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September 22 2019
Twenty-fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time
Amos 8:4-7
Hear this, you who trample upon the needy
and destroy the poor of the land!
"When will the new moon be over," you ask,
"that we may sell our grain,
and the sabbath, that we may display the wheat?
We will diminish the ephah,
add to the shekel,
and fix our scales for cheating!
We will buy the lowly for silver,
and the poor for a pair of sandals;
even the refuse of the wheat we will sell!"
The LORD has sworn by the pride of Jacob:
Never will I forget a thing they have done!
Psalm 113:1-2, 4-6, 7-8
R. Praise the Lord who lifts up the poor.
1 Timothy 2:1-8
Beloved:
First of all, I ask that supplications, prayers,
petitions, and thanksgivings be offered for everyone,
for kings and for all in authority,
that we may lead a quiet and tranquil life
in all devotion and dignity.
This is good and pleasing to God our savior,
who wills everyone to be saved
and to come to knowledge of the truth.
For there is one God.
There is also one mediator between God and men,
the man Christ Jesus,
who gave himself as ransom for all.
This was the testimony at the proper time.
For this I was appointed preacher and apostle
— I am speaking the truth, I am not lying —,
teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth.
It is my wish, then, that in every place the men should pray,
lifting up holy hands, without anger or argument.
Luke 16:1-13
A clever rogue, and the right use of money
16:1-9 - Then there is this story he told his disciples: "Once there was a rich man whose agent was reported to him to be mismanaging his property. So he summoned him and said, 'What's this I hear about you? Give me an account of your stewardship - you're not fit to manage my household any longer.' At this the agent said to himself, 'What am I going to do now that my employer is taking away the stewardship from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I can't sink to begging. Ah, I know what I'll do so that when I lose my position people will welcome me into their homes!' So he sent for each one of his master's debtors. 'How much do you owe my master?' he said to the first. 'A hundred barrels of oil,' he replied. 'Here,' replied the agent, 'take your bill, sit down, hurry up and write in fifty.' Then he said to another, 'And what's the size of your debt?' 'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he replied. 'Take your bill,' said the agent, 'and write in eight hundred.' Now the master praised this rascally steward because he had been so careful for his own future. For the children of this world are considerably more shrewd in dealing with their contemporaries than the children of light. Now my advice to you is to use 'money', tainted as it is, to make yourselves friends, so that when it comes to an end, they may welcome you into eternal habitations.
16:10-12 - "The man who is faithful in the little things will be faithful in the big things, and the man who cheats in the little things will cheat in the big things too. So that if you are not fit to be trusted to deal with the wicked wealth of this world, who will trust you with the true riches? And if you are not trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?"
16:13 - "No servant can serve two masters. He is bound to hate one and love the other, or give his loyalty to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and the power of money at the same time."
16:14-15 - Now the Pharisees, who were very fond of money, heard all this with a sneer. But he said to them, "You are the people who advertise your goodness before men, but God knows your hearts. Remember, there are things men consider perfectly splendid which are detestable in the sight of God!"
(J B Phillips trans)
Making Sense in a Modern World
There's an irony with today's gospel reading. It teaches that in spiritual things we should be as canny as a failed businessman in making the best of a bad situation. The trouble is, the illustration doesn't work - which is a bit uncanny. This parable is so difficult to get straight that it's called the 'crux' - the cross or the torture of interpreters.
Hearing it for the umpteenth time we're still shocked that a corrupt manager, dismissed for stealing, is subsequently praised for defrauding his employer even further. Preachers waste time explaining away this negative impression, time that should be spent exploring how the principle could be applied. What principle is being taught, then?
That spiritual people should use their heads about spiritual matters with as much energy as business people apply themselves in running a profitable business, or in sorting out a problem when things go wrong.
Some parables would work better if they were recast in an appropriate modern setting. This one might be told something like this:
I hadn't seen Joe for a while, but I wasn't surprised when he rang me and suggested a drink after work. We often did this when he came to check on his Company's vineyards in the Valley. Three or four they managed, mostly owned, I daresay, by people looking for a way to sink their money into investments they could actually enjoy. Anyway today Joe was not his confident self.
"You can't help admiring the bastard," he said as he took a sip of his whisky. I could feel he was rattled. He'd come up to fire the manager, and he'd been badly mauled in the process. Outmaneuvered! That would not go down well with the board.
"I've known him for years," Joe went on. "I thought he'd be good up here and I got the board to set him up as manager over our properties. And he was good. He had those vineyards turning a profit; the people were happy, and the board was happy with the balance sheet. Then someone noticed there was a huge discrepancy between the sale prices for various grape varieties and the total figure in the annual report. It turned out he'd been creaming a substantial margin off the top for himself.
"They told me to fix it." There was an edge of bitterness in his voice as he remembered the feeling in the air at that meeting. "I rang him Thursday to say I was coming up Monday. He was too damned cocky, and I lost it for a bit. I said, 'You're finished, mate!' and he didn't like that.
"When I get up here this morning, I find he's fixed the books, clean as a new pin. He'd got onto the creditors and gave them discounts or specials, or something - making out we were suddenly big-hearted, y'know; only he put it across like he had arranged the favourable terms for them because he loved them. What a con! Of course, it didn't cost us because it was only the excess he'd added to their price that he was giving back. He's the only one to lose out, but it was worth it to him because it made him very popular with the big wineries.
""I've a good mind to report all this and have you charged,' I told him." Joe said. "But he was ready for that. 'The board won't like it,' he said. 'They won't want people going through the books.' I knew he was right because the board will want to bury the whole episode and forget it.
