Questions All Around
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13
September 19, 2010
Let’s begin this morning with questions that we bring to these texts; we’ll end with the questions the texts press upon us. So, let’s open it up: what questions do we have? What questions do you have concerning these readings? Let’s see what these ancient words stir up for us this morning.
Here are a couple of my own questions: do I have to pray for all who are in high positions? Does that include the likes of Kim Jung Il, President Ahmadinejad, Ken Cucinelli? And, if so, how should I pray for them? Dear Lord, “please let these men enjoy a return to private life?”
Or how about this question: what is up with the dishonest manager in Jesus’ parable? “Step right up and I’ll cut your debts in half!” And why can’t I find such a manager to be in charge of, say, my mortgage or my Visa bill? Clearly, this guy does not work on Wall Street.
Lacking the good fortune to find such a manager of my debt, I do want to ask of Jeremiah, “is there, in fact, a balm in Gilead, or is it really just a bunch of tree sap?”
These are, indeed, three strange texts, and our questions have only skimmed the surface of their strangeness.
Take the Luke passage: commentators have spilled barrels of ink over the years puzzling out the story of the dishonest manager and Jesus’ praise for his scheming. For good middle class Protestant Americans who bring their children to church to be steeped in the old-fashioned verities and values of honest business dealings this parable is a serious dash of cold water. Jesus just doesn’t care about that.
Or take the section from First Timothy: almost as much wrestling has taken place over, especially, the call to pray for those in power. Does it mean that we must support whoever is in power? Must we pray for the success of their program even if we think it’s nuts? Not only that, but the strain of universalism hinted at in the text has caused a lot of theological tempests as well. So, does God desire the salvation of all of human kind? If so, does God get what God wants over the long arc of history, or not? That question may not trouble nice middle class generally liberal-minded folks, but it sure does cause a stew among serious Reformed theologians who err always on the side of the sovereignty of God. Indeed, it makes one want to ask, along with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “who is this God fellow anyway?”
Clearly, from our own questions and all of the voluminous commentary on these brief passages, the only thing that is clear is that, in fact, not much is clear at all in these texts. Nevertheless, as I wrestled with them last week it seemed to me that the word of the Lord for us this week was not a declarative word but rather an interrogative one. In other words, just as we, and thousands of others, have asked countless questions of these texts, the texts themselves ask us more questions than we ask them.
For example, if God, in Jeremiah, is weeping over injustice in the land how can we not also weep? When in the richest land in the history of the world more people are living in poverty than at any time in more than 50 years, why do we not weep? When one in five children in the country lives in poverty, how can we keep from weeping?
I don’t mean to be a downer this morning, and I promise it was not my idea to create these conditions or announce them, but, really, which one in five of the kids of this congregation would we choose?
The text itself demands our response, if for no other reason than Jesus’ stark clarity that, when it comes to matters of money, we can, we must, in fact we do choose this and every day whom we will serve: God or money. So which one shall it be? The text itself asks this question. This question is, indeed, the word of the Lord.
The strange parable of the dishonest manager does not offer an easy way out of this demand, but it does point toward a horizon of hope. It seems clear to me that Jesus really does not care about the bottom line in any traditional sense, but he does care about justice. And in this story – as throughout scripture – the Biblical meaning of justice amounts to this: sorting out what belongs to whom and returning it.
By any conventional measure, the middle management guy in this story is not giving what he owes to his boss – that is, honest business dealings. Instead, he practices what can best be described here as jubilee debt relief, because economic Sabbath, liberation from crushing debt is what belongs to human beings.
The specific debts named in this story are all overwhelming. These folks found themselves in mortgages that were upside down and way under water. Indeed, for the poor people who were Jesus’ first audience, the crushing system of debt that kept them virtually enslaved to the powers that be was the most soul-killing aspect of life.
“Forgive us our debts,” was not an accidental line in the prayer Jesus taught.
The hope here, the good news in this story, lies in what happens next, the untold part of the story. Forgiveness of debt evened the playing field so that balanced relationships could be restored or reconstructed. In other words, establishing economic justice created space for establishing authentic community.
So the inquiry of the text to us – whom do you serve, God or money – is, in fact, an invitation to live lives of joyous and generous service to God such that we, too, might create and construct bonds of authentic community right here and right now.
The invitation to live such lives could not come on a more appropriate Sunday than the one before the International Day of Prayers for Peace. For authentic community is the only foundation upon which to build just and lasting peace.
May this good news find life in our midst. Amen.
