"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."
This is a weird reading. It may well be the weirdest reading in all of Scripture. One of the things I've come to believe is that it is the weird readings, the hard readings, the readings that I have to chew on a lot -- those are the readings that have a lot to teach me. They're sort of, like, the roughage in the Biblical diet; something you've just got to have.
I want to spend some time looking at this reading, and I want to start with this dishonest wealth. What is Jesus talking about when he says "dishonest wealth?" I don't think that he is talking about ill-gotten gains. I don't think that what he is talking about is limited to money that is gotten by robbing a bank, or by embezzling money from work. Although, if you have money that you've embezzled from work, or you have money that you’ve stolen, please do feel free to apply Jesus’ teaching to that money as well. But I don't think that this teaching is limited to just that kind of money.
In the King James translation, dishonest wealth is called "mammon of iniquity." I think I like that phrase better -- Mammon of iniquity. In Luke's Gospel, Jesus talks tirelessly about money. Again, and again, and again, Jesus is talking about money. He is talking about the way that money, and our material possessions, and our stuff, can distract our souls, tug on our souls. Money can turn us all back into two-year-olds in an instant. Mine! Mine, mine, mine! Our hunger for safety and security and money and possessions, and our clinging to all of that, can isolate us from other people. It can be anti-communion; it pulls us away from communion with other people.
In Luke's Gospel, Jesus is constantly talking about this danger that our money can have, to pull us into leading lives of iniquity. Not lives of robbing banks, or of hurting people, but money pulling us into lives that are too small for us, lives that are isolating, and isolated. That kind of iniquity. Money can lead us into that -- mammon of iniquity.
But, there is also another thing about money, and for this I like the "dishonest wealth" translation. Money promises security. If you have a lot of money, then you're going to be secure. Money promises happiness. If you have a lot of money, then you're going to be happy.
Money does not deliver on either of those two promises. It's a lie. Dishonest money -- it's promising something that it doesn't deliver. Money is dishonest. If you listen to the voice that says, "If I have more, then I'm going to be secure, if I have more, I'm going to be safe, if I have more, I'm going to be happy," know that it's a lie. In that sense, money is dishonest, if you give it that power over your soul. So be careful with this money, which has this dishonest voice inside of it.
Let's move to the parable. Once upon a time, Jesus says, there was a wealthy landowner. This guy lived far away. He owned lots of farms. The farms were worked by tenant farmers, indentured servants, really. Probably their parents or their great-grandparents had owned the land that the current tenants were now farming, but because of burdensome debts, they lost the farms. Now, the tenant farmers have to work another's land, they have to buy supplies at the company store, they pay more there than they should, their rents are higher than they ought to be, and each year they fall further and further into debt.
It's a trap that they can't escape. That's what the farming was like in Jesus' day. This landowner didn't really care about the farmers; he hardly ever visited the farms, he just wanted to get the money from the rents. To collect the rents, he had a manager who lived near the farms. This manager was probably in the same social class as the people who worked the farms, it's just that he had some shrewd way of getting this manager job. He collected these exorbitant rents, and padded his pockets nicely.
Something happens, and this distant landowner hears that his manager is doing a bad job. So the landowner sends a telegram, and in the telegram he says, I hear you're doing a bad job, and I just don't want to bother messing with you, I'm firing you. As you can imagine, the manager gets very anxious. He's about to lose his livelihood, and all the farmers, by the way, hate him. Everyone in the entire farming community hates him, the rent collector. He's about to lose his way of making a living, he's going to be impoverished, and he's going to continue to be hated. No one is going to support him.
So the manager comes up with a plan. Now, the plan is different from the plan that I would have come up with. What I would do is, I would go to the farmers, and make them give me money. I would say, You owe a hundred jars of olive oil, or whatever, and you need to make at least a partial payment, so give me 10 jars. I would collect all the money that I could, and then I would've gone to the Cayman Islands and retired.
But the manager doesn't do that; he doesn't get money. What he does is, he visits all of these farmers, and he goes on a forgiveness spree. He forgives debt, forgives debt, forgives debt. And these bills were huge. He had something like power of attorney -- the lawyers hadn't found out he'd been fired yet -- so he goes to each of the farmers, and cuts their bills in half. And now, these farmers, who had been buried in debt that they could never even imagine getting out from under, now they are thinking, maybe I can pay this off!
The result? Now the farmers love the manager. The manager does this, farm after farm after farm. He goes on this crazy forgiveness spree, and he builds relationships with all of these people. Relationships of gratitude and love, because he's gone on this forgiveness spree.
