Dishonest Dilemma

Gospel: Luke 16:1-13

Sermon Transcript:

I have a love-hate relationship with grocery shopping. The most dedicated hobby I have is cooking, so trips to the grocery store are sometimes fun and creative. I get to pick out ingredients, think through different recipes, and figure out the little spins that I’ll put on the meals. Sometimes, though…well most of the time the grocery store is the stressful part of the week. My wife and I usually go on Sundays – the busiest day to go – and the store is filled with other stressed people who are just trying to get done. Common courteously is thrown out the window. I bob and weave around people with my cart and usually don’t think much about my shared humanity with the other shoppers. I just try to get through the list as quick as possible. So, when Giant Eagle released a new way to check out a few months ago, I was ecstatic. Some stores now have one of those scanner things that customers can take with them and scan while they shop. If I want to buy a box of cereal, I simply scan the item and put it in my cart. That’s it. That way, when a customer is done shopping, they’re also done checking out. No more waiting in line at the cash register! There’s a dedicated line near the exit where customers return the scanner and pay their bill. Items don’t leave your cart until you unload it in your car. This new way of shopping makes me very happy. I’m able to shop at a breakneck speed and not have to wait in a line. It’s great – get in, get out, get home. [Pause] However, after doing it a few times, I realized that I could shop without any interaction with a store employee. I could buy a week’s worth of groceries without a single Giant Eagle employee looking at me or my cart. Does Giant Eagle really trust all of these people to scan every single item? What’s to keep someone from scanning one bag of chips, but put two in their cart? Or for me and my mild ice cream addiction, what’s keeping me from scanning a pint of chunky monkey and putting an extra pint of half-baked in as well? I consider myself a pretty honest person, and I’ve never shoplifted; but to tell you the truth, the thought went through my mind. This new check out system is definitely convenient, but is it convenient enough to be dishonest? Is Giant Eagle really that trusting, or are they just that naïve? [Pause] And, on top of this grocery store dilemma, I came across this reading from Luke which gives us an even greater dilemma of dishonesty. Today’s passage is pretty difficult to understand. The dishonest steward is commended by his master for making backdoor deals to reduce debts. The steward is best thought of as the personal account manager for the master. In today’s terms, the steward is basically a financial advisor who is swindling his client’s funds for his own benefit. Verses 8 and 9 really throw readers for a loop: It says, “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 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.” The RSV keeps the Greek word for wealth, mammon, in its translation. So there’s no confusion that Jesus is being very confusing in this parable! How do we reconcile the manager’s dishonest behavior and Jesus’ surprising approval? Is not the Christian life marked by tenacious honesty and striving toward the truth in all things? Most importantly, where is the good news for us today in this parable? [Pause] Maybe the reason this parable is so difficult to understand is that it’s just so, well, honest. The steward clearly understands the situation he’s in. He even admits it; he asks himself, “What will I do now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.” He is concerned with being welcomed into the homes of his former debtors. He must rely on the people who he once used as pawns in his scheming. He must rely on his ability to mend relationships and for those people to accept him in return. With this in mind, his blunt practicality and awareness of his circumstance is understandable. The manager uses his position to secure his future and build bonds with those around him. If we were put in this situation, would we act any differently? [Pause] Of course, we would! I’m sure we all think of ourselves as honest people. But I think the difficulty of this passage is that it speaks to a side of every one of us that we don’t want to acknowledge. Namely, it pokes at our natural tendency to be dishonest. We’re imperfect beings and we’re dishonest with our loved ones, colleagues, and especially ourselves. Dan Ariely, a professor of psychology at Duke University, underwent a huge research project to test our dishonesty. His researched involved around 30,000 people and it set them up in situations in which they were given the opportunity to steal or cheat. He found that out of those 30,000 people, only a dozen or so would steal more than $150. Surprisingly, though about 16,000 people – over half of the participants – stole just a little. A dollar here, a few more dollars there – who’s it going to hurt? Right? Taken together, these tiny thieves stole a combined $36,000. In another experiment, participants were given a sheet of paper with 20 simple math problems. They had 5 minutes to solve as many of them as they could; for each correct answer, they were paid $1. When the 5 minutes were up, the participants were instructed to count the number of questions they answered