Greed Is (Not) Good!

'Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, `What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.' Then the manager said to himself, `What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.' So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, `How much do you owe my master?' He answered, `A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, `Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' Then he asked another, `And how much do you owe?' He replied, `A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, `Take your bill and make it eighty.' And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.

"Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."'

--Luke 16: 1-13

In 1987 Gordon Gekko quipped, “Greed is good,” a quote so iconic that some think Gordon Gekko is one of those people talking finances on a cable news network, not, in reality, Michael Douglas’ character in the film Wall Street. That line came to personify the Affluent Eighties, a decade marked by more, well, everything.  We’ve seen where such a focus on excess has gotten us—a greater disparity between rich and poor, haves and have nots, than any of us has ever seen.  

Gordon Gekko, played by Michael Douglas, on a fictitious cover of Fortune Magazine.

We might think that Gordon Gekko was just a product of his time and modern capitalism, but we hear again and again stories from the Bible in which the chief sin committed by the people, especially those in power, was the exploitation of the poor. The Torah outlawed interest on loans and other debts and required every person to leave their leftover goods and money for the poorest among them, yet again and again we hear the prophets, including Amos, my favorite prophet, call the people out for their behavior. By the time we get to Jesus, he’s leaning into his rabbinic heritage to use parables, metaphors, and rhetorical questions to subvert the systems of oppression in his own day. There’s something happening here in these parables....what it is ain’t exactly clear.

At first glance this Parable of the Dishonest Manager is really confusing. Is Jesus commending dishonesty, the kind of shrewd business acumen of a Gordon Gekko? The scholar William Barclay calls this "a story about as choice a set of rascals as one could meet anywhere." How are we to figure out which rascal in this story we are supposed to resonate with? Or which rascal who is a stand-in for God? What if the point of this parable is not to figure out which character represents us and God, but for Jesus to say something about the system of oppression in his own time, and in so doing, give us also a good word for living and moving and having our being in our time and place? Writer and preacher Brian McLaren says that understanding this parable is really easy, if we understand the economic ethics of 1st century Palestine! 

Rome occupied and exploited every facet of people’s lives, including their natural resources and their labor. They achieved their goals principally by way of collaboration between the religious elites and Roman officials. Those elites and other rich folks lived in Judea, while poor folks lived up north in Galilee. Rome needed produce from the poor Galilean farmers, namely wheat, wine, and olive oil, and so they taxed the beejesus out of them. The poor farmers couldn’t afford those taxes, so rich folks in Judea would come up to the north and say to the poor farmers, “We will pay those taxes of yours in exchange for the deed to your property; but don’t worry, you can still live and work as tenant farmers for the low cost of giving us a percentage of your wheat, wine, and oil.” The rich folks would then sell that tribute to the Romans, a textbook case of the rich getting richer and the poor getting poorer. To top it all off, the rich folks very often wouldn’t go north themselves to obtain the tribute – after all, they were pretty hated – so they would send a manager, or steward, in their place. That’s the backdrop for this parable. Now you know who the rich person is, who the manager is, and who the debtors are.

The Parable of the Shrewd Manager by Marinus van Reymerswaele

So a rich land owner sees that his manager is not squeezing those poor farmers hard enough, he’s squandering the rich man’s property, which, remember, originally belonged to his debtors, those tenants. The manager is fixing to be fired, and he has to turn over the books to his boss. The manager isn’t a bad guy, he’s basically part of a middle class, stuck having to make a life for himself by doing the will of the rich guy by taking advantage of the poor. He says to himself, “I’ve worked for this guy all these years, now he’s ready to throw me out, and I’ve got no security.” When he realizes how expendable he is in this economic pyramid, he switches sides. He arranges things so that he cuts the debts of those tenant farmers – “How much do you owe? We’ll half it.” He gets some return for his rich boss, but he does it in a way that’s subversive, that gives a break to the poor, with whom he has now found solidarity. He recognizes the economic injustice being done and switches sides, using the very tactics of the oppressors to lift up the poor. For this he is actually commended as acting, in the words of our translation, “shrewdly,” but the original Greek word phronimos is better translated to “wisely.” Simply put, the dishonest manager is smart, and the rich boss sees and respects it. Game recognize game.

