01 August 2007

Homily for Trinity 9 (2007) - Draft 1

[2 Samuel 22:26-34 / 1 Cor. 10:6-13 / Luke 16:1-9]

Today’s Gospel is one of the most difficult of parables in many people’s opinion because it sounds, at least on a surface reading, as though our Lord is commending the dishonest manager for his dishonesty. But that is not the case. Jesus commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. There’s a difference. You see, the manager took a realistic evaluation of his situation and did what he could to ensure his own temporal welfare. He made sure that when he was fired from his job, he’d have friends who would be ready to welcome him into their homes.

Jesus’ point, then, is disclosed for us in these words: “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.”

Take a lesson from the world’s playbook, says Jesus. The world is all wrong in its assumptions, but look at how dedicated the people of this world are to their own goals of having an easy life and heaping up the dough. Now, says Jesus, YOU be as dedicated toward the ends of the kingdom. I mean, just stop and think about it.

God blesses you with wealth, but not so you can pretend it is your own. That’s what the children of this world do. But we are children of light, and we know better. We know that there is not a single thing we possess that it really our own. Every last one of us is managing the possessions that belong to Another, to the true Rich Man, to Jesus Christ. Everything we have is really His, “for the earth is the Lord’s and all its fullness, the world and those who dwell in it.” And so we’ll all managers, and as is true for every manager, we’ll have to give an account one day of what we’ve done with what was entrusted to us.

And our Lord is very clear on how He wants us to use His possessions. He wants us to use them to support the preaching of His Gospel, His good news, to the ends of the world, and He wants us to use what we’ve received from Him to alleviate the sufferings and hardships of those who are poorer and more disadvantaged than ourselves. We wants us to invest the stuff he gives us in bringing blessing – both spiritual and eternal - to others.

To do so takes trust. Trust that all the stuff is His to begin with. Trust that He will continue to supply our daily needs and so we have no need to hoard against tomorrow. Tomorrow is entirely in His hands and on one of those tomorrows we will be called from this life to stand before His throne. And you know what? Every one of us will leave this world carrying out exactly as much as we brought into it: not a blessed thing! But when we stand before His throne, and He will call us to account for how we’ve handled what He entrusted to us in our time in this world.

How blessed we’ll be on that day, if as we stand before the throne, person after person stands up and says: Lord Jesus, he helped me when no one else would. He gave me food and drink. Please, welcome him now to Your feast! And another: Lord Jesus, I am here today sharing Your glory because she supported the preaching of the Gospel and so I came to hear of Your great sacrifice on the Cross and to know and believe that You had taken away the sins of the world, and mine too. She supported that preaching, welcome her home! And another: Lord Jesus, I remember feeling so down and alone, and that person noticed. He came and spent time with me. He listened to me and prayed with me, he shared Your word with me and gave me new hope. Welcome him home! And so on and on. You get the idea.

On that day of accounting, we won’t be surrounded by our stuff, but we will be surrounded by the people whom we have blessed or abandoned in their need. Which will it be?

Now do not misunderstand. Our Lord is not implying that by our use of His goods we can earn our way into the heavenly home. God forbid you think it. HE and He alone has won the right for us to share His heavenly home. He, who never mismanaged anything entrusted to Him by His Father, but offered His entire life as one great sacrifice to God, wiped out the debt of our sin and restored to all who believe and are baptized into Him the joy of being beloved children of the heavenly Father. He is the One who by His suffering and death has opened the kingdom of heaven to all believers.

But believing has its fruit. Believing is not just a matter of heart, but breaks forth out of the heart and shows itself in the deeds of our lives. And so these people who surround us on the Day of Judgment, when they point to the good we did to them and urge Christ to welcome us into the heavenly home, they are not saying our deeds earned us what Christ freely gives. No, instead they are witnessing to the fact that we truly believed, we truly trusted that Christ would provide for our every temporal need even as He had provided for our every spiritual need. They are confessing that our lives were lighted up by the trust that freed our hands to be open in blessing, instead of staying clasped in fear. Our giving of self to others just witnessed to the fact that we had found in Christ a life that was more than we’ll ever need for ourselves. Hey, when you know that you’re not only a manager but that the One you are managing for is your Brother, and that you are a co-heir with Him of all His Father’s riches, then you can be very generous in the handling of what’s been entrusted to you.

Today at His table, your Jesus goes on giving you more than you’ll ever need. He imparts His body and blood for forgiveness, for all the times you’ve doubted and distrusted and so kept to yourself what He wanted you to give to others. But He also imparts that body and blood to you to strengthen in you the faith that will burst out into love, so that you begin to share with others more and more, confident that in Him you have and you will always have more than you will need for time and for eternity. This God – His way is perfect; the word of the Lord proves true. He is a shield for all who take refuge in Him. To Him alone be all the glory now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.

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