The Crisis

St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, Gainesville FL
September 19, 2010

Year C, Proper 20: The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Psalm 79:1-9
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13

The Crisis

The gospel lesson I just read is usually called the parable of the dishonest manager. It’s found only in the Gospel of Luke – and, I’ll be honest, at first I wished we had a different gospel today.

Here it is my first Sunday as your new priest and we are given this strange and challenging parable about a manager who gets in trouble because he’s been squandering his master’s property. Jesus doesn’t give us any more detail, but I’m sure we can all fill in the blanks. We’ve all heard way too many stories of corruption and embezzlement.

Since this is the Bible, we might reasonably expect that this dishonest manager would get his comeuppance and the moral of the story would be clear. The moral would be: Jesus teaches us not to steal. I could wrap up the sermon early and we could get on with the rest of the service. Everyone would go home, call their friends and say – “Hey, great news, our new priest preaches short sermons!”

Well, sometimes, but not this time. Of course there’s a commandment about not stealing, but that doesn’t seem to be the point of today’s parable. The point is how the manager deals with this crisis.

He very cleverly goes around to all those who were in debt to the master and cuts their bills. He hopes to make these debtors happy enough that they will welcome him into their homes after he gets axed by his master.

Keep in mind, the manager probably didn’t earn a salary. Instead he made his living by taking a cut of what people owed to the master. So most scholars think that the manager was eliminating his own “commission” on the debt owed to the master. In that case, at least this time, he’s not really being dishonest.

In any event, up to this point, this is sort of interesting, but kind of a routine, everyday story of corruption. But then, as usual, Jesus throws us a curveball. The master finds out what the manager has done. Jesus concludes the parable saying, “And the master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.”

“And the master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.”

And that’s it. That’s the end of the parable. In my imagination, I can see the disciples sitting around Jesus trying to make sense of this parable – and trying especially to make sense of that last sentence. What are we supposed to take away from this parable?

And here we are two thousand years later here at St. Michael’s in Gainesville, sitting around doing the same thing - trying to make sense of this parable – and trying to make sense of that last sentence.

“And the master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.”

I would have chosen some other piece of Scripture, but this is what the Holy Spirit has given us to hear and to wrestle with today. And, more than that, I believe it’s the Holy Spirit who has brought us together this morning.

To be honest, I never thought I’d live in Florida. I had never even been to Florida! Sue and I were both really comfortable back in New Jersey. It’s where we both grew up. It’s where our families and friends are. When the opportunity of serving as chaplain at UF and serving as your rector, at first I just dismissed it.

It was too far away - too different from what we’ve always known.

But then I kept hearing this little voice gnawing away in my head. It was my own voice. It was my own voice in my own sermons. Over and over I had preached that we need to be open to how God might be at work in our lives. Over and over I had preached that we had to be mindful of the Holy Spirit gently but firmly nudging us along the road of life.

So, a few months ago I said, OK, I’d better not be a hypocrite. I’ll fly down to Florida and check it out. But, I was still only taking this openness business only so far. I said I’ll go down to Florida, but I feel bad wasting the diocese’s money because I’m pretty sure I’m not going to take this job.

I came down for just about twenty-four hours. I spent a whirlwind day meeting the bishop and the diocesan staff in Jacksonville. Then Canon Griffiths drove me to Gainesville and I toured the chapel and the apartment. And then we came to St. Michael’s. For some reason, we didn’t have keys to the church. So, I could only peer in through the glass. And, although it was different from anything I had known before, I could imagine myself here. I didn’t meet a single person from St. Michael’s, yet I could imagine us here together.

It was really inconvenient and not what we expected, but through the grace of God and the power of the Holy Spirit, here we are.

So, what might the Holy Spirit be saying to us today through this difficult parable of the dishonest manager? What does this story have to do with us?

Followers of Jesus have struggled with this parable from the start. Luke himself seems to struggle with explaining it, listing a series of Jesus sayings.

But, I think it’s the first Jesus saying that is speaking directly to us today. Jesus said, “For the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

In the parable, the dishonest manager faced a crisis. The manager responded to the crisis cleverly and shrewdly.
Well, you and I here at St. Michael’s are also faced with a crisis.

We live in a world that is hungry and in pain. Much of that hunger and pain is in far-off places. I’m sure many of us suffer from compassion fatigue after seeing reports from the earthquake in Haiti and the floods in Pakistan – just the latest in a litany of disasters. We get appeal after appeal for help. Yet, we still live in a world that is hungry and in pain, filled with people crying out to us. And God expects us to be shrewd and clever in responding to those cries.

Some of that hunger and pain is closer to home. The statistics on poverty in the US are bleak. In 2009, 43.6 million Americans lived below the official poverty line. And many more millions are poor by any reasonable measure. Many of our neighbors and maybe some of us here experience real economic poverty. In just a few weeks, here in Gainesville I’ve been approached frequently by people looking for money – whether I’m wearing my clerical collar or not.

God expects us to be shrewd and clever in responding to those needs.

We live in a world that is hungry and in pain. And some of that hunger and pain is just about invisible because it lives inside our own hearts. How many of us are anxious about the future? How many of us worry that our children and grandchildren will live in a world poorer and meaner and hotter than the world we’ve known? How many of us feel disappointed by our lives? How many of us feel guilty about what we’ve done or left undone? How many of us feel trapped and alone? How many of us are angry - at someone else or angry at ourselves?

Yes, like the manager, you and I here at St. Michael’s are faced with a crisis.

Since we live in a world that is hungry and in despair, God is challenging us – God is daring us – God is expecting us - to be shrewd and clever just like the manager in the parable. We need to be shrewd and clever in figuring out ways to feed and heal our brothers and sisters who are hungry and in despair.

And we need to be shrewd and clever in letting our brothers and sisters who are hungry and in despair know about this special place. I know enough about St. Michael’s and its history to know that you – and now we – are here because this is where we are fed. This is where we are fed – fed by the Word of God, fed by the fellowship, fed by the beautiful music, fed by the opportunity to serve and to lead, fed by this beautiful space, and most of all, fed by the Body and Blood of Christ that we will receive in just a few minutes.

Someone once said, “Evangelism is one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.”

So, my fellow beggars, we are faced with a crisis. We live in a world, in a community, that is hungry and in despair. So, we, the children of light, need to be clever and shrewd like the manager in today’s parable. We need to figure out in this time and place – with all its challenges and distractions – how to let the other beggars know where to find bread.

Like the master in the parable, God is challenging us – God is daring us – God is expecting us - to deal with this crisis.

It’s a big job, yet God is also giving us everything we need. The same Holy Spirit who has brought us together will continue to guide us and inspire us and, yes, make us shrewd and clever. The Holy Spirit who has brought us together will strengthen us as we continue to build the kingdom of God right here in this corner of Gainesville.

And, if we give this our best shot, the master will commend us for acting shrewdly.

You know, maybe this difficult parable is just what we needed as we begin our life together. Let’s get started!

Amen.