Dishonesty is the Best Policy -9/18/22

My sermon titles usually are taken from the passages themselves, but sometimes I get "cutesy," and I have done so this morning: "Dishonesty Is the Best Policy" with a question mark and an exclamation point after it. The title is a variation of the popular saying, "Honesty is the best policy," which is a saying that I'm in agreement with. People who have known me for a long time will testify that I am a lousy liar. My family will testify to that.

Jesus tells this difficult parable in which someone seems to be honored for his dishonesty. I am part of an online lectionary discussion group every Tuesday afternoon, and this week we puzzled over this passage. I must admit that I have no more insight about this passage after that discussion than I did before. What is Jesus trying to say?

First let's just review the story. Jesus has been talking to the scribes and the Pharisees in order to justify his ministry to the tax collectors and the sinners. He tells three lost parables: the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son. Then he turns his attention to the disciples and tells them this story about a rich man and a manager. The manager would have likely been a slave. The rich man gives the manager a pink slip because he has been squandering the rich man's property, just like the younger son had squandered his property in the previous parable (Luke 15:13). It's not good to squander property. Oh to be a squanderer--bad!

But there is hope beyond squandering. So, the manager calls in his accounts. He asks someone, "How much do you owe my owner?" And the debtor says, "A hundred jugs of olive oil." And the manager says, "Make it fifty!" Wow! He cuts the debt in half! Exactly what is he doing here? Who is he cheating? His master or himself? In the ancient world, there were exorbitant fees and commissions. Maybe the manager was eliminating his own cut. Anyway, a second debtor comes in and says that he owes a hundred containers of wheat. The manager says, "Make it eighty!" Hmm. Why does the first guy get a 50% reduction and the second one only 20? I don't know, but the master says to the manager, "Good job, man! Way to go!" It doesn't say that he got his job back. It just says that his master commended him. He gave him a gold star or agreed to write a strong letter of recommendation.

Then Jesus adds his own commentary: He divides people into two categories, and he says that the children of this age are more shrewd or more prudent in darling with their own than the children of light. And he tells the disciples to make friends with dishonest wealth. Jesus is talking to the disciples, and they've given up everything to follow Jesus, so they don't have any wealth at all--neither dishonest or honest wealth.

Jesus goes on to talk about being faithful and dishonest. And he concludes with these famous lines: "No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the others. You cannot serve God and wealth" (16:13). And the word "wealth" is a translation of the Greek word "mammon." Several years ago, the singer Bob Dylan became an evangelical Christian and recorded a song entitled "Serve Somebody." "It may be the devil, it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody."

So what do these verses say to us? We are managers. All that we have and all that we are, are given to us from God. My favorite song in the musical "Godspell" is entitled "All Good Gifts." "All good gifts around us / Are sent from heaven above. / So, thank the Lord, yes, thank the Lord / for all his love." We thank the Lord for all that we have and are. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Our thanksgiving is our thanks-living. Our thanksgiving is our thanks-living.

We are living with a grateful heart, for example, for these children that have been dedicated this morning. We thank God for them. They are just beginning their lives. They are just beginning their loves. And so they encounter our love for them. Through it, they know God's love. This is stewardship. Often, we think of stewardship as contributing to the church, and that is certainly part of it, but stewardship has to do with how we steward or manage the resources that God has given us. Our most valuable resource is our children. Praise God for them. Praise God for these four children who have been dedicated this morning. We not only dedicate them, but we dedicate ourselves to their upbringing. And not just their upbringing but all those who are part of our community. We dedicate ourselves to peace, to joy, to love.

One could say that the transition is one of stewardship. We are stewarding the rich resources that God and previous generations have given to us in this church. We are asking the questions Who are we? Who is our neighbor? And what is God calling us to be? We ask these questions to steward that vision that God gave people over 180 years ago. So that we can go into the future with confidence that we are together as a people and as servants of the living God.

When I’m not serving interim pastorates, I live in the DC area, and so I'm interested in presidential politics. Long before I came to the DC area, Lyndon Baines Johnson was serving as president. He had the reputation of firing staffers and then keeping them on for a month or so. He fired one of his speechwriters but then forced him to work on a big speech that Johnson had coming. So the speechwriter gave him a stack of cards. The president began, "People wonder how we're going to fight a war in Vietnam and fight the war on poverty, but I have a plan.” The next card: “People wonder how we're going to put a man on the moon and rebuild our cities, but I have a plan. " The next card: “People wonder how we’re going to preserve defense and domestic spending and balance the federal budget, but I have a plan.” The last card read, "You're on your own now, Lyndon!" In some ways, we are on our own to steward that which God has given. But we are not completely on our own. We have the Holy Spirit, and we have one another. Let us go forward in this transition to love and serve the Lord.

And all God's people said, "Amen."