Planning Ahead

Luke 16:1-15, 19-31

Our title for today holds a certain irony for me, as I was well on my way toward preparing a message on the Parable of the Talents, until on Friday I realized that my passages for today were supposed to be from Luke 16: the Parables of the Shrewd Manager and of The Rich Man and Lazarus. So my “planning ahead” had gone awry, except that I will be speaking on the Talents passage in August, so my work was not actually wasted. There is also overlap in some of the concepts that Jesus is teaching about, so it has been good to think about those beforehand. So anyway, you can think about today’s message as the first of two that I will do on the teachings of Jesus concerning how to handle money and possessions.

You may be aware that 16 of the 38 parables in the gospels have something to do with money and possessions and that the Bible as a whole has more verses on money and wealth than on prayer, faith, and salvation combined. Jesus recognized the importance of wealth and possessions – but also their potential to lead us away from God. The function of wealth has been corrupted by sin. What God intended as an expression and source of blessing has become a source of pride and security apart from God. People think that money gives them control over their lives and allows them to live autonomously. Money is a source of status and power – just look at our political system. As 1 Timothy 6:10 puts it, the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.

So money and possessions are an important part of life, but we need to handle them with care, always examining our attitude toward what we own and our priorities in how we use money. Jesus gives us some principles in today’s parables. The first story is a difficult one, so it may not be as familiar as some other parables. Reading from Luke 16.

Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions.  So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’

 “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg—  I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

“So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

“‘Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied.

“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’

“Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’

“‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied.

“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’

“The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.  I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”—Luke 16:1-9

Some commentators suggest that this parable is allegory not instruction. They compare the master to God, and they go to great lengths to redeem the dishonest manager by saying that he reduced the bills with his own money or by cutting his own commission, although there is no evidence of this in the text. Personally, I wonder how the manager (who could have been a bondslave) would have had the resources to do this, if he is contemplating begging as an alternative after he leaves his job. I think we just have to accept what it says, that this is a dishonest manager, acting in his own self-interest. And I don’t believe we detect many God-like qualities in the master either. He passes judgment on the manager and dismisses him based on hearsay.

In verse one, we understand that the manager is accused of “wasting” his master’s possessions. This “wasting” is the same verb as the “squandering” of money by the Prodigal Son after he left home with his share of the inheritance, as related in the previous chapter. It is expenditure with minimal benefit to anyone. He is promptly dismissed, but before he leaves he curries favor with his master’s debtors by reducing their debts – at least on paper. This huge amount of olive oil owed – 900 gallons – is cut in half, and a thousand bushels of wheat (which would weigh 30 tons) is reduced by 20 percent. So these are not trifling amounts that the master would ignore. But we have the master commending him for his shrewdness. I don’t think this commendation meant that the master approved of the behavior. Perhaps he did recognize that at least the manager was doing something useful with the wealth, not just wasting it. Was he so impressed that he would decide not to fire the manager? Not likely! The manager was still bad for his bottom line, but at least the manager was thinking ahead now. Rather than just being negligent, he was now planning for the future. The master grudgingly admits that it is a clever plan – perhaps one he would have thought up himself if he had been in that same situation?

The people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. Jesus is speaking of using money for one’s own advantage. People in the world are very good at this, using money to impress others and get their own way. Some believers, however, think of money as inherently evil. Jesus does say in Matthew 19 that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God. Money can be a barrier to following God, but it doesn’t have to be. If we have the right attitude toward it, it can clearly be very useful in God’s kingdom, too.

But people have taken Jesus’s warnings about money and attached a defiling label to mammon itself, as wealth was referred to in the Aramaic that Jesus spoke. In the Middle Ages, Mammon was personified as the demon of wealth and greed. There are some reports of a Syrian idol named Mammon, worshiped as the god of riches. But Jesus does not say that money is inherently bad. Here in verse 9 he says to use worldly wealth (mammon). For what? To gain friends for ourselves. In the way the prodigal son tried to, as he squandered his wealth in a distant land? No, those friendships did not outlast the money supply, and the prodigal son only had pigs as companions when he hit rock bottom. Instead, we are to take an eternal perspective. The friends we welcome into God’s kingdom as fellow believers will welcome us into heaven. Jesus wants us to use our wealth to create opportunities for witness. Applying all that we own to God’s work is the “shrewdest” plan of all. We can’t take the money with us, so let’s put it to good use, in friendships that will bear eternal fruit.

