Sermon by the Rev Karl Przywala, Advent 1 2013, Luke 16:1-13 I know that I’m in the habit of firing questions at you of the non-rhetorical kind. But I hope they’re the sort of questions that you have a hope of answering. If I were to pause my sermon here and ask you what the reading means you’d be justified in thinking, isn’t it your job to tell us. And it would be unfair because I’ve found myself placed on the spot with this reading before – and had to admit that I didn’t know what to say about it. I was taking a home communion in someone’s home. I turned to the reading Cranmer set in the Prayer Book for the previous Sunday, confident I’d be able to find something to say about it. And found Luke 16:1-13. I was stumped. I have given it more thought since then and I hope that together we’ll get something worthwhile from it. As Cranmer chose it, I feel duty bound to preach on it. And I want to try to convince you that if we regard the whole Bible as the Word of God, and I do, then God has something we need to hear in every passage. But, don’t always expect the Bible to be easy. I’m with the Reformers in maintaining that even the ploughboy can grasp the Bible’s essential truths and should be able to read them for themselves. But I’m also with JC Ryle, the first Bishop of Liverpool, who said of Luke 16 that “There are knots in it which perhaps will never be untied, until the Lord comes again” He goes on to say, “If we learn nothing else from the passage before us, let us learn humility”. Preacher take note! Mentioning Ryle, gives me an excuse to say something about evangelicals and evangelicalism. Ryle was Bishop of Liverpool from 1880 to 1900 and he was a leading evangelical. Evangelicals trace their roots back to the Reformation. Cranmer was an evangelical. The Book of Common Prayer is evangelical. Nowadays some people confuse evangelical with charismatic or ‘happy clappy’. But I don’t think that Ryle or Cranmer could be so described! Or it’s confused with evangelistic or evangelism, which means telling people the gospel – but at their best churchmen who aren’t evangelical also do this. So, what does it mean to be evangelical? I’ve mentioned that evangelicals trace their roots back to the Reformation. And there are three great Reformation truths. Each one of us is called to a personal relationship with God through acknowledging Jesus as our personal Lord and Saviour. Worship is to be dignified but simple, concentrating on the Bible as God’s Word to us. And the Bible, as God’s Word, is our supreme authority. As Cranmer writes in Article 6 of the Thirty Nine Articles of Religion, “Holy Scriptures containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man, that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation.” That’s why an evangelical preaches from the Bible – even when the text is difficult! Please turn to our passage. You’ll find it on page 875 of the church Bibles, Luke chapter 16. Jesus is teaching and he often does so by means of parables. What is a parable? An earthly story with a heavenly or spiritual meaning. It’s a means by which Jesus gets people, us, to think. One of the dangers of the internet is that it stores up all sorts of things that people have done or said. If you type Karl Przywala, me, into a search engine such as Google, you find all sorts of things including a quotation from me about the Authorised or King James Bible. I said, its language makes you sit up and take notice. That’s, I think, what Jesus wants to achieve by use of some of his parables. There are two main characters in this parable. There’s the rich man and his dishonest manager. There can be a danger with parables in thinking we know who the characters represent. For example, some have said that the rich man represents God. This can be encouraged by the fact that in some Bible the Greek word kurios, which our Bible translates as master, is rendered as lord. But this master or lord isn’t God or Jesus, he’s just a rich man in a story. The manager has been dishonest and he realises that he’s going to be found out. There’s a day of reckoning coming. And he sets about doing something about it. He summons his master’s debtors and slashes their bills. Now there may be a twist to what’s going on here. You may be familiar with the practice that Roman tax collectors got up to. Do you know what they did? They added a cut for themselves to what they were required to gather for the Romans. That’s why they were so hated. It may be that’s what the manager of our story had been up to. One reading of the parable. Is that the manager realises he’s going to face judgement day and it the light of this sets about setting things right. He’s been dishonest but when confronted with this does an about-face. He repents. And that’s something even dishonest people can do when they come to realise how things are and how they should be. Perhaps the manager turns over a new leaf and will now behave the way he should behave, which is of course the way we should behave as Christians in the light of our relationship with God through Jesus. True faith is shown in works – the way we behave. May the manager no longer be dishonest but honest in his dealings. But I’m left with the lingering fear that the manager may not have learnt the entire lesson. The master, verse 8, only commends the manager. It doesn’t sound like the sort of ringing endorsement I’d like. It doesn’t say, for example that the master was actually pleased with him. And it doesn’t sound as if he’s going to get his job back. After all, he’s still being described as dishonest. And is shrewdness such a good quality? When looking at a difficult passage such as the one we’ve been looking at today we need to see it in the context of what the Bible says elsewhere and use that as your interpretative guide – another evangelical principle. A passage we can refer to in this context is the Sermon on the Mount, where Jesus says, “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.” Matthew chapter 6, verses 19 to 21. Perhaps what Jesus is saying in the parable is, look at the ways of the world. The time and effort people invest in securing their material position. Would that people, by which he means you and me, invested as much time and effort into spiritual matters. May we as righteous people, people in a right relationship with God through Jesus, provide for ourselves spiritual treasures, a heavenly home, in a righteous way. The manager was faced with a problem. And he found a way round it. Jesus isn’t saying emulate his dishonesty, or even his shrewdness. But emulate his belief that there is an answer to the problems with which we will inevitably be faced as Christians. I think that we, as members of the Church, can too easily be tempted to through in the towel. To think that the problems we face are too big for us. And maybe they are if we were to attempt to face them alone. But, as Paul writes, “If God is for us, who can be against us?”, Romans 8:31. As I said last week, as we face a future which in some ways is uncertain, we should not be afraid. The manager had good reason to be afraid, but he rose to the challenge. So, a twofold message. Be honest in your dealings with worldly wealth. But also, always keep in mind that we, as individual Christians and as a Church – people of the light – realise that there are true riches that are of greater importance than worldly wealth. It is this that is our primary concern and calling to address. And we should do so with confidence, believing that God is with us and will see us through. There is always an answer. But is this our attitude when faced with problems? Sometimes I think we think that matters are too big, or too small, or too complicated to hand over to God. What is this saying? Left to our own, yes, we would have reason to be afraid. But we are not alone; God does not leave us comfortless. See the true spiritual calling of our life as Christians and as part of God’s Church. Believe that God has an answer and turn to him to discover it. Amen.
Posted on: Sun, 01 Dec 2013 16:02:35 +0000
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