A Fourth Church Sermon by John W. Vest

September 23, 2007 | 8:00 a.m.

Flirting with Dirty Sexy Money

John W. Vest
Associate Pastor, Fourth Presbyterian Church

Psalm 113
Luke 16:1–13

When I think of the future, when I think of heaven,
when I think of the end of the age as we know it,
I think of the loving, gracious, generous God in whose hands it all rests
and I am glad, even delighted, that this God is far more generous
than many of his most ardent worshipers and preachers.
We Christians need a bigger God that goes against
the more conventional wisdom of our faith.
With such a God we need fear nothing that the future has to offer,
and before that time comes and ends,
we might emulate that generosity of God in our own affairs.

Peter J. Gomes
The Scandalous Gospel of Jesus

If you were able to follow along with this scripture lesson, you may find yourself puzzled or confused. I know that I was when I first sat down to read it.

It seems odd for Jesus to tell a parable in which the hero is described as a “dishonest manager” and that this manager would be praised for his shrewd yet seemingly questionable behavior. Further, it’s not entirely clear what the moral of this story really is, an ambiguity that is only compounded by a series of pithy teachings about wealth that are tacked on to the end of the parable, apparently intended to give some kind of context or interpretation for this difficult teaching of Jesus.

This complicated passage of scripture seems to raise more questions than it can answer, but perhaps this is as it should be. The mark of a good teacher or a good story is the ability to make us think. So let us think a little bit about this one this morning.

Commentators have attempted in various ways to contextualize the parable in first-century Judea to help make sense of the core story Jesus begins with. The basic idea is that a rich man has either leased his property to tenant farmers who pay him in kind or he has made loans to them that are repaid in goods rather than in currency. This rich man does not oversee his affairs directly, however, and has hired a manager to handle his business. It turns out that this manager is not doing a very good job, so the rich man fires him and sends him on his way.

The manager thus finds himself in a bind. A white collar businessman his whole life, neither his body nor his pride are equipped to turn to manual labor once his middle management job is gone. Shame prevents him from begging from the people he once lorded over. He must figure out some way to survive. And so he comes up with an idea.

He works out a scheme by which he fixes the books in such a way as to reduce the debt each debtor owes. Exactly how this is done is a matter of speculation among commentators. Some suggest that he reduces the debts by canceling what would have been his commission for each transaction. The shrewdness of this approach is that he ingratiates himself to the debtors without stealing outright from the rich man. Others suggest that the rich man was in fact lending and charging interest—a practice explicitly forbidden by Jewish law—and that the manager is simply canceling the interest. The shrewdness of this is that the rich man cannot really challenge the manager since he himself is in the wrong. Either way, to me it all sounds dangerously close to practices that would warrant scrutiny from the SEC in today’s world.

Yet in this parable, the rich man is impressed by the manager’s scheme and the implication seems to be that we should be as well. The author of the Gospel of Luke reinforces this by adding interpretive comments and summary statements to the basic core of the teaching, the parable. Scholars are in general agreement that Luke is adding on what he considers to be complementary sayings of Jesus in order to help make sense of an otherwise bewildering parable. And in doing so, I think that Luke may in fact be making things even worse.

Especially worrisome is verse 9, which moves from story to application: like the shrewd manager, we are to use money shrewdly in order to make friends in this world and thereby ensure some kind of blessing in the world to come. Now I confess that the meaning of this verse doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. The best explanation I read in the various commentaries on this passage suggests that the idea is to use wealth to undo some of the injustices that have been caused by wealth itself, which Jesus and/or Luke actually call “wicked wealth”. (1) The logic behind this understanding is that in first-century Judea, the accumulation of wealth was a zero-sum game: people became wealthy only by making other people poor. The implication is therefore that by redistributing some of this wealth (presumably by what Luke generally refers to as “giving alms”), Jesus’ followers help move the world closer to the ideals of equality and balance assumed in the kingdom of God. (2)

If this is indeed the meaning of the parable, then what we have is a Christian teaching about how to use wealth shrewdly to actually promote the gospel of the kingdom of God. This would be rare because much—though not all—of the early Christian teachings and practices were biased against wealth. This is what happens when poor people write the New Testament. We get a hint of that even here when it is referred to as “wicked wealth.” And the supplemental teachings that Luke connects to this parable further highlight this paradox.

Beginning in verse 10, we find a series of teachings that were most likely added to this parable to help make sense of it. And the first actually do seem to help. Following a common biblical and Jewish line of argument that moves from simple to complex, Jesus says that how we manage material things is an indication of how we manage our spiritual lives. If we can be trusted with a little, we can be trusted with a lot. If we are faithful with things that really don’t matter, we will be faithful with things that really do matter.

But the final saying of our scripture lesson this morning actually threatens to undermine the entirety of what comes before. “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” According to this, the Christian approach to wealth should be pretty black and white. Wealth is bad and cannot be mixed with devotion to God. God and wealth are mutually exclusive. The suggestion, therefore, that wealth can be appropriately manipulated to serve the ends of the gospel is undercut and rendered void. If God and wealth cannot mix, how can you use one to serve the other? It is a contradiction that is not easily resolved or ignored.

Are you confused yet? You should be. This is a difficult juxtaposition of teachings. What this ambiguity does a good job of, however, is highlighting a perennial tension in the Bible itself and among Christians who look to it for guidance. What are we supposed to think and do about wealth? Is it inherently evil? Can it only corrupt and tempt and destroy? Is it a distraction from the true work of the gospel? Or can it legitimately and faithfully be used to bring about the kingdom of God on earth?