I saw a picture online of where someone had written this verse into their journal. The date was October 28, 1949. Here it is: “…that when it shall fail, they may receive you into everlasting habitations.” Any idea whose journal this was? There is a big clue in the previous sentence: “He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose.” Yes, it is Jim Elliot, and this is probably his most famous quote. He wrote these words 6 years before he was martyred as a missionary to the Waorani people of Ecuador. He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose. Jim Elliot had an eternal perspective. Even our physical lives are a gift from God, to be laid down in this service, whatever that means for us. Jim received his crown of life, which he will never lose.

So what about our money? Do we keep in mind how temporary it is? Do we own our possessions or do they own us? Are we planning ahead for eternity? Jesus said that where our treasure is there our hearts will be also. So we need to lay up treasures in heaven rather on earth. That’s what this verse is talking about. The Message renders it this way: “I want you to be smart in the same way—but for what is right—using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.” True life means focusing on the essentials, using everything we are and have for God’s purposes.

After Jim Elliot’s death, his wife Elisabeth wrote, “‘If God gave it to me,’ we say, ‘it’s mine. I can do what I want with it.’ No. The truth is that it is ours to thank Him for and ours to offer back to Him, ours to relinquish, ours to lose, ours to let go of – if we want to find our true selves, if we want real Life, if our hearts are set on glory.” She died about a month ago, having lived with that eternal perspective, that abandonment to God, finishing her course almost 60 years after her husband.

Back in Luke 16, Jesus goes on to say that stewardship is about more than money:

“Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?  And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?”—Luke 16:10-12

What are the true riches? They must be spiritual. God wants to bless us spiritually, but somehow that will be limited if we fail to handle our worldly wealth appropriately. Integrity is not a matter of degree. There are no “little compromises” that don’t matter. Where do we fudge a little here and there? Jesus says that we need to be trustworthy with little things as well as with bigger things that might seem to matter more. And we need to treat other people’s property as carefully as our own. This goes back to the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” It means that our stewardship extends to other people’s property as well as our own. I have been thinking about this as we have been moving out of the house that we rented for the past 3 years. In many ways we did care for it as though it were our own, but now as we are moving out the temptation is to just get our stuff out and leave the house as it is. But how would we want it left if we were the next people to move in?

The founder of the world Scouting movement, Robert Baden-Powell, liked to advise people “to leave this world a little better than you found it.” As Christians, we should try to leave every place better than we find it. This is in keeping with Jesus’ desire for us to be trustworthy with other people’s property. We have all seen people abusing public property because they feel no ownership of it. As Christians we need to set a different example in our concern for the common good – a value starkly absent in many cultures in the world.

Everything that we have comes from God, so in that sense we don’t really own anything – we are simply stewards of it. But God wants us to act as though we own it, so that we will take care of it but not so that we will find our security in it. He also doesn’t want us to be so concerned about money that we end up worrying about it rather than trusting in his provision. We can have little money or lots of money, and it can still be an unhealthy focus and distraction, robbing us of joy and contentment. That is why Proverbs 30 requests of God,

“Give me neither poverty nor riches, but give me only my daily bread.  Otherwise, I may have too much and disown you and say, ‘Who is the Lord?’ Or I may become poor and steal, and so dishonor the name of my God.” Proverbs 30:8-9

Money can very easily take the place of God in our lives, as the means by which we get the things we need and want. That is why many rich people in the world don’t feel a need for God or care at all about him. Jesus warns against compromise in this area.

“No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.  He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.”—Luke 16:13-15

What do people value that is so detestable to God? Independence, control, power, status, self-sufficiency. Our God is a jealous God. He is content with nothing less than our humble submission and dependence on him alone. This is nonsense in a world passionately pursuing the almighty dollar.

