And Jesus said, “Make
friends for yourselves [even] by means of tainted wealth…” May I speak to
you in the name [+] of the G-d who creates, redeems and sustains us? AMEN.
The writers of Luke’s Gospel confront us with a difficult lesson this Sunday. Many biblical scholars have proclaimed that this passage, which is found only in Luke, is perhaps the most difficult of all the parables to understand.
A Perverse Moral?
On its face it seems to offer a perverse moral. Jesus speaks of an unjust manager handling the wealth of a rich man. His job is to collect the debts that are owed his boss. The manager’s squandering of property suggests both his greed and his incompetence. And, so not surprisingly his rich employer lets him know he’s about to terminate his employment. It’s a wakeup call for this man who has no doubt enjoyed a cushy life thus far and for whom the prospects of doing manual labor is appalling.
And so he goes to those in debt to the rich man and cuts them a deal – pay half of what you owe and we’ll call it even. There is some suggestion among scholars that the manager is absorbing this loss from his own profit margin, much of that skimmed off the top of the debt and probably in violation of the Jewish law on usury. But in the end, it saves him his job. And Jesus praises the manager for engaging in shaky business practices to ensure that he will have friends to catch him when he falls from grace.
So, is the moral of the
story that G-d admires slick businessmen who employ questionable business
practices? Are we supposed to buy our friendships? Is Jesus telling us that any
means to an end is OK so long as it is profitable?
In all honesty that
sounds more like the gospel of Chicago School economist Milton Friedman - whose
mantra asserted that the only purpose of business is profit making, regardless
of how it impacts people or the planet – than the good news of Jesus. Somehow,
I just don’t think that’s what Jesus was talking about.
Jesus Had a Lot to Say About Money
To begin with Jesus has a lot to say about money in the Gospel of Luke generally. He begins his gospel with these words from a Mary now pregnant with the baby Jesus:
“He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly; he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.”
These are the words of the Magnificat which are used in liturgies throughout our Book of Common Prayer.
Hardly the stuff of market fundamentalism.
In the sixth chapter of Luke, Jesus offers a version of the Beatitudes which contain this pointed set of blessings and curses: Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God…. But woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.” Indeed, at the end of today’s passage, Jesus adds, “No slave can serve two masters…You cannot serve God and wealth.”
Again, looking strictly on the surface, it might sound like Jesus has it in for rich people, a refrain we hear reflected in the First Letter of Timothy whose author asserts,
“For the love of money is the root of all evil…”
But note the qualification that Timothy makes here: It is not money itself which is evil, it is the love of money, to the exclusion of – and often at the expense of – everything and everyone else that is the problem.
Putting the Parable Into Context
To put today’s parable into context, it’s important to note what falls on either end of it. At the end of the preceding chapter, Luke tells the story of the Prodigal Son. The moral of that parable is that the value of loving relationship surpasses those of financial concerns. The Prodigal Son, like the unjust manager, squanders his Father’s wealth and returns home in shame anticipating becoming the hired help. But the Father will hear none of his self-abasement. He is just happy the son is home and throws a big party. His property may be gone but his Son has returned; the relationship has been restored. Now the wounds can be healed.
On the other end of
today’s parable, Luke lays out the parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man. When
Lazarus, the poor beggar at the city gate dies, he is carried away by the
angels to be with Abraham. A Rich Man who had studiously ignored this beggar
all of his life also died and wound up in Hades. When he asks Abraham to simply
touch his finger into water to soothe the agony of the flames he endured,
Abraham replies, ‘[R]emember that during your lifetime you received your
good things, and Lazarus in like manner evil things; but now he is comforted
here, and you are in agony.”
In both of these parables which frame the one we consider today, a pointed message becomes clear:
Money is a means to human ends, not vice versa.
The way we earn, hold and use our earthly wealth is an issue of great moral, ethical and spiritual importance. When money is used to further human ends, beginning with healthy relationships, it is an asset. But when money becomes an end in itself, it tends to suck the very soul out of its possessors. There is a word for a code of values and resulting behaviors in which money becomes the central concern.
It is called idolatry.
Debtors: The Missing Players in the Drama
But I think there is a deeper issue that is implicit here that we are required to consider this morning. Today’s parable refers to debtors but gives us little insight into how that debt was attained or how good Jews were called to respond to debt.
Judea was a part of the
first century Roman colony of Palestine. Rome was an empire whose might and
wealth was built on the backs of exploited labor. About one in every three
Romans within the empire was a slave. Through Roman imperial law and
bureaucratic governance, its colonies were organized into means of serving the
wealthy oligarchs of the empire. It was an extractive economy where the goods
produced through coercive force were ultimately destined for the wealthy in
other places. As is true in most extractive economies, that meant that the overworked
producers of the goods which flowed out of the colony often found themselves in
a downward spiral into poverty that almost always involved going into debt just
to survive.
