17th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 20C

The 17th Sunday after Pentecost--Proper 20C
September 19, 2010
Today's gospel reading includes one of Jesus's most challenging parables. It is both challenging to read and challening to preach. Why would Jesus make an example for godly living so unsavory as it is in the person of the dishonest manager? Also, the ending is completely unsatisfactory. We want to see the scoundrel get justice in the end. But that’s not what happens.
So beyond being completely confusing and unsatisfactory, what does this parable have to offer us today? After Jesus tells the story of the dishonest manager, how he tried to repair his swindling by reducing the debts of those indebted to the rich man, he makes a comparison between the “children of this age” who are represented by the dishonest manager and the “children of light” who are presumably the followers of Jesus, his disciples that he is telling the story to (and us). He commends the dishonest steward because he uses all the resources that he has at his disposal, all the things that have been entrusted to him, all his master’s treasures, to bring about a particular vision, that is to save his own skin. The dishonest manager has an understanding of his master, as well as of the people he is working with, and he uses all of that awareness to try to get himself out of trouble.
So one of the questions this parable raises for me is what does it mean to be the children of light? What are the treasures of God that are entrusted to us? How are we called to live into God’s vision for the kingdom?
I think being children of the light means being bearers of the good news. It means that we live within the world but do not live our lives according to the values of the world. It means that we live our lives centered in Christ and his teachings, not putting ourselves at the center but rather putting Jesus and other people at the center. It means using our resources and our energy to work with God to bring all of creation into God’s kingdom. The treasures of the children of light are those things that Jesus has taught us to hold dear. At the heart of it all is God’s love which is freely given to us and which we are called to share with others, above anything that we may gain for ourselves, above even our own lives. The vision of the kingdom of God which we are called to bear witness to is a kingdom where love and relationship with God and others is of greatest importance, where everything else works toward this vision. And the deepest treasure of this vision, the deepest treasure of both love and relationship is forgiveness. That’s what the dishonest manager understood and used to his advantage. How much more are we, the children of light, called to understand and to use this treasure in doing the work of God’s kingdom?
So I had made my peace with this difficult parable, and then God sprung another one on me. I was drinking my coffee and reading the paper on Friday morning, when I saw a picture of the man who I had met at the church a mere few days before the angel statue was stolen from the church grounds back in March. He had introduced himself as Joe, and he was the one I always suspected of being the perpetrator of the theft, and there he was pictured in the paper along with a story about a copper-theft ring that has just been busted in Jackson County. Well, I was quite excited and set the wheels of justice in motion, contacting our wardens, who then contacted the local authorities. Well, the wheels of justice are slowly turning, and nothing further has happened in this at this time, except that this story from real life then started bumping up against Jesus’s parable for me, and it started causing me some real discomfort, and it made me start asking questions.
What is the call of the children of light in this particular situation? Here we have a person who has hurt us tremendously, probably for his own selfish gain. He stole a piece of our history that was precious to us, precious because of who it represents and also because it symbolizes a piece of our church, a piece of our past that weathered the storm and was restored. And he made a complete fool of us and our hospitality, showing up in broad daylight and asking questions about the angel statue, even getting a tour of the church. Personally, I’m really angry at Joe, and I’d like to see them lock him away and throw away the key. But that is the way of the world, and it is the concern of our justice system. I fully support our justice system and trust that process, and I will do all in my power to support it. But, to borrow a phrase from our more Protestant brothers and sisters, I find myself, in this situation, to be “convicted by the gospel.” If we really believe that we are the children of light and we are called to live our lives according to the priorities of God and God’s kingdom, then how are we called to lift up the priorities of love and relationship in this particular situation with this particular individual ? What would forgiveness for this individual look like for us? How might we even begin to go about it?
Let me share with you something that happened to my family when I was growing up, because it is part of my challenge with this Joe situation. When I was a teenager, my family was the victim of multiple house burglaries. At first, they took money and all of our jewelry, mostly sentimental pieces like the gold locket that had been my great-aunt/godmother’s and my leather-bound, gold embossed Bible with my name on it. When they came back, they took the tv and VCR and other larger items, anything they could carry with them. We got the bigger items back after finding them at a local pawn shop, but we never recovered the sentimental items. Eventually, my dad was called down to the Canton Police department, and he looked into the faces of two teenage boys who were responsible for causing my family such hurt and fear. The boys were dealt with according to the law, and we went on with our lives.
Years later, my dad participated in a Kairos event. For those of you who don’t know, Karios is a weekend of spiritual renewal similar to Happening, or Cursillio, but it is held in prison, and the pilgrims are convicts. My dad and the others on the team had spent a lot of time praying before they put on the weekend, praying for themselves and for those they were going to encounter and when dad was there at the prison doing the Kairos weekend, he met one of those two teenage boys who had robbed our house. The young man remembered my dad, and he told my dad about how he had felt when he was handcuffed to the chair in the Canton Police Department and he had to look into the face of the man whose family he had robbed repeatedly. And then, in that prison, where he was doing time for a completely different crime, that man asked my father for forgiveness for what he had done to our family, and my dad, by the grace of God, was able to grant it.
So I don’t know where God is calling us in this thing with Joe, but I know that we need to begin somewhere.
And that somewhere is that we begin by praying. Paul’s first letter to Timothy says, “First of all, then I urge that supplications, prayer, intercessions and thanksgivings be made for everyone”. Don’t just pray for those you like, Paul says, or those who are sick. Pray for everyone, even those who hurt you. And then he challenges us to remember that Christ Jesus “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” and who, therefore, did not just give himself for the children of light but “as a ransom for all,” even someone so self-centered as would steal from a church. So we pray for Joe; and we pray for ourselves, that God may give us the grace and the power to act, not as children of this world, but as children of the light, who are working to help fulfill God’s vision for God’s kingdom.
Let us pray. Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.