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"Jesus' 101 course on Wealth and Relationships"
Rev. Manohar (Mantu) Joshi - September 19, 2010
Luke 16: 1-13

Heidi and I made the decision to adopt a child a few years back. It was a roller coaster of emotions to navigate through the system and come out the other side with a child. Our daughter came with gifts that we could not have fathomed. Beyond enjoying her as our daughter and all the joys and challenges of raising a child, because we ended up adopting transracially, now when I look and see a little African American Girl I've never met, I feel an immediate sense of connection. My world is not only bigger; it is more interconnected and intimate. What an amazing gift to experience the world in this new way.

I think that this is what this parable is about. When we open ourselves to people we don't know and risk giving of ourselves (and they risk being open to us!), there is a connection that we could not have possibly imagined before.

This does not have to be an adoption that leads us to this feeling of connection. It is the little girl in my last church that decided to collect pennies for children's books for schools in Afghanistan. It is the efforts of this food pantry to give families around town a chance to make through another month. It is the choice to say that we are connected more than we thought before. That is what the dishonest manager's story is all about. Wealth is not about winning friends or influencing people. This passage is about not trusting wealth. It is about redefining what riches are.

If the IRS came and did an audit not just of your financial records but your life, your inner life, what would they find? What is your net worth?

Have you ever looked honestly at your life and asked, "What am I doing with my life?". Stewardship, is the answer to that question. Whether we writing the dream novel, planting the garden, making new friends, caring for those struggling with poverty OR spending time gathering new apps for our iphone, surfing facebook, and watching you-tube videos of cats dancing with small Chihuahuas, what we do with our lives is stewardship. It is broader than what we do with our money. It is bigger than what we do to volunteer from time to time. It is about making an impact with what we've got.

I once heard the Christian singer megastar Amy Grant say, that she did not have much of a voice, but she liked to think that she did as much as she could with what she had been given (heard this in a live concert).

I have been asking the question, "what am I doing with my life?" a little more often lately. But with all of our reflection on stewardship, I have been tweaking that question to "what am I doing with what I have been given?"

If we look at the passages before this in Luke, we see stories that have little to do with money and more about relationships. Look at Luke 15. These are the stories of the lost sheep and the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to find the lost one. Or the women sweeping the floor until she finds the lost coin. Finally, we hear the story of the prodigal son who squanders his inheritance and finds his way back home. The father forgives him at the last moment. All of these stories have to do with our relationship with God and with each other.

And then comes this story of mismanaged money. If we trust Luke that these passages are meant to go together, then we must conclude that even if this passage is about wealth, it is also about relationships. What I would propose is that this parable is a 101 course by Jesus, (with maybe a PowerPoint by the gospel writer Luke), on how wealth works in community relationships.

So lets look at the course objectives. Jesus says to make friends by means of dishonest wealth. But wait, the guy in the previous story, Luke 15, did that and none of the friends stuck around. He was left with nothing. What does Jesus mean?

I think it comes down to what I have learned over time as a stay at home Dad of a toddler. Share your food and baby wipes at the playground, because some time you are not going to have snacks or wipes, or something and you are going to have a messy day. BUT, if you are generous in the group, when the crisis comes, the day your kid ate the whole box of raisins, you are covered.

I think this relates to broader issues with which we are struggling as a nation. Isn't that what healthcare is supposed to be like. We pay for other people's needs so that maybe when we need it most, we are covered. Too bad it does not work that way for a lot of people, even with the current reforms.

So is it simply that Jesus is saying share your money, so you will have friends?

I think it is a step deeper than that. The next story that Jesus tells after this one is about a poor man and a rich man. The rich man does not help the poor man at all, but after they both die, their roles are reversed. The rich man is punished and the poor man is not allowed to help. The poor man is now the one with all the good stuff.

The story is easier to understand if we have a bit of an eschatological perspective. To understand the quandary of an eschatological perspective. . .

Think of Charlie Brown and Lucy and the quest of Charlie brown to kick the football. Charlie Brown always believes that Lucy will not remove the ball. That is how ridiculous we look to God, when we are running our lives as if they will never be taken from us. We get reminders that life does not last forever. A loved one dies, or we get news we don't like from our doctor. Our 401K tanks, a job is lost. All these things leave us flat on our backs looking up to heaven and saying next time, I'll live differently, but instead, we find ourselves running like the ball will not be taken away.

But when we acknowledge that not only is life not going to last forever, it is not even our own, then a funny thing happens. We finally, subtly, but profoundly, change our lives. We say, "Lucy, this time I will hold the ball for you." We turn things upside down. Suddenly everything we give away seems selfish, because we realize the gift it gives to us. Every thing that we hated about ourselves, becomes a gift, because now we think, "God could even use even me!"

John Wesley, founder of the Methodist Church said of this passage:

"Make yourselves friends of this, by doing all possible good, particularly to the children of God: that when ye fail, when your flesh and your heart faileth, when this earthly tabernacle is dissolved, those of them who have gone before may receive, may welcome you into the everlasting habitations." (Wesley Notes on Luke 16)

As the song we sang said before, our world becomes more than "population me". That if we don't somehow get over ourselves, we miss out on the bigger picture.

I have to say that being a stay-at-home parent, my world can seem pretty small at times. I am so focused on laundry, and snacks, and bath times, that it is easy to forget there is a world out there. The passage today, is a challenge that even in my own little world, I have to look for small ways to to live generously, even when it hurts.

In the end, Stewardship is not about money, but about changing how we see the world, a paradigm shift that shows us our connection to our Christian community and the world. It is about losing our life, so we can finally find it.