How Do You Know The Good Guys From The Bad Guys?
Sermon
Sermons on the Gospel Readings
Series III, Cycle C
Object:
I'm going to dispense with the niceties and cut to the chase. Everywhere I turned this week commentators on this gospel told me that it is the most difficult of all the parables of Jesus. They told me how it has caused incredible problems for the church for 2,000 years now. Some said that the problems were caused because folks didn't understand what he was trying to say. I read so many of these that I got a class-A case of writer's block. I became stuck worrying that I'd come in here this morning with a dull, sad look on my face apologizing all over the place, happy that my wife is in Pennsylvania with her mother so that she wouldn't be embarrassed by my ineptness. I finally decided to cut to the chase as I said, get to the point and clear up as much of the confusion as I am able. If it ends up that I don't really cut to the chase or get to the point or clear up all the confusion please don't tell me. Just smile and say, "Nice message, Father" and I'll never know the difference. Oh, and when my wife returns next Sunday, tell her that she missed a great sermon. Then make sure you confess your sin, of course.
The problem, I think, is that often when we listen to these parables our first reaction is to assign parts. I noticed this recently when I told a folktale in which the king was the main character. Many of you tried to understand the story by equating the king with God and right away you got stuck in your interpretation. Doing that was no better than equating the snake in the story of Adam and Eve with the devil. The snake is not the devil. The snake is a snake. And by the way, until it messes with God, it is a snake with legs! But I digress. I trust you'll look it up when you get home. The point is, in the folktale I told, the king was just a king. Not God, not us, just a king.
When we try to interpret the parables by assigning parts, we usually pick for ourselves the role of one of the good people and from that, we hope to learn something about how we might better live our lives. So we know who the good guys are in the story (us, of course) and who the bad guys are (always someone else). But Jesus' parables are never that simple. They are meant to cause dissonance; to make us think on deeper and deeper levels. If we simply say, in the case of this story, that the rich man is God and we are the manager and the debtors are those who got in too deep with payday lenders, we immediately get in trouble.
Still, let's see how this would play out in the story we're faced with this morning, which begins with a rich man bringing charges against his manager. Most of us are not going to identify with the rich man. Someone once said that no matter how much money we have, being rich means having more money than our neighbor.
So we're not the rich guy. And who would want to be with all the recent corporate scandals. Imagine if Jesus had begun his story, "There once was an executive who worked for Enron." So, no ... we're not going to identify with the rich man. He probably did something dishonest to get where he is anyway.
Perhaps we'll have more luck with the manager. Most of us grew up with the stories of Robin Hood. He was always stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. We love stories where the rich and powerful go down in a blaze of glory and the little guy winds up on top. Remember how a few years ago the tabloid television shows were having a ball with Donald Trump's casino losses. We love those stories.
Well, we love them until we're the rich guy. We don't mind kicking them when they're down unless the foot is smacking us on our behind. So it's decided, we'll identify with the manager.
But immediately another problem arises: the manager is lazy -- not even strong enough to dig ditches, and he's proud -- he's ashamed to beg. However, he is clever and before he's dismissed, he discovers that he's not too lazy to cook the books. He calls in the people who owe his master money -- lots of money; one owes 900 gallons of olive oil and another somewhere in the vicinity of 1,000 bushels of wheat. He discounts the bill for olive oil by 50% and the wheat by 20% thus insuring that they will treat him well when he's kicked out into the street. There's no question that he's dishonest. Oh well, so much for rooting for and identifying with the little guy. We like him and all, and we're all for the boss getting his comeuppance, but this is just plain wrong. So ... if we can't use the rich guy as a role model and the manager falls far short, what are we to do?
And wait! This story gets more complicated by the commendation of the rich man. He praises the manager because he acted shrewdly. Now if the story was just sitting in a book somewhere we might not have so much trouble with this. But Jesus told this story. Somewhere in here there's got to be good news. Somewhere in this strange story is a glimpse of how we're to act in the kingdom of God. But where is it? What in the world, or better, what in God's kingdom does he mean?
