St Luke 16:1-9/1 Corinthians 10:6-13/2 Samuel 22:26-34
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
This is a difficult parable, a difficult text, the Gospel reading we just heard. Why? It appears, at first glance, that Jesus is condoning sin against the 7th commandment, You shall not steal; that He is praising the unjust steward for his unrighteousness. He is not. He merely commends his shrewdness.
Listen, the explanation comes at the end: Jesus said, And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.
But even the explanation leaves us asking some questions: Why is mammon unrighteous? When does it fail? Who are these friends who welcome us into the eternal tents?
First, “unrighteous mammon.” Mammon is simply stuff, the abundance of stuff; that one has more than he needs for his support so that he can use the bounty to help others without injuring himself. Luther observed that it was called “unrighteous” simply because of our use of it is so often unrighteous. The stuff is not evil. It comes from God who alone is good; it is a gift from the gracious Giver. It is written, Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil (Eph 5:15-16). The days themselves aren’t evil! How great evil is done in them. Mammon itself is not unrighteous. But what we do with it is.
Now there is first of all the unbelief that manifests itself as greed, as St Paul says, The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim 6:10). It goes like this: “I can’t let loose of this money by giving it away because who knows if there will be enough for me and mine tomorrow!” Sadly forgotten is the lesson of the manna, as Paul lays out for us in the Corinthians text. Remember how God worked that?
Take only what is necessary for today, there was always more for tomorrow. But when you tried to store up and save it, instead of trusting the Lord’s Word and His generous giving, it grew maggots and stank. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Mt 6:34). There is a reason our Lord teaches us to pray for “daily bread,” and not “tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year’s bread.”
Then there is the silliness of thinking that life itself is all about accumulating stuff: more and more equals better and better. And so we build for ourselves “bigger and better barns,” forgetting our Lord’s words, Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions (Lk 12:15).
I also wonder if our Lord calls it “unrighteous mammon,” not only because of our bad use of it, but also because it – all the stuff we call wealth – won’t make it into the Kingdom, the Kingdom that is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rm 14:17).
What will make it into the kingdom are people. People who surround us all the time. People who stand in various kinds of need. People whom we can bless in countless ways. If we have the eyes to see them. If we have the eyes to see their need. If we behold Christ in them, as our Lord says to the sheep and the goats. Christ in my neighbor. To see their need as my own, for they are my flesh. Indeed this requires not only our eyes to be opened, but also our hearts to be opened by God to care, to have compassion.
To care, and to be shrewd enough to realize how things will be sorted out at the end. The unjust steward was commended not for his dishonesty, but for his shrewdness. He saw what was coming in the future and he made plans for others to welcome him when he lost the funds that he once managed. Those funds would not be following him into the future; he’d loose them all. Turn in the account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward. He had squandered the mammon of his lord and he is called to task for it.
He was too weak to dig and too proud to beg. So he cut the accounts of his lord’s debtors. Half here. Twenty percent there. The money would run out; it wouldn’t be there in the end. But the people to whom he showed kindness and good will, the people who benefited from his generosity (granted, it was a generosity with another’s stuff), they would be! He made friends with that stuff that wasn’t his, and those friends would remain even when that stuff was gone.
Do you see Jesus’ point? He says, The sons of this world, that is the pagans, the heathens, the unbelievers, are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light; that’s us, the baptized, the enlightened ones. He says they can figure out how to plan for their earthly future, and they put their money where their heart is; where their treasure is. Why do we have such a hard time with this? About putting our money where our heart is? In the support of the proclamation of the Gospel and the care of our neighbor?
And this is where the real difficulty in this parable lies; Jesus is giving us a sermon on stewardship. He is telling us what to do with our money. We wish, perhaps, that Jesus were talking about more spiritual things, more heavenly things. But not in this text. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon. He is telling His followers, telling us, how to spend our money.
Because the mammon won’t make it into the eternal dwellings. There won’t be computers and cars and retirement homes in the woods. You won’t have a stock portfolio, a wallet full of cash, or accumulated credit card points. Old Job, who had plenty of stuff, was right: you exit this world as you entered it: naked. You carry nothing with you.
But on that day, you will be surrounded by all the dead raised by the Lord, and many of them will be people you knew, people whose paths you crossed somewhere on your own journey. They will be there. Invest in your future, Jesus says: love them! Have compassion on them. Give to them. Share with them. Serve them in Christ. Its not your stuff anyway.
