Gracious God, guide us to seek your Truth: come whence it may, cost what it will, lead where it might. Amen.
“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth.” If I’m honest with you, and I’ll always be honest with you, I don’t have a clue why Jesus told this parable or what he was getting at by commending the actions of this weasel of a manager. The guy is self-serving, conceited, and conniving. He’s a cheat. If this manager asked to be on our Finance Committee, we’d give him a very firm, “Thank you, but we’re not sure that we need your, um, gifts, should used for the finances of the church.” And yet in this story that Jesus tells us the scoundrel is commended for his actions. It’s outrageous and I can’t say that I get it.
You might know that I’ve been teaching preaching at Hood Theological Seminary in Salisbury, North Carolina for three years. Hood is the seminary for the AME-Zion denomination. I’m teaching a class online this semester called “Reading Luke for Preaching,” and to make the class more applicable for the students, and easier on the professor, each week we’re exploring the Gospel text for the upcoming Sunday. All that is to say, I lectured and led a discussion on this passage for two hours this past Friday night. And in preparing for this sermon, I read several commentaries and articles, did some Greek word study, and asked God “What in the world do you want me to do with this?” and the most I can say is “Well, this is a tough one.” One commentator notes that this passage has a “bewildering number of explanations, most of which are dead ends.”
So I’m going to use a liturgical sleight of hand and focus on the Collect. The Collect is that prayer that changes weekly and comes right after the Song of Praise and before the readings. Yes, it’s written “collect,” but pronounced Collect. It’s been a part of Christian worship since the 400s and is a prayer that is intended to gather, or collect, our thoughts and focus our attention on the themes of the season or occasion. And this isn’t only the Collect for Sunday – it’s for the entire week, so I would commend you taking a picture of the prayer or taking the bulletin with you and praying it daily. You’ll notice how the words and phrases will hit you differently throughout the week.
The Collect for this week comes from the Leonine sacramentary – a book of prayers that a priest would use to lead worship. It’s one of the oldest surviving liturgical books and dates to the 400s in Verona, Italy. That’s one of the many things that I love about our Episcopal tradition – the prayers that we use have provided relief and direction for hundreds, or even thousands, of years. Not only does this prayer unite us with our siblings in Christ around the world who are also using this Collect this week, but it unites us across the generations.
The 400s in Northern Italy was a tumultuous time as there were many barbarian invasions during that period that the Leonine sacramentary was being composed and used. And though I suspect that most people in human history would say that they lived during a tumultuous time, I know that’s a sentiment that many of us have right now. We are watching institutions crumble and the fabric of our society is being torn apart; it remains to be seen if we will be able to mend that tear. Wars rage on in Ukraine, Sudan, and Gaza; our economy feels like a roller coaster; and our political system is being overrun with violence and rage. We might not be dealing with literal barbarian invasions, but there certainly a lot of accusations on all sides of exactly that happening.
Given this anxiety, the eternal truths of this Collect seek to give us a sense of peace and hope: “Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure.” Easier said than done though – not to be anxious about earthly things. That’s why this is a prayer, not an exhortation. The Church isn’t telling us to not be anxious; that just makes us anxious about how anxious we are. No, it’s a prayer, a plea, that God’s peace would meet our anxiety and give us a sense of relief.
I was talking with someone recently who noted that a lot of people right now are disappointed with the Church’s response to the historical moment we find ourselves in. Some think the Church should only focus on things heavenly and ignore earthly things. In other words, that the Church ignore politics and only talk about personal piety. That’s not what the prayer asks though – we don’t pray for blinders, just not to become fixated on earthly things. Others however think that the Church isn’t doing enough or saying enough; they expect the Church to give more attention to earthly things, particularly things like the environment, racism, and Christian nationalism.
Now I don’t pretend to know what the perfect balance is, but I do think that the wisdom of this Collect has something to speak into this moment: longing to love things heavenly while not being anxious about earthly things. That doesn’t mean we ignore matters of justice or that we turn a blind eye of the oppression of others. But it also means that we, as Christians, keep the main thing the main thing. It means we remember that the stories told in the headlines isn’t the only story.
