Snday Sermon - Jealous Farmer or Trickster Thief?
The Rev. Aron Kramer 17 Pentecost Sunday, September 23, 2007
God appeared to this farmer and granted him three wishes, but with the condition that whatever God did for the farmer would be given double to his neighbor. The farmer, scarcely believing his good fortune, wished for a hundred cattle. Immediately he received a hundred cattle and he was overjoyed until he saw that his neighbor had two hundred. So he wished for a hundred acres of land, and again he was filled with joy until he saw that his neighbor had two hundred acres of land. Rather than celebrating God’s goodness, the farmer could not escape feeling jealous and slighted because his neighbor had received more than he. Finally, he stated his third wish: that God would strike him blind in one eye.
There is little imagination in this story on the part of the farmer, there is little creativity, it is a story about jealousy, desire and wanting to have more than anyone else. Today’s Gospel left me hanging, is there anyone else here who is thinking to themselves, “What on earth is Jesus saying?” The parable of the manager is certainly a challenge, but we have to remember that stories of tricksters and wise rogues were popular in Jewish folklore and there are plenty of stories in our own scriptures that attest to that. Jacob was the trickster patriarch who deceived his father, cheated his brother and the made off with most of his father in law’s flock. This character of the trickster endures in folklore and even in our own modern day pop culture. Our CSI’s and our Law and Orders revere the craftiness of criminals and applaud the tricks and twists the heroes of those shows have to come up with to apprehend the dangerous and creative minds that do evil.
Listen to this Jewish story:
A man once caught stealing was ordered by the king to be hanged. On the way to the gallows he said to the governor that he knew a wonderful secret and it would be a pity to allow it to die with him and he would like to disclose it to the king. He would put a seed of a pomegranate in the ground and through the secret taught him by his father he would make it grow and bear fruit overnight. The thief was brought before the king and on the morrow the king, accompanied by the high officer of state, came to the place where the thief was waiting for them. There the thief dug a hole in the ground and said, “This seed must only be put into the ground by a man who has never stolen or taken anything which did not belong to him. I being a thief cannot do it.” So he turned to the Vizier who, frightened, said that in his younger days he had retained something which did not belong to him. The treasurer said that dealing with such large sums, he might have entered too much or too little and even the king owned that he had kept a necklace of his fathers. The thief then said, “You are all mighty and powerful and want nothing and yet you cannot plant the seed, whilst I who have stolen a little because I was starving am to be hanged.” The king, pleased with the ruse of the thief, pardoned him.
Now don’t you wish you could have come up with something as great as that the last time you were caught taking something that wasn’t yours? There is something that pulls at our heart strings, or at the very least affirms our bias towards those who are wise and intelligent and can weasel their way out of difficult situations. It is inherent in American culture to use one’s imagination to come up with some new avenue of escape, or some specific way to cut the corners whether it be in finances or relationships or to get possessions we desire. We often seek the easiest way to do these things. I learned young as my Dad’s way of doing things was always the most difficult and long lasting way he could find, and if we did not do it that way, well we had to have a good explanation why we dared do something in our own way.
What business owner or treasurer would ever imagine that the dishonest manager would be let off the hook, or at least, as in the Gospel, looked favorably upon for giving away the owners money rather than collecting every last cent. If any of us did that today, we would be tossed out in the streets, or thrown in jail if it was a bad enough offense. That takes some serious moxie to say to oneself, I am going to be prepared for when I get thrown out on the street. And what is so shocking is that he did not save money for himself, he did not buy things he needed, he created relationships, and he built up trust and good will in the very people that would be able to receive him when he would be dismissed from his job. Building social capital, building relationships is just not a good way, we might think today, of preparing for the loss of a job.
