September 23, 2007 - Pentecost 17, Year C
Saint James Episcopal Church, Saint James, NY

If there's one thing we all love
it's a story. If you're like me, as soon as I hear those magical words
“Once upon a time”,
I relax, and settle in for a journey into the land of make believe.
Ordinary reality is a little more evident in most TV shows and movies,
but anything that has a story to it
is likely to catch – and keep – my attention, at least for a while.
It's one of those things about being human - we all love a good story.

Which is probably why Jesus
told so many of them. He was known as a storyteller; people came from miles to hear him. The lost coin, the lost sheep, the prodigal son; Jesus began most times
with something homey and everyday, but somewhere along the way
his stories took a twist
and you never knew quite
where you would end up.
But usually
it wasn't quite where you began;
when Jesus told a story,
you would most often end up
looking at the world and at God
from a whole different perspective.
That was the attraction: no matter what else happened, when you listened to Jesus, you could b sure of hearing a good story.

But this time, it was different. This time, although the story began as normal,
the twist was altogether unexpected,
and the hearers were left
in total confusion.
This story had no clear meaning, no punch line,
nothing to tell them
what on earth he meant.
Even the experts can’t work out what to do with it.
Because it just doesn't make sense.

If we take it as a parable, like last week's lost sheep and lost coin,
if we look at it the way we normally look at parables, assigning ourselves to one of the characters and God to another one, and Jesus to a third, then we end us with God the gullible rich man, and Jesus the manager, who is in collusion with us the debtors in cheating the rich man. Great. Follow Christ the thief.

It makes no sense. At the very least, it’s a direct contradiction of the eighth commandment, “You shall not steal.”
And I can’t imagine the police or the FBI would be too happy to hear that I’d been preaching that we should all go fudge the figures and steal from your employers.
It makes no sense, or at leas, not if we take it as a parable.

So maybe we should just ignore it. Assume it's someone else's story that made it into the bible by accident,
just write it off?

Maybe there's another way.
First of all, we’ve got to remember that sometimes a story
is just a story.
Not fact.
Not an allegory, where every element in the story corresponds with an element in our lives.
Just a story, one that raises a difficult issue – what has faith got to do with money – a story that gets our attention, and is troublesome enough
to get us talking about that.

It's the final verse that makes me think this. It's a straightforward saying, “You cannot serve God
and wealth.”
It reads like an answer; but we're not really sure what the question was. But maybe it happened like this.

Jesus was talking to the crowds, when someone asked him,
“Master, I want to follow you. But I’ve heard you told people to sell everything they have. I’ve got a good business, and people depend on me. Surely I shouldn’t abandon all that? Can’t I serve you and still keep my business?”

And Jesus answered,
“Let me tell you a story.‘There was a rich man who had a manager...”
And so he went on with the story we heard today.

And if that was the question that our story was the answer for then maybe the story doesn’t look so much like something condoning the slick operations of a thief, as something that raises the problem of trying to serve a master on the one hand, and line your pocket on the other. Sometimes, no matter how good you are at it, the two will come into conflict, and you’ll shortchange one
or the other.
And no matter how you resolve it, even if you do it in a way
that’s pretty clever business,
you’re always stuck with the reality
that you had to cheat to survive.

And if you think about it in terms of how you work out how you deal with money as a brand new Christian , maybe the story is saying, if you try to serve God with the one hand
and yourself with the other,
you’re going to be in trouble.
But if you serve God first,
then the rest will take care of itself.

Or maybe it was a different question.
Maybe someone came up to Jesus all worried and said,
“Master, why is it
that I see people in my town who lie and cheat
and nothing bad seems to happen to them,
but Christians are so naive, they’re forever getting taken advantage of?”

And Jesus answered,
“Let me tell you a story.‘There was a rich man who had a manager...”
And so he went on with that same story we heard today.

As the answer to this question, our story
affirms that yes, people cheat, and yes, they’re often better businessmen than the naively honest Christians.
And you Christians better wake up and uses your brains — don’t be dishonest, but at least be wise. Money isn’t bad, it’s just that it should be our tool, something we can use
for the sake of the kingdom of God.
We shouldn't let it rule us, even by default — we should be serving God, with our money along with every other part of us.

We don't know if either of those questions
was the question that prompted Jesus’s story, or something else altogether.
But either way it got us doing what Jesus was inviting us to do,
which is to think about what he says, to play with the ideas, and see how they might connect with our lives. To think about money
and how it relates to our faith.

It's one of those hidden questions
in the baptismal covenant.
“Will you proclaim by word and example
the good news of God in Christ?”
And what it's talking about
is not just saying you're a Christian
but living as one.
It's about working out how our faith
connects with other parts of our life,
how the water of baptism
is connected to the water we drink and the water we wash with and the water that surrounds this island we live on,
how the bread and wine that we take in our hands
relates to the bread and wine we eat for dinner.
Today, thinking about Jesus' story,
it's about how the money in our pockets, in our wallets, in our bank accounts,
is connected with the money we put in the plate.

When I was five years old, I received 20 cents per week allowance. My brother and I were allowed to spend 5 cents on candy. Two cents went in the offertory plate on Sunday. The rest went in our money boxes, to pay for gifts.

As we got older, our parents gave us more choice with what we did. There was still a limit to how much we could spend on candy. We were still expected to put ten percent in the offertory plate. But we chose for ourselves how much of the rest went on gifts, on saving up for something we really wanted, on giving away in school fundraisers and things like that.

It's no different now. I still have to think about how much I put in the plate, how much I save, how much I spend on myself, and how much on others. It's more complex, because then I didn't have to pay for my own food and clothing and all those essentials, I didn't owe taxes or run a car. But in the end, it boils down to the same things:
myself, God, the bank and others.
I'm thankful that the way I was raised
means that I'm predisposed to
though every time I write my check towards my pledge, I think about how if didn't write that check
I could afford a new car without chipped paint where I bumped into a kerb,
and every time I buy food for the food pantry or make a donation to help people affected by a natural disaster, I think of the nice dinner out or new clothes it would buy.
But in the end, what matters most
is serving God, in the end, what matters most
is not being a hypocrite, in the end what matters most
is having the things I say I believe
match up with what I actually do.

And maybe that's why Jesus told a story that is so troublesome. Because it makes us think. Think beyond the easy answers
to the harder questions.
Next time you get a paycheck, think about what Jesus might say to you
about how he’d choose to use this money.
Next time you feel cheated, think about Jesus and what he might have said in answer.

It’d be much easier if Jesus just told us straight out
what he wants us to do.
But you know, when it comes to money, we’re not so good at hearing what he has to say
even when he does tell us clearly.
And maybe that’s why he told
a difficult story.
So that it would stick in our minds, so that it would bug us and challenge us and force us to think about how we deal with money and possessions, and how that all shapes our faith. It forces us to ask difficult questions,
things like, “am I really honest?” or “Does the way I handle my money reflect my values? or “who am I trying to please?”

And for those sort of questions
there are no easy answers. They are things we have to face up to
and decide for ourselves,
and answer for our decisions
to God.
God grant us wisdom
to make the right ones.

©Raewynne J.Whiteley, 2007