The Power of Humility

Text: Luke 18:9-14

Focus: humility

Function: to foment humility.

⁹He also told this parable to some who trusted in themselves that they were righteous and regarded others with contempt: ¹⁰“Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. ¹¹The Pharisee, standing by himself, was praying thus, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves, rogues, adulterers, or even like this tax collector. ¹²I fast twice a week; I give a tenth of all my income.’ ¹³But the tax collector, standing far off, would not even lift up his eyes to heaven but was beating his breast and saying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner!’ ¹⁴I tell you, this man went down to his home justified rather than the other, for all who exalt themselves will be humbled, but all who humble themselves will be exalted.”

This parable addresses the sin of self-righteousness.

If we were to put a positive spin on the parable, we could say that it is a call for us to be humble. The power of humility is that it brings us to salvation.

Humility seems to me to be a difficult subject to preach on. I think it might be because I wrestle so much with my own pride. But I keep reminded you that that there are three things that God wants from us. God wants us to be active justice makers. God wants us to be happy about mercy shown to others, and God wants us to walk with God in humility.

Don’t be proud of yourself.

Specifically, don’t be proud of your own self-righteousness.

For some, theologically, this is a call to grace. Theologically, we were taught that since God is perfect, God is separate, or Holy and therefore, it is impossible for us to purchase our own redemption. The doctrine presupposes the concept of original sin. Somehow we have to reconcile that theological statement with the fact that when God finished creation, God called it good.

What I mean is this, God believes in us. God believes in humanity. God, we teach, created humanity specifically for the purpose of fellowship and companionship.

God, we teach, and I believe, is love.

Apparently, the Pharisee, a religious leader, believed that since he was as obedient as possible to all the commands of scripture, God must be forced to love him more.

The tax collector, instead, believed, or hoped for, our counts on, the mercy of God to save him.

He humbles himself. Instead of comparing himself to others and therefore justifying himself -in his own eyes- he acknowledges the fact that he is a sinner.

I call myself a liberal theologian. But one of the concepts from liberal theology that I reject is the idea that it is wrong to use the word sinner since when God created us God called us good.

And I understand the refusal to use that term, but then I come to this parable and I see the man who was justified before God, according to Jesus, was the person who self-identified as a sinner instead of as a righteous person.

“Self-identified” is the salient term here.

You have heard the statement, which I reject, Love the sinner, hate the sin.

But I would change it drastically to say, love the sinner -which includes myself since God loves me- and hate my own sin.

But, in order to keep it palatable to my liberal friends, I would say, Love everyone, hate my own sins. (But, forgive them since they are also chances for us to learn and to grow.)

The terms “Sin and sinners” seem pejorative and they aren’t mentioned in this passage. I attached the word sin to the concept of pride which makes us stumble and fall.

Sin is an ugly word to us. But the word actually means, to miss the mark. When we sin, we miss the mark.

It is important to understand this because our failures do not mean that God doesn’t help us. Our failures are opportunities for us to grow and to learn. If we stop growing and learning, we shrivel up and die.

The Pharisee missed the mark by trusting in his practices of piety to save him instead of having a heart that was humbly listening to its conscience and the leading of the Holy Spirit inside of him.

And the problem that I find is that pride often is used for me to justify myself, just like the Pharisee.

I love science and the mixture of religion and science. I can defend evolution and the Christian faith without any inconsistencies.

So I get proud of the fact that I am not like those people who reject science. I do the same with climate change. And don’t let me get started on my politics. I am proud and deeply opinionated about my positions and don’t leave room for people to have opposing views.

Pride, when we use it to think that we are better than others, leads us to sin. It keeps us from loving them as God wants us to.

I grew up in an era when housing was red-lined and black people could not move into specific neighborhoods. I remember the show “All in the Family” doing an episode on it and my dad just casually explained it, as if it was a natural thing, “those kind of people lower the property value of our houses so we have to keep them out of our neighborhoods.”

My dad didn’t think anything was sinister about that kind of prejudice against a race of people.

So, I accepted it as natural myself. And then I learned why black people bought huge expensive cars when they lived in the ghetto. Part of it had to do with financing terms on luxury vehicles, but most of it was because they couldn’t use their homes as symbols of prestige, like we can be guilty of, so they used their cars.

