“Jesus and the Trailer Park Boys” 5. Some parables are just too earthy for pious ears. The working definition of a parable is: “an earthly story with a heavenly meaning.” But some of our Lord’s parables are just too earthy for pious ears. Take the parable of the Prodigal Son, for example. They probably didn’t tell you in Sunday school that Jesus was telling a parable about a family so dysfunctional they’d be on “The Jerry Springer Show” if they were alive today. And then there’s the parable that followed the Prodigal Son: the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, as we just heard in today’s Gospel reading. The manager is a sleaze. His master isn’t much better. The whole thing is what the Trailer Park Boys would call “greasy.” (And for those who don’t know, the characters on “Trailer Park Boys” are themselves some of the sleaziest, greasiest, low-life people you’re ever likely to see.) What is our Lord doing telling such a sleazy, greasy story in the first place? 4. Heaven is different from earth. Beginning when the scribes and Pharisees grumbled at Him for eating with tax collectors and “sinners” – the Trailer Park Boys and Girls of His day, Christ began telling a string of parables to illustrate one important point: Heaven is different from earth. Would you leave ninety-nine sheep in the open country to find one lost one? Or would you turn your house upside down to find one coin out of ten, and throw a party when you find it? Probably not. But God would; and heaven rejoices over one sinner who repents. Would you welcome a son who treated you like he wished you were dead? Probably not, but God would. Would you lower yourself to the level of a sleazebag manager who writes off his master’s debts to save his own bacon? Probably not, but Christ would. 3. Grace only works on those it finds dead enough to raise. Pastor Jim Schnarr of St. James Lutheran Church reminded me recently that, unlike some parables with only one meaning, this parable has been subject to many different interpretations.. My personal favorite interpretation is that of the great Anglican theologian Robert Farrar Capon. When the Teacher says, “The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness,” Capon takes that to mean that, far from being grudging, the master was overjoyed to get dollar one out of that bunch of deadbeats. “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges where brought to him that this man was wasting his possessions. And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your management, for you can no longer be my manager.’” On the basis of a rumor, the master fires his manager. No due process. No two weeks’ notice. No nothing, or so it seems. “And the manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the management away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, “A hundred measures of oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and write eighty.’” First, note that the guy was unfit for any other trade. I’m just saying. Second, and more importantly, he gave himself the two weeks notice his master apparently didn’t give him. And he used it. Now it might have happened that the manager put the master in a position where he had to absorb the loss or he’d look like a jerk while the manager got free lodging in the debtors’ guest rooms; so the master grudgingly said, “This guy’s good.” But it might have also have happened that the manager’s deductions, shady, sleazy, and greasy as they were, did what months of “pay up, you deadbeat” letters never could: they got the master’s debtors paying up at last. The manager just wanted to save his own bacon. He became the mediator between the deadbeats and the old Scrooge; and “The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.” So the first lesson from this parable is: “Grace can do what legalism can’t.” It can bring to life that which was dead. The second lesson is, as Capon puts it: “Grace only works on those it finds dead enough to raise.” Make no mistake: a death and resurrection occurred here, as it did in the previous parables. As I said last week, the lost sheep wasn’t just “misplaced.” It was in mortal peril, but the shepherd sought it out and saved it. (The lost coin was too. How a lost coin can be in mortal peril, I don’t know.) The parable of the Prodigal Son concludes, “It was fitting to celebrate, for this your brother was dead, and is alive; he was lost, and is found.” Likewise, the firing of the dishonest manager was the end of his old life. It was the death of the person he had been before. And so, by a figurative death and resurrection, he became the mediator between the master and the debtors. And by His death and resurrection, Christ became the mediator between us and God the Father. And not just any death, but the lowest, most dishonorable, greasiest death you could imagine. He died the death of a common criminal, numbered among the transgressors, crucified between two First-Century Trailer Park Boys. And on Easter Sunday, He rose from the dead. And in our Baptism, we died and rose with Him. And in the Lord’s Supper, we proclaim His death until He comes again. 2. What about stewardship? But what about stewardship? After all, pastors like to use this text for their stewardship sermons. The verses about stewardship come after the parable: “And I tell you, make friends for yourself by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into eternal dwellings. One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and one who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who sill entrust to you true riches? And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? No servant can serve two masters, for wither he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and money.” So we take a look at ourselves, and what kind of stewards we are, and what do we see? We haven’t been faithful with unrighteous wealth. We haven’t been faithful with what belongs to God. Given the choice between serving God and money, we have served money. We have loved money. We have been devoted to money. If our stewardship was the basis for our entry to the heavenly dwellings, we would never make it in. Consider again the master’s debtors. These people were losers. To them, the master probably looked like a creature from another planet: the Planet of the Winners. His deadbeat letters probably made them feel like bigger losers than they already were. But the manager, having died to his old life, gave them a fresh start with his greasy deductions. Likewise, our Savior joined us here in the world of the losers. He died a loser’s death. He rose from the dead. And in our death and resurrection with Him in Holy Baptism, we have been given a fresh start. Now our relationship to unrighteous wealth is redefined. We use it as those who serve God, to make friends for the kingdom. Furthermore, even though we have been unfaithful with unrighteous wealth, the Master still entrusts us with the true riches of His Means of Grace, and welcomes us into heavenly dwellings, not because of anything we have done, but for the sake of His death and resurrection. 1. The cross is the devil’s mousetrap. Capon quotes St. Augustine: “The cross is the devil’s mousetrap, baited with the death of Christ.” The cross is our mousetrap too. Baited with Christ’s death, it kills the greasy, unfaithful stewards we had been before. And in Christ’s resurrection, we’re raised to life as new people, who are entrusted with true riches and welcomed into heavenly dwellings. + In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. + - Ward I. Yunker, Pastor
Posted on: Mon, 23 Sep 2013 16:20:25 +0000
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