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No servant — slave — is able two Lords to serve: for the one he will hate and the other he will love, or, the one he will hold onto and believe in, and the other he will despise. You are not able to serve God, and mammon.(Luke 16:13)
Jesus today tells a parable about a household steward who cared for the Lord of the house's investments and possessions. The steward, in other dealings, has been accused of squandering the Lord's possessions. The accusations were devilish and particularly hostile, because simply based upon them, the Lord of the house calls in the steward and deals with him harshly: “What is this I am hearing about you? Return the log of your stewardship, for you are not able anymore to act as a steward.” (Luke 16:2) Based on hearing the accusations alone, without giving any opportunity for explanation, the Lord of the house asks the man to turn in all his paperwork, his keys, security badge, and sends him on his way with a pink slip. Seems harsh, but, after all, it is the Lord of the house's right — and are not most of our employers today (at–will) employers? Without any notice or explanation, management can send a worker home without a job at anytime. I witnessed some of those in my previous life, by God's grace, I was never on the receiving end.
Yet, the steward still had to settle accounts, complete the paperwork, gather his things. He wasn't asked to drop it all and leave; he had time to finish his work. He says to himself, “What shall I do, because my Lord is taking away the stewardship from me. Dig? I am not strong. Beg? I am too ashamed. I have decided what I might do, so that when I might be removed from the stewardship others might welcome me into their houses.” (Luke 16:3–4) Amazing — this man had a plan he had already thought through. Perhaps he knew one day he'd be caught squandering the Lord of the house's possessions. He already knew what he would do. He would settle accounts with tenant farmers on the Lord's lands. In the ancient middle east, tenants leased property from more wealthy landowners to farm it, in exchange they would give the owner an agreed upon amount of the crop. The steward was the Lord of the house's representative to these debtors. The steward would receive a cut of the crop, and the rest would go to the Lord. After so many years of farming and paying by crop, the agreement often times worked as a mortgage, and the tenant became the owner of the land. The steward made friends with these aspiring and hard working debtors by forgiving a significant portion of their debt for that year. At the expense of both his own share and of the Lord of the house's share, yet acting on his behalf, the steward made himself and his Master look good to the debtors. Who knows? Maybe the Master of the house admired his shrewdness so much the steward kept his job. Maybe he was able to latch on with another household. The Master commended him for his shrewdness. Forgiving debts is always a good thing, everyone always feels good. Witness the people on the television show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.” Not only do people in some unfortunate situation have a new house built for them, but usually someone, like the generous contractor, or a large corporate sponsor, kicks in a paid off mortgage as well. Everyone feels good and looks good in front of the cameras and everyone else, right? Nothing was different 2000 years ago except the lack of television cameras.
Many great theologians, from St. John Crysostom to our own Martin Scharlemann, have said that the preacher dare not “make a parable walk on all fours” — or try to explain every point of every parable. We don't know in this case if the steward, or the Lord of the house, or the debtor–tenants, or the wheat, or the oil, stand for anyone or anything in an equivalent fashion as characters and details in other parables do. Jesus does not say that about this parable. But He is saying that “you have to hand it to the unrighteous steward — he showed great wisdom.” With great foresight, zeal, and wisdom, he took care of himself, turning a bad situation for himself into a good one. The man squandered the Lord of the house's possessions, and was as low as he could get, and so he faced an uncertain future. The prodigal son, in the parable Jesus had just finished telling before this one, squandered his father's inheritance and possessions, and was eating with the pigs — about as low as he could get. Hand it to both of them, they were each able to think of a way out of their predicaments. In both cases, debts were forgiven, and the head of each house was happy. The Lord of the house commended the steward's shrewdness and wisdom, happy to be made to look good; the Father of the house found the lost son he was looking for, forgiving him and rejoicing to find him safe and alive in his arms.
The sons of this world, in their pigsty of overabundant wealth and excess, are quite good at playing the game to stay wealthy. They know how to come out ahead, manipulate the system, they rarely lose. When they do, they lose with a loud crash, like the prodigal son, or like the Enron folks a few years back. When they are about to lose, they oftentimes have a shrewd plan to minimize their losses. They are always more shrewd, wise, and crafty then the sons of light, Jesus says. Why is that? The sons of light walk by faith, not by sight, they listen to the Word of the Lord alone. The sons of light believe in something that cannot be seen to complete certainty, they live simply by Words spoken to them, their faith comes by hearing their Lord's voice. They simply receive with thanksgiving the blessings God does give them. The sons of this world live by their eyes and their own reasoning, they work hard at serving themselves and fattening their own coffers, they are wise to the ways of this world, but are without faith in God.
