Stewarding our Gifts: A Sermon for Proper 20

The Rev’d Richard Gillespie Proctor

Christ the King Episcopal Church

15 Pentecost, Proper 20, Year C

September 18, 2022

Today’s parable from Luke’s gospel has historically been one of the most difficult ones to interpret. Scholars, preachers, and faithful readers of scripture alike have struggled to make sense of the Parable of the Dishonest Manager. Beth Quick reminds us that we are not to read parables as allegories, where each person and part of the story has a one-to-one relationship to something specific. Parables like today’s make it difficult to fit the pieces nicely into the puzzle.

Jesus told parables to communicate what God’s reign - the Kingdom of Heaven – is like. Again, Beth Quick says that parables “tell us something about how things are or will be when we do things on earth the way God means for us to.” When he was baptized by John, Jesus announced that the Kingdom of Heaven was near. So, we must remember to always frame Jesus’ public ministry within the proclamation of a new era of God’s reign on earth. And the parable of the Dishonest Manager is indeed a kingdom parable.

In today’s lesson, Jesus and his disciples are still on their journey to Jerusalem, and as they draw closer, you can feel Jesus’ intensity - and perhaps even anxiety - begin to rise. So, the parables we have been hearing the past few weeks have been preparing Jesus’ followers – then and now - for God’s reign on earth as it is in heaven. And for those of us in positions of earthly power and influence, the parables have perhaps been difficult to hear.

In the parable of the Dishonest Manager, Jesus is pointing out to his disciples that that they should be as shrewd at handling what has been entrusted to them as the rich man and the dishonest manager have been with what they’ve been given. In other words, I don’t think Jesus is saying that they too should be dishonest in their dealings with others. I think he is calling for his disciples then and now – the “children of the light” – to take the calling to follow Jesus as seriously as others take their worldly callings.

In prison and drug and alcohol recovery ministries, a common mentoring approach is to challenge the person seeking to turn their lives around is to be as shrewd, industrious, and persistent in making good choices as they were in making poor choices. In other words, most addicts simply find a way to get what they need. They will beg, borrow, and steal – and put their lives on the line - to get their next fix. And sometimes, the ingenuity they use to get drugs is quite impressive. So, when working with addicts, counselors would praise them for their persistence, creativity, and drive. But then they’d say that the addict now needs to use that same persistence, creativity, and drive to get and stay sober. And then they’d need to use it to get and hold a job, and to achieve and maintain stability in their lives. The shrewdness is there – it just needs to be re-channeled towards good, healthy choices instead of poor, dangerous choices.

Oftentimes, the parables deal with extremes, and that is a rhetorical device Jesus used so that he could effectively draw the listener in, and so that the impact of the story is significant. Most of us today do not live in the realm of the extreme like the characters in Jesus’ parables. We are all lost and wayward in some way or another, but not as outwardly or materially lost and wayward as the Prodigal Son. That being the case, we have to be careful not to hear these parables and think, “Wow, that is a great story. Thankfully it doesn’t apply to me. I’m not that lost, or that dishonest or that selfish. The power of the parables is that they are for all of us.

I think that today’s parable is a lesson first and foremost about wisely managing our resources – as individuals, as families, and as a church. Jesus calls us to be shrewd, industrious, creative, and driven with the resources with which we have been blessed. After all, our resources are really God’s, not ours. As scripture tells us, “All things come of thee O Lord, and of thine own have we given thee.”

Speaking from personal experience, Emily and I took the Financial Peace University course several years ago and learned a lot about managing the resources with which we have been blessed. And once we began following the Financial Peace program, we were actually able to not only save more money, but more importantly, give more money to the church. Our incomes didn’t change – our priorities and habits changed. Our Financial Peace coach helped us be shrewd in the management of our income and expenses. And we found a way to make it happen, and I must say, it feels better than ever.

What I admire about the Financial Peace program is that the first budget priority is to give 10% of your income away – preferably to your church. And everything else flows from there. Again, it is about reordering your priorities and habits. One thing that ensures that Emily and I keep our financial commitment to the church is that we have our pledge on autopay through the church database. So, at the beginning of every month, the first thing that gets paid is our church pledge – even before our mortgage payment. We aren’t seeing what is leftover at the end of the month and then giving to the church. We are not tipping the church at the end of the year for a job well done. Our commitment is first to the church. And again, everything else flows from there.

And with that commitment, we are trusting that the vestry is also being shrewd managers of our money. Just as we are called as individuals and families to be wise and generous with our gifts, so too is the church called to do the same. We are, after all, Christ’s body in the world. We are representatives of Christ, and how we manage and share the gifts we’ve been given should reflect that. And I can confidently say that our vestry does exactly that.

So, what about the parable? How do my own personal financial management as well as the church’s financial management relate to today’s parable? Remember that parables “tell us something about how things are or will be when we do things on earth the way God means for us to.” Imagine our local parish, our local community, our state, our nation, and the world if every Christian made their church their first priority with their time and their financial resources. The effect of such gracious generosity would be astonishing. I may be naïve, but I truly believe that many of our local, national, and worldwide problems would be greatly diminished if Christians led the way in re-ordering our priorities as it relates to our financial resources. I am regularly amazed at what we have been able to accomplish here at Christ the King with only about 50% participation from our parishioners. Imagine the impact we could have if every household in our parish made an annual pledge to the mission and ministries of our church! And then imagine again if everybody tithed, which is giving back 10% of your income. Again, the effect of such gracious generosity would be astonishing.

The kingdom of heaven isn’t characterized by money or business or budgets. Whenever the kingdom is finally realized, I can assure you that there won’t be finance committee meetings being held. And we won’t be talking about money and budgets. That is because in the kingdom of heaven, everybody’s priority will be to offer gratitude and praise towards God. And everything will flow from there. Until the kingdom is fully realized, let us model kingdom living for the world, and with gratitude in our hearts, structure our sharing of our resources in a way that reflects our gratitude and love towards God, embodying our weekly remembrance of God’s Word for us in holy scripture, when we say,

“All things come of thee O Lord,

and of thine own have we given thee.”