The Future and What to Do About It, Graduates
(Luke 16:1-13)
Graduates, good judgment comes from experience;
and experience, well that comes from bad judgment.
The gospel reading for this morning is the most
difficult Jesus-parable for me to understand. What in the
world was Jesus trying to say by telling this story?
Someone in the office goes to the boss and snitches on
a fellow employee. Boss, our office manager has been
cheating you. The boss calls the dishonest manager on the
carpet, tells him to clean out his desk and leave that very
day. He also demands a complete accounting: Show me
the books.
The dishonest manager thinks to himself: I’m not
accustomed to hard work. Unemployment compensation is
peanuts. What am I to do?
He decides to get together some of his boss’s clients.
Then the swindle begins. At an expensive restaurant, he
meets with clients, one last fling on the expense account.
During the lunch he asks: Now tell me, what do you
owe the company? Each owes a vast sum. Look, why don’t
you just write off most of what you owe? And we’ll call it
even. He “cooks the books.”
This crook is writing off vast debts at his boss’s
company’s expense!
What a strange story. Why would Jesus tell such a tell
to good church-folk like us? What are we to make of this
parable? Talk about biblical life application! I don’t think
so; or do I?
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One thing is for certain, due to a catastrophe in his
own life, the dishonest steward in Jesus’ story is thinking
about his future. (Catastrophes will come your way in life,
Graduates—visited upon you by others, the situation of our
country or world, or by your own doing, intentally or unintentally).
What is most troubling in our gospel reading this
morning is that Jesus commends the dishonest steward?
We would expect Jesus to make some concluding moral
point, at the end of this story. What the dishonest steward
did was wrong. We don’t expect Jesus to praise
immorality, but that’s exactly what Jesus does.
Why?
That’s the reason I said that this parable is the toughest
story Jesus told for me to figure out. And I’m in good
company. St. Augustine said: I can’t believe that this story
came from the lips of our Lord. Luke himself seems to be
uncomfortable with the story. He adds a few clarifying
verses at the end. Luke quotes Jesus: You can’t love God
and wealth. True, but does it really relate to this parable?
Luke also quotes Jesus’ saying: One who is not
faithful in small things, will not be faithful in big things.
Well, what does that have to do with the story?
What the steward did was dishonest and what Jesus
did was to praise him for it! What shall we make of that?
What I am about to say should ring true in light of the
crises our nation has been going through since September
11, 2001. (Graduates, the time since has spanned half of
your lives).
Jesus tells the story about a steward, albeit a less than
honest one, who when faced with a crisis, recognizes the
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catastrophe and immediately moves to do something about
it! He wants a future. Graduates, you want a future. That
diploma you recently received, your cap and gown prove
your striving for a future! You know what Jesus knows in
the telling of this story, and keep this lesson forever before
you—if you do not remember anything else I said to you
this morning, remember this: Nothing desirable happens
un-intentally. Graduates, you must be intent about the
future. You have known that, consciously, or
subconsciously, all along, or you would not have gone to
college.
When adversity comes, don’t freeze up, or pull the
covers over your head and simply give in. Don’t think:
What can I do? I’m just one person? I can’t do anything
to help. Remember that diploma you recently intentally
earned. You can do anything with God on your side!
Your boss comes in and tells you that you are the
latest victim of “downsizing” and you decide that your
productive life is over.
Circle the wagons, move into a defensive posture and
hunker down? Why fight a hopeless cause?
I think that Jesus is telling us in this parable that that is
a lousy way to live, Graduates. If even dishonest,
unscrupulous business people know how to move from the
defensive to the offensive so quickly, how much more so
ought we Christians? Be smart. Be savvy. Why—because
the future belongs to those who are shrewd—because life
goes better for those who move decisively—because it
takes more than defense to win in any contest? Yes,
Graduates! It takes intent! Graduates, Jesus said: Behold, I
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send you out as sheep in the midst of wolves; so be wise as
serpents but harmless as doves (Matthew 10:16).
Speaking in Duke Chapel in 1998, evangelical activist,
Jim Wallis, noted how inner-city gangs ruthlessly defended
their “turf,” how drug lords mark off a neighborhood and
make it theirs. I want churches to learn from these guys,
Wallis said. I want some inner-city churches who will say:
‘This is our turf and we are going to do whatever it takes to
control our turf.’
He told of one such church, which posted their little
old ladies in lawn chairs on all the street corners close to
the church, armed with video cameras and how overnight,
they changed an entire Detroit neighborhood. They had no
idea how to operate the cameras, but the bad guys didn’t
know that.1
The little old ladies were not simply savvy to the ways
of the world, beating the world at its own game, they had a
conviction about what they saw the future to be for their
neighborhood and they acted on it. Graduates, you have a
conviction about what you see your future to be, and you
have acted upon it—your diploma and cap and gown say
so!
The Bible says that the future is God’s. Therefore we
are to live as those constantly open to God’s advent among
us, savvy, watchful, ready to move. We are not to be
anxious about our lives, timid over tomorrow, paralyzed by
anxiety. Worrying about the future gets us nowhere.
Rather, we must trust that the future is God’s and we are
God’s children.
1 Jim Wallis preaches at Duke Chapel, 9/20/1998.
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Even with our visions, dreams and schemes
concerning the future, Graduates, we aren’t sure what the
future will look like, but we are convicted that God holds
the future and therefore it will look good.
We get confused into thinking that the future is in our
hands, solely; that God’s future is just like our future. Then
when catastrophe comes we hang our heads, we sigh, and
we resign ourselves to our fate.
Jesus says: Lift up your heads and follow me into the
future. He lures us toward an unexpected future, because it
is not our future, it is God’s. Jesus tells an outrageous story
of a man who makes some outrageous moves because he is
convinced that his story is not yet over, that the future is
open, surprising, yet not fixed or final.
The dishonest steward took what had been dealt his
way by his own hand, a rather bleak prospect; and wheeled
and dealed, worked with it with faith that even this could
lead to good, and his story continued. He had a future.
In this parable is some good advice for the future. It is
not the advice that Ann Landers would give. Newspaper
advice columns, in time of distress and turmoil, encourage
us to draw upon our abilities and resources, alone.
It is different in this parable from Jesus. We are urged
to stride into the future with confidence in the power and
grace of God. The one who told the story is Jesus, the one
who not only told good stories, but embodied them. Even
when he moved toward a cross, he did not do so as one
resigned to a bleak fate, but as one confident that the future
belongs to God—Resurrection.
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Knowing that, we are able to move into the future with
confidence, with shrewd recourses, not solely of our own
devising. That’s good news for Graduates.
God’s speed, Graduates!
Amen.
Charles Lee Hutchens, D.Min.
Main Street U.M.C.
Reidsville, N.C.
6/5/2001
1 William H. Willimon, The Future And What To Do About It (a sermon
preached at Duke Chapel, 9-20-1998).