September 19, 2010
Let’s begin this morning with questions that we bring to these texts; we’ll end with the questions the texts press upon us. So, let’s open it up: what questions do we have? What questions do you have concerning these readings? Let’s see what these ancient words stir up for us this morning.
Here are a couple of my own questions: do I have to pray for all who are in high positions? Does that include the likes of Kim Jung Il, President Ahmadinejad, Ken Cucinelli? And, if so, how should I pray for them? Dear Lord, “please let these men enjoy a return to private life?”
Or how about this question: what is up with the dishonest manager in Jesus’ parable? “Step right up and I’ll cut your debts in half!” And why can’t I find such a manager to be in charge of, say, my mortgage or my Visa bill? Clearly, this guy does not work on Wall Street.
Lacking the good fortune to find such a manager of my debt, I do want to ask of Jeremiah, “is there, in fact, a balm in Gilead, or is it really just a bunch of tree sap?”
These are, indeed, three strange texts, and our questions have only skimmed the surface of their strangeness.
Take the Luke passage: commentators have spilled barrels of ink over the years puzzling out the story of the dishonest manager and Jesus’ praise for his scheming. For good middle class Protestant Americans who bring their children to church to be steeped in the old-fashioned verities and values of honest business dealings this parable is a serious dash of cold water. Jesus just doesn’t care about that.
Or take the section from First Timothy: almost as much wrestling has taken place over, especially, the call to pray for those in power. Does it mean that we must support whoever is in power? Must we pray for the success of their program even if we think it’s nuts? Not only that, but the strain of universalism hinted at in the text has caused a lot of theological tempests as well. So, does God desire the salvation of all of human kind? If so, does God get what God wants over the long arc of history, or not? That question may not trouble nice middle class generally liberal-minded folks, but it sure does cause a stew among serious Reformed theologians who err always on the side of the sovereignty of God. Indeed, it makes one want to ask, along with The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, “who is this God fellow anyway?”
Clearly, from our own questions and all of the voluminous commentary on these brief passages, the only thing that is clear is that, in fact, not much is clear at all in these texts. Nevertheless, as I wrestled with them last week it seemed to me that the word of the Lord for us this week was not a declarative word but rather an interrogative one. In other words, just as we, and thousands of others, have asked countless questions of these texts, the texts themselves ask us more questions than we ask them.
For example, if God, in Jeremiah, is weeping over injustice in the land how can we not also weep? When in the richest land in the history of the world more people are living in poverty than at any time in more than 50 years, why do we not weep? When one in five children in the country lives in poverty, how can we keep from weeping?
I don’t mean to be a downer this morning, and I promise it was not my idea to create these conditions or announce them, but, really, which one in five of the kids of this congregation would we choose?
The text itself demands our response, if for no other reason than Jesus’ stark clarity that, when it comes to matters of money, we can, we must, in fact we do choose this and every day whom we will serve: God or money. So which one shall it be? The text itself asks this question. This question is, indeed, the word of the Lord.
The strange parable of the dishonest manager does not offer an easy way out of this demand, but it does point toward a horizon of hope. It seems clear to me that Jesus really does not care about the bottom line in any traditional sense, but he does care about justice. And in this story – as throughout scripture – the Biblical meaning of justice amounts to this: sorting out what belongs to whom and returning it.
By any conventional measure, the middle management guy in this story is not giving what he owes to his boss – that is, honest business dealings. Instead, he practices what can best be described here as jubilee debt relief, because economic Sabbath, liberation from crushing debt is what belongs to human beings.
The specific debts named in this story are all overwhelming. These folks found themselves in mortgages that were upside down and way under water. Indeed, for the poor people who were Jesus’ first audience, the crushing system of debt that kept them virtually enslaved to the powers that be was the most soul-killing aspect of life.
“Forgive us our debts,” was not an accidental line in the prayer Jesus taught.
The hope here, the good news in this story, lies in what happens next, the untold part of the story. Forgiveness of debt evened the playing field so that balanced relationships could be restored or reconstructed. In other words, establishing economic justice created space for establishing authentic community.
So the inquiry of the text to us – whom do you serve, God or money – is, in fact, an invitation to live lives of joyous and generous service to God such that we, too, might create and construct bonds of authentic community right here and right now.
The invitation to live such lives could not come on a more appropriate Sunday than the one before the International Day of Prayers for Peace. For authentic community is the only foundation upon which to build just and lasting peace.
May this good news find life in our midst. Amen.
posted by David Ensign at
6:46 AM
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