Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost -- 23 September 2007

St Paul Lutheran Church, ABQ NM -- The Rev. P. L. Holman

Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13

"It's Not About the Money"

One of the most difficult things for families or church folk to talk about is money. Do you agree? Well, maybe not. Maybe your family regularly discusses Mom and Dad's income with the children, how much you spend on running the house, clothing, food, and entertainment. How much Mom and Dad give away in charitable contributions, to the church and Storehouse and the like; how much the youth are giving from their own paychecks, or from their allowance to the Sunday school offering. Maybe you're all very open about that.

Not me. Not my childhood. We NEVER discussed religion, politics, sex or money in my home growing up, and we still had plenty to fight about! It wasn't until he was dying that my Dad ever sad anything about their financial status, and then he involved me only because the filing extension on his Federal tax return was almost expired and he needed help.

There are over 2000 Bible verses dealing with money matters. Many of Jesus' parables related to matters of possessions and stewardship. Yet when we, the people of the Word, have opportunity to talk about money and wealth, we freeze up. What is it about money?

Jesus says, "It's not about money. It's about grace."

I invite you to take the bulletin home and reread the gospel lesson for today; maybe even open your Bible and put the lesson in its context in Luke's gospel. Chapter 15 begins with the parables of the lost things -- a coin from the set of 10 coins, a sheep from the flock of 100. Rijasoa Andriamanana gave us a wonderful testimony of the power of that one coin -- her lost coin being a graduate degree from the US, something she is pursuing with all she has, hoping to return home to Madagascar and the other nine coins of her husband, children, family, church, community, country -- inviting us to rejoice in the new opportunities that reunion will mean for everyone. There's grace in the seeking and in the rejoicing.

Also in chapter 15 Luke tells about the prodigal son and the waiting father, and the amazing grace that leads the wayward one to "come to himself" and return home. There's grace in the awakening, and more grace in the reunion of the lost son with his family, in that relationship restored.

Then Luke offers this story. A steward, a manager is apparently dishonest. We aren't told what he did, but we can imagine. Our news reports are filled with such stories. He cheated, he got caught and he's going to lose his job. No litigation, no spin, no defense lawyers rising to declare his innocence.  He was wrong, he's caught, and he's getting cut. Before he leaves his job, however, he leverages his power for the sake of his future. The soon-to-be-fired manager reduces the outstanding debts -- super-sized debts, jumbo debts -- of his boss's debtors. I imagine a refinancing to save the mortgage, a consumer credit counseling arrangement that preserves the debtors' livelihoods. We're talking waive the interest and pay only the principal.

Whatever the details, the net result is this: two debtors are relieved and have a new lease on life; among his peers and in the community the reputation of this master has received a tremendous boost; and a certain dishonest employee, now praised for his shrewdness by his boss, has a chance to recover from the shame of being lost.

Surprise! It's not about the money -- it's about grace.  It's about the grace of a God who offers second chances. The grace of a God who uses really strange and broken people -- people like you and me -- to be about something really life-giving and healing in this world.

We know that how we use our money makes a statement about what we value and who we love. Every time we bring our offerings to the altar we sing words to the effect that "all that we have is" God's alone, a trust from God. Every time we are reminded that living as God's "trust fund kids," God's disciples, is challenging and disconcerting and risky. One theologian summarizes the cost of being God's trust fund kids this way:

"In a culture that worships winners, it is an ongoing challenge to place our trust in a God who values what we might prefer to leave behind:  

the poor,
the sick,
the crazies,
the wounded,
the lost.

Yet, that is exactly what God invites us to do.

Place our trust,

            our love,
            our hope
            and our wallets,

with the one who often uses questionable people to teach valuable lessons."            [Susan Fleming McGurgan]

I just returned last night from the Rocky Mountain Synod Council meeting in Denver CO. As leaders elected to serve on your behalf we wrestled for faithful decisions around matters of policy and staffing, finances and budgets. The changes coming soon to the way Lutheran Campus Ministries are supported by our synod and our church are very unsettling. Moving from a “hiring” agency where salaries for Campus pastors are included every year in the synod budget, to a “funding” agency where local boards like the faithful five at Luther House are responsible for writing grants and fundraising those dollars for ministry is a huge shift. The expectation that we can make that happen in the course of the next year makes me feel like WE were given a pink slip.

I was frustrated – and right in the midst of my frustration we took a break. We stopped to get an update about the "Vision, Passion, Action" process that’s been unfolding in our synod since last fall; then we participated in part of the process that will be used when groups gather throughout our synod this fall. Through the exercise of turning to one another and naming our passions as disciples of Jesus, then piecing them together into the vision of God’s mission for us in this place, even though we were role playing some actions for our work as a synod council began to emerge. I personally began to see that while I didn’t like the way things were being handled, I did see possibility in the end result. We have opportunity through this challenge to develop an even stronger partnership among congregations and individuals who care deeply about campus ministry. That surprised me -- I calmed down, and my experience of the rest of the synod council meeting was transformed.

That's a given about this journey with God -- once you step out in faith, expect to be surprised. Like newly baptized children returned to their parents, on loan for a time to be shaped by their parent's witness, we too are on loan to the world only for a time. All that we have and are have been given us by God to manage, to steward, for the time we have. So what we are doing in this life then is not making good -- or not -- on what belongs to us. We are trading with goods that were never ours in the first place. We are, from the get go, stewards of someone else's wealth. And yet even for us, broken and stumbling, God offers a word of grace:

Whoever is faithful EVEN in a very little, is faithful also in much.

It's not about the money -- it's about God's accounting system of grace. What's so amazing about grace is that it only takes a little effort in the direction of reconciling, renewing, and restoring relationships to make a big difference in the heart of God. A little bit of openness to be surprised by grace. Even you -- right here, right now -- just as you are with all your baggage and imperfections, even you can be a channel of God's grace.

Thanks be to God.

Amen