Sermon for 9/17/2023 16 Pentecost, Proper 19

Sometimes it is amazing how the Scriptures can capture the spirit of humans who have succumbed to the power of greed. Entitlement has to be one of the other most egregious characteristics that exist in human relationships as well. I heard another story that I think captures this a little more.

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, little creativity, what might you wish for given the same circumstances? Can you imagine being their neighbor? Suddenly these things just appear without any explanation. Here’s another question for you all, do you think God followed through on striking the farmer and neighbor blind? Do you think God would have said absolutely your wish is my command when it came to destroying someones’ livelihood?

Stories of tricksters and wise rogues were popular in Jewish folklore and there are plenty of stories in our scriptures that attest to that. Jacob was the trickster patriarch who deceived his father, cheated his brother and 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. We like to think the bad guy always gets his due, like today’s manager.

Listen to this Jewish story: A man once caught stealing food for his family 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 the next day 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 person who has never stolen or taken anything which did not belong to them. 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.

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. This story has imagination and we respect it and even revere it. In the end we don’t know if the thief continued to steal, or lived a changed life, but that doesn’t matter, because grace and forgiveness and honesty rule the day in this story.

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 corners whether it be in finances or relationships or to get possessions we desire. We often seek the easiest way to do these things. When I was younger I remember getting into arguments with my Dad because he always had a particular way to accomplish goals, and they never were easy, it was always some convoluted detailed lengthy process that left me behind others doing the same thing. I don’t know if he was just stubborn or teaching me a lesson, but it was infuriating.

In thinking about the building of relationships versus the debt we owe or are owed, we arrive at a complex, yet very simple question of how money affects our lives. An important question to ask ourselves is how we experience money and relationships with others in our own daily economies. 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. Financial wealth can help grow the Kingdom of God, if it leads to freedom and hope and forgiveness. Your financial commitment to this community of faith leads to a changed world, it truly does.

When we separate and isolate our personal and communal spiritual welfare from our corporeal material welfare that watches and protects the resources at our disposal from all forms of generosity, growing relationships and serving God loses all meaning. Does the manager in today’s Gospel, who by the way is not a lowly slave, but an elite member of the upper class, realize that generosity is the best investment? Does he get himself out of a hole by building trust and social capital? No. He loses perspective as soon as he walks out the door and forgets that the community he is part of is connected deeply to one another.

Jo Bailey Wells, an English Bishop and theologian, wrote in 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.”

It is an interesting exercise to think about the people who reported the stewards' response to the one who owed him money. Were they being equally petty in their response? Ratting on this guy because it made them feel good? Or were they people who had received similar debt relief? We don’t know, but I would like to think that the community they lived in was one of transformation. They were focused on their neighbor and what was good for them was better for their neighbor so they invested themselves in one another, not their own personal economy.

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 this world. That is what is going on in this Gospel, it is not about simply forgiving the debts of 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.

God knows our hearts, and for the most part, we know one another’s hearts, how are we preparing to show and be shown hospitality? How are we preparing to welcome and 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?