Sermon for Trinity 9
1 Corinthians 10:6-13 + Luke 16:1-9
In today’s Epistle, Paul presented part of the tragic history of the Old Testament Israelites, how time and time again they became arrogant before God, thought they could defy Him without consequence, because they were His chosen people. They learned the hard way that you can’t. There will be consequences for defying God, and they may be deadly. And just because you were once baptized, and you call yourself a Christian, doesn’t mean that God will put up with your stubborn defiance forever. Paul presented that lesson to the Corinthian Christians, because they were beginning to grow arrogant and defiant toward God, and he wanted them to learn from Israel’s example before it was too late, so that they wouldn’t experience a similar end.
But he didn’t stop with the warning. He went on to assure those Christians of God’s own faithfulness in helping them to bear up under whatever temptation or hardship they faced. He wasn’t about to leave them on their own to deal with their troubles. Because they were His baptized children, His chosen people, redeemed by the blood of Christ.
In today’s Gospel, Jesus has a similar warning, and some godly counsel, for the children of God, the “sons of the light,” as He calls them. But instead of using an example from God’s people in the Old Testament, He uses the example of a secular steward, basically an accountant working for the wealthy owner of an estate, who learned a valuable lesson in Jesus’ parable. And if that lesson can be learned by “the sons of this age,” that is, by non-Christians, by those who live only for this life, then it can and must certainly be learned all the more by the sons of the light, who plan on spending eternity with one another. Learn to make lasting friends for yourselves with the resources God has given you to manage.
The steward in Jesus’ parable is sometimes called “shrewd” or “wise” or “clever.” But he didn’t start out that way. He initially carried out his stewardship of his employer’s goods wastefully, negligently, lazily. He wasn’t an outright thief; he just didn’t take his job very seriously. And it showed. He was accused before the rich man of squandering his goods. So the rich man summoned his employee and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your stewardship, for you can no longer serve as steward.’
The steward has been confronted. And he already shows some basic wisdom. He doesn’t try to defend himself. That would be foolish. He knows the accusations against him are true. He doesn’t make excuses. He doesn’t beg for a second chance. He knows that judgment is coming, and that he has only a little time left before it comes. He’s been given time to put his accounts in order for review. So, instead of relying on his past behavior, he decides to use the little time he has left to do something productive—not for his boss, not for the good of anyone but himself.
The steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do? My lord is taking the stewardship away from me. I cannot dig. I am ashamed to beg. I know what I will do, so that, when I am removed from the stewardship, people will welcome me into their homes!’ At that time, if you lost your job, there was no unemployment to collect, no government programs to fall back on. You either found another job, or you were reduced to begging, or starving to death. Well, this steward realized it would be very hard to find another job. He wasn’t fit for manual labor, like digging. He was ashamed to sit on the street and beg for handouts. So he turned his thoughts to winning the favor of people he had a business relationship with, so that they would become his friends and then gladly welcome him into their homes after he lost his job.
What plan did he come up with? Well, you heard what he did. He carefully went through the accounts and looked at the bills that the rich man’s debtors had racked up for themselves. And he went to each one, and cooked the books in each one’s favor, not cancelling their debts entirely, just lowering them enough to make the debtors grateful to him going forward.
You’d think his boss would have been even angry with him. But, surprisingly, the man was commended by his master, because he had finally put his mind to doing something productive with his employer’s wealth—something that would benefit the debtors and thus also benefit himself. How could the owner commend the steward for basically stealing some of his money? Because in this case, the owner was more interested in the character of his steward than he was in the bottom line.
The point of this parable isn’t that accountants should cook the books, or that employees should cheat their employers out of their money. Remember, the characters in this parable represent secular businessmen, not Christians, not even God. Jesus tells us that at the end of the parable. For the sons of this age are wiser toward their own kind than are the sons of the light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon, so that, when you become destitute, they may welcome you into the eternal dwellings. The steward is a “son of this age,” and even he learned how to make friends for himself with the resources at his disposal—in spite of the fact that those resources belonged to someone else. Sadly, tragically, Jesus says that the unbelievers of the world are often quicker to learn that lesson than believers are.
And so He wants His people to learn from the steward in this parable, first, in recognizing our own sin, our own failures, as the steward himself was forced to do. In particular, this Gospel calls you to think carefully about how you have used the resources at your disposal. Nothing you have ultimately belongs to you. It all belongs to God. It takes humility to admit that. You may have worked hard for some of your things, but remember that God is the one who gives you strength to work and who is able either to establish the works of your hands or cause it all to fail. He remains the owner. You are the steward. Of everything. Where you have been negligent with His goods, or careless, where you have failed to think about how you can use those goods to help your fellow Christians, repent, and turn to the Lord Christ again for forgiveness, which is guaranteed to all who repent.
Second, learn from the steward to recognize that the day of judgment is coming, whether it’s your death or whether it’s the Last Day. Once you know that, you can’t just keep going on the way things were. Something drastic has to change. Something urgent has to be done. The money you have, the money that you think is so important, is about to run out anyway. You’re about to become destitute, in the way that the book of Ecclesiastes describes: You came into this world with nothing. Soon you’ll leave it the same way. What will you do with what you have as that day draws nearer? The world’s answer is, “Live it up! Enjoy it! Store it up! Save it for a rainy day!” There’s some wisdom in that, but only to a point. The Owner of all you have has told you not to think only about yourself, and your future, and your needs in this life, but about your fellow Christian, and his future, and his needs in this life, to shrewdly look for ways to help him out.
Third, learn from the steward that your fellow Christian’s favor matters. Having his favor is helpful, for this life and for the next life. And if you can purchase it, that is, if you can acquire it by using your resources to help him or her, then you should! If the sons of this age do it for their own, for self-serving purposes, how much more shouldn’t the sons of the light use the wealth at our disposal to serve our fellow Christians, for selfless purposes, and yet still believing what Jesus says here, that when we become destitute, that is, when our time on earth runs out, those Christian brothers and sisters will gladly welcome us into eternal dwellings, with gratefulness and love in their hearts?
In short, it’s smart to go out of your way to help your fellow Christians, to think about it carefully, how you can be generous toward them, viewing your money, your wealth, your resources, and even that resource that we call “time,” not to spend on yourself, but on others. Jesus teaches us to have a heart for generosity. A heart for faithful stewardship, to be shrewd, to be wise. Look for opportunities to help your neighbor in general, but especially your fellow sons of the light. Think carefully about it, as the steward did in Jesus’ parable, knowing that the time is short, and that soon you will have to give an accounting of your stewardship to the Owner. You’ll have Jesus by your side as your Advocate and Refuge when you make that accounting. But you must still make it your goal to prepare an accounting that you won’t be ashamed of.
Speaking of which, the door offering we’re taking today falls at the perfect time, doesn’t it? It wasn’t planned to coincide with today’s Gospel, but it does fit with it. The Lord supplies some of His people with more, while He provides others with less, for the very purpose of allowing those with more to supply the needs of those with less, while those with less respond with godly gratefulness and favor and maybe a different kind of support in return. In the present case, you Christians who have experienced the grace and mercy of God, who have been baptized into Christ, who have been born again as sons of the light and as heirs of eternal life, have been given a little more, so that you can practice God-pleasing stewardship by lending a hand to a Christian family that will be grateful for it, even after this life is over. And this isn’t the first time this congregation has shown such generosity. May the Lord enable us and inspire us to keep practicing this kind of generosity toward all our fellow Christians, and to open our eyes to their needs, until the day when the Lord Himself welcomes His believing children into His eternal dwellings. Amen.