It is written, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed”, says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them” (Rev 14:13). “Their deeds do follow them.” Your good works shall be known. And on the last day the least of Christ’s brethren will throw their arms around you and enter with you into the heavenly home. You proved to be their friend because you had the eyes to see their need and, in Christ, the heart to help them.
Our Lord said, Greater love has no one that this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you, that you love one another as I have loved you (Jn 15:12-14).
This dear saints, is exactly what the teller of the parable did. He noticed His neighbor – that’s you – in your desperate need, and He did not count a single thing that was His as His own, even equality with God, but gave up everything He had in order to befriend us, to care for us, to provide us with daily bread and an eternal dwelling.
And He not only gave up all that was His, but He assumed all that was ours – not only our flesh and blood, but also the horrible debt of sin – and He paid it as His own; slashed our debt by the shedding of His own precious Blood, with a righteousness that was His own. Shrewd, indeed.
The Cross is where He closed your account with the Master and it is paid in full. There He made friends for Himself, dying for the sin of the whole world. And rising to Life again in continual service to you.
He invites you into this same kind of living, a life together as the Body of Christ that follows after its Head. He shows you that by giving up everything, even life itself, for the service of others, is what love does. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will kept it (Lk 17:33). For His love cannot be destroyed in death. Rather the love of Jesus destroys the power of death. His love is stronger than the grave. And He rose again to be the first to welcome home His many friends into the eternal dwellings prepared for them.
Beloved, in His Supper today He extends to you the fullness of that love, forgiving your sins – even those where you have used wealth unrighteously in greed or fear – and here He strengthens you to believe that a life lived in service to your neighbor is the only sort of life worth living. Because the end of this life is the joyous welcome home of forgiven sinners to eternal life in the Father’s house.
Be shrewd, beloved. Remember what lasts and what does not. And by the grace of the Holy Spirit use the stuff that doesn’t to bless the people that do. By faith, your heart, your treasure is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And in love, in the joy of sins forgiven and debts paid, you serve your neighbor.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
In the Name + of Jesus. Amen.
This is a difficult parable, a difficult text, the Gospel reading we just heard. Why? It appears, at first glance, that Jesus is condoning sin against the 7th commandment, You shall not steal; that He is praising the unjust steward for his unrighteousness. He is not. He merely commends his shrewdness.
Listen, the explanation comes at the end: Jesus said, And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.
But even the explanation leaves us asking some questions: Why is mammon unrighteous? When does it fail? Who are these friends who welcome us into the eternal tents?
First, “unrighteous mammon.” Mammon is simply stuff, the abundance of stuff; that one has more than he needs for his support so that he can use the bounty to help others without injuring himself. Luther observed that it was called “unrighteous” simply because of our use of it is so often unrighteous. The stuff is not evil. It comes from God who alone is good; it is a gift from the gracious Giver. It is written, Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but wise, making the best use of the time, because the days are evil (Eph 5:15-16). The days themselves aren’t evil! How great evil is done in them. Mammon itself is not unrighteous. But what we do with it is.
Now there is first of all the unbelief that manifests itself as greed, as St Paul says, The love of money is the root of all kinds of evil (1 Tim 6:10). It goes like this: “I can’t let loose of this money by giving it away because who knows if there will be enough for me and mine tomorrow!” Sadly forgotten is the lesson of the manna, as Paul lays out for us in the Corinthians text. Remember how God worked that?
Take only what is necessary for today, there was always more for tomorrow. But when you tried to store up and save it, instead of trusting the Lord’s Word and His generous giving, it grew maggots and stank. Do not be anxious about tomorrow, for tomorrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble (Mt 6:34). There is a reason our Lord teaches us to pray for “daily bread,” and not “tomorrow, next week, next month, and next year’s bread.”
Then there is the silliness of thinking that life itself is all about accumulating stuff: more and more equals better and better. And so we build for ourselves “bigger and better barns,” forgetting our Lord’s words, Take care, and be on your guard against all covetousness, for one’s life does not consist in the abundance of his possessions (Lk 12:15).
I also wonder if our Lord calls it “unrighteous mammon,” not only because of our bad use of it, but also because it – all the stuff we call wealth – won’t make it into the Kingdom, the Kingdom that is righteousness, peace, and joy in the Holy Spirit (Rm 14:17).
