bind them as a sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem^[b] on your forehead, ⁹ and write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates."

I found a website this week called “divinewalls.com” that makes scriptures into giant stickers to put on walls.  This first one I found when I was looking for a picture for the front of today’s bulletin.

  

Here’s another one that’s probably familiar: 

Putting scriptures on our walls is one way for us to document our faith so that we will remember and so that future generations can know the same blessings we have known from our faith. 

Thinking about the future helps us to make better choices.

When Queen Victoria was a child, she didn't know she was in line for the throne of England. Her teachers, trying to prepare her for the future, were frustrated because they couldn't motivate her. She just didn't take her studies seriously. Finally, her teachers decided to tell her that one day she would become the queen of England. Upon hearing this, Victoria quietly said, "Then I will be good." The realization that she had inherited this high calling gave her a sense of responsibility that profoundly affected her conduct from then on.[8]

We too have a high calling – to pass on the faith that we have been given.  This is just one of the ways we are responsible stewards of all that we have been given.  

Be responsible.

Sometimes I think we get caught in the middle – living halfway between doing things the worldly way and the Godly way.  Jesus encourages us at the end of this parable to go all the way.  He says, “You cannot serve two masters.”  We have to choose whether the bottom line for us will be about stuff or about God.

Paul helps us think about this another way:

Whatever your task, put yourselves into it, as done for the Lord and not for your masters, since you know that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward; you serve the Lord Christ. Colossians 3:23-24

Thankfully, Jesus bore for us the ultimate responsibility.  He took responsibility for all our sins and failures so that we might be forgiven and receive God’s grace. 

Let us be faithful and thankful and pass it on.

---

[1] http://www.stewardshipoflife.org/jokes/

[2] https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=wealth&search%5Bsource%5D=goodreads&search_type=quotes&tab=quotes

[3] http://ministry127.com/resources/illustration/losing-gods-money

[4] Tom Long, “Surprise Party” Christian Century, March 14, 2001, 10

[5] Picture found on the wall at St. Vincent’s House, Galveston, TX, September 18, 2014

[6] http://homegrownhospitality.typepad.com/

[7] http://homegrownhospitality.typepad.com/homegrown_hospitality/2016/09/documenting-your-faith-.html

[8] http://www.sermonillustrations.com/a-z/r/responsibility.htm