This parable immediately follows the three parables in chapter 15 about the lost sheep, coin, and child. It’s part of Jesus’ teaching against the religious elites, the very ones who have benefited from this collaboration system – in fact, Luke explicitly says in the very next verse that these folks are, in Greek, philargarus, which literally means “lovers of money.” You need to learn, Jesus is telling them, that it’s better to use your money in service of relationship than to use relationship in service of money. Or, as Jesus puts it in the final verse of this story, “You cannot serve God and wealth.”

That’s an interesting translation isn’t it? Some of you may know the original word here, which is mammon. It doesn’t have a direct English translation, which is why some Bibles, like the King James Version, don’t even bother translating it. Mammon is a Greek transliteration of a Semitic word that most closely means “that in which one trusts.’ Perhaps our Bible translators figured that “that in which one trusts” most often has meant money or wealth – Greed is good! Sure, we could preach this sermon outside the doors of congressional representatives who are so often bought by deep-pocketed lobbyists. Of course, we can point to this Gospel as we denounce modern day heretics like Joel Osteen and Creflo Dollar, who espouse the so-called Prosperity Gospel and have the audacity to think God actually needs them to have jumbo jets to spread the good news. We could do that, and we have. We can turn to this Gospel as we preach in both word and action, calling for a most just economic system, one in which the rich are in solidarity with the poor – as Torah intended – not continuing to rob them for pocket change. It’s pretty obvious who the folks are that need to hear that message. But there’s something about noticing the speck in our neighbor’s eye and ignoring the log in our own, right? So what is the message for us? 

False prophets.

This past Sunday was the 22nd anniversary of the first service conducted by my current congregation, the Church of the Advocate. This church was founded without land of its own and emphasized social justice and thoughtful liturgy that reflected the core pieces of their theology. The folks here have sought for the past 22 years to live into their missional values of compassion, justice, and transformation in many ways. One of those is the Advocate Tithe, an act of solidarity with poor and disenfranchised neighbors illustrated by the parish taking the very first 10% of their pledged contributions and designating them to help others. These folks know, perhaps better than most, that money is meant to be used in the service of relationship and not the other way around. But remember how mammon means much more than just money? It means that in which we put our trust. And boy, oh boy, I wonder what that could mean. What is it, brothers and sisters, in which you so strongly put your trust? What is your mammon?

If I’m examining my own life, I wonder how much trust I’m putting in things, as compared to my trust in God. How much trust am I putting in my toy collection, for example? Do I really need another one? How much trust am I putting in technology that is eroding away at my critical thinking skills, stealing the research and creativity of other people, and killing the planet, all the while telling me that it’s making my life easier? How much trust am I putting in efforts to save my own life, to preserve the safety and security of me and mine? What’s my mammon, the non-God-shaped matter that I, that we all, have relied upon? Writer and bootleg preacher Will Campbell, one of my theological heroes, once was asked to preach at Riverside Church in New York City, a very wealthy congregation. In his homily he asked, rhetorically, “What can I do to love Jesus and keep all my stuff?” He paused and said directly, “Nothing.” They didn’t ask him back.

The Rev. Will Campbell in the pulpit of Riverside Church in New York City.

Mammon might be the strongest weapon of temptation that the Enemy has. The lure of wealth, yes, but also the lure of comfort and security. Characters like the land owner and manager might seem strange and foreign to us, but this parable really does hit home in time and place of exploitation not that much different from Jesus when we really think about it. And it’s not great. But we can’t run away from it. We can’t all go and join monasteries – though, I’ve been tempted. We can’t be children of light, as Jesus says. What’s interesting here is the term “children of light”in this parable is actually a reference to the Essenes, to John the Baptist’s community and the folks who fled the cities and shunned the material world because of how evil they said it was. Jesus, by choosing to actually live in the world, rejects this principle. The children of this generation, he says to his crowd, are smarter than that, more shrewd than that. They have to live in such a world. We have to live in such a world. We cannot escape the reality in which we live. So what can we do?

The same adverb that Jesus uses to describe the actions of the dishonest manager – phronimos, or shrewdly – is used in Luke, chapter 10, verse 3, when Jesus tells his followers to be “wise as serpents, and innocent as doves.” Be wise, be shrewd, my brothers and sisters. We may have to live in a culture that is not that much different from the occupational state Jesus lived in, but we can find our way in it and through it. We do so by calling out the injustices of our own time – particularly economic exploitation, which is a tale as old as time – and by asking ourselves how we too have both benefited from and been enslaved to such a system. We do that inner work on ourselves so that we can do the outer work of using the resources we have in service of relationship, not the other way around, and rather than ignoring the growing issues of our time – a position only the privileged are able to do – we engage; we use the tools at our disposal to do what needs to be done, and we meet those challenges head-on, together. This, I believe, is the lesson of the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, and quite frankly, I think it’s a lesson at the heart of the foundation of the Church of the Advocate, making this a perfect Gospel reading for their 22nd anniversary. 