And through that, I learned of the sin of red-lining.

And now, I feel l superior to those who don’t see it my way.

God, be merciful to me, a sinner, is the only thing I can pray when my mind, and my opinions get in the way of the fact that they person who holds a different view than me might simply be a person who has also missed the mark, just like me.

I hope that wasn’t political, because my point is just how arrogant and divisive political views can be. God has called us to humbly listen to and respect the viewpoints of others. It is only through that process that we can bear fruit as the kind of peacemakers and believers Jesus has asked us to be.

Here is the thing about humility. It leads us to honest self-examination. But don’t get proud of the fact that you can do it.

For me, honest self-examination is a result of my prayer life. Especially if I have a difficulty that I am praying about. God is often working on my own heart and my own attitudes to see of I will practice this principle of walking before God in humility.

I didn’t have a lot of success with conflict resolution during my 35 years of ministry. If someone came to me with a complaint about someone else, which was often, Instead of taking a side between two people, I would seek for them to see how their own pride might be contributing to the conflict.

Conflict resolution between two people as a preacher was a no win situation since I wont take sides and neither side is happy.

So, the only thing I can do in preaching against pride is to help guide people into a thoughtful prayer and contemplative life, I believe this places us in a spot where the Holy Spirit can temper our pride and get through to the new way of living to which Jesus calls us.

So practice self-examination. It leads us to humility and that can deliver us from pride.

But I caution you, when you practice self-examination, to be as gracious to yourself as you are to others.

Remember, Jesus loves us and is living inside of us. His Spirit is there to help is see our own arrogance and cause us to love others the way Jesus loves them.

So, let us practice humility, it brings us to the place where we hear the Holy Spirit speaking and that gives us the source of power to love others as we love ourselves.

For the Least of These

Text: Luke 18:1-8 The Message

Focus: justice

Function: to help people seek justice

^1-3Jesus told them a story showing that it was necessary for them to pray consistently and never quit. He said, “There was once a judge in some city who never gave God a thought and cared nothing for people. A widow in that city kept after him: ‘My rights are being violated. Protect me!’

^4-5“He never gave her the time of day. But after this went on and on he said to himself, ‘I care nothing what God thinks, even less what people think. But because this widow won’t quit badgering me, I’d better do something and see that she gets justice—otherwise I’m going to end up beaten black-and-blue by her pounding.’”

^6-8Then the Master said, “Do you hear what that judge, corrupt as he is, is saying? So what makes you think God won’t step in and work justice for his chosen people, who continue to cry out for help? Won’t he stick up for them? I assure you, he will. He will not drag his feet. But how much of that kind of persistent faith will the Son of Man find on the earth when he returns?”

This is one of those parables that has two meanings and two applications.

It is introduced with a phrase about the fact that we shouldn’t give up in our prayer even though it seems as if God isn’t listening because it is taking a long time for an answer.

And, it is concluded with a thought provoking question, by Jesus, directed at perhaps even us, His disciples of 2,000 years later. The question reverts back to the introduction to the passage when He speaks of the need for consistent prayer with Jesus wondering out loud of when He return there will be that kind of faith in the disciples.

Do we have a persistent faith? It appears that Jesus wants us to ask ourselves that question.

So, one meaning, and the reason why Jesus tells the story, is Jesus provoking us to a persistent faith.

But inside of that meaning is Jesus’ statement in verses 6-8 when he says that if unjust judges can get around to giving justice finally, then how much more will God, who actually cares about justice, do something about injustice on your behalf?

So, let us put the story in the context of the relevant Jewish experience in that time that marked the difference between the common era and before.

That being the incarnation of Jesus. But I use common era and before common era when I talk about times and dates since we are not the only religion on the planet. The prophet Micah said that God, while we love mercy and seek Justice also wants that kind of humility that respects other peoples and their cultures.

Jesus mentions injustices happening to this woman.

And all of a sudden, He gets the attention of the people because they are living in completely unfair and unjust circumstances. The Romans have a sword at their belly, the cross as punishment for rebellion and their boots on the necks of the people.

