Sermons

September 23, 2007

Rev. Scott Swanson

17th after Pentecost - Luke 16:1-13

I want to begin this morning with an apology and a warning for Barb. I told Barb yesterday afternoon when we were both in the office together that she would be getting someone else's words today rather than mine. I had struggled with this text all week. I went back to what I preached on this Sunday in past years, to find that I had systematically dealt with every text in the lectionary for this week ... except this one. I have been avoiding preaching this text for 12 years. Late yesterday afternoon, I found an adequate and I thought interesting take on the text that dealt very nicely with the passage and planned to read that for you today - that's what I told Barb about yesterday. And then last night a little after 8:00 when I sat down to put the finishing touches on someone else's sermon, I read this email which came through the preaching email group to which I belong:

"Maybe we ought to just share our struggle with this passage, with all the twists, turns, convolutions, creative approaches, questions, laughter, wonder, worry we have heard shared this week. I get a sense that this story, when Jesus told it, left a lot of the disciples scratching their heads and muttering, 'well, he didn't hit the bullseye on that one, did he? Where does it say we have to be able to interpret every passage in scripture clearly, succinctly, logically, and simply? I spent 25 years before going to seminary struggling with the Bible, four years in seminary struggling with the Bible, 21 years since being ordained struggling with the Bible - and most days, I just close it and say, "I don't have a clue."

"But the struggle, the struggle, the struggle - that's what I love - on the days I get it, and especially on the days I don't. It's the Bible, for pity's sake. It should leave us thinking we don't have a clue. If it was as simple as some people claim, we wouldn't need God, Jesus, or the Spirit, would we?"

When I read that email I realized I had fallen in the trap: the ego trap of wanting to be a preacher who can make any text make sense. "We really like how you help us understand the texts" ... And when I came across a text that didn't make sense to me, I looked for someone else's interpretation that did make sense, at least in part to get myself out of a jam.

But Tom - the author of the email I read to you - is absolutely right. Sometimes the Bible does not make sense. Sometimes it is just as mysterious and inexplicable and elusive and confusing as the rest of life. And when it is like that, we do it a disservice to gloss over the struggle and come up with a facile moral to the story.

Let me tell you some of what I think might be going on in this story. It may be that Jesus has his tongue firmly planted in his cheek in this parable. That he's poking fun at us. Perhaps it's a parable about details, and about how we get caught up in them and by them - and yet we continue to anguish over the details. Maybe Luke missed Jesus' wonderful sense of humour here. The last verse can sound like someone trying hard to make sense of a passages that, otherwise, is beyond him and perhaps beyond us.

Mark Brantley-Gearhart, a Presbyterian minister in Texas, says that "there are times when details are important. After all, either God or the devil are in them, if the old sayings are true. Yet too often we fail to see the forest for the trees. The point is that we are supposed to be shrewd. We all know full well what that means: use your noggan and all your resources and stop being so artificially pious and reserved about the Christian life. Live Jesus' teachings to the fullest, don't just study them, or comment on them, or frame them under glass, or use them to bludgeon others. Live them, otherwise you're squandering them!"

John Dominic Crossan gives some good insight into the text as well. The people who followed Jesus were poor because of some really unjust economic realties of the day. The rich guy and the manager were guilty of milking the poor folks. The rich guy wanted to get as much as he could and the manager would get a cut. The bottom line was that the poor folks were squeezed (often out of their land) For whatever reason, the manager wasn't squeezing as much as the manager wanted him to . . . perhaps he began to see what the system was doing to people: the pain, the suffering . .. and developed some compassion.

Perhaps he began to see the handwriting on the wall -- and developed a conscience. So, when he realized he was going to get fired, he could have squeezed harder -- but instead, he threw his lot in with the oppressed -- yes, hoping they would help him if he helped them. Not unlike Oscar Schindler . . . who ended up being supported by the Jews he saved. Though Crossan feels like the original story has several addtitions to it, he thinks that Jesus was suggesting a third way . . a way of refusing to be a part of an unjust economic system . . and it would have received cheers from his surprised hearers.

I think there are a few things we can conclude about the parable: it does NOT say ... it is good to be dishonest. But it does say that there is something to being shrewd which is useful and can be used to God's glory.

The parable does NOT say ... it is good to be a lousy steward of what is entrusted to us. But it does say that there is something about finding ways to get ourselves out of a jam that are noteworthy and even appreciated by God, or at least Jesus, depending on your Christology.

The parable does NOT say ... this is what this means and this is how it is to be understood and applied to everyday life. But it does read and confine itself to being one of those hard sayings of Jesus: "Hard" both in the sense that it is difficult to find the meaning and "Hard" in that the seeming response of Jesus does not fit well in our minds or hearts.

The parable does NOT say ... here is what you are to do. But it does say something about children of light and what they may be in need of.

Those are some ideas, but to be honest friends, I really am not sure what this parable means or what to do with it. And so if you go away confused by this text, will you at least also go away with this message: the Bible at the end of the day is not something for us to "get." It is something to be struggled with. Like the mysteries of life and faith themselves. What matters is the struggle. God is mystery and sharing the way that mystery touches and enters our lives, even when the mystery is not so clear or distinct -- is mystery ever such? -- we do well to be OK with the mystery and know that the mystery is OK with us. We don't need to get it. We just need to be open to being "got" by it.

For more information or to comment on this sermon, please email Rev. Scott Swanson.