In thinking about the building of relationships versus the hoarding of money, we arrive at a complex, yet very simple question of how we see money in our lives. How we experience money and relationships with others in our own daily economies. This Gospel challenges us to think of money in a very different way, money is a resource only if it is given or spent, especially when it is given for providing to those in need and releasing people from debt. That is how money can help grow the kingdom of God, whereas closely watched personalized accounts that are protected against all forms of generosity stand in the way of growing the sort of relationships and serving the kind of purposes that truly matter. Does the dishonest manager realize that generosity is the best investment? Does he get himself out of a hole by building trust and social capital? Does the dishonest manager teach the owner what the best policy is in dealing with his own money and people who are in debt to him, that policy being generosity? Jo Bailey Wells, director of Anglican Studies at Duke Divinity School, writes for the Christian Century’s Blog, “It’s time to change economies. Forget “my economics”: it is time to invest in somebody else’s. Forget “my household”: it is time to think about other people’s households, time to squander that which is squirreled: money should be kept moving. It is time to handle it as the overflow of God’s abundant grace: to scatter it freely, to the end of making friends and setting people free—just as God does with God’s grace.”
Changing economies is hard for us to imagine, ingrained in the culture as we are. There is another reason this parable grates against our imagination as well. Most of us in this room, faced with the prospect of losing our jobs, would be able to imagine what our next steps would be. Most of us in this sanctuary would be able to find support from others, support from loved ones, and support from people in this very community. But there are a great number of people on the fringes of our society that would not have the same support, the same opportunities to ease through unemployment as we could. Most of us could find, in this moment, if we needed it, the two dollars to hop a bus and get to a destination we wanted to go to. This is the kind of change in economies I am talking about. We are called to change our assumptions, not just redistribute our wealth; we are called in this Gospel to imagine our lives differently, to imagine our daily habits and routines differently. We are being asked, in a form that is familiar to us, to adapt and change how we see the world so we can better see the Kingdom of God in the world. That is what is going on in this Gospel, it is not about simply giving money to those who are in need, it is about weighing our human relationships against the things we “own” and the relationships we have with one another and with God.
Changing economies is about metanoia, it is about changing our behavior and changing how we see God in the world and where we see God in the world. God knows our hearts, and for the most part, we know one another’s hearts, how are we preparing to be shown hospitality? How are we preparing to be welcomed into others’ homes when our own luck runs out? Will we be unimaginative and wish only retribution on those who receive the grace of God, or will we engage our creativity to see how we can change our behavior in order that we might someday be welcomed gracefully at the table of those we showed grace to as well. What will it be? Jealous farmer or trickster thief?
God appeared to this farmer and granted him three wishes, but with the condition that whatever God did for the farmer would be given double to his neighbor. The farmer, scarcely believing his good fortune, wished for a hundred cattle. Immediately he received a hundred cattle and he was overjoyed until he saw that his neighbor had two hundred. So he wished for a hundred acres of land, and again he was filled with joy until he saw that his neighbor had two hundred acres of land. Rather than celebrating God’s goodness, the farmer could not escape feeling jealous and slighted because his neighbor had received more than he. Finally, he stated his third wish: that God would strike him blind in one eye.
There is little imagination in this story on the part of the farmer, there is little creativity, it is a story about jealousy, desire and wanting to have more than anyone else. Today’s Gospel left me hanging, is there anyone else here who is thinking to themselves, “What on earth is Jesus saying?” The parable of the manager is certainly a challenge, but we have to remember that stories of tricksters and wise rogues were popular in Jewish folklore and there are plenty of stories in our own scriptures that attest to that. Jacob was the trickster patriarch who deceived his father, cheated his brother and the made off with most of his father in law’s flock. This character of the trickster endures in folklore and even in our own modern day pop culture. Our CSI’s and our Law and Orders revere the craftiness of criminals and applaud the tricks and twists the heroes of those shows have to come up with to apprehend the dangerous and creative minds that do evil.
Listen to this Jewish story:
A man once caught stealing was ordered by the king to be hanged. On the way to the gallows he said to the governor that he knew a wonderful secret and it would be a pity to allow it to die with him and he would like to disclose it to the king. He would put a seed of a pomegranate in the ground and through the secret taught him by his father he would make it grow and bear fruit overnight. The thief was brought before the king and on the morrow the king, accompanied by the high officer of state, came to the place where the thief was waiting for them. There the thief dug a hole in the ground and said, “This seed must only be put into the ground by a man who has never stolen or taken anything which did not belong to him. I being a thief cannot do it.” So he turned to the Vizier who, frightened, said that in his younger days he had retained something which did not belong to him. The treasurer said that dealing with such large sums, he might have entered too much or too little and even the king owned that he had kept a necklace of his fathers. The thief then said, “You are all mighty and powerful and want nothing and yet you cannot plant the seed, whilst I who have stolen a little because I was starving am to be hanged.” The king, pleased with the ruse of the thief, pardoned him.
