St. Luke 16:1-19 – Trinity 9 – 2012
Zion Ev. Lutheran Church, McHenry, IL
August 4-5, 2012
Watch here
In the name of Jesus. Amen. Who is this guy, this Unjust Steward, Who thinks that He can give His master’s stuff away?
He’s in a heap of trouble and His master knows it too! “Surrender your account book because you can’t be my steward any more!”
He’s as good as fired with no government program to bail him out! What’s worse is that He knows he’s too geeky to work and too unattractive to get any money by begging.
So, the steward starts calling those who owe His master money. “How much do you owe my master?” A hundred measures of oil. “Take your bill and sit down quickly and write fifty.”
Then another, “How much do you owe?” A hundred measurers of wheat. “Take your bill, and write eighty.”
At this point, you might expect the name for this parable to be “The Parable of the Dead Unjust Steward.” For if the steward was in doo doo before he was fired, don’t you’d think he’s going to be physically harmed when his master catches up with Him now?
Then the unexpected happens, opposite of what we could ever come up with on our own. “The master commended the Unjust Steward because of His shrewdness.”
Huh? That like makes no sense. He was accused of being unjust before. Now He’s giving stuff away that isn’t His. Why is He commended?
First things first, we will never understand this parable on our own because we don’t have the same view of money that the Unjust Steward has. We collect, hoard, and stack. Our stuff is our stuff. Our things are our things. Don’t get between us and our money.
It’s how we deal with our family and our friends. The worst way to wreck a relationship is to loan money to someone. Why? Because we’ll help them out? No, because if they don’t pay us back, well… they’ve taken our favorite thing away – our money.
Then, our idolatry – and make no mistake that’s what the sin is – it’s idolatry – then our idolatry gets specific. We can’t afford things for those we “love,” but we surely can afford the stuff that we want. It’s not that we didn’t have enough money for them, it was that well.. If they got what they wanted, then how would we get … well what we want.
This is why when you looked and saw that your bank account, or your mutual fund, or your retirement and it’s on the uppidy up, you didn’t have a care in the world. God loves you for sure!
But when it starts drying up, when your stocks aren’t worth a fourth of what they were before, your mutual fund looks like it had been a glass of water on a hot summer day – all or mostly all gone, you might wonder, even for only a second, “Why did God suddenly stop caring about me?”
And how’s that offering? How’s that going for you? Is it the first thing you do after getting your direct deposit? Or do you wait until after you see if you can pay for you first? It’s not that He’s not important and all, but I really have to well you know… tend to me.
And stop thinking, “Oh great, pastor is talking about money. Another one of those sermons.” That only proves my point.
We are all fine with Christian pastors talking about ours sins, talking about what we are doing in the dark corners, but don’t hit us in ours wallets….” You know, where our god is.
But we love God, pastor. Good, then live like it when it comes to your money. It’s easy to talk about loving God and others, until we actually try to live like we love them. Saying you love someone is one thing, living as if you love them is another.
Isn’t that hell? In Hell, you really get what you wanted most. You lived as if you didn’t love Him, now you don’t have to have Him around. All by yourself, you and what you do – an eternity of what you always wanted – just you and no God but you.
Then comes the Unjust Steward Jesus giving salvation away, giving faith away, giving the Gospel away, giving His Father’s kingdom away! Haphazardly tossing His Calvary-won-unjustly-given forgiveness to whomever will hear it.
Unjust Steward Jesus says to you today, “So you owe your life to God? A debt you cannot pay. Your life is forgiven.”
“Have had money as your idol and just realized it? Have you trusted in your riches? It’s all good because it’s all forgiven.”
“Have you been full of yourself? Full of your own idolatry and self-centered narcissism? All of it, forgiven.”
Have you hoarded your money like a squirrel does acorns? Coveted stuff, one thing after the next? Have you withheld from others for your own personal gain? Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write, “Forgiven. Forgiven. Forgiven.”
Has your Father been the farthest thing from your mind when it comes to your money? Have you served your stuff instead of Him? Your sins, all of them, are forgiven you.”
“And the sins in the dark corners? Don’t fret. He paid for those too.”
Jesus today does one better than the Unjust Steward did in the Gospel: He gives away His Father’s kingdom. Not just cutting the debt in half, but paying the whole thing Himself!
And His Father couldn’t be more pleased. For Jesus pays your debt with His faithful life and innocent sufferings and death.
For your sins, He suffers. For your unfaithfulness, He is fired and abandoned by God, For your debt, He dies. For your forgiveness, God raises Jesus from the dead.
The cross is the accounting, the final and only accounting, of the Son of God’s stewardship. Your salvation has been achieved, paid for by Him.
Not one of your sins did Jesus not die for. Not a bit of your debt to God remains. Not a bit of your hell is left for you to pay. He has answered for it all. He has paid it all. By His stripes, you really are healed. And the proof that God is pleased is the resurrection!
The Unjust Steward bets His life that His master is merciful, kind, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love. He bets his career on the simple fact that with the merciful, His master shows Himself to be merciful. To blameless, He is blameless.
That’s how your Heavenly Father is, He wants to save you, He wants to rescue you from all that you could ever do wrong.
Now, dear saints of God, we won’t always be here. We are temporal. More temporal than we’d like to admit. Use what you have to help others. If they repay, they repay. If they don’t, so what. Freely you have been given to, freely give to others.
After all, it’s just a little thing like money. It’s not even the real and true riches. Be faithful with the little things, for He has given you the true riches.
For the Unjust Steward, has completely given the true riches away. Salvation for all: To those in our neighborhoods, our family, our friends. Those little ones who come to our school. The young people we get to teach here whose lives are changed. All of them, even those outside McHenry, unfairly and unjustly proclaimed “forgiven” without any merit or worthiness in themselves. They, whether child, youth or adult, are saved by Jesus.
And faith receives that salvation and we are saved!
Who is this guy, this unjust steward, who think that he can give His master’s stuff away? That’ll get Him crucified.
It did. And in doing so, Jesus purchased salvation not only for you but also for the whole world. What you owe – the debt you owe to God – is forgiven by Unjust Steward Jesus. In the name of Jesus. Amen
