19th Sunday After Pentecost, September 25, 2016; by Stan Bowers

No sermon text available.

THE SHREWD MANAGER CONFUSES AND TEACHES - 18th Sunday After Pentecost, September 18, 2016; by Bishop Terry Brown

(Sermon preached by Bishop Terry Brown at Church of the Ascension, Hamilton, Ontario, on the 18th Sunday after Pentecost, September 18, 2016. Text: Luke 16: 1-13.)

Sometimes it is best to regard Jesus’ parables in the Gospels rather like beads on a necklace. What at first appears to be a single bead is really a string of beads, connected by similarity of themes or other resemblances. And it may even be the case that some of the beads are older, some newer, as the early church put together in the Bible Jesus’ words and its interpretation of them.

Surely that is the case with today’s Gospel parable, sometimes called the parable of the dishonest manager. One generally reliable Catholic commentary [Jerome] suggests the passage we heard read consists of a parable and three moralizations of it, all tied together by the themes of money and faithfulness: one big bead, followed by three small ones. I have a slightly different interpretation, which I shall come to. No wonder this is one of the most confusing parables in the Bible. I am sure when Mary Goldsberry does her study on parables in the Tuesday morning Bible study, she’ll have some words to say about this parable.

So to start with the parable: Jesus is telling a story about a rich landowner, who himself may not be very honest. He wants big returns and has perhaps has trampled on many, including many of Jesus’ hearers, to get where he is. He is not someone Jesus’ hearers would be very enamoured of. He has entrusted at least a portion of his wealth to a manager, who is possibly a slave, under pressure to produce more wealth. But he is not very honest himself; he may well be overcharging his master’s business customers, charging a very high rate of interest, indebting them, and pocketing the difference. He is perhaps a “con man”, cheating both his master and his customers. But maybe the master deserves to be cheated. Finally, the manager gets caught; perhaps one of the unhappy customers has complained to the master about the high prices and the master asks to see the accounts and discovers they have been “cooked”. But the manager, very clever, has prepared for this eventuality. He quickly starts reducing his prices, perhaps down to their correct level, or even to a discount level. He knows he is going to be sacked by his master so he has nothing to lose. Indeed, perhaps he has now been forced into honesty, actually charging fair prices, though still not for very good motives. The master sees what has happened and, rather than being angry, is amazed at his manager’s cleverness and good sense. He too has been brought up short and his dishonesty challenged.

So if we stop the parable here, perhaps the message is “repent, be clever and honest, get back on the right track”. It turns out that the bargain-basement prices were a return to justice and a critique of both the master’s and the manager’s formerly selfish and greedy ways. But one needs a lot of context to come to that conclusion and by the time the parable was written up, that context may not have been so clear.

So we have three more beads, three moral explanations of the parable or moralizations.

The first: “the children of this age are shrewder in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light”. This explanation seems rather to come out of right field. Indeed, some have suggested that, because of the “children of light” reference, the origins of this saying are with the Qumran community with its very dualistic view of good and bad and its pessimism about the current age and the need to withdraw. But still there is the theme of cleverness and being clever for the sake of the Rule of God.

But then comes an even more difficult moralization: “make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”

Does this passage mean to go out and make friends with casino owners, pay-day loan operators, embezzlers and billionaire arms merchants? And why would they be the ones to “welcome [us] into the eternal homes”?

There are a couple of possibilities. One is that, along the lines of the parable, through our friendship with them, repentance takes place, and everyone’s wealth vanishes because it is now shared. Another more general possible explanation is simply to be wise with our money and share it in ways (perhaps even to the point that it runs out) that ensure an entrance “into the heavenly homes”. We do not know the end of the story of the parable. Did the manager find a new job where he as now honest? Or did he get rehired for his cleverness? Did the master and manager repent of their money-centred ways? We do not know. Perhaps not. But the parable is to be completed in our lives.

Then comes a third moralization: “Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” The theme shifts to faithfulness in matters both big and small. If we lie in small things, we are apt to lie in big things. And if we tell the truth in small matters, we are apt to tell the truth in big matters. Be consistent: even cheating in the smallest way is a problem and may signal a much bigger problem. The parable is invoked again, with the manager chastised for not properly looking after dishonest wealth. This interpretation risks undercutting the parable; but an invocation of preparing for “true riches” (like preparing for “eternal homes” in the second moralization) brings the theme back to “use your wealth honestly and justly” for the sake of the Rule of God.

Then we come to what I would see as a fourth bead. The neckless, so far, looks rather like one big bead (the parable), three small beads (the moralizations) – but now comes another big bead, rather a different colour: “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 other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

The connection with the parable is thematic (both have to do with the use of money) but they are not really so connected. In the parable both the master and the slave-manager are devoted only to wealth. They have no other master. It is only when disaster comes upon them that they are forced to do justice – rather like the dishonest judge in another parable who is finally forced to exact justice only after the long and annoying pleading of the woman seeking justice.

Indeed, this fourth bead almost scuttles the parable: it seems to say, don’t be like either the master and manager. Choose God rather than selfish wealth.

Can one somehow see this necklace with two large beads at either end and three smaller beads in the middle as an integrated whole, as a single teaching about wealth and the Rule of God?

If we work from the end bead, “you cannot serve God and wealth”, backwards to the earlier beads, one comes up with a teaching that reads like this: always put God first; if there is wealth, do not let it take over; use it for God’s glory; wealth is given by God to share, that we might be welcomed with “true riches”, into “eternal homes”. As Pope Francis has said many times, “the shroud has no pockets”. Yes, be friendly with all, both rich and poor, but do not let wealth be the centre of friendship. Yet do not exclude wealth and sharing from friendship. The early Church shared wealth. Yet St. Paul gives us a model of one who did not want to burden the church with the expenses of his ministry; he worked to support himself in what we would call a non-stipendiary ministry.

