‘Hear this, you who trample on the needy
    and bring the poor of the land to an end.’

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‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were 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 manager.’ 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.’

The manager goes, and begins to discount what is owed by the debtors, that they might remember his somewhat amoral kindness to them after, simply put, he is out of a job.

But then it seems there is a rather unexpected twist to the story:

’The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.’

Why would the master commend the dishonest manager? Dishonesty is a sin, and something barely to be praised in the Scriptures. And why is Jesus even telling us such a story that seems to be praising such shady dealings?

And if we were to hope that there is some hidden, mystical interpretation that would save us from facing what seems to be the obvious moral of the story, Jesus makes it clear that there is no ambiguity in what He is saying: ‘I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.’

It seems that what Christ Himself is teaching us is that using our ill-gained money to bribe those who might benefit us later is not so bad after all.

It is a strange thing for the Lord to say, even on the heels of Him teaching us that we are to not throw a banquet to those who might repay us, but rather only to those who never can, the poor, the lame, the crippled.

St. Augustine himself was disturbed by this parable, remarking that rather than try to understand it, it was best to just take the lesson that we should always be working toward our future good, not our present good, though our future good as Christians is in heaven.

Yet it is not so disturbing if we understand why, exactly, the wealth of the servant is, at the end, unrighteous. Our assumption is that it is unrighteous because it was stolen from the master. But if this is the case, the master does not seem particularly displeased about it. Nowhere is it written that he became angry or bothered. Rather, he treats the money almost as if it was meant to be given away, commending the servant.

The wealth is not unrighteous because it was stolen, since it most likely was not. In a world where keeping people honest in their accounting was difficult due to the lack of the utterly Byzantine bureaucracy of overseers now present in most businesses and governments, the easiest way to make sure people did their job was to incentivize them with money to do so, and eagerly. For this reason, tax collectors were not paid a salary or wages. Rather, they merely collected a little extra on top of what was technically owed by the hard working citizen, and kept the difference for themselves. From our point of view, this is blatant corruption. From the point of view of the Roman authorities, this was a simple and clever way to make sure that the tax man collected from as many Roman subjects as possible, a sort of early system of working on commission.

The same is likely true in our parable. The steward would pad the bill of the master’s debtors, and then skim off the top to make his living.

It would seem, therefore, that the money being discounted by the steward is not really the master’s at all, but his own cut. He is simply cutting out the middle man, and the debtors are surely quite grateful.

In a sense, what he did was commendable. And perhaps St. Augustine was not all wrong. The steward was forgoing his immediate gratification for a future reward.

If, then, the money that was deducted was not the master’s at all, but the steward’s to forgive, why is such wealth called ‘unrighteous?’

The Lord answers this question: ‘No servant can serve two masters, for either 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.’

His wealth is called unrighteous because all wealth is unrighteous, for before the eyes of sinners, it makes itself a god in itself, that promises nothing but the fulfillment of our stomachs. For one does not love money for its own sake, but for the slew of indulgences it promises: good food, nice parties, new cars, bigger houses, vacations, weekends away, piano lessons, education. Retirement.

It is unrighteous because it exists as the substance of sacrifice, a sacrifice that is forever made to one’s self, and all that is consecrated to an idol is hateful to the Lord, and what is exalted before men is an abomination in the sight of God.

‘You cannot serve God and mammon.’

You cannot serve God, and yourself.

Yet, the Lord does not go on to tell us to have no such unrighteous wealth. Rather, He tells us how to use it. ‘Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings.’

The proper end of our wealth, then, is to make friends. Yet what friend among us will welcome us, not even into their own house, because we showed them such generosity, but into the eternal dwellings? Who holds such a key and such a right?

This too is made clear by what the Christ would tell us next, in the pericope for next week, on the Rich Man and Lazarus, if we were not to keep the Feast of St. Michael and All Angels in its stead.

For there, the poor and wretched leper, Lazarus, dwells in the arms of Holy Abraham, and the Rich Man thirsts in hell. The Rich Man calls to Lazarus to come and aid Him, even to merely dip his finger in some water and touch it upon his tongue. Yet, Abraham rebukes him, saying that in his lifetime, he received good things, but Lazarus received nothing.’ Indeed Lazarus, who dwelt outside the Rich Man’s house, received nothing but evil. He received nothing at all, especially from the Rich Man. And yet it seems he has become the door keeper in the house of the Lord, for it is written, the meek shall inherit the earth.

Therefore, it is the end of our unrighteous wealth to be sanctified by being given to the benefit of those made in the image of God, and so, consecrated to God Himself. What Christ tells us in the parable then, is no different from what He told the Rich Young Ruler: ‘Go, sell all you have and give it to the poor, then you will have treasure in heaven,’ ‘in the eternal dwellings.’

Even now, your Holy Mother, the Church, is ever in need, is ever poor, though she prepares for you a heavenly mansion. Will you then watch her starve, as if your time, and money, and vigor have a more worthy end? If you will starve your mother, you will invite the anger of your Father, who is in heaven.

For the Church, as a woman, remains silent, and demands nothing for her own good, and it is the obligation and authority of men to care for her. Yet we do not feed her from our wealth and labor, even though she feeds us from her own body. Yet, she will be saved through childbearing.

For the Lord Christ, born of the Virgin Maiden, has not forgotten the poor, nor will He forsake the widow. He will forgive the Church her debt, and so honor his mother and father.

For all the wealth of heaven He forsook, that He might gain for Himself a home in His Church, a dwelling place with His Mother and Our Mother, that He might tent among us in this tabernacle, in this sanctuary, upon this altar. That He might feed us, and that He might forgive us our debt.

All this, that He might dwell within us also, and buy for Himself a home in our souls through the Sacrament of Holy Baptism. A sacrament both of forgiveness, and of indwelling; of ending a debt, to gain a home, that it might be fulfilled what was written:

‘He raises the poor from the dust.’

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Preached by Pastor Fields

Sermon Texts: Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-15; Luke 16:1-15.