Making
the Best of It
Luke 16:1-13
One of the big lessons in life we have to learn is that we are not always going to do the right thing even if we want to. Things happen. I heard it said one time that there are three kinds of people in the world. There are those who make things happen. There are those who just watch things happen and then there are those who are always saying, 'what happened?'
The question is appropriate for the lesson today. What happened? We don't really have enough information to make too many judgments about what this word wants to tell us so we will just go with what we have. We will make the best of it.
What we know: There is a master, a manager, and some debtors. The manager is accused of being dishonest and the master has to let him go. The manager before he leaves goes to the debtors and lessens what they owe the master. The storyteller praises him for his shrewdness. These are the facts in the story. The rest is speculation and the speculation has been everywhere without much satisfaction over the years. Supposedly a parable is to have a clear point even if it is rife with irony and even metaphor. The clarity of this one eludes me.
Of course this is the way it is in
the world we know. Sometimes the clarity eludes us all. What are we to do? The
words before us tell a story in which a so-called dishonest manager is praised
and the summary explanation after the story firmly denounces dishonesty. Another
thing we do know is that the story is addressed to the disciples. There seems
to be an issue with them of being too naive. For the children of this age, it says here, are more
shrewd than the children of light. One could understand perhaps a
little lecture on worldliness in dealing with the world. After all Jesus had
instructed them to be wise as serpents
and innocent as doves.(Mt. 10.16) Jesus knew about
the world. He knew what he was dealing with. He likened the disciples' mission
as sheep being sent to the wolves so it is not hard to understand that he
wanted to toughen his disciples up a little, make them aware of what they were
getting into, prepare them for what might come, but then verse 9 says, And I tell you make friends for yourselves
by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into
the eternal homes.
Now it turns out that what Luke likes to call dishonest wealth is only money. The word in the original language that is translated as dishonest wealth I guess could also be translated as mammon, a word we no longer use for some reason, or as unrighteous money as if it were one word, as if all money by definition is unrighteous. In any case the word that is used is about money and it is negative. That's what we know. Some think this means that for Luke any money is tainted and the message is about how it is used, that if we have some (no matter how we got it) we had better use it for good. If this is so then there is the beginning of an understanding. There seems to be a connection between ones' resources (what one has) and ones' relationships (with all the other people who share the planet with us) that is crucial to the mission before us. The idea that all money is tainted is a strange one for us but Ernesto Cardenal has written of this troublesome verse 9 a word that may help us to understand how someone like Luke or anyone else could have thought of money as something unrighteous or dishonest.
In respect of riches,
then, just or unjust,
of goods be they ill-gotten or well-gotten:
All riches are unjust.
All
goods ill-gotten.
If
not by you, by others.
Your title deeds may
be in order. But
did you buy your land from its true owner?
And
he from its true owner? and the latter . . .?
Though your title go
back to the grant of a king
was the land ever the king's?
Has no one ever been
deprived of it?
And the money you
receive legitimately now
from client or Bank or National funds
or from the
was it ill-gotten at no point?
It makes you think. Wealth doesn't create itself. It is
produced by work and not everybody who works enjoys the benefits of its' wealth. Despite what we want to think that we have what
we have because we work harder or we are smarter it simply doesn't cover the
fact that there are smart people and people who work hard who are still poor. Why
are some rich and some poor?
And suddenly the plot thickens and Jesus has made us feel uneasy again or angry or confused. The challenge is before us and we may wish that it had remained unclear for it is clearly now a challenge to connect our resources with our relationships to the other people in the world who share this time and space with us.
Part of the message here has to be that using our resources wisely and compassionately we will have something even when our resources are gone, something much more than any resources can buy. There is that to consider as well. Mammon, money, wealth, earthly riches, whatever you want to call it is temporary, an abstraction, an illusion particularly acute if one has depended upon it for eternal salvation.
There is even some irony. The good life may be an obstacle to the good life. Surely it has not gone unnoticed to you that we as a society are so busy keeping up with maintaining our resources (keeping them and expanding them) that we hardly have time to enjoy them anyway. We are stressed out. I feel guilty asking anybody to do anything. We need to know that not everything is needed but some things are needed. This eternal home is not just something in some fantastic future, it is a present reality to be lived in now if we weren't so busy doing other things. You know what it is (this eternal home, this eternal salvation) it is inner peace - it is the peace of knowing we are doing the right thing.
We may have it good here for a while but if we want an eternal home we will share our resources so that others who don't have it so good will have something good too. Maybe it is a stretch but could this strange story be practical advice for peacemakers? When Jesus said make friends with your money, he is describing a formula for peacemaking. If we would distribute fairly the wealth and would not peace have a better chance to increase in the world. Peace is not ( it seems to me, am I naive, stupid?) won by force of arms but through economic justice, through opportunity and education; through affording every human being the dignity of being human. We can't have it both ways. We cannot secure ourselves at the expense of others and ever be truly secure. Everybody has to be secure before anybody can be secure. So what are to do? Life as we know it as been handed to us. We take it for granted. We have to play by the rules of our world. We have to make compromises. We are completely dependent on dishonest wealth, on unrighteous money. It is the way we do business. It is the way we live. We are sinners in a sinful world. We are imperfect. We are not always going to do the right thing but we can do something right.
Perhaps Jesus' word to his disciples is simple enough after all. Maybe it is simply this: Make the best of it. Do all the good you can with what you have. We will not always be good. We will not always be honest. We have to live in this world for now but if we are to be serious about what God wants we must be intentional about how we use what we have. We must make the best of it. We must be ready to act on behalf of those who do not have enough to sustain even the minimal quality of life. We have a responsibility to use our resources for the common good. This may even mean giving up some things that we want but don't really need so that somebody can have what they need. We are, it turns out, our brother's keeper. How do you like that? What are we going to do to make sure that we use our wealth, our mammon, as those who serve God and not mammon? It is a question that is in our face. It is a question that should always be before us whether we like it or not. We are accountable for what we do with what we have.
We can't do everything but we can do more. We can take the life we have been given and make the best of it for everyone . . . or not. We can serve God and our neighbor . . or not. May the Church using the name of Christ be in ministry to the needs of the world. May this congregation be strong with generous resources and use them compassionately to do all the good we can. May we, who have our own problems; who sometimes wonder what is going on; who don't always get it right; may we serve God anyway with all our hearts, with everything we have left, and make good things happen. We have been given life together for a while on earth. May we make the best of it.