One place we might focus our attention is on the last half of verse 8: "for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light." This may not be a parable so much about rich and poor people as it is a story that should wake us up to the realities of a post-Christian world, that is of course, a world very much like the pre-Christian world of Jesus' time. A Christian talk-show host I quote once in a while sometimes talks about how gullible some Christians are. Sometimes he's talking about the internet schemes aimed at Christians. Other times he's talking about conspiracy theories. Still other times he's just talking about how quick Christians can be to believe anything and everything that comes over Christian radio or from the pulpit. He urges his listeners to think and discern. Good advice, I think. Sometimes the children of light are not very shrewd in dealing with the rest of the world, with the children of this age.
I have often thought about how Christians are so gullible at times. Now, if I'm not already, I'm going to get in trouble, but here goes: I have a problem with the word "Christian" being attached to everything. It's not unlike the controversy a couple of years ago about whether a particular presidential candidate wore a flag lapel pin. The assumption was that if he wore one, he was patriotic; if he didn't wear a flag lapel pin, then he was unpatriotic. In the same way it seems like tacking the word "Christian" onto something makes it better, more reliable, less likely for the consumer to have a bad experience dealing with that business. The other day my wife brought home a copy of the Christian Blue Pages. She said she had never seen them before and asked me what they were. I said it was simple. If you want a Christian plumber or insurance agent or auto mechanic you simply had to look here. She thought I was making this up. But I wasn't.
Here's my problem, if I believe that just because a person puts a fish symbol in his ad or calls himself a Christian attorney, that they will be good or better or more honest than someone else, I might find myself sadly surprised someday. Likewise, if I believe everything I hear on some of the so-called Christian cable television shows I might begin to think that the fact that I'm not rich means I'm not as faithful as I should be, or at the least, I haven't "sowed a seed" into some particular televangelist's Mercedes ... oh, I'm sorry, I meant ministry.
Perhaps it would be a good idea if we prayed about this: Dear heavenly Father, sometimes the parables that Jesus told are too much for us. It would seem that he is teaching us to be shrewd and crafty when dealing with the people of the world. That doesn't sound very Christian to us. Yet it is so easy to be taken in by some people who profess one thing and do something quite to the contrary. Help us to keep our eyes open, our minds alert, and to use all of our smarts when dealing with those who perhaps have values that differ from ours. We ask this of you who with Jesus and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God forever and ever. Amen.
The problem, I think, is that often when we listen to these parables our first reaction is to assign parts. I noticed this recently when I told a folktale in which the king was the main character. Many of you tried to understand the story by equating the king with God and right away you got stuck in your interpretation. Doing that was no better than equating the snake in the story of Adam and Eve with the devil. The snake is not the devil. The snake is a snake. And by the way, until it messes with God, it is a snake with legs! But I digress. I trust you'll look it up when you get home. The point is, in the folktale I told, the king was just a king. Not God, not us, just a king.
When we try to interpret the parables by assigning parts, we usually pick for ourselves the role of one of the good people and from that, we hope to learn something about how we might better live our lives. So we know who the good guys are in the story (us, of course) and who the bad guys are (always someone else). But Jesus' parables are never that simple. They are meant to cause dissonance; to make us think on deeper and deeper levels. If we simply say, in the case of this story, that the rich man is God and we are the manager and the debtors are those who got in too deep with payday lenders, we immediately get in trouble.
Still, let's see how this would play out in the story we're faced with this morning, which begins with a rich man bringing charges against his manager. Most of us are not going to identify with the rich man. Someone once said that no matter how much money we have, being rich means having more money than our neighbor.
So we're not the rich guy. And who would want to be with all the recent corporate scandals. Imagine if Jesus had begun his story, "There once was an executive who worked for Enron." So, no ... we're not going to identify with the rich man. He probably did something dishonest to get where he is anyway.
