Investment Counseling

September 23, 2007     Proper 20 C

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1             Psalm 79:1-9

1 Timothy 2:1-7         St. Luke 16:1-13

We invest a great deal of time, money, and energy in acquiring skills, guidance, therapy, and education in order to live better lives.

Disciples are called to invest the same time and energy gaining prudence and spiritual insight so to be "welcomed into eternal dwellings."

God or mammon: Jesus continues to instruct his followers about the demands of discipleship. In Luke 16, he addresses the matter of possessions.

You cannot be the slave both of God and of money. The Lord Jesus, true teacher of the precepts that lead to salvation, wished to urge upon the apostles in his own time and all believers today the Christian duty of almsgiving. He therefore related the parable of the steward to make us realize that nothing in this world really belongs to us.

We have been entrusted with the administration of our Lord's property to use what we need with thanksgiving, and to distribute the rest among our fellow servants according to the needs of each one.

We must not squander the wealth entrusted to us, nor waste it, for when the Lord comes we shall be required to account for our expenditure.

Finally, at the end of the parable, the Lord adds: Use worldly wealth to make friends with the poor, so that when it fails you, when you have spent all you possessed on the needs of the poor and have nothing left, they may welcome you into eternal dwellings.

In other words, these same poor people will befriend you by assuring your salvation, for Christ, the giver of eternal rewards, will declare that he himself received the acts of kindness done to them.

Not in their own name, then, will these poor people welcome us, but in the name of him who is refreshed in their persons by the fruit of our faith and obedience.

The parable of the "Prudent Steward" is a minefield of problems. The lesser problems have to do with the sayings of Jesus in verses 10-13: how do these relate to the parable? The greater problems have to do with this dishonest steward being used as a model for faithful discipleship. How can this be?

The string of sayings gives a new application to the parable: the disciples are to show as much intelligence in the use of wealth as the unjust steward did in his own interests.

The issue is the impending fate of the steward. He has been given his notice and will have to render an account of his service.

Clearly, the parable is oriented to final judgment and accountability. Knowing what awaits him, he attempts to secure his future by making use of what is in his power.

While his falsifying the accounts of his master is hardly admirable or exemplary, he is "prudent" in knowing that the personal stakes are high: nothing less than his survival is at issue.

He takes the risks and the necessary steps to insure his survival. In the broadest terms, this is the lesson for disciples. The end is coming, judgment and accountability await: use the present situation to secure one's future.

More narrowly, the issue is the proper use of the goods of this world.

Earlier Jesus had indicated the relative worth of earthly possessions and the proper use of them: "Sell your belongings and give alms. Provide moneybags for yourselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy. For where your treasure is, there also will your heart be."

For many Christians who wish to follow Christ and yet find themselves rich in material things, Gospel teachings concerning money are troubling. At times it becomes so perplexing that we are tempted to stop searching for a solution. It seems so hard, even impossible, to integrate material security with full discipleship that we often give up trying to figure it out. Maybe it will all go away.

Jesus, in the Gospel according to Luke, tells us that we should not give up the effort. This is the recommendation (not advice to deceive and manipulate) behind the story of the unjust steward. The steward musters every available bit of farsightedness and craft when it comes to working out his material fate. And he is dealing with mere earthly things. We, however, are trying to figure out something that touches the very meaning of who we are and what we forever cling to.

Luke himself provides two guidelines to help us figure out our relationship to money. The whole of chapter 16, with its four interrelated sections, exemplifies the first guideline: Money is for persons and the only proper use of it is in sharing. What is more, those who make special claim on our sharing are the poor. This is an inescapable conclusion from Luke's teaching. It is a teaching with ancient pedigree, the same doctrine that led Amos to indict those who "trample upon the needy and destroy the poor of the land." And just as Amos said that God would never forget the exploiting of workers for silver, dress, and drink, so also Luke warned of a dire fate for the rich man in the story of Lazarus.

Luke's second guideline is the pithy moral drawn from the story of the steward: "No servant can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other or be attentive to the one and despise the other. You cannot give yourself to God and money." The more we allow ourselves to be mastered by money, the more we are likely to despise those who remind us of another dominion. We might even resent the very Gospels that challenge our attachment.

The things of this world are not of ultimate worth, but they may have ultimate consequences: how one deals with them has a bearing on one's salvation and indicates what one truly values.

But if you have been untrustworthy in the administration of worldly wealth, who is going to trust you with true riches? For if someone cannot be relied on to administer worldly possessions that provide the means for all sorts of wrong doing, would anyone dream of trusting that person with the true heavenly riches rightly and deservedly enjoyed by those who have been faithful in giving to the poor?

The Lord's query above is immediately followed by another: If you cannot be trusted with another's property, who will give you your own?

Nothing in this world really belongs to us. We who hope for a future reward are told to live in this world as strangers and pilgrims, so as to be able to say to the Lord without fear of contradiction: I am a stranger and a pilgrim like all my ancestors.

What believers can regard as their own is that eternal and heavenly possession where our heart is and our treasure, and where intense longing makes us dwell already through faith, for asSaint Paul teaches, Our homeland is in heaven.