SermonStudio

A magazine cartoon showed a scene of yesteryear as two men watched a wealthy man ride by in his elegant, horse--drawn carriage. One man said to the other, "There is a man that will never have to worry about money and the future. His father owns the biggest buggy whip factory in the country."

A few years ago there was a vast migration to Texas. Dallas and Houston were national symbols of unprecedented wealth and opulence. Both cities were booming with towering office and apartment buildings. Real estate fortunes were made overnight. Newspapers were almost screaming with position openings and help wanted ads. Meanwhile, Massachusetts was fearful of its economy and Boston was wondering whether it could retain its reputation for understated Brahmin affluence.

But with the decline in oil prices, the economic tide reversed itself. Houston and Dallas then had thousands of square feet of vacant real estate while Boston experienced a building boom. Onetime oil--rich, typically exuberant and boastful Texas then faced the largest state fiscal deficit ever. But Massachusetts began to flow with the revenues of the revised, revved up, high tech industry.

The billionaire Hunt Brothers, who once had a corner on all the silver in the world, then struggled to keep their financial empire afloat. Billy Durant, the exuberant, flamboyant, aggressive founder and organizer of General Motors, was a multimillionaire in the early years of this century, but lived out his latter years in very modest circumstances in New York City.

How is it with you and your money? With me and my money? Are you making more than ever? Do you have boats, houses, cars, cottages, condos, club memberships, and a bulging stock portfolio? Is your high school doing so well they have a mink for a mascot? Are you reaping benefits from the tide of economic resurgence? Are you buoyant and confident, living on top of the world with barns bulging with produce, ready to tear down and build bigger? Is your financial present better than any past ever has been?

But beyond the prosperity of the present, or even the poverty of the present, there looms a larger question: What about the future? Have you and I adequately prepared for the future? Have we, for the future's sake, been making friends with our money?

I.

It often comes as a surprise to many people to learn how often the Bible and Jesus speak of money. One time a church leader advised a minister that to be successful he should stay away from such controversial subjects like politics and religion! Numerous other ministers have been advised that money is an inappropriate topic for sermons!

Money. Why do we talk about it in churches? Because Jesus talked about it a lot. And why did Jesus, Paul, and the prophets talk about it? Because they knew that where a person's money was, his heart, his soul, and his energy were likely to be there, too. And that is what churches and religion and the Bible are all about - a person's heart and soul and energy and eternal destiny.

Money and its use are inextricably tied up with a person's future. Any economist will tell you that. Any investment advisor or life insurance salesman will urge that notion upon us. Destiny is determined greatly by our wise or unwise use of money.

But what most economists fail to tell you is what Jesus and ministers and churches tell us over and over again. Not only is our immediate future at stake in proper use of money. Shocking as it may seem to many delicate, pseudo--religious ears, our eternal destiny is tied up with the issue of proper investments for the future.

Our text's unique and delightful parable illustrates the point. A man who was an incompetent manager of a rich man's estate had misused the resources. The owner called him in for a final accounting before firing him.

The incompetent manager was at least competent in this: he knew how to "feather his nest" for the future. He called in the debtors, asked them how much they owed, and told them to make out a new promissory note for a greatly reduced amount while he destroyed the old note. He rightly reasoned that once he was fired and word got out about his incompetence, he would have a hard time getting a decent job. He would have to turn to manual labor or even to charity.

The Israelite economy of the time made such maneuvers possible. Since it was against Jewish law to charge interest to a fellow Jew, the amount borrowed on the note was usually puffed up to include the interest. So if a man borrowed 800 bushels of wheat, the note would say he borrowed 1,000, and thus would have to pay back the 1,000, the 200 extra bushels being, in effect, interest.

Therefore, the unjust steward could get away with reducing the amount of debt without getting hauled into court. The owner would not prosecute because he would be found guilty of charging interest. The debtors were glad to have the reduced bill, but also would not prosecute, lest they be found out for complicity with the illegal system.

Thus, the crafty manager saved the debtors a lot of money and perhaps even extracted a job out of them and a guaranteed pension. They could pay for it out of the money he had saved them. Besides, if they did not comply, he could blackmail them by taking them to court, testifying that they had conspired with the owner in the illegal usury system. He was a shrewd, crafty rascal who carefully assured himself of future financial security.

