Giving Grace

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Psalm 79:1-9; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13

Friends,

These past few weeks we’ve been working through some tough scriptures in the Bible--we’ve had the prophetic book of Jeremiah, speaking to the situation of a people unaware they were about to be overrun and exiled from their country; and we’ve had some difficult teachings of Jesus which have at least on the surface sounded rather harsh.  And we get a little bit more of that this week, as we come to the parable of the shrewd manager.

The Anti-Hero

At first glance, you might wonder why this is even in the Bible.  You have a dishonest manager who’s been skimming off his boss, and when he gets caught and is about to get fired, he apparently skims even more off his boss by cutting in half all the debts of the people who owe stuff to the boss--and then he gets rewarded for costing his boss money!  Does this make any sense at all?

Well, first off, we have to know the world in which this parable is told:  Often, the wealthy owned land and the poor became tenant farmers: they paid to work the land and make a (meager) living.  These landowners hired managers to keep everyone in line--and often, those managers were crooked.  They exploited the tenants and filled their own pockets.   Now, you might even argue that while the manager isn’t a saint, the boss is also cheating everyone, at the top of the system; and while we’re discussing all of this, do you recall all the stuff going on about the 1% and the 99%?

Now you should also know, in this crowd gathered around Jesus, they probably were the 99%.  They are the tenant farmers, they’ve been cheated by these managers, they know they’ll work their tails off and never get ahead.  These parables, then, are enormously subversive speech, and the crowd around Jesus knows it.

It was a system of savage inequalities, in a world where there was no social safety net, and no mercy.  And this shrewd manager was crooked but not stupid; he knew he’d likely die as soon as he lost his comfortable position.  So, on his way out the door, maybe he’s putting it to his boss, or maybe he’s making friends where he once had enemies.  After all, in having their debts even half-forgiven, the tenant farmers who have been exploited and mistreated by this dishonest manager, are more likely to be in a forgiving mood.  They are much less likely to attack this man with the revenge they must surely desire.

Deliver Us From What?

In our Brewing Questions group this week, we talked a bit about how so much of our faith tradition seems to assume a life that is nasty, brutish, and short, with lots of emphasis on deliverance from the world--not only in the Bible, but also so many of the religious writers that have come in the centuries since. It may not resonate so well today because at least in the past few decades, things have been relatively stable for us.  When was the last time, here in rural Wisconsin, that the teeming hordes swept through and burned the village and slaughtered the masses?  When was the last plague around here that wiped out entire families?  Fortunately, we’ve got antibiotics and we can listen to Dr. Zorba on NPR and we’re going to probably all be okay.  But not so long ago, daily life could be overwhelmingly, inexplicably tragic.

Perhaps the only folks around here fairly recently who would have known this quite so well, were the Native Americans, as the early settlers came through.  They knew diseases brought by pioneers that wiped out entire tribes; they knew slaughter and the burning of homes.  They knew exile and the destruction of their entire way of life.  In fact, our theology of Manifest Destiny, we know, became their Trail of Tears.  We haven’t been able to talk about these realities of our how our country was founded, and who was harmed in the process, very often.  It was often kept out of schoolbooks and the media of the day.  Talk about such things was also considered rather subversive speech.  We know there are still tensions and prejudices between Native American communities and several of our own towns and villages even here in Wisconsin.  We know that even today, Native American communities continue to suffer and often live in deep poverty.  

In light of this context, we can begin to understand the anger in the Psalm, asking for God’s jealous wrath to burn like fire against their enemies, since they themselves have been slaughtered and humiliated.  And yet the Psalmist also asks for forgiveness for themselves, for whatever harm they themselves have caused.  And you can really hear the overwhelming grief in Jeremiah, who asks for eyes to be a fountain of tears to weep day and night for the slain of my poor people!

Which Master?

Jesus says we cannot serve God and wealth.   Now, wealth can serve us; it’s not wrong to earn an honest living and invest faithfully, and even to be wealthy as a result.  However, when we earn our wealth dishonestly, through exploiting others, or investing in things which cause harm, then we are serving wealth, where the wealth matters more than the people who are harmed while we’re creating it.  Since God’s concern is for the health, dignity, and wellbeing of all God’s children, wealth earned in these ways would put us directly in conflict with God.

There are ways to be conscious, which even our own PCUSA programs of Compassion, Peace, and Justice help us to learn, in order to be good stewards of our wealth--how to shop and invest more ethically, how to even give our money in ways that cause good and not further harm.

Praying For the 1%

If we are the ones on the bottom, the tenant farmers, the exiled, those in the lowest positions, and it is someone else’s boot that is on our neck, it might be very hard to forgive.  It would be hard just to control our anger!  And yet, we have Paul’s teaching that we ought to pray for everyone, including kings and others in high places, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity.  Let me reiterate: we pray even for our enemies, even for those who treat us unjustly, that we may lead lives that are quiet and peaceable, and that we might also live lives that are Godly and with dignity.  It is hard to live with dignity when we see ourselves as a victim.  By praying for others, we act to restore our own dignity--not by force or violence, but through peaceable means.  This robs us of nothing, relieves us of revenge, and fills us with hope and renewed purpose. And when we have discovered our dignity, we are able to work with others to address injustice and inequality in our world.  The path towards such a systematic reconciliation may be difficult, but it very well may be our balm in Gilead, that makes our woundedness whole and heals our sin-sick souls.

Go Ahead, Be Shrewd

There’s one phrase in there that I thought quite interesting, which struck me anew in this reading:  “The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.  What does this mean?

Sometimes we may also be like that manager:  We too are caught up in systems that we know to be unjust, where we see vulnerable people being harmed.  It can be at school or work or even in our social circles.  it can be in our government and on our streets, or anywhere in our world.  We may not be sure that we can take the risk to change anything about it, until like that manager, we realize we’ve got nothing left to lose by doing so.  

We who would call ourselves children of the light, can't pretend we don't see suffering, can't close our eyes and refuse to get our hands dirty. We need to be a little shrewd, a little streetwise.  To get a little involved and stir up trouble, lest we be accused of squandering our too-comfortable lives.

And yet the good news is, we who have received such abundant grace, grace to cover all our sins and bring us to new life, are now free to extend such grace to others--those above us and below us, in high places and low, next door and across the street.  In doing so, we can truly be children of light, reflecting the true Light, which outshines all darkness. Amen.

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Prayers This Week:

For our Native American sisters and brothers

For all who are nearing the end of their earthly lives

For all who are caregivers

For all who struggle with chemical dependency

For all peoples who are displaced from their homes

For all who have suffered from violence