As one of the parish's old t-shirts put it: be the noun – advocate – and do the verb – advocate. If that is our mission, then surely the teaching of this parable is not far from us. Let us then use the circumstances given to us – like that manager – to create churches and communities that center Jesus above all and put mammon in its place, that we may be a people who are ever marching in the light of God. 

Being Lost

'All the tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to Jesus. And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, "This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them."

So he told them this parable: "Which one of you, having a hundred sheep and losing one of them, does not leave the ninety-nine in the wilderness and go after the one that is lost until he finds it? When he has found it, he lays it on his shoulders and rejoices. And when he comes home, he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, `Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep that was lost.' Just so, I tell you, there will be more joy in heaven over one sinner who repents than over ninety-nine righteous persons who need no repentance.

"Or what woman having ten silver coins, if she loses one of them, does not light a lamp, sweep the house, and search carefully until she finds it? When she has found it, she calls together her friends and neighbors, saying, `Rejoice with me, for I have found the coin that I had lost.' Just so, I tell you, there is joy in the presence of the angels of God over one sinner who repents."'

--Luke 15: 1-10

I lose things.  A lot. I lost my high school ring, which was miraculously found in another state six months later. I lost my father’s college ring from the Citadel – if you know, you know – which was, sadly, never found. I lost a precious James Avery cross ring, which I wore on my right hand to match my wedding ring just before we moved back to North Carolina from Updstate New York. Honestly, I don’t know what it is with me and rings! While I was serving at a church in South Carolina I lost my sunglasses, and our wonderful parish administrator, who was a devout Roman Catholic taught me a short, simple prayer to St. Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost items: 

Dear St. Anthony, please look around. Something is lost and cannot be found.

I never found that particular pair of costly sunglasses, but if I had, she explained, I was supposed to show my gratitude by praying: 

Dear St. Anthony, thanks for coming around. What I had lost has now been found.

Any of y’all ever enlist St. Anthony’s help to find something you lost? Assuming you did find the thing you were looking for, do you remember how overjoyed you were to find it? 

St. Anthony of Padua

The entire 15th chapter of the Gospel of Luke is made up of three parables about lost things – lost sheep, lost coin, and a lost or prodigal child, which we don’t hear this week because we actually heard it way back on the Fourth Sunday in Lent. Each of these parables follows the same pattern: a sheep is lost from the fold, the shepherd goes to find it and rejoices when it is returned; a woman loses a coin that is worth 1/10th of her earnings, turns her house upside down searching for it, and when she finds it she throws a party to celebrate. Something is lost, someone searches for the something, and joy abounds when the something is found.

If parables are meant to teach us a thing or two about ourselves and God, the message of these parables seems pretty obvious. God is the shepherd searching for the sheep. God is the woman searching for the coin. The sheep and the coin are the folks who are lost, the folks God loves. They’re you. They’re me. They’re even the ones we wish would stay lost. To some of you biblical scholars out there, this assessment of the text might seem a bit like low-hanging fruit, but it's true, regardless of how simple it may sound, and it’s critically important for us to remember. So much gets in the way of us really believing this. Our shame whispers: “Maybe everyone else, but not you. Not after what you’ve done, what you’ve said, what you’ve secretly thought. A just God couldn’t possibly love you that much, to seek you out. Anybody but you.” Our pride whispers in the other ear: “Not him. Not her. After what they’ve done, what they’ve said, the seeds of contempt that they’ve sown. A just God would not possibly love them that much, to seek them out. Anybody but them.” Both voices are that of the Enemy.

The voice of Jesus is different. It says come unto me and rest. It says that one is loved to such an extent that he, this good shepherd, would leave everything to find such a one, would turn the whole house upside down looking for such a one; and what’s more, while speaking directly to the religious authorities who are chastising him for eating at the table of so-called sinners, Jesus does not return their outrage with his own. Moral outrage – whether self-inflicted or directed toward another – is not the way of Jesus. He remains engaged with the scribes and Pharisees. He is every bit in relationship with them as he is with the ones they call sinners. What a concept! Staying rooted in love so much so as to not leave the table! To borrow a line from Nichole Torbitzky: this is one of the beauties of the lure of God! 