I know that I constantly find myself torn between these extremes, and that is sometimes a difficult place to be.

There is a television show debuting this week on ABC called Dirty Sexy Money, and the timing couldn’t be better for this sermon. From what I’ve read and seen about it in previews, it may prove to be a modern-day parable that wrestles with this ambiguity about wealth. An altruistic lawyer is hired by a ridiculously wealthy and equally eccentric New York family to handle their affairs. The moral question posed by the series seems to be this: what effect will all of this dirty sexy money have on the good lawyer as he gets sucked into the world of the rich and powerful? Dirty sexy money—both appealing and corrupting. Will wealth give him the freedom to do good, or will it taint him as it has his employers? It should make for some interesting television.

Yet more importantly, what does this say about us? What happens when the church flirts with this dirty sexy money, thinking we can use it for good?

I think about Fourth Church, for example. A congregation this size is able to gather and put to use a large collection of resources. It was an eye-opener for me, as I imagine it is for many, to move from a medium-sized church and its budget to this large church and its budget. Yet it has been such a blessing for me to see those resources put to work in service of God, truly in proclamation of the gospel and the realization of the kingdom of God.

Last month Anna and I visited family in Houston, and I took advantage of some free time one day to visit Memorial Drive Presbyterian Church, mostly to swap notes with their youth pastor and see how a large Southern church does things. Beyond the things I learned about how they do youth ministry, I was impressed that the church as a whole practices dollar-for-dollar spending with its budget: every dollar it spends on itself is matched by a dollar it spends in mission beyond the church. That’s a pretty remarkable approach, quite a countercultural witness to how to use money for good.

I think too about our larger, connected church. For years critics have heralded the death of denominationalism, and there is no doubt that our national church is experiencing difficult times. We are having to rethink how to be a denomination in today’s world. One of the persistent arguments for denominational structures is the power and resources we can muster as a collective body of churches. While this too is being rethought, I look to the effectiveness of denominational entities like Presbyterian Disaster Assistance, which are able to respond quickly and meaningfully to crisis situations such as hurricanes and floods. “Mission dollars at work” we call it.

Yet I also think about the real excesses of the pre-Reformation Catholic church. In those days the church really was getting wealthy by impoverishing its members. Where did the church cross the line? And how can we identify that line today and make sure we’re always on the right side of it? How do we balance spending on ourselves and spending on others?

And what about us as individuals? How do I think about my own wealth and how I use it?

There are some Christian communities that preach what is called “prosperity theology,” the idea that prosperity and success is evidence of God’s favor. Preachers encourage their followers to accumulate wealth and see it as a sign of God’s blessing. (3) While there is so much wrong with this kind of theology, it is nonetheless tempting to think that God has given me various skills and talents with which to make a living, so why not enjoy the fruits of my labor? And why not strive for excellence and success in what I do? And why shouldn’t my hard work be rewarded?

And think about those who have used their wealth and power to do so much good in the world. Think about Bill Gates, whose entire empire was built by capitalizing on consumption and the luxury spending of the affluent, but who now uses that wealth to accomplish a lot of good things. Or think about Bono, who uses his riches and rock star status to make a prophetic witness about social justice.(4)

Yet every time I fill up my gas tank to enjoy the luxury of driving my car around town, I wonder if this is the best use of my resources. And every time I eat an expensive dinner at a nice downtown restaurant, I think about how the money I just spent on one meal would feed a family of my friends in Cuba for several months. How much is enough? Where do I draw the line for myself and my family?

I don’t know enough about economics to know whether or not wealth really is a zero-sum game. I suspect that it is not. Yet I wonder if my accumulation of wealth necessarily comes at the expense of someone else or, even worse, the impoverishment of someone else. Do I contribute to a national or global economic system that oppresses and exploits?

Next month the leaders of our church will ask us to think about stewardship and giving to this church. What is a truly sacrificial pledge? Does God really expect a 10 percent tithe? Is 5 percent good enough? How about 1? Or should I even measure my giving in percentage points? How do I balance my giving to the church and my giving to other institutions that work toward the common good? And when I’m handed the plate during the offering, what should I put in there?

This is a lot to think about. And as I mentioned at the outset of this sermon, our scripture this morning raises more questions than it answers. Again, maybe this is as it should be. I think we need these questions much more than we need simple, easy answers. Given the 3,000 years of sacred history in which God’s people have wrestled with these tensions without arriving at a clear resolution, I don’t think answers are necessarily coming soon.

Yet we must ask the questions. We must let them confront us every day. We must be intentional about every move we make, wondering if we are living out the gospel or ignoring it for our own desires.

What to do with that dirty sexy money?

God only knows.

Amen.

Notes
1. The New Revised Standard Version has “dishonest wealth,” but a more literal translation is “wicked wealth.”
2. Sharon H. Ringe, Luke (Westminster Bible Companion; Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995). Other commentaries I found helpful for this passage were Fred B. Craddock, Luke (Interpretation; Louisville: John Knox Press, 1990) and Tom Wright, Luke for Everyone (London and Louisville: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge and Westminster John Knox Press, 2001 and 2004).
3. For a recent discussion of this phenomenon, see the cover stories of the 10 July 2007 issue of the Christian Century.
4. The philanthropic endeavors of these two, along with Gates’s wife, Melinda, prompted Time magazine to name them “People of the Year” in 2005.