And not only that, but the wealthy landowners are collaborating with them and the whole system is designed to milk whatever profit and chance that the poor have to get a better life.

The people are living with injustices happening to them all the time.

And remember, Jesus told His disciples to preach the good news that a new kingdom, a new way of doing things was at hand.

Jesus was talking about people being filled with the Spirit of God and giving up their greed and selfish ambition.

And it was a radical message. And it was political. It was so political that the politicians had Him killed because He was upsetting the status quo.

Jesus, like many other times, speaks to the human condition that they are facing at the time and it appeals to their senses that there is a new way of doing things and they do not have to be oppressed by the wealthy any longer.

In the story, Jesus promises them that God is indeed listening, watching and will ultimately judge on behalf of the poor and the oppressed.

Please God, let us not be part of the oppressors, that is one of my consistent prayers.

I don’t know what the judgment for the oppressor will be. I have often said that Jesus is Lord of both the oppressed and the oppressor. But woe to the oppressor! Jesus promises that God will give justice on behalf of those who are abused.

And He opens and closes the story with the reminders that we are to keep on praying earnestly, and that we are to ponder if we have given up faith and hope, or if we are still seeking the justice that God has for the world.

He is asking us to live by faith. Live by faith in the justice and the mercy of God. Well, “the mercy” isn’t mentioned in this passage, except the assumption that God is always benevolent and merciful.

God calls us to persistently have faith in God’s justice for the world.

We sing the hymn, “This is my Father’s World” and there is a line in there that I love: “And tho the wrong seems oft so strong, God is the ruler yet.”

In the story, we are both called to persistent faith in prayer and reminded that God is also committed to the justice that we seek.

And the call to action that we have in this passage is to be consistent in prayer. God is faithful, Jesus tells us and God cares about the suffering of the oppressed. And God will indeed rule against the oppressor, if not now, then when it is time to get our reward in heaven.

And I hope that prayer is a beneficial process for you. James 5:17 says that Elijah was human, just like us. Nothing special about him, and God was faithful in answering his prayers. We should rest in God’s answer to ours.

So, I rest on God’s promise of justice. It is the promise of justice on behalf of all who call out to God for it. Oftentimes the ones who need justice are what Jesus refers to as the least of these. The prisoner. The refugee. The Aslymn seeker at our border, people of color who are abused by the system. We often think less, and are told to think less of these people. We hear some of them derogatorily called “illegal,” but God promises to answer their prayers. We need to be on the side of the oppressed, not the oppressor. But those who are marginalized are the least of these, and Jesus said that whenever we care for the least of these, we care for Him. And when we ignore them, we ignore Him and lose our reward. It is serious stuff we are talking about here.

I don’t understand how God can be love and forgive as He commands us to forgive. I don’t understand how God’s justice will and does work. But I believe that God can sort it all out and be fair to all of God’s children.

The parable of the rich man and Lazarus might help us understand. Lazarus’ never expresses faith in God, but is comforted in heaven while the rich man suffers. I don’t know how God will be and is fair.

I don’t know. But when I ponder it, it reminds me of my own call by God to do justice.

Let us seek the justice that God so desires.

He is Faithful

 

Text: 2 Timothy 2:8-15

Focus: Faithfulness

Function: to help people see the promise we have that God will keep us

⁸Remember Jesus Christ, raised from the dead, a descendant of David—that is my gospel, ⁹for which I suffer hardship, even to the point of being chained like a criminal. But the word of God is not chained. ¹⁰Therefore I endure everything for the sake of the elect, so that they may also obtain the salvation that is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory. ¹¹The saying is sure:

If we have died with him, we will also live with him;
¹²if we endure, we will also reign with him;
if we deny him, he will also deny us;
¹³if we are faithless, he remains faithful—
he cannot deny himself.

¹⁴Remind them of this, and warn them before the Lord that they are to avoid wrangling over words, which does no good but only ruins those who are listening. ¹⁵Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved by him, a worker who has no need to be ashamed, rightly explaining the word of truth.

Well, I remember Bible College and Seminary. They drilled that last verse into us, and rightly so.

Everyone needs scripture with imperative commands, especially preachers because in response to the love that we have for God, everyone needs something to do.