The Parable of the Lost Sheep

The Wesley Study Bible summaries this chapter by saying that these parables are intended to move the scribes and Pharisees from grumbling to rejoicing. And yet, despite his efforts to reach across the table, despite his insistence that God does, really and truly, love every single person THAT much, these religious elites continue to grumble as if it’s some kind of national pastime! The more things change, the more they stay the same, am I right? Jesus pleads with them to understand that God is actively searching to reconcile, not seeking to punish. Why would they respond in such a way? Why would anyone, upon hearing such good news, respond with dismissiveness, blame? Why, even now, are there folks who cheer at the idea of a vengeful, angry God, but, once you start talking about a God who loves each person with the kind of fervor that the shepherd and woman possess in the parables, those same people rant and rave and utterly reject such a concept?

I wonder if it’s because such folks see themselves as part of the 99, the ones that the shepherd seems to abandon to go look for the one single lost sheep. Have they not also been loved? Why then would the shepherd – why would Jesus – leave them to go search for a “sinner,” for someone who doesn’t fit what they’ve been taught a person who is worthy of God’s love looks or acts like? Maybe blindness to their own belovedness has done this, the result of years of indoctrination, the twisting of empathy into something to be mocked and spat upon the way the passers by mocked and spat upon Jesus. Hurt people hurt people, so the saying goes. As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Perhaps we should all ask ourselves how we would feel if Jesus left us to go search for someone else. Would we, too, feel abandoned and angry? Could we possibly find the empathy for such a one?

These parables speak the truth that not only are we all loved, but we are all, to some extent, lost. When we silo ourselves for the sake of security, cutting ourselves off from the thoughts, feelings, and experiences of others, and are convinced of our own moral superiority, we are lost. When we strive so hard for success and capital that we reject the commandment to rest and cast our cares on God, believing everything really is up to us, we are lost. When we respond to the abominable plague of gun violence in our communities with scapegoating and what-about-isms, literally praying that such tragedies are not perpetrated by “one of us,” we are lost. To be lost is to rely solely on own egocentric worldviews, and to believe that the Gospel of Jesus Christ and the grace, mercy, and love of God that he both preached and embodied are not nearly enough. If this God of love is not enough, then neither are we. 

The God of love had a really bad week last week: the theatre of war expanding and escalating on the other side of the globe, public shootings here at home. Jesus don’t like killin’, no matter what the reason’s for. John Prine said that, and it bears repeating. The world and everything in it feels lost as of late. And while that might be true, here’s the thing: the shepherd and the woman in the parables were determined to find the pieces of the whole that were lost. They never stopped searching, never gave up. And the sheep and coin? They weren’t repentant. They were simply found. There is nothing that will stop Jesus from searching for any who are lost, and there’s nothing for any of us to do to earn such grace, such love, such mercy; it is a gift we need only accept, for ourselves and for those neighbors of ours of whom it would be easier to believe are not worthy of such a gift. Perhaps if we could do that for ourselves, we could do it for our neighbor; and if we could do it for our neighbor, little by little, person by person, then we would seek each other out, we would find each other, and there really would be celebrating in heaven. 

The God of love may have had a really bad week, but the God of love is still the God we know and meet in Jesus Christ, and this God never, ever gives up on any of us, even when we give up on ourselves, on each other, and on God. This Jesus of ours, is still seeking folks out, even through the tears that he has no doubt been shedding, while Rachel again wails over the sufferings of her children. Patty Griffin has a song When It Don’t Come Easy in which she sings, “If you break down, I’ll drive out and find you/If you forget my love, I’ll try to remind you/Stay by you, when it don’t come easy.” Kristen and I love this song, mostly because it sums up our relationship really well – I literally drove out and found her in the middle of the night early on in our courtship when we weren’t even sure if Team Kroe was really a thing. No matter if it’s you, me, or them, Jesus is searching, driving out there to find us, reminding us of his love, even when we forget; staying by us, when it don’t come easy. That’s grace, which makes all things possible, even for our own wailing to be turned into dancing. We may deserve blame, yet we’re forgiven. We may be filled with righteous anger, yet we can be joyful. We may wander away, yet we will always be found. 

Patty Griffin's song When It Don't Come Easy