Sermon preached by Fr. Tom Haynes
at St. Thomas Episcopal Church Plymouth
September 22, 2013
Eighteenth Sunday of Pentecost – Proper 20
Jeremiah 4:11-12, 22-28
Psalm 14
1 Timothy 1:1217
Luke 15:110
“May the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be an acceptable offering in your sight, Oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer.”
The Great Litany in the Episcopal Book of Common Prayer contains these some words I love:
“In all time of tribulation;
in all time of our prosperity . . .
good Lord, deliver us.”
This request reminds us that we need help, not only when we are struggling with hardship, but also when we are blessed by mercy. One of the collects for mission with Evening Prayer has a prayer in it to shield the joyous, and maybe it is another reminder that we need prayers when we are blessed. I want to compare two stories that Jesus tells in this morning’s sermon.
The first appears at the end of chapter eighteen of Matthew’s Gospel. A king shows enormous generosity by forgiving a debtor who owes him an astronomical sum. But this former debtor hasn’t even left the palace when he comes upon someone who owes him a far more modest amount. He seizes his debtor by the neck and demands the money, refusing the debtor’s entreaties for mercy. The king finds out about this injustice, and, so to speak, there is hell to pay.
“In all time of our prosperity, good Lord, deliver us.”
It is entirely possible for one of us to be on the receiving end of abundant mercy, and then to show cruelty to someone who is desperate for mercy from us. Someone befriends us by kindness, yet we refuse to do the same in turn for our needy neighbor. It happens all the time. Think of the ways we have been blessed by God’s mercy, and sometimes we do not show the same mercy to our brothers and sisters. The Book Group at St. Thomas was looking at the Lord’s Prayer this last Tuesday, and we had a really good discussion about the Lord’s Prayer. In the prayer our Lord gave us, we pray that God would forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. That line sums up nicely the lesson in this first story Jesus tells.
The second story is today’s gospel, and it is found, not in Matthew, but in Luke. It is more challenging than the story from Matthew. We get that one. We don’t do it, but we understand the concept. This second story has encouraged preachers to use the Epistle for the sermon over the centuries, because it is hard to know just what to do with it. Let’s see where we can go.
A rich man hears from somebody or other that his manager, his trusted manager is squandering his property. The
rich man apparently makes no effort to investigate these charges other than to demand an accounting from his manager. At the same time he does this, he fires the manager. This is not a rational way to behave. Perhaps the manager is not dishonest or even irresponsible. He may be a victim of false accusations.
Now what’s the manager to do – dig ditches? He’s not strong enough. Beg from people? He’s too proud for that! The manager decides on a plan. Before he has to hand in the key to his office, he invites in his master’s debtors and has them change the records. He allows them to get out of big portions of their bigtime debts. Naturally they are grateful. And as people of influence, they find work for this former manager that befits his background and experience.
Is it underhanded — what the manager allows the debtors to do? Maybe yes. Maybe no. Commentators on this passage offer various explanations.
∙ Perhaps the manager really has been dishonest and has overcharged these debtors. Now he is reducing their bills to what they should have been in the first place.
∙ Perhaps the manager is cutting out his fee or commission in all this. He is about to be fired and is not going to collect it, so maybe this explains it?
∙ Perhaps he is deducting interest payments which, according to Jewish law, are strictly forbidden in the first place. So really he is making things right?
We simply do not know how to interpret the manager’s action, except that what he does makes his master’s debtors into his friends. He is doing them a big favor, and they know it. If he was dishonest before, he is trying to make things right. If he is just cutting his commission out of it, maybe he is cutting his losses and using the opportunity to gain some good will.
Just for the sake of thinking about this text, let’s look past the possibly dishonest activity of the manager to recognize a different aspect of what he does, something else which in its own way appears to us as
unusual.
The manager is out of a job whether justly or not is unclear. Yet in his moment of crisis he reaches out to others to relieve their burdens.
Put aside for a moment that the business with the records may have been unethical.
Put aside also how his new friends are well equipped to help him out in return.
Concentrate instead on how the manager does a favor for somebody else. He looks pretty good by comparison with the debtor in the first story who, once relieved of an enormous debt, refuses to let someone else off the hook regarding a far smaller sum.
However implausibly, even his former master commends his behavior once he catches on. At this point, the text calls the manager “dishonest,” but it also has his former boss commending him for acting shrewdly. It does not sound as if the manager is ripping off the boos at this point in the story anyway.
In the first story I mentioned, the one from Matthew, there are in effect two scenes of judgment. In the first scene, the king forgives the debtor. In the second scene, the forgiven debtor refuses to forgive
someone who owes him money. The conclusion is tragic.
In the second story,the one from Luke, there are also two judgment scenes. In the first, the manager is judged guilt and condemned by his master, apparently on hearsay. In the second judgment scene, the
manager in effect acquits the debtors of much of their debt. He shows them mercy, even though mercy had not been shown to them.
The first story reminds us that when people treat us well, we ought to pass on the favor to others who are in need, and woe to those who do not.
The second story presents a more demanding ethic. We are invited to respond to misfortune or ill treatment by showing kindness to others. If possible, we’re to let the grief stop with us.
Like the manager, we can get moving and make friends for ourselves. Rather than simply pass on mercy when it is shown to us, we can generate it ourselves when it is conspicuously absent. In the eyes of the world, this production of mercy may seem as scandalous as a case of cooking the books. But it is gospel goodness.
At some time or other, each one of us is treated unjustly. Sometimes we do stupid things and pay some consequences. This treatment or the consequences of something stupid is beyond our control. Where we have a choice is in how we respond to this.
Do we believe that God is at work, even inside our worst circumstances?
Do we continue to believe that the Lord’s intention for us remains good?
The injustice is still an injustice, and those responsible for it will have to answer to God. But within that injustice there may be a blessing for us or for other people.
The bad news is that sometimes we act like the forgiven yet ungrateful debtor in that story from Matthew.
Work on the assumption that the manager is not corrupt, and he uses his misfortune to relieve the debts of others. This is good news for the debtors. This message is also the Good News in the Gospel. Jesus was unjustly accused and suffered as a consequence. He used this situation as an opportunity to to set us free from debts we can never pay. The whole business of the cross looks like a scandal, yet it is a gift of life and freedom. Christ asks that as he absolves us, we go forth in turn and forgive the debts of others.
My takeaways are these:
- We have mercy shown to us, and we need to respond by showing mercy to others. Remember the words of the Lord’s Prayer we will say later in the service. “Forgive us our trespasses and we forgive the trespasses of others.”
- When we suffer, use that as an opportunity to bless others. Jesus did this, and you and I are the recipients of that blessing!
I have said these words in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen