Pentecost 18, Year C (2016)

Proper 20 :: Amos 8: 4–7; Psalm 113; I Timothy 2: 1–7; Luke 16: 1–13

This is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker given at St. John’s Church in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, September 18, 2016.

“FAITHFUL LIVING AS CHILDREN OF THE LIGHT”

(Homily texts:  Amos 8: 4–7 & Luke 16: 1-13)

Both our Old Testament reading from the prophet Amos and our gospel reading for this morning have to do with dishonesty. In the Amos reading, it is the rich who are cheating the poor. Jesus’ parable about the dishonest manager is just the opposite: The manager is cheating his rich master.

Jesus’ parable might – at first glance – appear to be difficult to understand. Indeed, biblical scholars take differing views of the details of some of the Lord’s teaching.

But the overall meaning (and challenge for us as disciples of Christ) is clear in Jesus’ statement, when He says, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.”

As we look at the details of this parable, let’s remember the target audience…Jesus is speaking to His disciples. He is also speaking to us. (Last week’s gospel and the two parables we heard then were addressed to the Pharisees and the scribes. Remembering who are the recipients is important to understand the application of the teaching.)

So then, Jesus is telling us what faithful living as a follower of Jesus looks like.

Now then, let’s look at some of the details of Jesus’ parable, remembering that the Lord is a master story teller.

First of all, we should notice that the dishonest manager is consistent in his dishonesty. When confronted with the accusation of dishonesty, he acts dishonestly to cheat his master out of what is rightfully his. In so doing, he does so quickly (perhaps so as not to be caught and prevented from carrying out his dishonest act?). Jesus says that the dishonest manager tells the first debtor to sit down “quickly” to reduce the amount owed.

The dishonest manager is pulling others into his web of deceit. (Isn’t that exactly how sin works? Once sin becomes a reality, then it tends to affect others and to involve others….consider the act of telling a lie: Once a lie has been told, then the liar has to remember the tale that was told in order to keep the story straight and to maintain the falsehood. The liar might also involve others in maintaining the false narrative.) The manager is basically guaranteeing his retirement (the ancient equivalent of an IRA or a 401K account) by creating a debt owed to the manager by those who have benefitted from his act of generosity (at the master’s expense, we ought to note). Put in very blunt terms, the manager is telling these debtors “You owe me, and once I am dismissed, I’ll be coming to collect on my debt.”

Jesus’ statement “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes,” may seem difficult to understand. Allow me to attempt an explanation: Jesus is saying, in effect (I think), “Go ahead and live dishonestly. You can live that way if you choose to. Go ahead and get friends for yourselves (like the dishonest manager), so that you and they will have an illicit agreement based on cheating…for that agreement and the wealth attached to it will both come to an end.” At least that’s what I make of the statement. (Again, biblical scholars puzzle over the meaning, but I think my interpretation of the statement’s meaning is generally faithful to the Lord’s intent.)

Now, let’s return to the central theme of this parable.

Jesus is instructing His first disciples and His modern day disciples that they must make a choice in the way they will live their lives. Here are reminded that the letters of the New Testament contain numerous admonitions to the early Christians that they cannot live as they used to live before they came to faith in Christ. They must put away their former ways of living and they must live upright and holy lives before God. One passage from I Peter 1: 14 – 15 will illustrate this concern: “As obedient children, do not be conformed to the passions of your former ignorance, but as he who called you is holy, you also must be holy in all your conduct.” (English Standard Version)

Finally, the Lord tells us that the little things count. He admonishes us to remember that the one who “is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”

Just as the dishonest manager was called to give an account of his stewardship of the master’s wealth, so, too, we will be called to give an account of our conduct and of our stewardship of the love of God which has been given to us.

AMEN.

Pentecost 17, Year C (2016)

Proper 19 :: Jeremiah 4: 11–12, 22–28; Psalm 51: 1–11; I Timothy 1: 12–17 ; Luke 15: 1–10

This is a homily by Fr. Gene Tucker, given at St. John's Church, Huntingdon, Pennsylvania on Sunday, September 11, 2016.

“LOST AND FOUND, OUT AND IN”

(Homily text: Luke 15: 1–10)

Lost and found, out and in.

These are the phrases that come to mind as I think about our gospel text for this morning, which puts before us two lovely parables, the Parable of the Lost Sheep and the Parable of the Lost Coin.

With regard to the Parable of the Lost Sheep, there is a familiar painting of the Lord carrying a lamb or a sheep over His shoulders, which you may have seen. It is a lovely image.

But for all the loveliness of the image of the Lord carrying one of His sheep back from being lost, there is some very dramatic stuff going on in the two teachings we hear this morning. So let’s dig into the situation a bit, and explore the ramifications of the Lord’s teaching.

