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St. Mark's Lutheran Church

 

  2013

 Sermons



Dez 29 - Never "back to normal"

Dez 29 - Remember!

Dez 24 - The Great Exchange

Dez 22 - Embarrassed by the Great Offense

Dez 19 - Suitable for its time

Dez 15 - Patience?

Dez 13 - The Life of the Servant of Christ Jesus

Dez 8 - Is "hope" the right word?

Dez 1 - In God's Good Time

Nov 24 - Prophet, Priest, and King

Nov 17 - On that Day

Nov 10 - Persistent Hope

Nov 3 - To sing the forever song

Nov 3 - Witness of all the saints

Okt 27 - Is there some other Gospel?

Okt 25 - With a voice of singing

Okt 20 - Are you a consecrated disciple?

Okt 13 - No Escape?

Sep 22 - Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Sep 15 - Good News in Every Corner

Sep 8 - The Cost of Discipleship

Sep 1 - For Ourselves, or for God?

Aug 25 - Who, Me?

Aug 18 - The Cloud of Witnesses

Aug 11 - Eschatology and Ethics

Aug 4 - Possessed

Jul 29 - How long a sermon, how long a prayer?

Jul 21 - Hospitality, and then...

Jul 14 - Held Together

Jul 14 - Disciple or Admirer?

Jul 7 - Go, fish!

Jun 9 - Two Processions

Jun 2 - Inside or Outside?

Mai 30 - On the Way

Mai 26 - What kind of God?

Mai 19 - Come Down, Holy Spirit

Mai 18 - Good Gifts of God

Mai 14 - Not Zero!

Mai 12 - Glory?

Mai 5 - Finding or being found?

Apr 28 - A Heavenly Vision

Apr 21 - Our small acts and Christ's resurrection

Apr 14 - Transformed!

Apr 7 - Give God the Glory

Mrz 31 - Refocused Sight

Mrz 30 - Walls

Mrz 29 - It was Night

Mrz 29 - Today, Paradise

Mrz 28 - To Show God's Love

Mrz 24 - Bridging the Distance

Mrz 17 - The Extravagance of God's Actions

Mrz 10 - Foolish Message or Foolish People?

Mrz 3 - What about you?

Feb 24 - Holy Promises

Feb 18 - God's Word by the Prophet

Feb 17 - Tempted by whom?

Feb 13 - On a New Basis

Feb 10 - On Not Managing God

Feb 3 - Who, me?

Jan 27 - Fulfilled in your hearing

Jan 20 - Where Jesus Is, the Old becomes New

Jan 13 - Called by Name

Jan 6 - Three antagonists, three places, three gifts

Jan 4 - The Teacher


2014 Sermons         
2012 Sermons

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Read: Luke 16:1-13

 

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 22, 2013

The Rev. Kenneth R. Elkin

 

What in the world is Jesus saying here?

This is the most outrageous thing in the Gospels.

Why am I not hearing murmuring in the pews?

How can we just sit so calmly while Jesus seems to be commending dishonesty?

It is remarkable on both counts.

Jesus, what are you saying?

 

The master owns an estate, and hires a manager to run it.

He in turn handles the tenants on the estate, who pay rent through a portion of the crops raised, but they also are expected to fork over something to the manager personally each year and at special occasions as well.

The manager will be criticized only if the demands for the “fees” are unreasonable.

 

Stories of mismanagement get back to the owner, and he calls in the manager.

He is fired on the spot and ordered to turn over the records of accounts.

But then there are several curious things.

First, the manager remains silent, and makes no defense to the owner.

In effect, he is admitting guilt, recognizing that the owner knows the truth and expects obedience, and also that he is not going to get his job back by offering excuses, so he remains silent.

And secondly, the owner has not thrown him into jail!

The master has been unusually merciful to him, a dishonest manager.

 

What is the manager going to do?

He hits upon a plan, that must be carried out quickly, before anyone in the village learns that he has been fired.

He calls in the tenants, one by one, (he can't have them talking to one another about things) and reduces their bills very significantly, in such a way that it appears that he is doing so under the orders of the owner.