Running contrary to the
Roman values of exploitation which came at the expense of the people was the Hebrew
practice of shmita, the belief that G_d demanded periodic release from
debt every seventh year, a practice we hear as the Jubilee year. Beneath this
understanding was a recognition that wealth and poverty are both socially
constructed phenomena. For the Jewish law human dignity was the paramount
concern.
It also recognized that in the long run, we are all debtors to the G-d whose good Creation provides everything we need to survive. Even the very breath we breathe is a gift from a generous G-d, without which our lives would immediately end. Our Earth has always contained enough goods for all its living beings to sustain themselves. So wherever excess in the hands of the few and deprivation experienced by the many exists, it is always the result of human decision making.
Jesus recognized that
debt has the potential to cripple any life, no matter how it is procured. There is a reason he taught us to pray with
these words:
“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
While Reformer William Tyndale would later interpret those words as trespasses, a reflection of his own culture’s growing concern for the issue of private property, in both Matthew and Luke’s versions the Greek word Jesus uses is debt. And in the context of 1st CE Palestine with its indebted masses feeding the insatiable appetites of their Roman overlords, that makes enormous sense.
Generational Chains of Debt
It also makes sense in
the context of our own time. Some of you know that I have spent a good part of
my life in higher education both as student and as a faculty member. In the process
of procuring an undergraduate degree and three different graduate degrees, I
racked up a good bit of debt. When I graduated from Florida State with my Ph.D.
in December 2000, my Christmas gift that year would be a $60,000 set of student
loans that would take me 14 years to repay working several jobs with a little
help from my federal employee Mother’s years of buying U.S. Savings Bonds. I
had one month of debt free life between my last law school debt payment and
signing the financial aid papers to begin seminary, a process for which I had absolutely
no diocesan support. If I wanted to go, I had to agree to pay for my schooling
through loans and work study. And it was my ability to pay off my loans that
ultimately allowed me to retire.
As onerous as that might
sound, in the larger picture, I was lucky.
Many things changed between my first days as an undergraduate in 1971 and my last day as a graduate student in 2000. The well of private financial aid with its grants and plans to work off loans after graduation had dried up. State funding of higher education was cut by well over half with colleges scrambling to make up the difference through drastically higher tuition, fees and limited financial aid. By the time I began teaching undergraduates in 1997, they were being told that the only way they could succeed was to get a college degree. And the only way they could get it was by taking on enormous debts that would saddle them financially for decades after graduation. The costs of our need for an educated public had been successfully shifted onto the very people we Boomers expected to take care of us in our older lives.
Much like the Hebrew people of Jesus’ time, many of our children and grandchildren became debtors simply to survive. And much like the older brother in the Prodigal Son story, there are many of us today who loudly object to the recent decision to cancel a portion of their debt.
Never underestimate the power of resentment.
And never underestimate the allure of money as an idol demanding worship, even when it comes at the cost of our humanity, our relationships with others and a healthy society.
The Tough Questions Jesus Raises
I believe Jesus poses some important questions for us this morning. The first are about money:
- What is our relationship with money?
- Is it a means to an end or an end in itself?
- Does money come between us and other human beings?
- Does it impact our relationships with family and friends?
The second set is about compassion.
- Are we willing to forgive the debt that others owe when it becomes obvious that debt is crippling their lives?
- Are we willing to critically examine the conditions under which our fellow humans become debtors, recognizing that not all debts are the same?
- Can we let go of the resentment that so many of us feel when compassion is shown those in our world we would dismiss as slackers to inflate our own egos, applauding our own hard work as a means to success even as we forget all those along the line whose help made our own success possible?
- Are we willing to recognize that when we say to others that they should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps, we are presuming they actually have boots?
Jesus gives us much to think about this day. So 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.
Text: A sermon delivered on Pentecost 15, Sunday, September 18, 2022, St. Richard’s Episcopal, Winter Park, FL [Proper 20 RCL]
You may watch this sermon as it was delivered by going to the following link:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVlGRnoHrkQ
The sermon on this very difficult lesson begins at 27:00.
Thoughtful responses are welcomed.
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Harry Scott Coverston
Orlando,
Florida
If the
unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it
religious or political, is not worth holding. Most things worth considering do
not come in sound bites.
Those who
believe religion and politics aren't connected don't understand either. – Mahatma
Gandhi
For what
does G-d require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk
humbly with your G-d? - Micah 6:8, Hebrew
Scriptures
Do not be
daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly, now. Love mercy, now.
Walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are
you free to abandon it. - Rabbi Rami Shapiro, Wisdom
of the Jewish Sages (1993)
© Harry
Coverston, 2022
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