These are only four beads of a much larger necklace that are the parables of Jesus and their interpretations, so perhaps we best stop here. We shall reflect more upon many other beads in the week ahead, and hear more teaching on this subject.

Let us pray:

God of love and justice, give us a right mind towards the material wealth that we possess or, indeed, do not possess. Help us to share wisely. Help us to put you at the centre of our possessions and wealth. We pray for those without material wealth and thank you for the many gifts they have to offer. And open our hands, blessed by you, to share with the heart of Christ: these things we pray through your Son Jesus Christ, our true riches, in the power of the Holy Spirit. AMEN.

NO LESS THAN ALL - 17th Sunday After Pentecost, September 11, 2016; by Nicole Smith

A funny thing happened on the way to the lectern, to alter a common saying for the situation. The readings for this week were accidentally switched with last week, and I was worried that I'd have a difficult time speaking from last week's readings. But God knows all things and it turns out that these readings have their own appropriate connections to today's theme of volunteer appreciation, though each reading is, in one way or another, a challenge to comfortable and easy modern views of spiritual life and community.

First, let's look at how each of the readings fits with our theme. 

I'm sure many of you are familiar with this passage from Jeremiah where the prophet is asked by God to “go down to the potter's house”, and there to listen to what God had to say. Probably many of you have watched a potter at the wheel yourselves. Perhaps you have even “thrown clay”, as the expression goes? In a blink of an eye, you can go from lightly shaping a beautiful vessel on the wheel to watching it twist into a mess which has to be thrown again from scratch.

God's words relating this to Israel being clay in God's hands are chilling to modern sensibilities. I don't think this is a popular text for 21st century individuals who pride themselves on forging their own destinies. But the truth is, each of us is in the hand of God. We have all had to face this reality when our careful plans and heartfelt dreams have been smashed to pieces by unexpected development in our life.

The good news is that submitting to God's way means that our lives can be formed in beautiful ways that no one expected. Even the biggest disaster can be redeemed into something better than we experienced before. As we have known this in our personal lives, so it is in our life as a church. And it is those who are in positions of deciding and advising on those decision who need the faith to look to God and to do what is necessary to redeem difficult situations.

The psalm, too, speaks of God forming each person, not in the more distant metaphor of clay, but in the much warmer and more intimate reality of development in the womb. The psalmist is deeply grateful to be God's handiwork, accepting of the fact that God has already seen his whole life before he was even born. Is seeing everything the same as deciding for us what life will be? It seems that there is still room for our decisions, as long as we can be at peace with the big picture being beyond our total control.

The reading from Paul's letter to Philemon is perhaps the most directly applicable of today's lessons to our theme of volunteer appreciation, especially as it begins, with glowing praise for Paul's dear friends and family in God. As we do today, and will continue to do in the months to come for Ascension's hard-working volunteers, Paul thanks these believers continually for their love for other Christians and their faith in Jesus.

Paul also had a special favour to ask of them. He had become very close to a slave who had run away from them, and the slave had become a Christian, and at this point, it seemed best to send him back to them, though he had become an invaluable help to Paul.

We are modern people, horrified by slavery. But we know that two millenia ago, people had very different assumptions about slaves. Can we hear the significance in that context of Paul asking them to accept their runaway slave back as a “beloved brother, especially to me but how much more to you!” Paul refused to treat him as society dictated at the time, as a  piece of property to be returned to the original owners. He spoke caringly of an opportunity for Philemon and his family to rejoice because a new brother in Christ wanted to come back to them.

We, too, are often faced with hard choices within our spiritual family. Pressed from the outside by societal and cultural expectations, the church is called to look with new eyes of love and compassion when our brothers and sisters grieve or disappoint us, and find God's way through to the best solution possible for the healing of the body of Christ.

Finally, the gospel reading includes these very hard words from Jesus, “Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? ...  So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions.”

The Greek word for “hate”, “miseo”, is used in other situations, both in the Bible and secular documents from that time, in the sense of “loving less”. So Jesus is not contradicting the commandment to honour father and mother, or asking his followers not to want to live. But Jesus was well aware of the constant push we experience as humans from our relationships with those we love most dearly to put them first, rather than putting God first, and so, as he often did, he uses direct language to shock us into awareness of the magnitude of the struggle ahead of us. He further emphasises his point by using other metaphors: the cross we must carry, and making sure we have the money for a tower before building. Many Christians have leaned toward a literal understanding of the need to give up all possessions – even if we don't take it literally, we at least have to take it seriously, and this has tremendous implications for everything we have. But that's a Stewardship message for another time.

For now, it's enough to see the totality of the commitment Jesus asks.

I don't know if you're like me in this sense, but I often find music coming to mind as I read or think about something.  As I began to reflect on this gospel reading, a song from a Christian pop band began to run through my head. Some of the lyrics are “It's gonna take more than just a little bit, more than just a little time... It’s gonna take more than a part of me / No less than all.”

No less than all. I see this level of commitment in my brothers and sisters in Christ being honoured today, as well as others we will be celebrating in the coming months, and others who have laboured long already, and even have already gone before us, like dear Carol Siksay. As a volunteer leader, I am inspired and challenged to be this committed, and look to God for the strength and resources to do my part.

To conclude then, the scriptures challenge us to look at our personal lives, our plans, our community, and in the end, everything we have and consider ours from a divine perspective. In doing so, the dedication and sacrifice of those who shoulder heavy responsibilities at the Ascension are seen in the light of a very important service to God that we honour, and for which we are profoundly grateful. May we show the depth of our gratitude not only in words and tokens of thanks, but through the esteem and grace with which we care for each other day by day. Amen