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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
The middle of last week, a man came here to Pilgrim asking if we had work that he could do, in order for him to earn money that he could use to pay for the hotel where he and his wife have been staying since he lost his job. Maybe you and I can relate to being out of work and, if not being out on the street, maybe you and I can at least relate to being afraid of being out on the street. Such fear of being out on the street can be a point of contact for us with today’s Gospel Reading, with its so‑called “Parable of the Dishonest Manager”, who himself feared being out on the street. The lengthy Gospel Reading includes not only that Parable, but the Reading also includes Jesus’s teaching related to that Parable—both about faithfulness in what is little or much and about not being able to serve God and money—and the Reading also includes Jesus’s reproving the Pharisees, who were lovers of money. This morning we consider the Gospel Reading under the theme “Received into Eternal Dwellings”.
As you may recall, in last week’s Gospel Reading (Luke 15:1-10), Jesus was receiving the tax collectors and sinners and eating with them, and the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling. So, Jesus told them three parables about rejoicing over finding something that was lost: a sheep, a coin, and a younger son, who had squandered (or “wasted”) his property in reckless living. Cast in that Reading as the older son, who was angry and refused to rejoice that his father had received back his younger brother safe and sound, the Pharisees arguably are cast differently in today’s Reading: in today’s Reading the Pharisees are cast as a dishonest manager (or “steward”) who wastes his master’s possessions and ends up fearing being out on the street.
The Pharisees clearly were still listening in today’s Gospel Reading as Jesus taught at least the Twelve disciples, and still teaches us today. This sixteenth chapter of St. Luke’s Divinely‑inspired Gospel account has both the parable we heard today, ostensibly about the right use of money, and a parable we will hear next Sunday, ostensibly about the wrong use of money (Luke 16:19-31). Elsewhere Jesus said the money‑loving Pharisees devoured widows’ houses (Luke 20:47), but we should reflect on our own right and wrong uses of money. Are we faithful in very little and much or are we dishonest in very little and much? Do we, like the man in the parable, try to serve two masters? Do we with our heart love and with our mind are we devoted to the right master more? If we are honest with ourselves, we have to admit that we fail to live up to God’s standard—not only in this case, but in all others. We are sinful by nature, and so we sin, like the Pharisees, and like the dishonest manager in the Parable.
In the Parable, the dishonest manager was not strong enough to dig (the hardest work), and he was ashamed to beg (perhaps the easiest work), so he reduced the debts of his master’s debtors so that they would receive him into their houses, either as an employee or as a guest. His master commended the dishonest manager, not for his dishonesty—not for cheating the poor, which today’s Old Testament Reading condemns (Amos: 8:4-7)—but the master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness, and Jesus told His disciples that they should be so shrewd as to make friends for themselves by means of money, so that those friends may receive them into eternal dwellings. The obdurate Pharisees had no shame but ridiculed Jesus’s teaching and justified themselves. God knew their hearts, and He knows ours. God calls and enables us shrewdly both to realize the urgent situation we are in (that time is short before we have to give an account to God [Matthew 12:36]) and to make use of the means necessary in order to reach our goal. For us, more than a job or temporary housing is at stake: our dwelling eternally in the Kingdom of our Lord or outside of it in the hell that we by nature and on account of our sins deserve. When we repent, as did the younger son in the preceding parable (Luke 15:17), then, as we sang in the Psalm (113), the Lord lifts us up from the ashes of our repentance.
That Jesus says we should make friends for ourselves by means of money so that they may receive us into the eternal dwellings sounds as if we can make our way into heaven, either with the money itself or by the things that we do with the money. But, the whole of scripture makes clear that we are saved from our sins only by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, Who lived up to God’s standard for us and on the cross paid the price for our failure to live up to it. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Timothy 2:1-15), there is one Mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ, Who gave Himself as a ransom for all of us. We are not ashamed to beg for God’s mercy (Luke 18:35-39), and, when we do, for Jesus’s sake, God forgives not only part (50 or 20 percent) but all (100 percent) of our countless debt of sin. Jesus makes Himself the friend not only of the Bible’s tax collectors and sinners (Matthew 11:19) but also of you and me. As the man in the Parable was not strong enough to dig, we cannot save ourselves, but, enabled by God, as we sang in the Hymn of the Day (Lutheran Service Book 557), we seek where we may to find a way that leads to our salvation; we are justified because He died, the guilty being guiltless. We do not, like the Pharisees, merely consider ourselves to be righteous before people, but God declares and so makes us righteous before Him. And, God declares and makes us righteous through His Word and Sacraments.
The dishonest manager in the Parable was a household steward, and stewardship is a theme running through the Gospel Reading (which uses five different words related to “house” and so also “stewardship” a total of nine times). The Bible speaks of stewards most‑narrowly in connection to God’s ministry of purely preaching His Word and rightly administering His Sacraments: Holy Baptism, individual Holy Absolution, and the Sacrament of the Altar. Unlike the man in the Parable and the Pharisees, who did not receive sinners and eat with them, God’s ministers are supposed to be faithful (1 Corinthians 4:1-2), or they can no longer be stewards, their stewardship is taken away, as it was. Spiritual leaders truly have to give an account (Hebrews 13:17), but they also live in the forgiveness of sins by grace through faith in Jesus Christ, the same grace by which they are only able to be stewards in the first place.
More‑broadly, all of us who believe are stewards: God entrusts us with material blessings, and He gives us spiritual blessings, such as the forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation—being received into the eternal dwellings. Saved by grace through faith, here and now we faithfully use the material blessings both to further the work of God’s Kingdom and to help those in need, as our congregation’s Titus Fund this past week helped the man and his wife who needed a temporary dwelling to keep them off of the street. We serve our Master, God, in the persons of our neighbors, making friends of them, proving that we have saving faith in Jesus Christ and so proving that we are faithful. Then, when we die or our Lord returns, whichever comes first, those friends who repent and believe will join Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and all those receiving and welcoming us into our heavenly dwellings (4 Maccabees 13:17), covered with the glory of God. There we will not, as an employee, work, but we will, as a welcome guest, rest.
The dishonest manager in the Parable shrewdly reduced the debts of his master’s debtors so that they would receive him into their temporary earthly houses, and, enabled by God, we shrewdly make friends by means of money so that they may receive us into the eternal heavenly dwellings. Maybe we will see the couple that we helped this week there! By grace through faith in Jesus Christ we who repent and believe will be “Received into Eternal Dwellings”. Now, we pray again, as we did in the Hymn of the Day:
My heart’s delight, / My crown most bright, / O Christ, my joy forever.
Not wealth nor pride / Nor fortune’s tide / Our bonds of love shall sever.
You are my Lord;
Your precious Word / Shall guide my way / And help me stay forever in Your presence.
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +