A reflection on the lectionary readings for the fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost.
This is another one of those “WHAAAAAT” moments with Jesus that makes us shake our heads and ask is he really encouraging us to be dishonest? No. Just like he wasn’t telling us we had to hate our families, Jesus is intentionally making us stop and ponder what he’s saying so that we will think about what we are thinking and doing.
This passage is so often used to talk about our relationship with money and that is a very important topic. How we behave in regards to money does reveal so much about our relationship with God.
And so before we dive into the “but wait there’s more” part of today’s reading, let’s me tell you another story.
Once upon a time, there was a whole community who was suffering. There was a church in this community that had an abundance of resources so the priest asked those in charge of the parish finances to use their abundant reserves to help provide relief in the midst of this major crisis. Those responsible for managing the parish’s finances wanted to hold onto the reserves for a proverbial ‘rainy day’. The priest asked them how much more ‘rainy’ could it get than when the whole community was suffering because of an pandemic? The debate went back and forth with the priest offering the teachings of Jesus about money and naming the pain and suffering of the greater community and the money folks telling stories of when they didn’t have enough and no one shared with them. The priest showed them how much they had and described how much good they could do and still have some left. The money-centered folks told the priest to leave God out of their money.
With this one demand, this group of folks revealed exactly what they believed to be the relationship between God and their money. And like the manager in our reading, they revealed so much more about how they viewed the world. For them, the world is a place of scarcity, there’s never enough for everyone and there might not be enough for tomorrow so the safest thing to do is hoard whatever we have, even if it means others might go without. These people let scarcity shape their life, not God’s Love.
A scarcity mindset is the very thing introduced into the world by the talking serpent in the Garden. God said, “I will give you all you need to thrive as my beloved children.” And the serpent convinced the humans that what God gave them wasn’t enough, that somehow God was keeping from them something they wanted and that God couldn’t be trusted to keep God’s promises. A scarcity mindset leads us to lie and manipulate others to serve ourselves instead of serving God so that everyone has what they need.
The manager of Jesus’ parable, instead of owning up to the consequences of his dishonesty, twisted and manipulated others for his own benefit and gain. Instead of admitting to being dishonest, he used more lies and manipulation to try and survive regardless of the harm it may bring to others.
In this parable, Jesus is showing us how people’s behavior reveals their inner motivations. When we place our own needs, our own comfort, our own need to be right or in control or in charge above the needs of others, we reveal that we don’t trust God and the teachings of Jesus to show us how to live in God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven. We’ve chosen ourselves over our relationship with God and others.
The deeper meaning of this parable is that character matters. And what and who we let shape our character matters. We are all discipled by something or someone or some group, be it the news we watch or the algorithms that determine what we see on social media, or time spent intentionally deepening our relationship with God or doing life with others. All that we give our time and attention to shapes who we are becoming. When we follow Jesus our relationship with God is the foundation of all that we do with all that we have: how we manage our resources, how we live in relationship with others, how we see and move through the world.
Following Jesus in the Way of Love means we work with God and each other to ensure we all have what we need in the abundance of God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven.. We live with God at the center, not ourselves.
When Jesus says make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, he isn’t encouraging us to be dishonest, he’s pointing out that regardless of how we make our earthly wealth, it is only temporary. It isn’t our friends who ensure we are welcomed into God’s everlasting Kingdom, it is God. And God’s Kingdom, Jesus tells us over and over is right here at hand. The only thing that is everlasting is our relationships. God’s Kingdom is built by relationships, not bricks and mortar.
Ok, yes, I know we need money and to manage it well so that we can be responsible adults. Jesus isn’t saying otherwise. If we take the whole of what our scriptures have to say about money, it boils down to the last thing Jesus says in today’s story: We can’t serve God and wealth. If our main focus and goal in life is to build our own wealth at the expense of others, we’ve lost the Jesus plot.
In God’s Kingdom-on-earth-as-in-heaven, there is always abundance because when we are focused on serving God and each other, all that we have is more than enough for everyone to thrive. Life in the Kingdom isn’t a competition of who has more. It isn’t about elevating ourselves above others. It isn’t about taking advantage of other people’s kindness and giving nothing ourselves. It isn’t about earning or deserving.
Life in God’s Kingdom is about being good managers of all that we have and all that we are and all that we do so that everyone thrives. And before anyone starts taking on the impossible pressure of having to fix all the ills of this world, God knows that we struggle to do it well all the time. All that God expects from us is that together we do our best with God’s help and as we grow in our relationships with God, each other, and ourself, we become better at this Kingdom living thing each day. This is the journey Jesus invites us to when he says ‘follow me’.
The wealth of God’s kingdom is love, compassion, mercy, and justice. And the more we invest in these by offering them them to others, the more we all have. This is the peaceable life of godliness and dignity that Paul writes of in his letter to Timothy. The prophet Amos offers the same admonition as Jesus – when we put aside God’s Way for our own, God knows our hearts and God is not pleased, not because God is sitting high on the throne waiting for us to mess up so he can use his smite button, but because God knows we are made for so much more than a scarcity mindset.
God made us to know the abundance of the Kingdom, to thrive when love, compassion, mercy, and justice are abundantly shared. God’s desire for us is to live outwardly as we are created inwardly – as image bearers of the Loving God who always offers us compassion and mercy and justice. The Kingdom life is the life we are made for, in the here and now and for all eternity.
Mother Nancy's Coffee Thoughts 