correctly. When they finished counting, they were instructed to shred their test. No one else would see the tests. Or so they thought. In reality, the shredder didn’t actually shred the tests. When the experiment was over, the research assistants would go through the tests and match-up the actual number of correct answers to the number that was reported by participants. On average, people solved only 4 questions correctly, but would report that they solved 6 questions. So all-in-all those who cheated only stole around $2, but it was stealing nonetheless. [Pause] Maybe we’re not as honest as we think. And maybe we actually would act in the same way as the dishonest manager if we were a similar dilemma. But I think this parable is saying more about the Christian life than just dishonesty and personal piety. Notice how Jesus’ moves from a story about an individual to a lesson for the community. Again, verses 8 and 9 says that, “the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of the light…make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal habitations.” And finally, to end the parable and to add even more confusion, Jesus tells the group of disciples that they cannot serve God and wealth. This transition from a story about an individual’s dishonesty toward a community ethic gets to the heart of this parable. The dishonest steward’s situation at the beginning is used to frame a larger lesson about how the disciples – and by extension the Christian community today – are to act in that ever-ambiguous and confusing space between this world and God’s reign. The heart of this parable is not the manager’s dishonesty, but his honesty with himself. The steward realized of his poor standing within the community and acted shrewdly our of self-preservation. Jesus is not condoning dishonesty; Jesus condones shrewdness, which is having sharp powers of judgment. In a word, to be a shrewd is to be astute. Jesus praises the manager’s shrewdness – his ability to realistically see where he is in life and to make a practical, pragmatic change. It just so happens that the manager makes this change because of an ulterior motive. What Jesus tells us, as both children of the light and children of this age, is that we have to be shrewd according to our motive set forth as a people of God. The humanity of the dishonest steward is all too real. But Jesus is challenging us to be shrewd toward God’s will and not our own ulterior motives. To be shrewd, then, is not necessarily a bad thing when we direct the shrewdness toward God’s will. Despite our dishonesties and glorification of wealth, God’s reign is timeless and among us. We are faced with this reality in every moment, and we must act shrewdly according to God’s reign, not the reign of money, greed, and injustice. As the body of Christ, we must be aware of our situation in this age and shrewd to the whispers and shouts of the Holy Spirit. God’s reign is continually unveiled to us, we must be astute enough as a community to see it. We must always discern between our earthy wills and God’s will. As if this isn’t difficult enough in our personal lives, we are called to be shrewd in our life together as the body of Christ. [Pause] Shrewdness, according to this parable, is a virtue. Dishonest wealth is a reality that we must all admit and reconcile with in this age. We must be true in our dishonesty. Dishonesty does not always mean stealing or making backdoor deals. Dishonesty can mean the ways that we live that is separate from God. This means living with an uncritical eye toward society and its structures that are unjust and oppressive. This means living according to the “gospel” of consumerism, that if we all work hard enough, we will be comfortable in our wealth. We all do this. We are all human, and we all live in this age. The lesson from the dishonest steward is that we must be in touch with the ways that we are disconnected from God. He realized who he was, and he acted accordingly. As the people of God, we too are called to realize who we are, at our core, and act according to the God’s Spirit. To act shrewd, to act with sharp powers of judgment, means that we must be in touch with our true selves. We must be in touch with our identity in Christ. We cannot live just according to our identity in this age and in this society. We must realize our position in this age and see God working and moving and prodding us toward God’s ever-lasting light. As we realize and understand more fully our situation as both children of this age and children of the light, we move into God’s reign. We must be open to God’s will, able to move and change at a moment’s notice. As a community, we respond to the Holy Spirit like a nomadic people, ready to discover a new corner of God’s reign. This is the good news for us today! As the body of Christ, our core identity is with God. Our true self is loved by God. Our true self dwells with Christ. Our true self is infused with the Holy Spirit The question remains for us: are we shrewd enough to respond? Will we be holy shrewds, ever discerning our situation with God? Let us pray. Holy God, we are both children of this age and children of the light. Help us to act shrewdly toward Your will. Help us to live with you in your eternal tent. Help us to continually discover Your reign among us. Help us to move and change according to Your Spirit. Amen.