I love the stories of how Jesus trained the apostles. He sent them out two by two right at the beginning of the ministry and he gave them a chance to succeed by the power of the Holy Spirit on their own.

It was Jesus empowering them that gave them the onus to spur on toward greater and greater things.

God, I believe, wants to do the same thing in us.

So we learned this verse and I apply it.

I take it to mean that it is my job to continually study and be enriched myself by the Scriptures so that I can continue to grow.

And I have grown a lot. I have grown a lot even since I have come here to be your pastor.

God calls us to growth in God’s love, grace and power. We move line upon line and precept upon precept as we continue to seek out the salvation that God is providing us through the knowledge of Jesus’ death and resurrection.

Starting at verse 11 of our text, we have a quote that was a common saying, apparently among the early church. It appears to be a song, or a poem.

And it contains promises and warnings.

Let us consider them:

If we have died with him.

That is the question that precludes our Christian growth. Dying to self because of the example of Jesus’ own death and resurrection.

He showed us that even death cannot separate us from the Love of God.

He died in faith, forgiving His murderers and entrusted His own soul to God.

He showed us that we don’t need to seek our own revenge, but to rest in the just actions of the Loving God.

Do we reckon ourselves dead to evil and corruption?

I grew up to hear that meant that we don’t cuss, smoke, drink or chew.

But God has called us to much more. Look again at the example of Jesus as He confronted evil in His day.

God has called us to that same kind of love and forgiveness. It is only when people relax their arms and fists in fight mode and open their arms in charity that we can overcome the evil warlike nature of our human evolution.\

It is the power of the Spirit that calls me to be an anti-racist. God wants us to confront evil.

The Bible says that God created us and called us Good. God believes in humanity and wants humanity to succeed.

And so, Jesus came and showed us how to live and die.

The next line of the poem says that if we endure we will reign with Him.

It speaks of the condition that we have been talking about, the fact that we will endure trials and struggles in our faith. Some of these are tests, but most of them are just the result of living with degrees of brokenness.

The promise is that we will reign with Him. It is the promise of eternal life. It is something that we all sense inside of our spirits and the poem seems to confirm that existence.

And then the poem takes a negative and makes a warning. It is simple: Don’t deny Christ. If we do, then we will face the consequence.

But there is hope!

I love the next line and it is my favorite line from both books written by Paul to Timothy: “If we are faithless, He remains faithful for He cannot deny Himself.”

That line is pregnant with promise. And we can draw conclusions from God’s promises.

There are times when we have doubts, struggles, and our fears get the best of us.

I think the opposite of faith is fear. “If we are faithless” is a result of giving in to our fears and letting circumstances stand in the way of our trust in God’s sovereignty.

And God understands the human condition. I was reading Psalm 103 Saturday morning in my devotions. It says, “For He knows how we are made and He remembers that we are made merely of dust.”

In other words. Our bodies are not eternal. We are frail compared to God. And we can be weak at times. Because of that frailty, we can shrink back in fear.

I have never thought of it before, but Jesus on the cross was an incredible act of bravery to trust that God would indeed raise Him from the dead and that His death would have some sort of meaning.

Bravery in the face of fear. It is a good virtue.

But it doesn’t always happen according to this passage, and the promise is that when we fail, God will still keep us in God’s love because we are God’s children and we belong to God.

To deny us, for God, is for God to deny Himself.

It is important to point out that Jesus died for the sins of the world entire. Everyone is a child of God. And God cannot deny God’s own self since we are part of God’s family.

I love the way the Eastern Orthodox church explains salvation, the prospect of God saving everyone and what that means for people of other religions.

It says in Philippians that every knee shall bow and every tongue, in the original, Willingly, confess that Jesus is Lord.

The Church is the family of God on earth and according to that scripture, at the end of the days when we stand before God everyone will confess Jesus as Lord.

They, and I too, believe that God will reveal Jesus to the world entire and the world entire will accept Him.

The advantage of being the Church, then, is the power of the Holy Spirit to make a change in this world.

There is a contrasting theological position which I also believe. And that is that people, as they read and believe that words of Jesus will apply them and lay down their arms and a day of peace will come.