The message of our Lord Jesus Christ today is this: you cannot serve two lords. The first commandment is being applied in this parable and in the parable of the prodigal son. Devotion to wealth, money, and the ways of this world may show shrewdness, wisdom, may even deserve a compliment. But the world's way is still not the will of our Heavenly Father, who created us to be His own possession. We must not fall into the trap of desiring our own possessions more than living humbly as children of God by the gift of faith. You shall have NO OTHER GODS, God says. That means GOD ALONE. Not “God first.” Not “God is most important.” It means, “GOD ALONE.” This is a radical concept to our sinful nature, hard for the sons of this world to accept! To whatever you set your heart on and put your trust in, the Large Catechism says, that is truly your god.
Thus we are tempted mightily on a daily basis to reject the Gospel, to lack faith and not fear, love, and trust in God above and beyond all things. So we are tempted to take God's love for us in Christ for granted. We are tempted to put off our eternal, spiritual welfare. We are tempted to idolize and lust after everything this world offers first, devoting time, zeal, wisdom, and energy to that which in the end will only be destroyed by moth and rust. We are tempted to skip Divine Services and Bible Studies and important meetings that we are supposed to attend to here; or we will fail to attend to our spouses and children adequately — so we can make the extra buck at work there, or spend the extra buck at the shopping mall there, or do our favorite leisure activity there. We harbor an illusion that God's Word and Sacraments, His gifts of grace given for ourselves and our children, are not so important that they deserve our attention today, that we can procrastinate and put them off. Since God loves us, we reason, everything will come out right in the end, especially some might reason to themselves, if their name is on the Church roll…
But for God, the matter of our salvation and our reconciliation with Him is a matter of dead seriousness and of immediate consequence. God did not spare anything, up to and including His own Son, by offering Him up on the cross to die for us in our place. God acts with urgency, zealousness, wisdom, cunning, and shrewdness, and does everything possible to defeat death, the devil, our sinful flesh, the world and its temptations. Our Lord Jesus did what Satan did not believe He would do — He suffered all of our evil, hateful attempts to serve ourselves, to covet what does not belong to us, to bow at the idols of serving our lusts, our evil desires, every vile thing that comes out of our sinful hearts and minds. Jesus took it all upon Himself, nailed it all to the cross and defeated it, proclaiming His victory at the gates of hell and rising again on the third day to open the way for us, His sons of light, to walk in those eternal tents. It was and is that important for God.
That is why today Jesus is calling you and I to believe His Word and to put our trust in Him alone with the same urgency and zealousness that the unrighteous steward acted with in today's Gospel lesson. You and I are in the pigsty; you and I are under judgment as having squandered this good creation of God by being sinful and unclean from our very conception in thought, word, and deed. If we reject the Gospel and stay on the way of the sons of this world, we are going to be expelled from the household and be cast out into the darkness and coldness of being separated from God. There is no room for compromise, we cannot be the friends of both this world, and of God, we cannot serve both God and this world.
Yet, by pure grace, we have time to hear the Gospel and receive the forgiveness of our debts on account of the shed blood of Christ. It is wise, shrewd, and the will of God that we believe His promises and receive His gracious gifts with great zeal, and live by faith as His children, today, while there is still light. Receive His body and blood shed for you to forgive your sins — now, today. Hear and study His Word, and be ready to confess to those around you what God has done for you in His Son — now, today. Bring your children to be baptized at this font to be washed of their sins and brought to new life in Christ — now, today. Repent and confess your sins when you are weighed down by them to your Pastors in Christ, and receive the Absolution won for you on the cross by Jesus Christ — now, today. God is present now, today, here, for you — to freely give you the fruits of salvation He has won for you at the cross.
What is the world to you? With all its vaunted pleasures — it seeks after wealth and all that mammon offers, and never is content though gold should fill its coffers. You have a higher good! Content with it we should be — Jesus is our wealth, our treasure, our life, health, wealth, friend, love, pleasure. He is our joy, our crown, our all, our bliss eternally: Jesus is the world to you and me! He alone is the true God, ruling over all things that He created. May we ever find in Him alone our true peace, rest, and soul's delight now and in eternity.
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