Reading: Luke 16:1-9
In chapters 15 and 16 of The Gospel of Luke, Jesus is talking to his disciples about forgiveness. To Jesus, forgiveness is an essential practice of the kingdom of God. To his disciples, forgiveness is something they still only partly understand. To help draw them more fully into the mystery and the way of forgiveness, Jesus shares a series of parables – about a shepherd who loses and then finds a sheep, about a woman who loses and then finds a coin, and about a man who loses and then regains a son.
Today’s story is about a man who loses his job and his place of power, and gains a community of friends. The first characters mentioned in the story are a rich man and one of his managers, both of whom would have been disliked by the people around Jesus, and assumed to be rich because they were dishonest and ready to take advantage of people below them.
Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’
“The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’
“So, he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ “‘Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied. “The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’ “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’ “‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied. “He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’
“The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”
Where do you go, to find God? To see or to sense God’s Presence with you? To be renewed in your relationship with Jesus? To hear a healing, challenging or encouraging Word of God in your life? To be renewed and strengthened in your trust and faith in the Gospel good news of the kingdom of God coming to be, and at work in the life of the world?
Obviously, wherever you are right now is one of those places, as you take the time to read this on-line moment of meditation. And I’m glad to be part of the practice with you – to offer something that might help you be aware God’s Presence and Word being stirred and brought to wakefulness within you.
God is within each one of us. Each one of us, and each of our homes and private spaces is a house of the holy. A dwelling place of God, and a place where God’s kingdom is known on Earth.
For some, gathering at church for worship together with others is also a place and a way of spiritual nurture. Being with other people of like-minded faith and similar experience and commitment helps to support our own openness to God. Being open and in community with other people of faith, helps opens us together to communion with God.
God is among us and between us. This is a house of the holy. A dwelling place of God, and a place where God’s kingdom is known, remembered, and committed to here on Earth.
Another place that’s been important to me along the way is to go on retreat – to get away to some place apart for a time of focused prayer and rest and reflection. For me, a favourite place is Crieff Hills Retreat Centre near Puslinch. Just a half-hour from my home in Dundas, but a holy and wholly-other kind of place, where in the wilderness and wildness I can be drawn into a mystery of God beyond myself and what I already know.
God is beyond us, and beyond what we already know and control. The world beyond us – the mystery and wonder of creation and of earth is a house of the holy. A dwelling place of God, and a place where the truth of God’s is unveiled and naturally lived out in all its glory and hard beauty.
And I also recall another place and another occasion of being drawn into the mystery of God and the kingdom of God beyond me. I experienced it in a memorable way just after I separated from my first wife. I was already on a path towards my new life, but the time was confusing, stressful, and with a lot of hurts and wounds for myself and even more for others around me.
A friend who at the time was chaplain at Wesley Urban Ministries suggested I join him maybe one night a week in staffing the overnight program that Wesley still offered at the time for people on the street and without a home or other shelter. The doors to the drop-in shelter opened around 9 pm, soup and sandwiches were served at 10:30, and people were free to mingle, find a spot to lie down, play cards, just rest until lights out and quiet at midnight.
My first night I showed up at 9 ready to do some good. I looked forward to being behind the kitchen counter, handing out soup and sandwiches and being of some use to people in worse shape than me. It felt good to be a servant of God, sharing the kingdom of God with people who needed it.
But it was only 9 pm. Serving time wasn’t for an-hour-and-a-half. So, my friend suggested I go out to where the people were gathering, and visit. It scared the heck out of me. It seemed to me that I and they were so different. What would we talk about? What could I tell them? Why would they even listen to me? Did they even want me sitting down with them?
Three guys were at a corner table. They looked homeless and poor. They also clearly offered one another friendship, respect and mutual care. As I walked over to them – warily, I saw they had a deck of cards, and what they saw in me was a fourth. They invited me to sit down. Asked me if I knew how to play euchre. And when I said yes, they dealt me in, and invited me into the game.
God and the kingdom of God are also beyond the limits of the world and the community we normally live within. The Wesley drop-in and other spaces like it shared by people who are broken, who know it, and are willing and able to be opened to one another is a house of the holy. A dwelling place of God, where the feast of God’s kingdom comes to joyful and gracious fruition for all who need it, and are broken open to it.
Jesus often saw God and the kingdom of God at work in the world, in the most common and ordinary of places, and in the most unlikely of people. This is the secret of the parables.
Today’s parable is about a rich man and his manager – two people that Jesus’ listeners would have been able to visualize well, because most of them spent all their lives under the power of rich men and their managers, and who they also would most likely have disliked and seen as villains from the start, because of the way they so often were rich and in the position they were, because of their dishonesty and the way they took advantage of people poorer and less powerful then themselves.
So, in the story when the manager loses his job and his place of power in the system, Jesus’ listeners might have had some sympathy for him. But they might also more likely have thought, “Good! Now finally her knows what it’s like! Let him suffer, like he’s made us suffer all along!” Ever feel that way about bad people who get their come-uppance?
Jesus, though, sees the story through, to a different conclusion. The manager, now vulnerable and afraid, uses what’s left to him – his last day on the job, to whatever good he can for others. To forgive at least part of the debt they owe and that normally it was his job to enforce. And who knows, maybe what he forgives is what his boss was traditionally over-charging, and he’s now at the end, as his final last gesture, setting things right and making the system more fair at least for those few and at that moment.
Whatever he’s doing, he’s forgiving others as he hopes to be forgiven himself. He’s being a friend to others who still seem to be beneath him, because he knows he himself is in need of friends. He is doing unto others, as he hopes will be done unto him. And it’s thus that among the despised and crooked of the world, so easily overlooked by the righteous of the world, that God and the way of God and the kingdom of God are lived out. And those who listen to Jesus are invited to have the eyes to see it, have the ears to hear it, and have the heart to be part of it.
Because maybe, Jesus is saying, it’s
those who are weak,
and know their need of support from others …
those who are broken,
and know their need of healing …
those who are scoundrels,
and know their need of forgiveness …
those who are empty,
and know their need of sharing what there is
with others at a common table …
who will know and show
the way of God for all the world.
Where and how do you find your place in that story of Jesus?
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