If we skip over a couple of verses here, we will see in our next parable where this all ends up. Starting at verse 19:

“There was a rich man who was dressed in purple and fine linen and lived in luxury every day. At his gate was laid a beggar named Lazarus, covered with sores and longing to eat what fell from the rich man’s table. Even the dogs came and licked his sores.

“The time came when the beggar died and the angels carried him to Abraham’s side. The rich man also died and was buried. In Hades, where he was in torment, he looked up and saw Abraham far away, with Lazarus by his side. So he called to him, ‘Father Abraham, have pity on me and send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue, because I am in agony in this fire.’

“But Abraham replied, ‘Son, remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here and you are in agony. And besides all this, between us and you a great chasm has been set in place, so that those who want to go from here to you cannot, nor can anyone cross over from there to us.’

“He answered, ‘Then I beg you, father, send Lazarus to my family, for I have five brothers. Let him warn them, so that they will not also come to this place of torment.’

“Abraham replied, ‘They have Moses and the Prophets; let them listen to them.’

“‘No, father Abraham,’ he said, ‘but if someone from the dead goes to them, they will repent.’

“He said to him, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’”—Luke 16:19-31

So here we have a rich man whose heart has turned away from God. Living in luxury, he has no concern for the miserable beggar living on his doorstep. The implication is that he gives nothing to the beggar, not even the leftovers from his table. Nobody seems to care about this beggar. Perhaps he has leprosy, which would explain his sores. Someone has laid him at the gate to beg for money – many beggars in the world are used as a moneymaking scheme by their relatives or others – but no one keeps the street dogs away from him. But he has a name, Lazarus, and God knows him somehow.

When he dies, angels carry him to Abraham’s side – or the bosom of Abraham, as the King James Version puts it. Use of this concept gives us a clue that Jesus may have intended this story to parody the beliefs of the Pharisees, who believed they were destined for this place of peace and happiness where they would await the final judgment. Hades was the place of the dead, with a section reserved for the unrighteous, but this would not be hell as we understand it. These are intermediate places before heaven and hell. This is only place in the Bible where Hades (or Sheol as it is called in the Old Testament) is associated with torment. The rich man is being punished for his unrighteousness, and he appeals to Abraham to send Lazarus to relieve his agony even a tiny bit. In life, he would not give Lazarus even a crumb fallen from his table, but now he is begging for one drop of water. Jesus is using these extreme statements to show how drastically and finally the tables are turned. The chasm reinforces the finality of the situation. Beyond death, there are no more chances to change. Father Abraham is unable to help his “son” as the Pharisees would have thought of themselves.

So the rich man asks for Lazarus to go and warn his five brothers. The historian Josephus notes that Annas had five sons who also served as high priests. And coincidentally John 12:10 tells us that it was the chief priests who made plans to kill Lazarus of Bethany after Jesus raised him from the dead, because of the number of Jews putting their faith in Jesus after that incident. So the name Lazarus in this parable is not accidental. Lazarus of Bethany was someone who did come back from the dead, and yet the religious leaders did not put their faith in Jesus. If anyone had studied Moses and the Prophets it was the Pharisees. They knew every detail of the law, and yet they missed how it all pointed to Jesus.

So Jesus is warning against self-righteousness. Once again he was overturning the popular conception that the rich were somehow favored by God, and the poor must be under his curse. Jesus taught that outward appearances had no bearing on a person’s final destiny; what mattered was what was in their heart, be it faith that led to good works and concern for others or be it selfishness and self-sufficiency that closed them off to God’s free gift of salvation. What we do today determines our eternal future. Once we die, it is too late to make a decision to follow Jesus. Following him now means that we need to be concerned for the poor, the oppressed, the suffering. They may not be literally on our doorstep, but we know where they are. It is awfully easy to ignore them, the way the rich man in this story did. But God knows each one, and he cares about them, the way he cared about Lazarus. As it says in James 2:5,

“Listen, my dear brothers and sisters: Has not God chosen those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the kingdom he promised those who love him?”

Let’s pray for God’s heart for the poor, for the generosity that will break the power of mammon in our lives, and for eyes to see the whole of our lives in the light of eternity.