The sermon below is a comprehensive interpretation of complex and ambiguous readings and is skilfully related to our current national economic situation. It is a really good read.
Sermon for Sunday 22nd September 2013.
Readings.
Collect.
Gracious God,
You call us to fullness of life:
deliver us from unbelief
and banish our anxieties
with the liberating love
of Jesus Christ our Lord.
Amen.
OT: Amos 8:4-7
NT: 1 Timothy 2:1-7
Gospel: Luke 16:1-13
Today’s parable about dishonest wealth is not an easy one to unpick. Who is the rich man for instance? Is he supposed to be God? Rich men are not usually heroes in Luke’s stories. We think of parables like the rich man and the beggar for instance. Is the manager supposed to be the Jews? Are they supposed to have squandered the things of God? Perhaps; it’s not clear. Whoever the manager is, he has clearly been trusted with a great deal. The quantities involved in this parable are vast. Obviously the rich man placed too much trust in him. The temptations were just too great.
It’s not entirely clear whether this story is about wealth, or something else. If it’s about wealth, should the manager be commended for reducing the debts of those who owe money to his master? Is Jesus being ironic here? There is quite a bit of irony in the Gospels but it often gets lost in translation. The manager hopes to be welcomed into the homes of those who owed his master money. But when Jesus mentions these homes the second time he uses a different word for homes meaning tents. Eternal tents; which are a sort of oxymoron. There is nothing very eternal about tents. In seeking worldly security, the implication is that the manager would have found only eternal insecurity.
Could this parable perhaps be about forgiveness? If we are the manager and we forgive those who trespass against us, will God forgive us in turn? Is money just a metaphor here? Well yes and no. The story could be about forgiveness but it seems from what follows that Jesus is also talking about money; about being faithful with dishonest wealth. With this parable it’s quite hard to see where the parable ends and the explanation begins. There’s a lot of ambiguity.
And perhaps that’s really quite important because wealth is a bit ambiguous. The passage ends with Jesus saying that you cannot serve God and wealth. But most of us find ourselves juggling the two one way or another. It’s hard to be clear cut about these things.
Financial management has been much in the news lately. At one end of the spectrum we hear a lot about companies and wealthy individuals finding creative ways to avoid tax. At the other end of the spectrum we have a boom in pawn shops and payday loan companies. All of us are tied into a complex financial system through our banks and pensions. It’s easy to blame the bankers for being dishonest managers but none of us can really claim to be squeaky clean.
Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, who criticised payday loan companies, found that the Church of England pension scheme had investments in Wonga.com. The Church is called to point heavenward but it still has to pay clergy stipends and pensions. It has to deal with money.
So what do we do? Do we cut up our credit cards and go and live off the land in some commune in the Outer Hebrides? Or do we give up on our ideals and embrace the market? Make friends with dishonest wealth. In the Middle Ages the church took a strong line against usury, the charging of interest. In those days Jews were not allowed to own land but they were allowed to lend money at interest. But sometimes, Christian rulers were not able to repay the money they had borrowed and instead, they expelled the Jews from their lands or worse. Keeping our own hands clean can sometimes be at the expense of others. We are fortunate that these days no one in this country has to work in a sweat shop. But the terrible collapse of the garment factory in Bangladesh reminded us of the cost to others of our cheap clothes. In some cases we have exported our moral dilemmas.
Today’s reading from St Paul’s First Letter to Timothy, chapter 2, suggests that we need to live in the world; that we can’t cut ourselves off from the public sphere.
St Paul wrote that, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for everyone, for kings and all who are in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity. Anglicanism has always taken seriously this call to be involved with government; with health and education, and yes, with the economy; with all the things that enable us to lead a quiet and peaceable life. There isn’t a nice neat boundary where the church ends and the world begins. We all have to be realistic about our ability to live up to the ideals of Jesus Christ. But that doesn’t mean we should abandon them. We bring our faith, our Christian principles to bear on the whole of our lives; our jobs; our investments; the things we buy; the way we use our wealth.
And that calling to live ethically is not just about us as consumers. Sometimes we need to ask the big questions, like Jeremiah we have to question why so many people are struggling at the moment. Why are so many people feeling the pinch while others have more than they know what to do with? Jeremiah writes,
“Is there no balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there? Why then has the health of my poor people not been restored? What’s going on?”
I’m very thankful that Christians in Sutton Coldfield have been supporting families who are struggling through food banks.
Sometimes they are the only thing keeping people from going to bed hungry. But we have to ask, why do we need food banks in Britain in 2013? They may be a sign of the big society but why are they necessary? They don’t make people feel good about themselves. They are not empowering. They are not a long term solution to our problems. More broadly, why is anyone in the world still hungry when we have enough food for everyone. On Friday, the Quaker Meeting House is hosting an important discussion on why children go to bed hungry. I hope some of you will be able to come.
Living as Christians in the world we cannot help but have to deal with issues of wealth and poverty. And we recognise the ambiguities and challenges of that. But we are called upon to offer an alternative to the worship of the market and the pay cheque that dominates so much of our society at the moment. Our Collect (at the top of the page) talks about our hearts being restless until they find their rest in God. So many people at the moment seem to be restless, searching, sometimes struggling, dissatisfied. We are called to point to something else; something more enduring; more liberating; to the God in whose image we are made who loves us regardless of the size of our bank balance.
Amen.
Reverend Dr. Matthew Rhodes, Vicar of St. Peter’s and Area Dean Sutton Coldfield.