Perhaps we'll have more luck with the manager. Most of us grew up with the stories of Robin Hood. He was always stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. We love stories where the rich and powerful go down in a blaze of glory and the little guy winds up on top. Remember how a few years ago the tabloid television shows were having a ball with Donald Trump's casino losses. We love those stories.
Well, we love them until we're the rich guy. We don't mind kicking them when they're down unless the foot is smacking us on our behind. So it's decided, we'll identify with the manager.
But immediately another problem arises: the manager is lazy -- not even strong enough to dig ditches, and he's proud -- he's ashamed to beg. However, he is clever and before he's dismissed, he discovers that he's not too lazy to cook the books. He calls in the people who owe his master money -- lots of money; one owes 900 gallons of olive oil and another somewhere in the vicinity of 1,000 bushels of wheat. He discounts the bill for olive oil by 50% and the wheat by 20% thus insuring that they will treat him well when he's kicked out into the street. There's no question that he's dishonest. Oh well, so much for rooting for and identifying with the little guy. We like him and all, and we're all for the boss getting his comeuppance, but this is just plain wrong. So ... if we can't use the rich guy as a role model and the manager falls far short, what are we to do?
And wait! This story gets more complicated by the commendation of the rich man. He praises the manager because he acted shrewdly. Now if the story was just sitting in a book somewhere we might not have so much trouble with this. But Jesus told this story. Somewhere in here there's got to be good news. Somewhere in this strange story is a glimpse of how we're to act in the kingdom of God. But where is it? What in the world, or better, what in God's kingdom does he mean?
One place we might focus our attention is on the last half of verse 8: "for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light." This may not be a parable so much about rich and poor people as it is a story that should wake us up to the realities of a post-Christian world, that is of course, a world very much like the pre-Christian world of Jesus' time. A Christian talk-show host I quote once in a while sometimes talks about how gullible some Christians are. Sometimes he's talking about the internet schemes aimed at Christians. Other times he's talking about conspiracy theories. Still other times he's just talking about how quick Christians can be to believe anything and everything that comes over Christian radio or from the pulpit. He urges his listeners to think and discern. Good advice, I think. Sometimes the children of light are not very shrewd in dealing with the rest of the world, with the children of this age.
I have often thought about how Christians are so gullible at times. Now, if I'm not already, I'm going to get in trouble, but here goes: I have a problem with the word "Christian" being attached to everything. It's not unlike the controversy a couple of years ago about whether a particular presidential candidate wore a flag lapel pin. The assumption was that if he wore one, he was patriotic; if he didn't wear a flag lapel pin, then he was unpatriotic. In the same way it seems like tacking the word "Christian" onto something makes it better, more reliable, less likely for the consumer to have a bad experience dealing with that business. The other day my wife brought home a copy of the Christian Blue Pages. She said she had never seen them before and asked me what they were. I said it was simple. If you want a Christian plumber or insurance agent or auto mechanic you simply had to look here. She thought I was making this up. But I wasn't.
Here's my problem, if I believe that just because a person puts a fish symbol in his ad or calls himself a Christian attorney, that they will be good or better or more honest than someone else, I might find myself sadly surprised someday. Likewise, if I believe everything I hear on some of the so-called Christian cable television shows I might begin to think that the fact that I'm not rich means I'm not as faithful as I should be, or at the least, I haven't "sowed a seed" into some particular televangelist's Mercedes ... oh, I'm sorry, I meant ministry.
Perhaps it would be a good idea if we prayed about this: Dear heavenly Father, sometimes the parables that Jesus told are too much for us. It would seem that he is teaching us to be shrewd and crafty when dealing with the people of the world. That doesn't sound very Christian to us. Yet it is so easy to be taken in by some people who profess one thing and do something quite to the contrary. Help us to keep our eyes open, our minds alert, and to use all of our smarts when dealing with those who perhaps have values that differ from ours. We ask this of you who with Jesus and the Holy Spirit live and reign, one God forever and ever. Amen.