We sing it in the hymn “We’ve a Story to tell to the Nations” when we sing: “For the darkness will turn to the dawning...”

The hope is that humanity will survive long enough to see this new day dawning.

But the promise is that we are God’s children, believers are part of God’s family and God will never abandon any of God’s own children.

Let us take comfort in that.

The Spirit Moves On

 

Text: 1 Timothy 1:7-14

Focus: How God keeps us in the faith

Function: to help build confidence in the faith.

⁷for God did not give us a spirit of cowardice but rather a spirit of power and of love and of self-discipline.

⁸Do not be ashamed, then, of the testimony about our Lord or of me his prisoner, but join with me in suffering for the gospel, in the power of God, ⁹who saved us and called us with a holy calling, not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace, and this grace was given to us in Christ Jesus before the ages began, ¹⁰but it has now been revealed through the appearing of our Savior Jesus Christ, who abolished death and brought life and immortality to light through the gospel. ¹¹For this gospel I was appointed a herald and an apostle and a teacher, ¹²and for this reason I suffer as I do. But I am not ashamed, for I know the one in whom I have put my trust, and I am sure that he is able to guard the deposit I have entrusted to him. ¹³Hold to the standard of sound teaching that you have heard from me, in the faith and love that are in Christ Jesus. ¹⁴Guard the good deposit entrusted to you, with the help of the Holy Spirit living in us.

Well, there is good news this morning. I hope the sermons are good news every week, for if it isn’t good news, then I don’t believe it is the gospel.

And the good news this morning is that we are on a hiatus from talking about money for a while.

This morning’s message is a message about the hope that we have through the power of the Holy Spirit.

I love the end of verse 12, we sing it in a hymn. “For I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able, to keep that which I have delivered to Him against that day.”

“That day” being the day of judgment. And we have entrusted our souls to the saving grace of God’s mercy proven to us by the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross as He showed us how to live and to die. He lived and died trusting in God. He lived by faith. And He died by faith. He died knowing that God would raised Him from the dead. And therefore, whatever suffering that He had to endure while here on earth, He did as an example to us to live with love for others as the primary direction of our lives regardless of what it costs us.

Paul assures Timothy, and through this assurance, us as well, that on the day of judgment God will take into account the love and sacrifice that we have shown God through the way that we have saved up for ourselves treasures in heaven by living sacrificial lives on behalf of the poor and dispossessed.

We, as believers, let that assurance control our lives as we face hardship and difficulty. We learn from scripture that at times our faith will be tested. God will allow circumstances that are painful distractions from our peace and purpose.

Look at these verses from 1 Peter 4 about trials: ¹²Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery ordeal that is taking place among you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you. ¹³But rejoice insofar as you are sharing Christ’s sufferings, so that you may also be glad and shout for joy when his glory is revealed. ¹⁴If you are reviled for the name of Christ, you are blessed, because the spirit of glory, which is the Spirit of God, is resting on you. ¹⁵But let none of you suffer as a murderer, a thief, a criminal, or even as a mischief maker. ¹⁶Yet if any of you suffers as a Christian, do not consider it a disgrace, but glorify God because you bear this name. ¹⁷For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; if it begins with us, what will be the end for those who do not obey the gospel of God?
¹⁸And “If it is hard for the righteous to be saved,
    what will become of the ungodly and the sinner?”

¹⁹Therefore, let those suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust their lives to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good.

It is almost as if it is a promise that our faith will be tested. And the testing of my faith has most often been in dealing with forgiveness and healing in conflict.

I have found tests most often in conflict when either I or a person who situates themselves as an opponent to me lets pride get in the way and we cannot resolve differences.

Or, in situations of health when it fails and we wonder where the ancient miracles that happened in the time of Jesus are today and we hope for the impossible.

Sometimes, we have seen God do the impossible and all we can do is sit back and say with grateful hearts: “Thank You!”

But then there are the times when God gives us the strength to overcome in the middle of bad circumstances.

Let me re-read the last verse from the text in 1 Peter: ¹⁹Therefore, let those suffering in accordance with God’s will entrust their lives to a faithful Creator, while continuing to do good.