And Jesus praises the man - not for being a rogue and rascal, but for being so clever and careful about insuring himself for a good future. Then came the famous saying, "The children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light" (Jerusalem Bible). Or as the New English Bible puts it, "The worldly are more astute than the other--worldly in dealing with their own kind."

In other words, this crafty, dishonest rogue showed more zeal and earnestness in dealing with his temporal future than many Christians show in dealing with their eternal future. Would that my disciples were as resourceful and sophisticated, says Jesus. As it is, they are terribly indolent, sentimental, and ignorant when it comes to their eternal destiny. They seem to think God is a pushover and will never call them to give an accounting. But how many times does God have to say, "Thou fool, tonight thy soul is required of thee, whose then shall these things be?" They won't be yours.

II.

If in this life we use money to make friends and business contacts to ensure a good financial future, then, says Jesus, his disciples ought at least to be smart enough to use money to make friends for an eternal future. Or as the Jerusalem Bible translates it, "Use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into the tents of eternity."

Many Christians have a strangely ambivalent attitude about money. On the one hand they tend to agree that it is "tainted" as Jesus says, that it is in some ways, at least, "filthy lucre." At least that's what they tend to think on Sunday when they wonder why Jesus and the minister are talking about such a mundane, worldly, grubby topic.

But on the other hand, let Monday morning roll around and the close on a big sale with a large commission or financial deal or big case settlement with a big fee or lucrative medical or surgical procedure come along, and then money seems to be okay. If with Sunday idealism they agree with the poet Shelley that money is that idol "before whose image bow the vulgar great, the vainly rich, the miserable proud," with Monday realism they seem only too happy to bow there themselves saying money is the true reality, the arbiter of all things. Money, they say, is all that matters. Everything can be reduced to money. Or as one wag put, "Money isn't everything, but it's way ahead of whatever is in second place."

But when we say that, we are going against Jesus and the Bible - a formidable opposition that will be around long after you and I are dead and buried. The Bible and Jesus say again and again that money is important. We should use it to "feather our nest" for the eternal mansions rather than buy for ourselves yet another earthly habitation.

And how do we make friends with our money for eternal purposes? By helping the helpless and disadvantaged, the abused and handicapped, the distressed and distraught, and always the poor. Yet many of our people think we should reduce our benevolence and outreach giving to help the needy. If we do, are we making friends for an eternal future?

How do we make friends with our money for an eternal future? By giving to the church and its cause of preaching the gospel of God's grace and teaching the ethics of Jesus so that people do not dissipate their lives in drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity and the diseases that often attend them. But often the very people who deplore most the lack of ethics and morals in our society give the least to the church whose basic task is to teach ethics and morals - a task largely abandoned by families, schools, and other institutions.

How do we make friends for an eternal future for an eternal soul? By giving generously to help in the temporal causes of the church so that we can prepare people for the eternal future.

The truth is that many churches struggle to carry out their work. They strive and struggle to get their young people into programs and activities where they can influence them with Christ's grace and ethics. They promote, urge, and cajole their people to participate in Bible studies and seminars and discussion groups to develop the heart and soul. And not only do they struggle to get their people there, they struggle even more to get their people to pay for the program of Christ in their church. The ministry and staff and their responsible leaders bend over backward to "make it happen," but church members, many of them, do not use their money to make friends for the future so that when money fails - as it will - they will have a place in the eternal home.

I suppose by now there are many saying, it's too bad that the people who need to read this message are not. But look again, Jesus addressed this parable to his disciples. Most of us claim to be his disciples, and most of us are nowhere near giving the ten percent of our income asked for by the Bible. Are we really making friends with our money for an eternal future?

III.

But there were more than disciples in Jesus' audience. As usually was the case, there were Pharisees - Pharisees who loved money. And I suppose there are Pharisees in our churches too, religious people, even very religious people, who when, the truth is known, love money more than God.

Perhaps that is why some people resent a church that is always talking about money. It seems to them as though the church has become a business interested, not so much in souls and people, as in the bottom line. Even God and religion seemed to be reduced to money. It seems to some as though a dollar sign should be superimposed over the cross or even replace the cross, because it seems as though we worship money instead of God. Money becomes master and God its servant. The cross and the offering plates seem to change places with the cross at the foot of the dollar sign rather than vice versa.