Now don’t you wish you could have come up with something as great as that the last time you were caught taking something that wasn’t yours? There is something that pulls at our heart strings, or at the very least affirms our bias towards those who are wise and intelligent and can weasel their way out of difficult situations. It is inherent in American culture to use one’s imagination to come up with some new avenue of escape, or some specific way to cut the corners whether it be in finances or relationships or to get possessions we desire. We often seek the easiest way to do these things. I learned young as my Dad’s way of doing things was always the most difficult and long lasting way he could find, and if we did not do it that way, well we had to have a good explanation why we dared do something in our own way.
What business owner or treasurer would ever imagine that the dishonest manager would be let off the hook, or at least, as in the Gospel, looked favorably upon for giving away the owners money rather than collecting every last cent. If any of us did that today, we would be tossed out in the streets, or thrown in jail if it was a bad enough offense. That takes some serious moxie to say to oneself, I am going to be prepared for when I get thrown out on the street. And what is so shocking is that he did not save money for himself, he did not buy things he needed, he created relationships, and he built up trust and good will in the very people that would be able to receive him when he would be dismissed from his job. Building social capital, building relationships is just not a good way, we might think today, of preparing for the loss of a job.
In thinking about the building of relationships versus the hoarding of money, we arrive at a complex, yet very simple question of how we see money in our lives. How we experience money and relationships with others in our own daily economies. This Gospel challenges us to think of money in a very different way, money is a resource only if it is given or spent, especially when it is given for providing to those in need and releasing people from debt. That is how money can help grow the kingdom of God, whereas closely watched personalized accounts that are protected against all forms of generosity stand in the way of growing the sort of relationships and serving the kind of purposes that truly matter. Does the dishonest manager realize that generosity is the best investment? Does he get himself out of a hole by building trust and social capital? Does the dishonest manager teach the owner what the best policy is in dealing with his own money and people who are in debt to him, that policy being generosity? Jo Bailey Wells, director of Anglican Studies at Duke Divinity School, writes for the Christian Century’s Blog, “It’s time to change economies. Forget “my economics”: it is time to invest in somebody else’s. Forget “my household”: it is time to think about other people’s households, time to squander that which is squirreled: money should be kept moving. It is time to handle it as the overflow of God’s abundant grace: to scatter it freely, to the end of making friends and setting people free—just as God does with God’s grace.”
Changing economies is hard for us to imagine, ingrained in the culture as we are. There is another reason this parable grates against our imagination as well. Most of us in this room, faced with the prospect of losing our jobs, would be able to imagine what our next steps would be. Most of us in this sanctuary would be able to find support from others, support from loved ones, and support from people in this very community. But there are a great number of people on the fringes of our society that would not have the same support, the same opportunities to ease through unemployment as we could. Most of us could find, in this moment, if we needed it, the two dollars to hop a bus and get to a destination we wanted to go to. This is the kind of change in economies I am talking about. We are called to change our assumptions, not just redistribute our wealth; we are called in this Gospel to imagine our lives differently, to imagine our daily habits and routines differently. We are being asked, in a form that is familiar to us, to adapt and change how we see the world so we can better see the Kingdom of God in the world. That is what is going on in this Gospel, it is not about simply giving money to those who are in need, it is about weighing our human relationships against the things we “own” and the relationships we have with one another and with God.
Changing economies is about metanoia, it is about changing our behavior and changing how we see God in the world and where we see God in the world. God knows our hearts, and for the most part, we know one another’s hearts, how are we preparing to be shown hospitality? How are we preparing to be welcomed into others’ homes when our own luck runs out? Will we be unimaginative and wish only retribution on those who receive the grace of God, or will we engage our creativity to see how we can change our behavior in order that we might someday be welcomed gracefully at the table of those we showed grace to as well. What will it be? Jealous farmer or trickster thief?
Comments