At the tomb of Lazarus, when Jesus saw the sorrow of Mary and Martha, His friends, He wept. He is in tune with human suffering.

I don’t believe that God causes it, but there are ways that we suffer for the Kingdom that God allows.

It feels like suffering when we are called to forgive someone who has harmed us.

The frustrations of our vocation can feel like suffering. Especially if our vocation is something where we are doing some good and contributing to society.

We pray and God promises to give us the strength to face the struggles of each and every day.

If we are suffering, it seems as if there is a promise that we can find by resting in God.

I love Isaiah 40: They that wait upon the Lord will renew their strength…

I think maybe the greatest example of forgiveness during suffering happened right before all of humanity on the cross when Jesus, as God, looked down on the people who had crucified Him -His murderers- and forgave them.

At that point, I am afraid that I would be crying out for revenge.

But vengeance belongs to God. And God in God’s mercy will perform just vengeance on behalf of every victim.

Penal substitutionary theology teaches that on the Cross Jesus suffered the punishment for all of sin of all of mankind at that moment.

2 Corinthians says, He who knew no sin became sin for us that we might become just in Christ.

I believe that this justice that overcomes us is a result of the presence of the Holy Spirit in our lives. That is the promise from today’s scripture.

I believe I mentioned before how during a period of rebellion from Christ I developed a racial bigotry.

And one of the first things I noticed when I was restored back to Christ was an overwhelming sense of love for that same racial group.

I had not consciously thought about it, but I noticed a change, a prompting, a move by the Spirit of God to love others bubbling out toward them.

The last verse of our text is this: Guard the good treasure entrusted to you with the help of the Holy Spirit.

The good treasure, I believe in the context of this passage is the assurance that God will keep us in the faith until we die. God is faithful and we now belong to God. Nothing, we believe, is greater than God and God promises to keep us safe in the day of judgment.

And it happens by walking by faith through the power of the Holy Spirit. We will struggle at times. But living by faith is a chance for God to show God’s love and provision for us.

Let us rest in God’s peace for us.

Listening to Love

 

Text: Luke 16:14-15, 19-31

Focus: Charity

Function: To help people listen to their conscience and be generous

¹⁴The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him. ¹⁵So he said to them, “You are those who justify yourselves in the sight of others, but God knows your hearts, for what is prized by humans is an abomination in the sight of God.

¹⁹“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and who feasted sumptuously every day. ²⁰And at his gate lay a poor man named Lazarus, covered with sores, ²¹who longed to satisfy his hunger with what fell from the rich man’s table; even the dogs would come and lick his sores. ²²The poor man died and was carried away by the angels to be with Abraham. The rich man also died and was buried. ²³In Hades, where he was being tormented, he lifted up his eyes and saw Abraham far away with Lazarus by his side. ²⁴He called out, ‘Father Abraham, have mercy on me, and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, for I am in agony in these flames.’ ²⁵But Abraham said, ‘Child, remember that during your lifetime you received your good things and Lazarus in like manner evil things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony. ²⁶Besides all this, between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.’ ²⁷He said, ‘Then I beg you, father, to send him to my father’s house— ²⁸for I have five brothers—that he may warn them, so that they will not also come into this place of torment.’ ²⁹Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the prophets; they should listen to them.’ ³⁰He said, ‘No, father Abraham, but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’ ³¹He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the prophets, neither will they be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’ ”

I suppose that the salient verse in the passage is the last one, , and I will paraphrase it to expose what I believe to be an hidden meaning: “If they won’t listen to the scriptures, they won’t listen to me when I raise from the dead.”

I titled the sermon, Listening to Love based on that last verse. They won’t listen to the record that is shown them in the scripture that the greatest commandment is to love our neighbor as ourselves. Jesus and Paul both say that this command, to love our neighbor as ourself, will fulfill all the law and prophet’s messages.

You have to understand that throughout the Gospels, Jesus employs literary license in the form of parables and stories to illustrate eternal truths.

The point of the lesson is to open our hearts to those who are hurting when we have the opportunity and resources to help them.

The other point of the story is that ignoring the plight of the poor will bring us into a place of God’s judgment.

I mention literary license in hyperbole because this passage is not a passage about hell.