And the tenants leave, rejoicing, and there is a great celebration in the village, praising the most generous owner of which they have ever heard.

Then the crooked manager takes the doctored books to the owner, who immediately realizes what the scoundrel has done.

 

What will the owner do?

Now the actions of the manger are of course illegal and could be nullified.

But if he does so, the celebration in the village will turn to gloom and the owner will be cursed.

He chooses instead to be silent, to accept the praise of the villagers, and allow the clever manager to be popular with the folks as well.

It is his choice to do this, out of his generosity, and with a laugh remarks to the manager what a clever fellow he is.

 

There is the story, and then Jesus adds the equally strange conclusion: “the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

 

So Jesus, what are you trying to get through to us?

We're having trouble seeing it, or admitting it.

When Jesus announces that a crisis is upon us, we get confused.

This is because we have grown so comfortable with the notion that Jesus comes to pat us on the back and tell us that everything is OK.

We don't find that in this story.

We're not able to say that we don't want or need change, just a little help.

Sin has us firmly in its grasp; we need more than a little chiropractic adjustment.

Upon whom can we depend in the time of crisis?

It is certainly not ourselves; that is what got the manager into trouble in the first place.

He had a good job and all of his cleverness lost him that job.

He experienced the mercy of the owner several times over:

--in securing the job at the beginning,

--in holding the job as long as he did,

--in not being jailed as he deserved when his first perfidy was discovered

--in not being jailed when is second round of chicanery became known by the owner.

The manager thew himself on the mercy of the owner, and won; it is the only way in which he could have won.

No excuses are sufficient, just “Have mercy, master.”

 

So why does Jesus tell this outrageous story to us, to nice people like us?

Perhaps because, deep down, we know that we are not such nice people.

To measure this, we need only pick a commandment, any commandment, and meditate on it through Luther's explanation in the Small Catechism.

Let's pick on #5 for the moment.

Perhaps we haven't murdered anyone yet today, but have we helped our neighbor in his every need?

No, the answer is no, we haven't.

Don't try to wiggle out of it by talking about good intentions or anything else.

We have not helped our every neighbor in every need.

It is called “sin”, whether we want to hear about it or not.

Remember the story about the man who fell among robbers, was left for dead, and who needed help?

The “good” people passed him by, remember; only the foreigner helped.

And the story about the Pharisee (good, righteous person) and the Tax collector (scoundrel, hated by all) coming to the Temple...remember that it was the scoundrel who was blessed by God.

 

Why would such a nice person like Jesus take such delight in the clever shenanigans of the manager?

Maybe because he is the kind of Savior who is willing to die hanging between two thieves.

It would take that kind of a Savior to see anything loveable about this crooked manager.

And if that is true, then we can give thanks that a Savior like Jesus might see something loveable, something redeemable in scoundrels like us!

There is the Good News of the day.

Oh, we dress up and try to look presentable, but we're still sinners.

Whenever we try the Pharisee's prayer “Thank you Lord that I am not like these other sinners...”, Jesus laughs at our pretentiousness.

When the crisis comes upon us and we are called to account for our stewardship of possessions, people, and the promise of the Gospel, with tremendous anxiety we realize that we have messed it all up badly.

If we huff and puff and come up with a list of excuses, will that change anything? No.

All that we can do is say “Lord, have mercy.,” ...in the confidence that he does.

 

Today Jesus delights in telling a story that seems just outrageous, a story about a rotten little scoundrel.

He tells it to good church people to remind us that we are not as good as we would like to think that we are.

It is a wonderful thing that Jesus tells this story, because Jesus did not come to save good people, but sinners.

So, let  all of us, scoundrels redeemed by Christ, say Amen.

 

Please note: The preceding sermon is provided as a resource for the thought, prayer, and meditation of the members and friends of St. Mark's. It is the residue of a verbal event, and thus it does not have academic footnotes and other details that would be expected in a written document. The writer gladly acknowledges the prior thought and work of many Christians before him.