"So he'll hand in his resignation tomorrow, and he knows there are plenty of businesses ready to snap him up the moment he's available, and there's nothing we can do about it. But you've got to admit, he's smart."
Joe finished his whisky and gloomily stared at the empty glass. I thought of the old saying: The bad guys are smarter than the good guys for sure. They know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, and know when to call your bluff. And for taking the risk they'll scoop the pool often enough to make the rest of us look dumb.
Maybe we are dumb, the way we drift along, enjoying the sunshine, telling ourselves and the shareholders that it's all fine sailing ahead.
When Jeshua heard this story he must have thought the same because he used it in a lesson to his students. "You've got to use your brains as much as the business people do, as much as frauds and crooks do, and take on the risks that come your way as gamblers do.”
Clearly this fellow could have taken to drugs or drink to drown his shame. He could have seen that it was only greed that got him caught. What a fool he'd been. Instead of being content with the healthy 10% he was allowed to claim he raised it to 25% when he could, and even doubled the price for one unfortunate buyer just to have more for himself. But this man did not wallow in his shame. He worked out a way of securing his future, and he was praised for that.
I note that Jeshua did not suggest we should adopt business practice but that we should be creative in our problem-solving as business people are. Successful business people are realists; anyone who follows their dream and neglects to read the market fails. I hear many people criticising 'religion' for being a fabric of fairy stories and pie in the sky promises. Jeshua was a thorough-going realist; this quality comes through strongly in this story. The bloke was honest and pragmatic in assessing his situation. There is nothing about a healthy spirituality that would suggest it should be anything less than realistic.
Each one can reflect on that for ourselves, but how does the church rate against this standard?
The problem that always confronts the church is how to communicate the gospel promise to a new generation. Nearly always adapting to new circumstances and a new audience will involve dropping some treasured things, moving on from some familiar stance, being open to respond to new tastes and appetites and to expectations that are unfamiliar.
A business survives and grows only by keeping abreast of the times. Likewise followers of the Way of Jesus must use their heads and work out how to meet new situations that they confront.
The advertising styles and methods of a hundred years ago would not work today, yet a church will keep on with ancient rituals that are no longer self-explanatory, as any ritual must be, and wonder why the people gradually become alienated. To communicate it is not enough to keep faith with traditions now musty and dull, with quaint or ludicrous graphics, with parables that don't work. To communicate the church must know how to make sense to its audience.
Come to think of it, Jeshua hardly ever used an old story. Nearly all his teaching was dressed up in fresh gear suitable for the new climate he was working in.
If Jeshua criticised the leaders of his time for over-emphasis on law and insistence on ritual purity, today he would critique our culture for its ritualism and clericalism, its reliance on liturgy and the overbearing domination of hierarchy. The energy in today's world is all about connection, being involved, feeling accepted, identifying with a group. We christians always say “community” is our goal. But we don't begin to achieve community because we don't allow communication to happen. We insist on performance of ritual, on uniformity of practice, and require every initiative among the people to be subject to approval by authority. A deadly mould of subservience poisons us.
What would Jeshua think of a church that put great effort into teaching catechism and ritual to little children and when they become adults simply marshalled them for Sunday worship and counted that as enough - so long as the churches are full? What would he say about rituals from baptism to burial performed with ancient words and gestures on the basis that 'The Ritual's the thing', regardless of whether people understand or not. Every liturgical action of its nature involves the whole community, but don't let it stop you if the community couldn't care less, so long as the symbolic gesture is done right .
I imagine Jesus would not be surprised that the church was bankrupt, tasteless salt good for nothing but for spreading on the path to dry up the mud. For new wine you need new wineskins. A new problem gets a new solution. A new product gets new packaging.
What first step would make a difference in your local christian community?
As climate change and ecology are the new issues, how do you as a christian respond?
Getting back to our gospel story, you might wonder what happened that this parable became so unfit for purpose. Did it have a meaning that depended on some business model we don't recognise today, or did some scribe leave out a necessary word of explanation?
It must have been clear in the first century because the gospel writer felt it worth keeping in his text. However more than most stories it did need to be kept up-to-date. J B Phillips' version (above) is very readable. Eugene Peterson's "The Message" gives us a feel for a situation we can identify with:
Jesus said to his disciples, "There was once a rich man who had a manager. He got reports that the manager had been taking advantage of his position by running up huge personal expenses. So he called him in and said, 'What's this I hear about you? You're fired. And I want a complete audit of your books.'
"The manager said to himself, 'What am I going to do? I've lost my job as manager. I'm not strong enough for a laboring job, and I'm too proud to beg. . . . Ah, I've got a plan. Here's what I'll do . . . then when I'm turned out into the street, people will take me into their houses.'
"Then he went at it. One after another, he called in the people who were in debt to his master. He said to the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' "He replied, 'A hundred jugs of olive oil.' "The manager said, 'Here, take your bill, sit down here - quick now - write fifty.' "To the next he said, 'And you, what do you owe?' "He answered, 'A hundred sacks of wheat.' "He said, 'Take your bill, write in eighty.'
"Now here's a surprise: The master praised the crooked manager! And why? Because he knew how to look after himself. Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits.
I want you to be smart in the same way - but for what is right - using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you'll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior."
My own re-telling is an example of how it might make further explanations unnecessary. The medium is the message: the story should be enough for one to think about. But it has to work as a story, and not be just a recurring puzzle.