The OT does not have any record of anyone going to hell.

History shows that during times of great oppression and bondage, literature arises that is called apocalyptic. It often has violent images of the oppressors being beaten back or suffering eternal torment for the pain that they caused to innocents. During the time when Jesus walked the earth that started this common era of human understanding, throughout that time, there were many references to hell and destruction against the Roman occupying forces and their collaborators.

Jesus picks up on that populist idea with a “what if torture in hell were real?” story.

Jesus said, then the rich, who are oppressing us will get there eventual judgment.

I suppose this passage is where the Roman Catholic Church gets the genesis of the doctrine of purgatory from. And the idea was and can be appealing to people who are suffering with no recourse against their oppressors.

Adequate punishment might be a comforting thought. When I think of the 80 million or so people who died in WWII, I think to myself, If God is just, then Hitler will be punished for war crimes in torment with enough time sufficient to offset the pain that he caused. After all, God is just and can figure out a way to make it the right amount of punishment for what he did.

But then, the doctrine of hell that has arisen in the Christian religion, says that hell is eternal and the punishment is eternal. Eventually he will have paid back in suffering for all that he caused, even if it is a million years per life that was lost, at the end of that time, eternity will still be beginning.

That is extreme and it doesn’t reconcile with what God commands.

As a matter of fact. God commands us to forgive our enemies. If God commands us to forgive, then God must also want to forgive God’s enemies. God is God and can do what God wants, but God gave us a sense of justice and we do not believe that God will be hypocritical.

So, the doctrine of hell is confused by mankind’s own limited understanding of God’s grace and need for revenge against oppressors.

And I bring all that up to state that this is not a passage about hell. It doesn’t validate hell, it just captures a populist idea of the time in order to get the point across to be generous with your resources if you are rich.

And the Bible describes a rich man as a person with a gold ring. I have one. So, compared to the rest of the world, we are rich here in the United States.

The passage is introduced with the statement: The Pharisees who were lovers of money were ridiculing Him.

Remember, the love of money, not money, is the progenitor of all sorts of evil.

What is the sin of the rich man? Well, the context must be that he loved money, but it was proven by the fact that he ignored the poverty that was literally at his doorstep.

It is kind of like that line from the song, “Blowing in the Wind” when we hear: “How many times can a man turn his eyes and pretend that he just doesn’t see?”

I wish that line were in the Bible, but alas, it comes from a different piece of our common literature.

Because the rich man refused to see the plight of the poor, because he refused to acknowledge the plight of the poor, God judged him and if there is or was a hell, would send him there.

But again, this is not about hell but about the way we treat the poor. Do we judge them because they are dirty and filthy? Do we judge them for being lazy? Or stupid? By the way, a lot of poverty is created by the misfortune of having a medical problems and an inadequate social safety net to care for those people who are just simply unlucky, not lazy stupid, filthy or worthless.

I find it symbolic that the rich man is not named. But Lazarus is given a name.

Jesus is indicting a class of people who refuse to help others. I believe it is a scary thing to disobey God and judge the poor.

By the way, Jesus isn’t judging all the rich. There are many who generous and caring. Dolly Parton comes to mind.

The rich man, metaphorically asks Jesus to let him go back and warn the rest of the uncaring that God isn’t pleased with their actions and Jesus gives a profound answer.

He tells them that God has made the command to love one another pretty obvious in the OT law. And when the Jewish people didn’t get that message, God send prophets to warn them to care for the least of these and to stop their oppression. They didn’t listen to the command to love.

If only the rich man had listened to love, he would have seen the suffering around him. He could have been saved.

May we listen to love and see others they way Jesus wants us to see them.

Master Jesus

 

Text: Luke 16:1-13

Focus: wealth

Function: to help people focus on Jesus instead of wealth

16:¹Then 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. ²So 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.’ ³Then 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. ⁴I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ ⁵So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ ⁷Then 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.’ ⁸And 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. ⁹And 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.

¹⁰“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. ¹¹If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? ¹²And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? ¹³No 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.”

I confess, I have been pondering this sermon the entire week and I am not very sure what to do with the text.