And in the very institution that urges us to focus upon the intangible, the tangible dollar seems to have first place. In the very precincts of the unseen Holy One, nothing seems to be more sacred than large overflowing offering plates that can be seen. And even in the church more deference seems to be given to the wealthy man than to the holy man.

But perhaps a word needs to be said in defense of Pharisees devoted to the religious institutions. For example, when people want to be married or buried in the church, they are glad someone has kept the doors open, the heat and lights on. In the summer at weddings, people wish it was air--conditioned, so I suggest to fathers of brides and grooms that donations are gladly accepted. It costs real money to build a church in the first place and then to maintain it.

For example, it takes lots of money just to insure the church. The gas and electric bills are large. Repairs, maintenance, paper, postage, office machines, cleaning equipment, and supplies are just part of the list of things that cost money to operate a church.

All that and we haven't even gotten to what a church is all about - preaching and teaching the gospel, administering the sacraments, instructing and nurturing the young, marrying those in love, burying the dead and comforting the bereaved, visiting the sick and counseling the troubled, helping the needy and distraught, and inspiring and encouraging the faithful. And all that translates into a competent ministry and staff which in turn, translates into dollars - lots of dollars.

It is easy to see how love of God can slip into love of money. There is a bit of the money--loving Pharisee in all of us religious leaders who struggle with cynicism when it comes to knowing what people say and what they really give, knowing how many talk a big game but never give a big game, knowing how much many Christians make and how little they pledge, realizing how affluent our members are with material goods and how uncommitted they are to support our common spiritual endeavor.

And yet, with his usual wisdom, humor, and irony, Jesus calls us again to love of God and use of money rather than love of money and use of God. We cannot serve two masters, says Jesus. The two alternative masters usually are God or money.

Jesus asks us to love God and to use money in his cause to win friends for eternity. Jesus warns against building bigger and bigger barns without thought for your eternal soul. Jesus says that the proper use of money is one of the most spiritual things we can do. Jesus says that we are either loving God and using mammon, or we are loving mammon and using God. Our eternal future hangs in the balance. How is it with you and your money? With me and mine?


Prayer

Eternal God, whose nature is mind and spirit, and yet whose will it has been to create the universe out of nothing and to express yourself in the appearance of the material world, praise be to you for a galaxy beautiful and awesome and for a world at once friendly and threatening. We are feeble and frail in your presence amid your many powers, and yet you bid us be one with you in heart and mind and will. We thank you.

It has pleased you to make the earth beautiful with seed bearing seed after its own kind and to sustain its life with the complex food chain. We are thankful for the infinite variety of foods, for the subtlety of taste, the mystery of nutrition, and the abundance we enjoy. We are glad for all the resources of our material world and praise you for blessing us with goods and services unprecedented in history.

We bring before you our lament for the terrible inequities of the world, the vast gap between the haves and the have nots, the disparity between the advantaged and disadvantaged. Grant, O Lord, that we might have both the will and wisdom to find better ways of sharing the world's fabulous wealth. Let new channels be opened for the distribution of food so that the hungry might be fed and farmers rewarded for their labors. Enlighten the leaders of underdeveloped countries that they might develop an economy to sustain their people with equity and justice. Save us all from regimes, totalitarian or free, communist or capitalist, which exploit without sharing, which take without giving, bringing despair to the hard--working and indolence to the poor. Help us to open up the world economies so that more wealth will be shared by all.

But even more in your presence, we would be mindful of our spiritual economy. There are treasures of wisdom and insight, wonder and inspiration that we have just begun to tap. You know how easy it is for us in prosperity to tell our souls to take their ease to eat, drink, and be merry because we have goods laid up for many years. You know how prone we are to reduce ourselves to material beings, who, when comfortable and well fed, think we have arrived at paradise all the while evading the still small voice of conscience calling us to spiritual awakening.

Be pleased, O God, in this hour, to awaken us anew to spiritual realities we have avoided or ignored. Reveal ourselves to us. Expose our selfishness, our shallowness, our trivialization of your eternal truth in the presence of worldly truth. By your mercy, call us again to responsible use of our temporal, material blessings to serve your eternal, spiritual causes of compassion, sharing, and love.

And if ours has been the selfish heart, the tight--fisted soul, the stingy mind, inspire us to be generous in our gifts to your church. If material things and yet another pleasure have taken the dollars that would have been given to you, help us to repent and to give lovingly and cheerfully to your cause. Through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.