No servant can serve two masters: for either you will hate the one, and love the other; or else you will hold to the one, and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon. (KJV)
The key to our understanding of Jesus’ parable from Luke today is that last sentence:
You cannot serve God and mammon.
Where do we put our trust in our lives today? Is it in wealth, riches, or possessions (Mammon)? Or Power & control? Or do we serve and trust God?
That is what Jesus is getting at today – what do we worship? Where is out trust? Whom do we serve?
And so Jesus tells a parable to his disciples.
A rich man had a manager who was accused of squandering the rich man’s property (sounds like the Prodigal Son!). The manager is called to account for this.
The manager worries about how he will live (like the Prodigal Son). He decides to make friends with the rich man’s debtors…
To one, he says cut the bill in half; to another take off 20 containers that you owe. The rich man does not condemn him, he praises the manager for his shrewdness.
We should notice a few things:
· The steward understands the trouble he is in
· But he uses his position to lower the debts of some debtors to get in good with them when they don’t know how much trouble he is in.
· He is praised by the rich man for doing such a thing; through his shrewdness, those in indebted to the rich man have some of the debts lessened, and the rich man would not risk losing honor by putting back those debts…
To which, Jesus tells his disciples to be so shrewd in their use of wealth. Not to hoard it, to build more barns with it, but to use it to serve others. Jesus is telling them to be faithful with unrighteous Mammon – to be faithful even with small things…
As the southern preacher Fred Craddock once said: “Most of us this week will not christen a ship, write a book, end a war, appoint a cabinet, dine with a queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake. More likely the week will present no more than a chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote for a county commissioner, teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, read a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor’s cat. “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much (Luke 16:10).”
Our discipleship is in those little things, to be faithful to them. And maybe like that steward, freeing people from debt – freeing people from mammon – is something we are called to do…
In the United States, 79 million people have unpaid medical bills; medical debt contributes to two-thirds of all personal and family bankruptcies. In CT alone - $351 million in medical debt on credit reports. A number of churches have found a creative way to help these families.
When someone can’t pay a medical bill, that debt is packaged with other people’s debt and sold to bill collectors for a fraction of the total amount of the bill. Those debts typically come from low-income people and are more difficult to collect. Because hospitals and medical practices are eager to get those hard-to-collect debts off their books, they sell the debt cheap.
A group of business professionals formed a nonprofit organization they named RIP Medical Debt. They buy up such medical debt for pennies on the dollar, and then forgive the debt. RIP recruits local groups to help — and churches have been especially responsive. A Kansas church’s commitment of $22,000 was able to wipe out $2.2 million in debt, not only for the Wichita area but all available debt for every Kansan facing insolvency because of medical expenses they couldn’t afford to pay — 1,600 people/families in all. A Maryland church erased $1.9 million for 900 families this past March. The total amount they raised: $15,000. An 18-year-old in Syracuse, New York, organized her high school classmates to raise a few thousand dollars that forgave $15 million worth of medical debt for 9,000 people.
A big part of RIP’s appeal comes from the impact that even a small donation can have. One pastor whose church is one of 18 that worked with RIP since 2018 says that medical debt and affordability issues resonate with parishioners.
“We need to do not just this thing but many things that practically show the love of God. It’s hard to tell somebody God loves you if they’re starving and don’t try to deal with the problem.” [National Catholic Reporter, July 2, 2019.]
That Pastor’s comment at the end of the story reminds me of the words from the Letter of James…
My brothers and sisters, what good is it if people say they have faith but do nothing to show it? Claiming to have faith can’t save anyone, can it? Imagine a brother or sister who is naked and never has enough food to eat. What if one of you said, “Go in peace! Stay warm! Have a nice meal!”? What good is it if you don’t actually give them what their body needs? In the same way, faith is dead when it doesn’t result in faithful activity.” (James 2:14-17)
Jesus holds up the model of the shrewd manager in today’s Gospel not as an endorsement of his treachery but for his ingenuity in getting things done, in the shrewdness he showed by forgiving debt. Jesus challenges us to be as ingenious for the sake of Kingdom of God as we are in our careers and professions, to be as ready and willing to use our time and money to accomplish great things in terms of the Gospel, the Good News, as we are to secure our own security and happiness.
To open our hearts to the possibilities we each have to build God’s kingdom of compassion, mercy and peace, right now, in our time and place – to show this faith by being faithful with what we have and by serving God and not mammon. Amen.
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