Trinity 9 2018
Luke 16:1-13
Faithful with Little, Faithful with Much
July 29, 2018
Zion Lutheran Church + Nampa, ID
Today in our Gospel reading we hear of the parable of a rich man who had a manager. The man in the parable is the manager over the rich man’s possessions. The manager does not own the property and wealth that he is supervising. Instead, it all belongs to the rich man. The manager has the responsibility for supervising how it is used. He is to see to it that the rich man’s property and wealth are managed in ways that cause them to increase for the rich man. The manager has a duty to both his master and to those who are under him.
It is interesting to note that the word “manager”, which can also be translated as “steward” is the same word that St. Paul applies to those who serve God in his Church. Nick Whitney, listen up, because this is going to apply to you. The apostle writes, “This is how one should regard us, as servants of Christ and stewards of the mysteries of God. Moreover, it is required of stewards that they be found faithful” (1 Corinthians 4:1-2). He says of those who may become pastors, “For an overseer, as God's steward, must be above reproach” (Titus 1:7).
While not everyone is called into the Office of the Holy Ministry as a steward of the mysteries of God, every Christian is in fact a steward of God. We are God’s stewards because God created us, and then through Holy Baptism he recreated us. In the Small Catechism’s explanation of the First Article of the Creed, we confess, “I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them.” God made us, and so we belong to him. We may talk about “our body” but the fact remains that if God does not continue to take care of our body it cannot live. Our body, mind and all that it can do is a gift from God, but it never ceases to belong to God. It is a gift that God puts into our management.
All things we have come from His hands, and He has given us all things (1 Chronicles 30:16). Christ does not deal out all thing equally. To one He gives much, to another little, but it all come from Him, even the smallest things. If God has given us more than what is necessary for this body and life, we should not think that these things belong solely to us, but that we have merely been placed over them as stewards. And if we feel that God has given us less, we need to remember that God gives as He sees fit and as we need, not always as we want.
Since we are managers of the Lord’s creation, we must not think that these earthly things are to be used at our pleasure and according to our own purposes. We should use things for the spread of the Word of God, for the preservation of churches and church schools, for support of our leaders and helping those in need, for that is what the Lord has put before us.
When it turns out that the manager in today’s parable had not been doing what he had been tasked to do, he is told to turn in the books because he can no longer serve as manager. He squandered all that he had been given and a day of accounting had come. His unfaithfulness does not remain hidden when the dishonest manager squanders the goods in his care. He has wasted his master’s goods and not earned the love of those under his authority.
The Lord pays close attention to the way that we handle His creation and His gifts to us. As a faithful friend, the Lord lets us know far in advance that we must give an account one day. It should come as no surprise, and not without warning. In Luke 12:48, we hear, “Everyone to whom much was given, of him much will be required, and from him to whom they entrusted much, they will demand the more.”
The parable of the dishonest manager shows the responsibility for our high calling as the people of God, as recipients of God’s grace and favor found in Christ. The Epistle illustrates the same. It shows how the history of the Jews serve as a warning for us today. A chosen people who rejected God’s grace in Christ, and in turn became a rejected people. A people who trusted too much in their genealogy and sense of entitlement rather than in the promised Messiah. Christians too must beware of the dangers of security based in our efforts or work or lineage, or of despair, in thinking that God could not, would not, love or forgive you.
As God is our Creator, He also recreates us as we are born again of water and the Spirit in Holy Baptism (John 3:5). He gives the gift of faith and joins us to the saving death and resurrection of Jesus Christ (Colossians 2:12). God gives us the first fruits of the Holy Spirit – the guarantee that we will share in the resurrection of Jesus Christ (Romans 8:23). He provides the 0assurance that when Christ returns in glory on the Last Day He “will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body” (Philippians 3:21). He promises the day when our bodies will never again die (1 Corinthians 15:50-55) and the world itself will be very good once again (Romans 8:18-21).
This identity as a new creation in Christ shapes our management of all we have. In the parable Jesus brings up the shrewdness of the world and we see how the sons of this world are. At times they are almost consumed by their efforts for worldly gain. Where do we find equal zeal and work on the part of Christians for those things of eternal value.
The zeal of the world in their earthly plans ought to be an example to us in our striving toward something better, something greater: our eternal goal. We may imitate the wisdom of this world in their shrewdness, but greater in that our works are carried out in faith in Christ and in service toward our neighbor. All too often though the world uses its wisdom in a greater way than we do. Jesus says is plain and clear, “For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” Since we are managers, then let us show our faithfulness to God and to man. Let our love and our confession of faith in Christ be so real and beyond a doubt that the world cannot help but notice Christ as work within us. So let us manage the Lord’s gifts as He has equipped us to do. Let us give thanks to the giver of all good gifts, the One who sustains our life and has prepared an eternal inheritance for those whom He calls His own.