Sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday After Pentecost “Fingers in the Cookie Jar”
Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ! Today’s Gospel is not an easy Gospel, but it certainly is easy to get hung up on the details. For example, I cannot explain why Jesus would chose a dishonest manager as the star of the show rather than a good and honest one, but those decisions are not up to me. Perhaps today’s Gospel is not a parable, but an actual event that had recently taken place, and now everyone at work was talking about it by the watercooler: There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be manager.” And the manager said to himself, “What shall I do? …” Summoning his master's debtors one by one, [the manager] said to the first, “How much do you owe my master?” He said, “A hundred measures of oil.” [The manager] said to him, “Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.” Then he said to another [debtor], “And how much do you owe?” He said, “A hundred measures of wheat.” [The manager] said to him, “Take your bill, and write eighty.” The point of today’s Gospel is this: God your heavenly Father has placed a certain amount of His wealth and possessions into your care and keeping, just as this manager was given care of his master’s belongings. God your heavenly Father wants you to win friends for yourselves, so to speak, by using His wealth and possessions. Dear Christian friends: If your childhood was anything like mine, unauthorized dipping into the cookie jar was a “high crime and misdemeanor.” It brought severe punishments: No one is allowed to touch the cookie jar! Those little nuggets of baked peanut butter and chocolate are more valuable than gold, not to be given away easily and certainly not just before supper. In today’s Gospel, your Lord Jesus declares to you that dipping into the cookie jar is a very good and praiseworthy thing. In fact, that is exactly what your God dearly wants you to do—God wants you to dig deeply into the cookie jar of His divine gifts, so to speak. Your heavenly Father has put countless cookies into the jar for the very purposes of having you enjoy them and of giving them to others. He wants you to grab as many of His “cookies” as your little fingers can hold, and He wants you to turn and pass those prized possessions to as many people as you can find. “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions.” The manager had better get busy, because his future suddenly looked very dismal. The rich man called the manager and said to him, “Turn in the account… you can no longer be manager. In order to hedge against his own future, this manager forgave many debts that people owed his master. Jesus includes two examples of the lucky winners: one fellow’s debt of a hundred measures of oil was reduced to fifty; one’s debt of a hundred measures of wheat was reduced to 80. This manager had reached into his master’s cookie jar, so to speak, and he passed out to others as many cookies as he could gather up. Then Jesus speaks a surprising conclusion to the whole affair: “The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” Do not mistakenly think that your Lord is praising villainy or unfaithfulness or theft. We are not to learn from this Gospel that one wrong deserves another wrong, or that a Christian may return an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth. Jesus merely uses this cheating, stealing, embezzling manager as a good example for you. “I tell you,” says Jesus, “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” This wicked manager is a good example to you because he used his master’s possessions while he was able. So also ought you—so must you—use your master’s possessions to gain friends for yourselves. “I tell you,” says Jesus, “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.” In other words, God your heavenly Father wants you to dig into His cookie jar. He wants you to take from those countless things that belong to Him and only to Him, and He wants you to gain friends for yourselves—that is to say, heavenly friends, brothers, sisters, fellow Christians—through your use of His possessions. “UNRIGHTEOUS WEALTH” What are those things that belong to God, which He desires that you use in gaining friends and fellow Christians? Jesus gives you the answer right here when He says to you, “Use unrighteous wealth.” Do not allow that word, “unrighteous” to throw you off the horse. When Jesus speaks about “unrighteous wealth” in this Gospel, He is simply speaking about those little green bills from the US Treasury Department that we all foolishly feel tempted to think we need. You confess under the First Article of the Creed that you don’t actually own anything, that you have never earned anything of your own, and that there is nothing in this entire creation that originated with you. It is a good confession that you make, because you end up admitting that your heavenly Father has given you “clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all we have.” All that you have is from God. Every dollar bill and every scrap of material in your possession actually belongs to Him. God the Father wants you to use these things—His things—as though they are cookies from the cookie jar. God does not want you to think of your stuff as something you must hoard or pile up. God the Father wants you to use His wealth—that is, the stuff He gave to you—in your proclamation of the Gospel, in order that you may gain friends and fellow Christians for yourselves. “MAKE FRIENDS FOR YOURSELVES” When Jesus calls you to “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth,” He is calling upon you to live in the confidence and surety that can only come to you by the life and power of His Gospel. · When Jesus commands that you use your money in this way, He is not really focused on the money. Jesus is focused, rather, on the new heart and new mind that He has created for you in His Word. You have been given the forgiveness of sins by His death and His resurrection. You have been given the gift of the Holy Spirit, just as He promised. You have been made “a new creation,” as St. Paul says (2 Corinthians 5:17), and this new creation now lives without fear. · In His powerful Word, Christ removes from you all fears, including the very same fear experienced by the manager in today’s Gospel—that is, the fear that you will be left without any means to live in this life. When God’s powerful Word awakens you, so that you realize and believe that your heavenly Father shall not fail to provide for you; when you apprehend the fact that all of your needs have already been met for you in Christ; when you believe by the miracle of God that the indwelling Holy Spirit shall not depart from you, then all fear melts away. Then you are no longer a slave. Then you are free to do that which Jesus calls you to do: “make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth.” “THEY WILL RECEIVE YOU” What happens when you make such friends for yourselves? These friends will “receive you into the eternal dwellings,” says Jesus. Of course, this does not mean that you earn your way into heaven. When Jesus says your friends and fellow Christians will “receive you into the eternal dwellings,” He is simply stating that people will rejoice in heaven over the way you used your possessions here on earth. Some of those people—having heard God’s Words of Life as a result of what you said or what you did—some of those people will be happy to see you when you arrive. They will “receive you into the eternal dwellings” with rejoicing because you did not love your possessions too much. They will receive you with rejoicing because you loved your neighbor, and you used your possessions to show love to your neighbor. That is really what today’s Gospel is all about. Do not let the little details in this Gospel derail you. Focus on the main point, that God wants you to use your possessions—His possessions—with your future in mind. If this manager could be generous with his master’s wealth as a way of securing his own future, how much more generous can you be—you whose future is already set and secure in the blood of Jesus? You have nothing to lose by losing your money and you have nothing to gain by keeping it. You have learned from other places in God’s Bible how things will be for you when you depart this life and you stand before the judgment seat of your God. Your deeds shall not give you entry there, and that is a good thing. Your Lord has earned your place in heaven for you by dying on the cross and shedding His blood for your forgiveness. When you go to heaven, your deeds will simply bear witness to your faith by which you lived here on earth. On the Last Day we shall say to Him, as our fellow Christians will say with us, “We are unworthy servants. We were only doing what we ought” (Luke 17:10). Jesus shall say to each of you in return, “Well done, thou good and faithful servant… Come and share in your master’s happiness!” (Matthew 25:21). ___________________________________________________________________ 'CAT 41 Sermons & Devotions' consists of works that are, unless otherwise noted, the copyrighted property of the various authors; posting of such gives members of this list implied consent for redistribution _with_attribution_ unless otherwise specified by the author (as long as no charge is made for the work and it is not made part of a compilation), as well as for quoting or use in a congregational setting _with_or_without_attribution_. Note: This list's default reply is to the *poster*, NOT the list. Do *not* reply to the list with your comments, but to the poster. Subscribe? Send ANY note to: sermons...@cat41.org Unsubscribe? 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