Last week we started a new sermon series looking at some of the most famous and challenging words of Jesus in Luke’s Gospel. Last week we thought about faith and duty, and over the coming weeks we will listen to Christ’s teaching on such matters as wisdom and prayer, repentance and resurrection, plus his return in glory.
But today we’re looking at Christ’s teaching on wealth and money. In today’s passage the Lord Jesus outlines a right attitude to our worldly goods and possessions. Its quite a tricky passage to unpack – indeed one Bible commentator (Darrell Bock) describes as the most difficult parable in Luke’s Gospel – so let’s pray before I proceed any further!
Some of you will know that I used to work at HM Treasury, as a civil service economist. And my former colleagues will be working hard at the moment, as this year’s Budget approaches – scheduled for Wednesday 26th November.
The Chancellor of the Exchequer, Rachel Reeves, is facing some difficult decisions as she seeks to manage the nations finances and exercise fiscal responsibility. It seems inevitable that taxes will rise – and spending too may be trimmed – as she tries to balance the government’s books.
But financial matters aren’t just a concern to national governments are they? All of us need to decide how much money we need to live on. What income we want to earn. How we should spend whatever wages or benefits we get. And how we should use the possessions we purchase.
And there is no shortage of people seeking to offer us financial advice, are there? For example, the loud voice of popular culture and the mass media encourages us to pursue wealth relentlessly, as the best way to achieve true contentment in life (They call it “retail therapy” don’t they?!).
Our culture encourages us to maximize our income and undertake “conspicuous consumption” to earn social status and respect. This materialist approach to life could be summed up in the phrase: “I shop, therefore I am” or expressed in the mantra: “Money will make you happy!”
But in today’s passage Jesus commends to his first disciples (and to us) a totally different attitude to our money and possessions. An attitude I want to summarise this morning under three headings:
- Firstly, wealth is to be used wisely (v.1-9)
- Secondly, wealth is a test of our trustworthiness (v.10-12)
- And, thirdly, wealth is not to be worshipped (v.13).
Let’s look briefly at each in turn…
Wealth is to be used wisely (v1-9)
Firstly, wealth is to be used wisely. In verses 1 to 9 of our reading Jesus tells a story about a rich man and his manager. This manager seems to have been responsible for managing the rich man’s financial affairs – stewarding his assets you might say. But this manager, this steward, is about to be given his P45! It has come to the rich man’s attention that the steward has been wasting his possessions, so he is about to be laid off.
Confronted by his imminent redundancy and unemployment, the manager considers his options. As we read in verse three: “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg. I know what I’ll do, so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’
He may be unscrupulous, but this manager is certainly shrewd. He may be wasteful with his master’s possessions, but he is definitely worldy wise! How do we know this? Because of what he does next: “He called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ “‘Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied. “The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’ “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’ “‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied. “He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’
In short, although Bible scholars disagree on the details, it seems that this shrewd but unscrupulous manager unilaterally reduced the debts that were owed to his Master. He took it upon himself to apply a 50% reduction to the debt of olive oil his master was owed, and applied a 20% ‘discount’ to the quantity of wheat owed to his boss too!
In so doing, this shrew manager ‘bought’ two friends, two debtors who would be extremely grateful to him for saving them a lot of money. When this manager hit the dole queue in the near future, he would know at least two people willing to do him a favour. It seems this shrewd manager wouldn’t be begging on the streets – or scraping together a living – after all!
Of course, a big surprise comes in verse 8, doesn’t it? Because the master – the rich man – discovers what his unscrupulous manager has been up to. But rather than tear a strip off him, or sack him on the spot, “the master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly”.
Although he’d been a victim of fraud, it seems that the rich master couldn’t help but admire the shrewdness of his manager. He was clearly impressed by the quick thinking and ingenuity of his manager, whose underhand dealings had (you might say) ‘won friends and influenced people’!
If verse 8 is a big surprise, then verse 9 is a real shocker, because even Jesus seems to commend this dishonest manager’s underhand behaviour. For he says: “the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”
It is important to be clear that Jesus is not actually commending this man’s fraud and dishonesty. But like the Master in the parable, Jesus is acknowledging his shrewdness and wisdom. And the lesson he wants Christians to learn is to be equally wise in how we use ourown worldly wealth and possessions.
Like the manager in his story, Jesus wants us to give careful through to how we use our money and possessions – he wants us to use our wealth wisely. But rather than shrewdly using our wealth to secure a comfortable lifestyle – or to pursue pleasure – he wants us to use our wealth to accumulate treasure in heaven. He wants us to use our wealth wisely in such a way as to please God and arouse admiration amongst the angels and saints in the world to come.
So what does this look like in practice? How can we use our money and possessions to accrue treasure in Heaven? Well here are some suggestions:
- How about giving money to mission agencies in the UK and overseas, thereby supporting the spread of the Gospel to those who’ve not yet heard it? As our own Bishop of Chester keeps reminding us, there are 1.5 million people even just in Cheshire who don’t yet know Christ.
- Or how about doing what we all did last week, by donating surplus food to West Cheshire foodbank – or giving surplus clothes to charity shops – helping those on low incomes to be well fed and clothed.
- And thirdly, of course, our very own church continues to rely on our congregation’s generosity. We can’t keep our ministries going, our lights on, or our Parish Share paid without your continued support. We’re still running a deficit on our current account, I’m afraid, so we can’t become complacent.
So whatever the state of our personal bank balance or pension pot, let’s learn a lesson from the shrewd manager and use our wealth wisely. Not to ‘feather our own nest’ or to secure our own financial security – but to advance God’s kingdom, to build Christ’s Church, and to accrue treasure in heaven.
Wealth is a test of our trustworthiness (v.10-12)
After the intriguing parable of the shrewd manager, Luke includes a couple of additional sayings of Jesus, also about our attitude to money. The first of which comes in verses 10 to 12, where Jesus says: “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?
What Jesus seems to be saying here is that worldly wealth is a test of our trustworthiness. With these words Jesus is subtly reminding us that all our worldly goods are on loan. God, not us, is the true owner of everything we possess. All our assets are held on trust from him. One day we will have to leave it all behind. Naked we enter the world and naked we shall leave it.
And so, in the time we have, we are to show the Lord that we are trustworthy stewards. We are to use our God-given possessions responsibly – to serve him and our neighbour, for the relief of suffering and the spread of the Gospel.
The enticing prospect that Jesus lays before us is that if we are trustworthy with worldly wealth, we will be given ‘true riches’ in the world to come. The mind boggles at what this might entail! An abundance of good things will be ours in the coming Kingdom of God if we’re seen to be responsible in the here and now. Worldly wealth, you see, is a test of our trustworthiness.
Wealth is not to be worshipped (v.13)
Thirdly and finally, we come to the last verse in our passage – perhaps the one we find most familiar? Because Jesus says: “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”
If I were to summarise this saying in a sentence it would be this: wealth is not to be worshipped. We are not to make money an idol. We are not to make the accumulation of possessions our principal objective in life. God, not greed, should command our greatest loyalty. Loving the Lord, not the love of money, should be our chief concern.