17 Pentecost Yr C

The parables from the Gospel of Luke we have before us today are down right hard. I have read them over and over, and continue to be unsure of what they mean. I have read about them, spoken to colleagues about them, and continue to be unsure of what the message in this is. But then that is the way with parables. The nature of a parable is to ask more questions than to give clear and certain answers. You have to wonder at the wisdom of Jesus, and at the wisdom of those who eventually told these stories, and the wisdom of those who eventually recorded them. I think if I was the editor, I’d try to clear up the meaning, and aren’t we thankful I’m not the editor,because my certainty surely would not be everyone else’s certainty.

And all that is in addition to the entire collection of readings we have today, or for that matter, recently in these last weeks. I wonder how this is sacred scripture, how any of this is really Good News. We have been reading from the prophet Jeremiah, and it seems like the Israelites’ circumstances are getting worse, not better, but I assure you, there is hope, we just need to see them through these very dire circumstances. The Psalmist laments the place the community finds itself, they are feeling taken advantage of, they are feeling embarrassed, and they are feeling that God is angry at them, and yet they continue to look for forgiveness, and for help. The epistle from Timothy actually seems to have some Good News. The writer asks for prayers for kings and all who are in high positions, which is really to ask for good government. Good government brings about good order; good order gives good faith, quiet and peace, so that our savior, Jesus Christ can be at work, which is what seems like the only Good News today.

The parables that we have heard for these last few weeks are parables that call us to faith, and demand that we put our faith life in good order, and that order puts our relationship with God as the priority. Let’s take a closer look at the parables in Luke. I think these parables, although there are some difficulties, continue that theme of priority. This does not set up a duality, it does not say that God is good and wealth is bad. What it does say, is that God’s relationship with humans is the more important priority, and is our top priority. Everything else falls into place, everything else is ordered after that, including wealth.

I think what Jesus is doing in these parables is show us that faith forms, informs and shapes every aspect of our lives. The practice of faith prioritizes everything, first and foremost, wealth. That priority is what we have come to call stewardship. Stewardship is the reality that everything we have, is gift. It is ours only to care for while we walk this earth.

So what does that mean in our lives? When we leave this place, you and I have competing claims on our time, attention, and resources. Time, attention, and resources actually make up our wealth, wealth is not limited to money, wealth is so much more than money. It is education, privilege, genetics, nature and nurture. Wealth is all we bring to bear on our choices and opportunities. These parables tell us that faith in God has everything to do with wealth, and faith in God has everything to do with how we use our wealth. So these parables are about how we use our wealth, how we can be good stewards, in the midst of these competing claims.

What kind of completing claims am talking about? American’s have for about 200 years lived a Gospel of Wealth. That gospel has preached that God’s plan for humanity could be realized in the United States, and Americans could get rich while helping God realize God’s plan. Much of our politics has been built on this dream of self-development and personal growth and privilege. The economic circumstances of our common life in these last couple of years may be teaching us that priorities have been skewed and must be reassessed, in fact, the Kingdom of God involves moving down, not up.

As I was thinking about this I remembered a conversation I had with my brother who owns a construction company, he builds Hom stores, they are large furniture stores. I asked him one day about the furniture business, I see and hear ads encouraging us to buy a whole room full of furniture and that we can finance it and not pay any interest for years. I’ve never been able to understand how that works. I learned from him that the money is made not on the furniture, but on the sale of the note to the bank. The bank charges the interest and collects the principle, and the furniture dealership makes money on that sale, and then is out of the picture and doesn’t have to get their hands dirty in the interest mess. I, personally, question the efficacy of that sort of business, it seems to me that it is really a practice that puts the accumulation of money over and against what people actually need.

There is the claim that accumulation and surplus rather than sufficiency becomes the goal, and the goal comes to justify exploitative means, we have seen and experienced this in mortgage problems. There is the claim to power, and the danger inherent in the worldly power that money brings with it; the power to get one’s own way, to seek to buy people as well as things, to stamp one’s feet and demand immediate gratification. Such power leads to hubris, pride; believing that one is more important, owed more privilege than others; thinking that one is above the law and the ordinary standards of decency and citizenship do not apply, we see this often in the people our culture holds up as celebrity.

There is the claim to relationships, but riches can distort human relationships; the equality and mutuality of love and friendship are replaced with elements of calculation as people almost unconsciously modify their behavior, seeing some self-interest in so doing.

And underlying all of these, as Jesus so acutely points out, is the moral desensitization that occurs; the inability to discern what is actually enough in a world in which there is enough for everyone’s need but not for everyone’s greed; the ethical obscenity of conspicuous over-consumption when so many suffer such poverty; the spiritual alienation from a human community in which if one part suffers, all the other parts suffer with it, and the consequent loss of belonging to a human community in which if one part rejoices all the other parts can rejoice with it.

So in the end, our true life consists not in our wealth, but in what we value, and in how we attend to what we value, how we practice the priority of God in response to the reality that God values us, that God loves us amazingly and abundantly.

Thanks be to God. Amen