Every other time I have considered preaching the parable, I have ignored it because it doesn’t fit with my theology of right and wrong. But then, my theology of right and wrong is based on our economic system, and not the one designed by Jesus in the early church or close to the one designed by Moses in the OT. Both are forms of heavily mixed capitalism. Almost socialism, or it would be called socialism by those who use the word pejoratively against social policies designed to life the poor out of poverty.

So, I avoided it. I am not going to get political, this is a safe space for people to find Jesus and He is open to all, both right and left. I remember that it takes a right and a left wing for a bird to fly.

So, It is obvious what Jesus says the meaning of the parable is, you cannot serve God and money at the same time. The word translated wealth in the NRSV is literally the word for money.

I believe that the question that Jesus wants His listeners to ask themselves, at this point, is who it is they serve.

Do you serve money or Jesus? There are many ways to answer that question.

We need money to survive. The more money we have, the easier it is for us to survive. We need enough money to survive and we need enough money to survive, as believers, in the US culture.

There is nothing inherently evil about money. It is the love of money that is the root of all kinds of sin.

Placing money over Jesus is the sin that Jesus wants us to root out from our lives.

If we make Jesus the Master of our lives then money is not the measure of success.

And we get all that understanding from the last two verses in our text where Jesus explains the parable.

And the reason why I have been pondering the parable all week is because the conclusion that Jesus makes us draw from the parable seems to be contrary to the lesson learned by either the master, or the incapable, and then corrupt, steward.

The story goes like this. The steward is an incapable manager and the master hears about it from other sources and wants to fire him.

When he informs him that he must prove his innocence or be fired, the steward, who so far has been inept turns to corruption to solve his problem.

He is too proud to beg and to weak to do physical labor to survive. And remember, everyone needs enough money to survive. It wasn’t wrong for him to want to care for his needs after he is fired.

I think it was wrong for him to cheat his master out of money in order to survive. But that is what he did. He went to his master’s debtors and greatly reduced their bills so that after he gets fired, one of them, or all of them in turn, will help him out and give him charity.

And this is the part of the parable that used to be hard for me to understand. Instead of condemning him for his cheating, Jesus -and the master- praise him for his shrewdness. It is almost like Jesus understands the plight of the poor and the compromises they have to make in order to survive.

I have to remember that when I see people begging on the street. We are commanded to ignore judgment of the reasons for their predicament and care for them.

I have to tell you that the Holy Spirit promises to help us understand scripture. I wish that I had not avoided that help in years past and tackled this passage in my sermons.

Then I would have come to that conclusion about the poor and would have been less judgmental.

Let me digress a second. It goes to a problem that we have with Biblical interpretation.

We approach scripture with a lens from our own experiences and past understandings.

We don’t often ask for a new and a fresh understanding even though the Bible says that our faith grows line upon line and precept upon precept. It grows gradually. And it shouldn’t stop growing until we die.

That is why we Brethren are called people of the Book. The book being the Bible, of course.

We recognize that we continually are led and fed by the Holy Spirit as we search the scripture. That is why we spend so much time during our worship service every week listening to an explanation of the Holy Christian Scriptures.

Anyway, I had avoided preaching this passage because I was uncomfortable with Jesus supporting the idea of cheating someone else.

Well, technically He doesn’t. He praises him, but then tells us the be faithful in little things and God will make us faithful in much. He does include the hard work ethic that is important to our economic success. But the parable makes room for misfortune, bad management and bad luck.

I define sin as anything that keeps us from loving our neighbor as ourselves, or loving God. And cheating someone else is certainly a form of harm.

Of course, the master wasn’t upset with the cheating, as a matter of fact, he praises the servant who cheated him for being shrewd. It is almost as if he wishes he hadn’t fired him.

And I was not okay with telling people that it is okay to cheat.

And yet, this man was about to be thrown into abject poverty. He had no recourse except the generosity of those with whom he collaborated.

I avoided the passage based on my understanding of the theology instead of letting the passage create my theology. I let my theology create the passage.

I learned a lesson in that for the way that I try to preach, keep it on the task of the scripture.

And again, the task of this scripture has to do with our relationship with money.

And all I can say is we need to take seriously the statement, you can’t serve both.