What will make it into the kingdom are people. People who surround us all the time. People who stand in various kinds of need. People whom we can bless in countless ways. If we have the eyes to see them. If we have the eyes to see their need. If we behold Christ in them, as our Lord says to the sheep and the goats. Christ in my neighbor. To see their need as my own, for they are my flesh. Indeed this requires not only our eyes to be opened, but also our hearts to be opened by God to care, to have compassion.
To care, and to be shrewd enough to realize how things will be sorted out at the end. The unjust steward was commended not for his dishonesty, but for his shrewdness. He saw what was coming in the future and he made plans for others to welcome him when he lost the funds that he once managed. Those funds would not be following him into the future; he’d loose them all. Turn in the account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward. He had squandered the mammon of his lord and he is called to task for it.
He was too weak to dig and too proud to beg. So he cut the accounts of his lord’s debtors. Half here. Twenty percent there. The money would run out; it wouldn’t be there in the end. But the people to whom he showed kindness and good will, the people who benefited from his generosity (granted, it was a generosity with another’s stuff), they would be! He made friends with that stuff that wasn’t his, and those friends would remain even when that stuff was gone.
Do you see Jesus’ point? He says, The sons of this world, that is the pagans, the heathens, the unbelievers, are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light; that’s us, the baptized, the enlightened ones. He says they can figure out how to plan for their earthly future, and they put their money where their heart is; where their treasure is. Why do we have such a hard time with this? About putting our money where our heart is? In the support of the proclamation of the Gospel and the care of our neighbor?
And this is where the real difficulty in this parable lies; Jesus is giving us a sermon on stewardship. He is telling us what to do with our money. We wish, perhaps, that Jesus were talking about more spiritual things, more heavenly things. But not in this text. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon. He is telling His followers, telling us, how to spend our money.
Because the mammon won’t make it into the eternal dwellings. There won’t be computers and cars and retirement homes in the woods. You won’t have a stock portfolio, a wallet full of cash, or accumulated credit card points. Old Job, who had plenty of stuff, was right: you exit this world as you entered it: naked. You carry nothing with you.
But on that day, you will be surrounded by all the dead raised by the Lord, and many of them will be people you knew, people whose paths you crossed somewhere on your own journey. They will be there. Invest in your future, Jesus says: love them! Have compassion on them. Give to them. Share with them. Serve them in Christ. Its not your stuff anyway.
It is written, “Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on.” “Blessed indeed”, says the Spirit, “that they may rest from their labors, for their deeds follow them” (Rev 14:13). “Their deeds do follow them.” Your good works shall be known. And on the last day the least of Christ’s brethren will throw their arms around you and enter with you into the heavenly home. You proved to be their friend because you had the eyes to see their need and, in Christ, the heart to help them.
Our Lord said, Greater love has no one that this, that someone lay down his life for his friends. You are My friends if you do what I command you, that you love one another as I have loved you (Jn 15:12-14).
This dear saints, is exactly what the teller of the parable did. He noticed His neighbor – that’s you – in your desperate need, and He did not count a single thing that was His as His own, even equality with God, but gave up everything He had in order to befriend us, to care for us, to provide us with daily bread and an eternal dwelling.
And He not only gave up all that was His, but He assumed all that was ours – not only our flesh and blood, but also the horrible debt of sin – and He paid it as His own; slashed our debt by the shedding of His own precious Blood, with a righteousness that was His own. Shrewd, indeed.
The Cross is where He closed your account with the Master and it is paid in full. There He made friends for Himself, dying for the sin of the whole world. And rising to Life again in continual service to you.
He invites you into this same kind of living, a life together as the Body of Christ that follows after its Head. He shows you that by giving up everything, even life itself, for the service of others, is what love does. Whoever seeks to preserve his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life will kept it (Lk 17:33). For His love cannot be destroyed in death. Rather the love of Jesus destroys the power of death. His love is stronger than the grave. And He rose again to be the first to welcome home His many friends into the eternal dwellings prepared for them.
Beloved, in His Supper today He extends to you the fullness of that love, forgiving your sins – even those where you have used wealth unrighteously in greed or fear – and here He strengthens you to believe that a life lived in service to your neighbor is the only sort of life worth living. Because the end of this life is the joyous welcome home of forgiven sinners to eternal life in the Father’s house.
Be shrewd, beloved. Remember what lasts and what does not. And by the grace of the Holy Spirit use the stuff that doesn’t to bless the people that do. By faith, your heart, your treasure is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. And in love, in the joy of sins forgiven and debts paid, you serve your neighbor.
In the Name of the Father and of the Son + and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
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