SCRIPTURE: Luke 16:1-13
TEXT: 13c” You cannot serve God and wealth.” THEME: Children of light living in a Children of the age world. INTRODUCTION The World is made up of all kinds of people. Jesus sees us as good and comes to love us to God. We have a choice to follow Jesus or not. When we chose to follow Jesus, we find that God’s ways are good for us and good for others. When we choose to do things our way, apart from God, often times it is only seemly good for us and others could suffer because of our choices. SCRIPTURE This parable is a little difficult to interpret because, trying to identify who the characters in this story are, is a bit tricky. Our usual assumptions could make this story harder to interpret until we leave them behind. At first, we would hope that the rich person in this story is God with the dishonest manager being one of us who had lost their way, valuable to God but lost like a sheep or coin. As the story progresses, we find that the dishonest manager continues at the master’s expense, to finagle deals in hopes of garnering good will from the master’s creditors. Fake grace in order to foster fake relationships with obligation, favors, manipulation to help this manager beyond his employment. The rich person’s praise of the dishonest manager’s shrewdness does not sound like something God would say. God’s goal is not to gather riches in our world but to build relationships with us. This rich person is somebody who has gathered riches in this world for themselves, so maybe the Rich person is not God, but another person who is lost in this economic system of usury, slaves and greed. The only ‘God like people’ in this story are the Children of light, who operate according to a system of love, fostering relationships, and who find themselves living contrary to this system of greed, self-interest, and injustice created by the Children of this age. The Children of light are about fostering loving and caring relationships through kindness, generosity, stewardship caring and reconciliation instead of creating liaisons for personal gain. This boils down to the same question of choosing humanity over money or to serve God or to serve wealth, or to live according to God’s ways or our ways. APPLICATION How do we as children of Light live in a world that operates under with the systems of greed created by the children of this age? Our news is filled with the ongoing saga of a rich man who is doing all that he can to stay in power, to garner more wealth, to change the laws for his advantage, to place his friends in positions of power so they can do favors for him, so he can avoid the consequences of his actions. In addition to that, he now is accused of collecting of sensitive data that he could use as leverage against his friends and enemies, to insure more favors. We are witnesses to a public display of selfishness, greed, manipulation and disregard of human life. Shrewd by the world’s standards. The warning Jesus gives is for the Children of Light is to be smart, vigilant, strategically prepare and not to rest on our laurels. Don’t be naive, know the game that is being played and prepare against the coming shrewdness. Admittedly the world is not perfect, but it is good and people are good, lost sometimes, with the potential of good is inside of them. The Gospel Christ brings is for the possibility of transformation, reconciliation, relationships and community. There are some who see the world as half empty and are waiting for it to be destroyed. This is not the message Christ gives to us, coming to live among us, and loving us in ways that bring wholeness and life to us. Very simply this passage is telling us that relationships are important. And human beings are more important than money. God shows us how to live with each other in ways that are caring and just. This week, the presidential portrait of Barak Obama was unveiled at the White House. It brought back memories of a person who led by example, tried to change the culture of Washington by seeking humanity over money. Obama Care, although used to make fun of the Affordable Health Care Act he proposed has been embraced as the kind of man and president he was. People are more important than money, and most of us are just a few health issues away from financial disaster. Obama Care created a way for all to have health care. When we follow Jesus, we will seem a bit Odd to the rest of the world. It’s hard for those who serve money to understand those who value people as being more important. But through compassion, prayers, and being advocate for those who experience injustice, we can be examples that draw people to God and transform the children of this age into children of light. CONCLUSION Jesus’ investment is in us. To choose to follow him has us operating from systems of love, relationships, and caring. The system of greed has choose creating scenarios of obligation, fear, manipulation, threat, control and vengeance. These relationships are filled with lies to prejudice the way people think. We falsely think that by keeping the rich man in power, we all will become rich. The truth is that most of the wealth is shared by only a few and that does not include the rest of us. Our value, our meaning in life is not gauged by how much money we have, but by the relationship we foster with God and the people we care for and help. We have friends and families who love us, not acquaintances and business partners who owe us favors. Our lives are rich with God and people who care for us, not with money. We build communities of caring and are stewards of our resources for the good of everyone not just a few. It is a richness that money cannot buy, God giving love freely to us, to transform the Children of this age with light.
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