September 19, 2010 - Pentecost + 17

Jesus Zeroes Our Balance Sheet
Luke 16:1-13
Pentecost + 17 – September 19, 2010

“Once upon a time,” Jesus says, “there was a rich man. And it comes to his attention that his senior manager has not been doing such a good job – that he's been squandering the rich man's property. Well, understandably, this doesn't make the rich man happy, so he calls the manager into his office, and says, 'that's enough! You can't work for me anymore – go get the books together so I'm up to speed – and then it's out the door with you.”

Well, of course, the manager isn't quite prepared for that. In this economy, & what with being fired and all, he knows he's not likely to find another upper-level management job. He knows he's not cut out for a manual labor/blue-collar kind of job – and he is too proud to beg... In no time, he's gonna be out on the street with no way to make a decent living. So he comes up with a plan – he calls together the people who owe the CEO money – and he takes their debts and he cuts them down in size, hoping that when word gets out about what happened, they'll think kindly of him, that they'll remember that he did them a favor financially, and welcome him into their homes, give him a meal, maybe let him sleep on the couch for a little while til he can get back on his feet again...

And while his motives aren't pure, we can understand. We're with Jesus as he tells this story this far. So were his listeners, probably – the disciples who Luke tells us up front were there, but also the Pharisees, who he tells us a few verses after the reading ends were listening too.

But then Jesus goes on – and nothing happens like what we would expect... we, like the listeners of Jesus' day, expect that something dramatic will happen, that the rich man will blow his top, that he'll bring the law down on the manager for squandering even more of his $, for cooking the books. We expect the dishonest man to get called on the carpet & condemned for his dishonesty. But instead, the rich man commends the manager for his shrewdness; and Jesus seems to hold him up as an example to follow - “make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”

And we all just kind of do a double-take at Jesus. Wha??? Did he just say what I thought he said? No, can't be... It goes against our sense of right and wrong, of fair & unfair, of what is ethical, of what doing the right thing is. We get offended by this story of someone getting ahead or at least protecting himself by less than above-board means. This parable doesn't make much sense to us, based on our understanding of who Jesus is and what he expects from us – and unfortunately, there's not a follow-up where Jesus pulls the disciples aside and tells them what it means, like there are with some parables. So we're left to wrestle and struggle with what's going on here, thoughts going in circles about how we might understand what Jesus was trying to say to us and his 1st century audience. And I have to tell you, none of the things I've come up with or read about seem to quite do it. There's no easy answer to what this gospel lesson means; it's not a black & white morality play.

But I was thinking that how we understand this story and what we think about the manager have a lot to do with perspective, a lot to do with who we identify with in what Jesus is telling us. Do we put ourselves in the place of the rich man who seemingly just got ripped off? Are we the dishonest manager? Or are we in the place of the debtors who just caught a big break? Is the rich man completely innocent himself? We'll think differently about the manager's actions depending on what we think about the rich man and his debtors.

I was thinking about how we could possibly ever root for the manager and what he does, and the story of Robin Hood came to mind. Whether you envision him as Kevin Costner in the movie from the 1990s or as a cartoon fox in the Disney version or have some other mental picture all together, clearly Robin Hood was someone who made friends by means of dishonest wealth. He took money that didn't belong to him and gave it away. That's not right or fair; it's not ethical from a pure perspective of right & wrong. But we cheer for him anyway – because Robin Hood steals from the rich to give to the poor. He undercuts an unfair, unjust oppressive system, and helps people who are really in need. And the common folk love him for it. Robin Hood isn't the bad guy, the rich guy is. Robin Hood's the hero! Unless you happen to be the rich person he's stealing from. That changes everything, doesn't it?

And that's where I come back into the gospel. Because how we understand this story depends on who we think we are in it, and who we think Jesus is too. We might want to think that Jesus is the rich man, commending us as managers to do some underhanded stuff, which leaves us where we started. But I think there's another way to look at it. Maybe in this story, Jesus is the manager. And that leaves us as either the rich man or the debtors... When we identify with the rich man, there's a piece of us that gets all up in arms that what the manager does isn't right or fair. It's not fair to take these debts and forgive huge portions of them. We want people to pay what they owe, and who is this manager to say they don't have to? But imagine yourself for a minute in the place of the debtors, who in that ancient world economy were probably more like the oppressed, disadvantaged poor of the Robin Hood story than we might realize, caught in a system that would never let them rise above where they were now, that would always hold them down, hold them captive to what they owed. And imagine your joy and relief, imagine the burden that would be lifted if you suddenly found that your debts were forgiven. Set free! Released, even though you didn't do anything to deserve it!

That's where I find myself in the story today. I know it doesn't fit exactly with the story Jesus told. The manager forgives their debts only in part, and then mainly for his own selfish needs and motivation. But he does it whether they deserve it or not.

And that's what Jesus does. Knowing how much we owe, how deep the debt of our sin is, Jesus calls us to him, and says, “You, what do you owe? Well, take your bill, sit down, and make it zero.” In one fell swoop, not out of selfishness, or corruption, or his own need, but out of pure love, Jesus zeroes our debt. He cancels our sin. It doesn't quite make sense, but that's what Jesus does. It's unexpected, it's undeserved, and it's a gift that's open to all! Thanks be to God!