Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost
Luke 16:1-13; Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; I Timothy 2:1-7
True or false. No one gets rich by being a good Christian. Wealth and faith simply cannot exist together. True or False. No one gets to be listed in the Forbes 400 wealthiest list without doing at least a few things that would be hard to call "Christian."
Jesus invites us to think about money and wealth today. Our lesson from the Gospel of Luke raises all kinds of interesting questions about money and wealth management. No, this is not going to be a stewardship sermon. That's still a couple of months away. But this is going to be a sermon about money. Contrary to what most of us probably think, Jesus focused on the most important things in our lives and that was not politics, sex or even the weather. Jesus spent more time talking about money then any other subject. One of every seven Bible passages in the Gospel of Luke is about money. All of us know that two of the most life changing words anyone can ever hear are "You're fired". The loss of a job and income means in many cases a loss of identity, place in community, a sense of self worth and even a vision of the future. "What am I going to do now?" is the inescapable question. Of course, some people have the opportunity to be careful or shrewd enough to take precautions against the future and such a job loss. Such is the case in our gospel lesson for today.
Jesus tells a story that is sometimes entitled the Shrewd or Dishonest Manager. The point of the story is very simple. A whistle blower goes to the boss with details about the activities of a certain business manager. The boss informs the business manager that his days with the firm are numbered but before he leaves he needs to prepare a full accounting. And this is where the story gets interesting. The manager, realizing that he has to take steps to secure his future, quickly contacts some of the biggest accounts and proceeds to ingratiate himself to them. Some assume that the manager steals from his boss by discounting the debts in order to curry special favors for the future. Another take on the story is that the manager discounts the accounts losing his commission but making points with possible future employers. Still another perspective on the story is that the debts were excessively large to begin with due to the usury or abuse of the boss and the manager was simply correcting their value to what it should have been all along. How you interpret the story actually seems to depend to a great degree on who you are and what your experience has been in the business world.
What captures my attention is that it is possible to see certain truths about "succeeding" in the business world that do not seem to have changed much in 2,000 years. The challenge of making a profit and building a business; the questions of fair value for services rendered; the moral and ethical questions of responsibility between employer and employee, business and client are as true today as they were in the time of Christ. The core factor, of course, is that humanity has not changed all that much in the last 2,000 years. The potential corrupting influence of money and possessions endures as a part of our very being. Jesus knew that. He almost celebrates this truth when he observes that 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.
There is little doubt that Jesus saw wealth and money as one of the greatest dangers to the human spirit not because money and wealth were in themselves evil or bad but because they tempt us so easily to loss our perspective, priorities, our very selves. There is the temptation so quickly to decide that because we can do something it is alright to do it. But scripture reminds us that we are not solitary in any decision. Every thing we do affects others, our world and our spiritual well-being.
The manager in our lesson for today made decisions that had implications for his future but they also impacted those whose debts were reduced or canceled. There is no question that wealth and money have the potential to do great things, positive things, meaningful things. The challenge is to see the world in all its connectedness. That is what the shrewd manager did. He recognized that it was not enough to live for today. He needed a business plan for the future. Jesus said the same should be true for those who call themselves his disciples. Jesus seemed to think that the two words "Follow me" should have the same life changing impact on us as the words "You're fired". He suggests that we can learn much from the children of this age about how we too should look to the future. Could there be such a thing as spiritual wealth?
Recently Forbes Magazine came out again with their annual listing of the 400 wealthiest people on earth. I always check this list, not for my name, (I know better) but I keep hoping that someone from the congregation will show up on it. This year, as you may know, it required a net worth of at least $1.3 billion dollars to make the list. This past week Forbes also completed their global survey of billionaires and reported that there are currently 946 billionaires in the world with a net worth of 3.5 trillion (that's "trillion" with a "t") dollars. We all know the top names (Gates and Buffett) but Jeffery Sachs (author of "The End of Poverty) suggests that there is another billion that we need to consider. Sachs suggests that Forbes magazine not only provide profiles of the billionaires but also the billion at the other end of the economic scale. The more than one billion people in the world who each live on less than one dollar a day. He refers to them as the billionth-aires. Unlike the billionaires, the billionth-aires will be happy to meet each of us with a hearty smile, a handshake and a food offering. Unfortunately, their generous offering of food to any guest or visitor will likely mean no meal for them that day. In our travels to west Africa, Chris and I have met some of the billionth-aires, witnessing both their poverty and their hospitality. Sachs reminds us that these billionth-aires are met most often in visits to their villages in Africa, Asia and the highlands of the Andes. Up to three-fourths are hungry farm families while the rest are hungry and newly arrived from the countryside into urban slums.