This Collect reminds us that tumultuous times are nothing new. Most every generation that has ever lived has seen itself on the precipice of history’s turning, thinking that this present moment is the hinge on which human history will turn. A bit of historical humility would go a long way. Because if we convince ourselves that human history depends on us, well, my goodness, that’s a crushing burden. The Collect ends the way that many of our prayers do: “through Jesus Christ our Lord.” That’s the enduring truth to hold fast to while we are placed among things that are passing away – that Jesus Christ is Lord, not Wall Street, not Caesar, not Congress, not the President, not our theology, not even the Church. There is one Lord, and he is the one who live briefly, died violently, and rose unexpectedly. At the end of history, that is the only truth that will remain standing, it is the only story that provides relief from the anxieties of life, it is the only way that gives us hope instead of despair.
So what does it mean to hold fast to these truths? Well, it’s a question of our diet; what we consume. How much time do we spend reading, watching, or listening to content that is intended to enrage and divide us? How long is our list of “non-negotiables” for which we are willing to cancel others? How many ditches are we willing to die in? A lot of the carnage in our society is due to the fact that the answer, for many of us, is “way too many.”
I’m not saying that we need to pay less attention to the news, but maybe we do. Or, at least, make sure we’re spending at least as much time being quiet, praying, serving, dancing, and playing. Our society teaches us that life is about acquiring – money, degrees, awards, power. But the truth of the matter is that salvation is actually found in losing things and letting things go. There are only so many things that we can hold fast to; only so many things that we can carry in our hearts and minds. The path of liberation is in letting go, and so we pray that God would help us to do just that. It is not up to us to save the world, and we have to let go of that illusion or it will crush us. We have to let go of our need to be God so that God can be God for us.
But I can’t stop thinking about this parable. I mean, if Jesus wanted to tell us to be prudent and generous, why couldn’t he just say that. Why tell this outrageous and obtuse parable? Why commend someone like this scumbag of a manager? I wonder how reflecting on the Collect might help us to read this parable. The Collect would have us to consider what things we cling onto, what things we give priority in our lives. And I wonder how much of our disgust with this parable is because we’re hanging onto the wrong things.
St. Augustine said of this parable, “When even a cheat is praised for his ingenuity, Christians who make no such provisions blush.” There’s a sense of urgency in the parable – the manager has to act. Either he figures something out or he ends up destitute. So he figures something out, which means he has to let go of some things, most notably respectability and playing it safe.
And that just might be a lesson for us. What makes the parable so challenging is that the manager’s actions are bold, audacious, and daring. And yet, that’s what is commended. Christendom had a long run, but we’re at a place similar to the manager – time is about up. We can no longer take for granted that people know the story of Jesus and that they are interested in what we are up to. We can’t just assume that people will visit, join, give, volunteer, and remember us in their wills. Like the manager in the parable or the community that wrote a prayer about not being anxious in the midst of barbarian invasions, this is a moment of crisis for us.
Now, a crisis isn’t a bad thing, it’s an opportunity. That’s what root of the word means – a crisis is a decision point. And we must decide what we will hold fast to. Will we be beholden to the past, to the way we’ve always done things, to our anxieties about the future, to our addiction to rage? Or will we hold fast that which shall endure – things like mercy, hope, and love?
Robert Farrar Capon was an Episcopal priest who saw the world through the lens of grace. In a book called The Parables of Grace he writes, “The unique contribution of this parable to our understanding of Jesus is its insistence that grace cannot come to the world through respectability… This parable says in story form what Jesus himself said by his life. He was not respectable. He broke the sabbath. He associated with crooks. And he died as a criminal. Respectability can only terrify and condemn.”
In this moment we will have to decide what our path forward will be. Do we play it safe like those who grumbled at telling of this parable, or do we act shrewdly and boldly like this manager? What earthly things are we willing to cast aside to more fully grasp things heavenly. What risks can we stomach to follow Jesus? What audacious hopes will we cling on to? What outrageous things will we dare in Jesus’ name?
Everything about our faith is outrageous – we follow a crucified Jewish peasant who we claim is God Almighty in the flesh, that he rose from the dead, that we eat his flesh and drink his blood on a weekly basis, that he speaks to us still, and that he is found most reliability in the rejects and outcasts of the world. Everything about Jeus is absurd. Following him is outrageous. He tells stories commending dishonest and shady business dealings. Any maybe most surprisingly, he loves us so much come to us knowing full well that we’d reject and murder him.
I still am not convinced that any interpretation of this parable is anything but a wild guess. But I’m thankful that we have a Savior who is outrageous enough to cast aside respectability, telling us outrageous parables and asking people like us to follow him.