We must begin by looking at the target audience for these two parables:  The Pharisees and the scribes.

Luke tells us that these two groups were grumbling about Jesus’ behavior, saying that He ate with “tax collectors and sinners”. The Pharisees and the scribes avoided contact with these two groups at all costs. The reason is that, to be in contact with a sinner was to risk becoming unclean oneself. Recall that – in the days of Jesus’ earthly ministry – the matter of who was “clean” and who was “unclean” was, perhaps, the one single governing rule which dictated acceptable behavior. Moreover, in that time and place, the company one chose to share a meal with was important, for it signaled who one’s friends and acceptable associates were. (In our own culture, we’ve lost this sense almost completely: We don’t really pay much attention to the company we keep when we eat in public places. But remember that public eating places were very rare in those days, so most places where one would share a meal or would eat in the company of others were homes.)

To the Pharisees and the scribes, tax collectors and sinners were “lost”.

Moreover, tax collectors and sinners were so lost that they could never be found, according to the thinking of the Pharisees and the scribes. Such people were completely outside of God’s will and were totally shut off from having any acceptable relationship with God, or so the Pharisees and the scribes thought.

Jesus undermines this way of thinking with the two parables He put before the Pharisees and the scribes. He describes the incredible and risky steps that God will take to seek out and find someone who is lost. I use the word “risky” because of Jesus’ assertion that God will risk the welfare of the main flock of His sheep in order to find the one who’s gone astray.

If we think about it, no shepherd in their right mind would do such a thing. Most shepherds would cut their losses with the one sheep who’d gotten lost, in order to preserve and protect what assets they have left. But God doesn’t work that way.

At this point, we come to the matter of God’s economy. Economy is a word that, in common usage today, has come to mean things having to do with money or finances. But our English word denoting money or finances has a Greek root, where it means “plan”. God’s plan is to seek out and find those who are lost. God deliberately undertakes this search mission, and there is an urgency to that mission … notice how Jesus says that the shepherd leaves the ninety nine sheep in the wilderness to seek out that one lost sheep. The shepherd does not take the flock back to the sheepfold to bed them down safely before heading back out into the wilderness. Notice also how the woman in the house lights a lamp to find the one coin she has lost. She does not wait until sunlight arrives the next day, she begins her search immediately.

No such urgency can be found in the Pharisees’ complacent and self-assured attitudes about the tax collectors and the sinners. In the mind of the Pharisees and the scribes, they know their status with God, and – according to their reckoning – they are anything but lost. They are the “in” crowd with God.

Ah, but in this observation, we stumble on an awful truth: The Pharisees and the scribes are the ones who are lost. They are the ones who are on the outside of God’s love and God’s will, for they have placed themselves outside of the divine will by their arrogance and by their self-important status, which they think they have earned by their own meticulous keeping of the Law of Moses.

In the Prayers of the People that we will pray together in a few moments, we pray this petition: “I ask your prayers for all who seek God, or a deeper knowledge of him. Pray that they may find and be found by him.”[1]

In our search for God, and in God’s search for us, when does the searching and the finding happen?

The quest for searching and finding begins at baptism. It is in the waters of baptism that God offers each one an invitation to become a child of God. It is God’s initiative that makes the finding possible. As we enter the waters of baptism, we take God’s hand, a hand that is outstretched toward us.

But the searching and the finding doesn’t stop at the baptismal font. If we are honest with ourselves, we’ll have to admit that there will be times when we might adopt the attitudes of the Pharisees, tending to rely on our own merits and not on God’s grace, tending to think we’ve gotten everything figured out where God is concerned.

When that happens, then we are at risk of being alienated from God. We find ourselves among the lost, not among the found. We place ourselves outside of an ability to hear God’s voice, a voice which calls us into a loving embrace.

The reality is that each one of us is at risk of such behavior. It is the very reason that we confess our sins to God before coming to the Holy Table of the Eucharist. No one of us is immune to the disease of spiritual arrogance. Fortunately, such a condition need not be permanent.

To see ourselves as God sees us is to realize the potential each one of us has for getting lost. This reality encourages us to look around to see if we are in a spiritual wilderness, lost in a place of our own making. If we find ourselves in such a desolate place, spiritually, then we are called to listen for the voice of the shepherd, and to welcome His carrying us back to safety.

So then, Jesus’ parables, heard this morning, challenge us to see our true status with God….where are we? Are we among the lost or among the found, among those who are “out” or among those who are “in”?

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[1]  Prayers of the People Form II, Book of Common Prayer, 1979, page 386.