The farmers, surprisingly, don't have enough food to eat, much less to sell to the market. They are caught in an environmental and financial vicious circle. They plant each year without the benefit of fertilizers and high-yield seeds, which they cannot afford. The result is a harvest yield around one-third of what it should be and soils that are continually being depleted with each harvest. The yields are not only low, but stagnant or falling. The hunger is intensifying. Financial markets might potentially help to finance the input of fertilizer, seeds, water pumps and the rest that is urgently needed, but these markets are not (yet) to be found in the villages.
When we were in Togo, West Africa there was only one ATM machine in the whole country and two hotels that accepted a credit card. In the whole country only one ATM.
The farmers have no collateral, no savings and no ability to borrow....That's the economy of the bottom billion. Little food, no assets, meager--if any--cash income. No collateral, no credit and no fertilizer. And in the villages, no roads, no electricity, no clinics, no safe drinking water. But there is warmth, humanity, hard work and love for their children. And hope, especially hope, even in faces of their children dying of malaria for want of a $1 medicine or a $5 bed net.
Let me repeat, Jesus never said money was evil although he does identify it as a source of evil. It can also do good. And it's accumulation is not evil in itself or is it necessary to do bad things to become wealthy. We learn from the Forbes 400 that today's billionaire wealth was made by and large not by monopolies, inheritance or government largesse. The wealth came to these children of this age most often because they were very creative, very hardworking and extremely lucky in riding the crest of globalization, finance and information technologies. Jeffery Sachs suggest that if we had a similar profile of the one billionth-aires we would learn to stop blaming the poor or African governments supposedly mired in mega-corruption. Instead we would focus our attention on things that count like soil depleted of nutrients, lack of infrastructure, malaria and drought. We would realize that extreme poverty is a global anomaly often resulting from extremes of geography as well as extremes of historical bad luck. It would be good if we knew the democratic leadership of Africa, such as President Jakaya Kikwete of Tanzania and President Amdou Touré of Mali, two countries where our church has Lutheran missionaries. It would be good if we knew of their struggle to help their people with government coffers that are as impoverished as the villagers themselves. Nobody is stealing untold riches in Tanzania and Mali; there are no untold riches to steal.
Jesus said, look closely at the children of this generation. How does one faithfully use the wealth of the world? A century ago the world's richest person, John D. Rockefeller, went to work for the world's poor. Heeding the social gospel of Andrew Carnegie before him, Rockefeller felt that the lasting contribution of his wealth would be to improve the world. He conquered hookworm in the American South. His foundation fought malaria in Brazil, yellow fever worldwide and even addressed the need for a new science of public health. Most remarkably, perhaps, his foundation shares credit for the green revolution, which sent food yields soaring in India, East Asia and Latin America. Bill Gates is today's Rockefeller, taking on AIDS, tuberculosis and malaria with new drugs, new vaccines, new diagnostics, new delivery systems. He has persuaded his friend Warren Buffett to put his wealth to the cause. And now there are new names on the list, like Carlos Slim Helú's mobile phone fortune pushing him into a virtual tie with Gates for the number one slot in the world wealth ranking. He too, aims to put billions into the cause of global health.
I of course do not have billions nor am I numbered among the billionth-aires. Comparatively, I have only a little and a great deal. That may actually be my gift. That I might learn to be faithful with a little which compared to so many is really so much. If each of us were to be faithful with our little. That after all is how the billionth-aires all live. With their dollar a day they faithfully feed, shelter and care for their children, their hopes and their faith.
A shrewd manager saw an opportunity to change his life. We each see opportunities to live our lives differently. Jesus told a story about someone who embraced the opportunity of the moment. He could not save himself. He could only believe that there would be someone who would accept him with the gifts that he had and offer him a job. So we also find ourselves ultimately trusting in God to accept us as we strive to use the gifts we have been given.
Every time I hear this parable I have to remind myself that the end to poverty will not come from a $50 offering or a confirmation student who found a moment of grace in an overnight at the church, and yet. The mystery of our faith is that faithfulness with a very little is also faithfulness with much. It may be that $50 is the critical difference in the Sunday benevolence sent to the synod that is passed through to the seminary that trains the seminary student who preaches God's word to the teenager who becomes the head of the World Bank that finally grants credit to Africa's impoverished farmers so that they may fertilize the crops that ends a cycle of hunger and poverty that allows a young African to attend school and become the diplomat who negotiates the middle east peace accord. That of course would never happen, unless we have a little faith. That is what this story is really all about. Faith and a little can do amazing things.
And Jesus said, You cannot serve God and wealth. But that doesn't mean that wealth cannot serve God. True or false.
Amen