Reading: Luke 16:1-13
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for 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. “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Reflection There is a lot going on here, and it is a bit hard to make sense of it all. The first nine verses talk about dishonesty in a weird way. In the beginning, the rich man tells his manager that he has to let him go because of his dishonesty, but at the end of the parable, he praises the manager for acting shrewdly. It was the verses that follow that caught my attention. It seems to me that Jesus is telling us that we are to handle the gifts that God has entrusted to us in ways that honor God. Verse 13 is really the key verse in this text. We cannot serve God and wealth. It doesn’t mean that we cannot appreciate money and material things on some level, but we cannot serve and worship both God and wealth. If our lives become so focused on wanting what we don’t have, as in striving to acquire more and more of what we don’t need, simply for the sake of having more money, and more stuff, we are no longer living into who God calls us to be. God calls us to love God and love neighbor, and as long as there are people in this world who do not have enough; enough food, enough clean water, enough housing, enough health care, enough resources to have dignified lives, there is a problem. God has provided enough resources on this earth so that every person could have enough. It is the distribution that is the problem. 10% of the worlds’ people own 85% of the worlds’ wealth. That means the bottom 90% have to share the remaining 15%. This is certainly not of God, but a result of human sin and greed. As people of God, we are called to work for a more just world; a world that more closely resembles God’s kingdom, where everyone has enough. --Tormod Svensson Prayer God of justice and love, help us to care more diligently about the well-being of our neighbors; those next door, those across our country and those across the world. Help us to work for a more just world, where everyone has enough. Help us to be less concerned about our own wealth and material goods, and more about faithfully serving you. Amen.
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