The landowner shows up on the scene. He looks at what this manager has done, and he commends him, not for the fact that the manager is dishonest, but he commends the manager for his cleverness, for his shrewdness. It's sort of like at the beginning of a mystery novel, when the investigator walks into the bank and sixty billion dollars in gold is missing from the bank vault. The investigator stands back, and says, "Wow. That robber was really clever." It's sort of like that -- commending the shrewdness, the cleverness, not necessarily commending the dishonesty.
After telling this story, Jesus issues a lament. I think that the lament is the crux of this entire passage. After he tells this story about the shrewd manager with his back against the wall, discovering a way out of his dilemma, Jesus says, "The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light."
This is what I think Jesus meant by this lament: The part of us that is concerned about our physical well-being, the part of us that watches the size of our portfolio, the part of us that gets anxious about the dropping housing market -- that part of us is more shrewd than the spiritual part of us.
If I lose my job, if I see the housing market falling, if I watch the tumultuous stock market, I get anxious. I know something's wrong. I try and think of some way to get out of the situation, some way to fix the problem. Or if I go to the doctor and I get a scary diagnosis, and my physical well-being is in jeopardy, I get anxious, my blood pressure goes up, I have to do something about the situation. I try to figure out how to make it better, how to change. That part of me is really paying attention; it's shrewd.
And yet, I can live my life in a way that's killing me spiritually, day after day after day, and not know it. Not pay attention. I can be in a relationship that's killing my soul; I can be in a job that's killing my soul; I can have an addiction that's killing my soul. I can have a relationship with my material possessions, with my desire for more, that's killing my soul, and not even know it. That is what Jesus is lamenting.
Jesus is saying, you pay such close attention to your physical well-being, but you're not awake when it comes to your soul! If the value of my house dropped 50%, I would be very anxious. I would be very awake. But, if my soul withered by 50%, I might not even notice.
So wake up. Make choices that will bring you alive. Start by paying attention to your relationship with your stuff. Use your money, use your possessions, use your things in ways that bring you alive; in ways that deepen your relationships with other people, like the manager in the parable did. Use your stuff in ways that help heal the world.
If you do that, you will become more alive. The ‘children of light’ part of you will grow. Pay attention to that part of your being. Allow that part of your being to have a voice. You can do it in grand ways financially, but you can also do it in small ways. He or she who is faithful in little, Jesus says, will be trusted with much. Every day, you make choices; little, tiny choices, that can either bring you more alive, or deaden you.
Take tipping, for example. Tipping at the end of the meal -- it's a small thing. It can either be just a simple business transaction, or it can be a way of engendering relationship. A means of thanking your server. Either way, it's not going to matter to your bottom line whether you're a stingy tipper or a generous tipper, but it will matter to your soul. If it is done as a generous gift to someone who is working really hard to make ends meet -- you know, when I'm wearing my clerical collar I always tip generously, but it would mean more to my soul if I were a generous tipper all the time... Tipping -- it's this lovely dance that we get to have whenever we go out to eat. It's a little thing.
Paying taxes. In paying taxes, we participate in this remarkable social dance. All of us are paying taxes to support this community where we all live. And we can either do it stingily, begrudgingly, or we can do it wholeheartedly. It's really not going to change the amount we pay, at least not enough to affect our bottom line. But it will impact our souls.
And, it's not just in how we deal with our money. It's in little actions -- not just with money, but all different kinds of actions. Driving in a car is an amazing dance. Just think of it; millions of people weaving in and out all over the globe in this dance. You can either elbow your way across the dance floor, or you can be gracious through the dance. It's not going to change what time you arrive at your destination all that much. But, it will change the state of your soul by the time you get to your destination.
These little things... how you use your tongue. How you talk, daily, in conversations. Do you speak in ways that build people up? Or do you speak in ways that tear people down, perhaps not even intentionally? I pay more attention to my checkbook than I do to my speech, and that is what grieves Jesus. I'm more shrewd, I'm more careful, I'm more attentive in the business side of my life, than I am in the soul side of my life, in those daily little choices.
That's the good news -- that the crux of the matter is in the daily little choices. This is not rocket science. You can change the shape of your soul, the state of your soul, just by paying attention to the daily little choices, and allowing the ‘child of light’ side of you to have a stronger voice. To pay attention; to be shrewd, and to be careful. And if you do, in those daily little choices, grand things will happen, and the kingdom of Heaven will dawn. Amen.