This Week’s Sermon:

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[Members: Please see Year C – Proper 20 or Luke 16 the sermon titled “Increasing Our Standard of Giving”]

Before John Wesley became the founder of the Methodist Church he was a teacher at Oxford University back in the 1700’s. When he began his career he was paid 30 pounds per year – in those days a lot of money. His living expenses were 28 pounds – so he gave 2 pounds away.

The next year his income doubled – but he still managed to live on 28 pounds – so he gave away 32 pounds. The third year he earned 90 pounds – lived on 28 – and gave away 62. The fourth year he earned 120 pounds – lived on 28 – and gave away 92. One year his income was a little over 1,400 pounds – he lived on 30 and gave away nearly all of the 1,400 pounds.

Wesley felt that with increasing income, what should rise is not the Christian’s standard of living but the standard of giving. Increasing our standard of giving. What a great Christian man and what a great lesson he taught us. It is the same lesson found in the parable for today. Let’s take a look. The Pharisees are standing off to the side watching Jesus as was their custom. Jesus’ disciples are listening intently as he tells his story. Probably on this occasion there were more than just the 12. A large number of followers are gathered around. He tells them about a steward who handled all the business affairs of a wealthy man. But the steward has squandered his master’s money; he was reckless and wasteful. Notice that this story follows another story about a reckless young man who squandered his father’s wealth, the prodigal son. But in this story the reckless young man does not come to his senses in time and he is fired from his job.

Then he does something so shrewd and conniving. As he is cleaning out his desk and clearing out his things he calls in his master’s debtors, those who had outstanding accounts, and cut those debts in half. You owe 800 gallons of olive oil? Write me check for 400 and we will call it even. You owe a thousand bushels of wheat? Write me a check for 800 and we’ll call it even. He forgives the debts that are not his to forgive, and he gains friends in the process. As a result his master commends him.

So what is Jesus’ point? Well, there’s not just one point there are a few. Let’s take a look.

1. First, He Explains the Wise Use of Worldly Wealth. 2. Second, Trustworthiness Is Measured by Character. 3. Third, Our Service Must Be Singular.

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Like Running a Business

There was an interesting legal question posed in The Saturday Evening Post recently. It seems that one lovely Sunday when the sermon was overlong, the congregation rushed, as usual, from its pews on the first syllable of “Amen!” Faithful Abigail, the only worshiper held entranced by the sermon, moved slowly and was trampled. She sued the church and its officials for damages.

“Those in charge of the church knew that most of the congregation stampedes after long sermons,” Abigail argued. “They should have recognized the danger in the situation. Not being prepared to cope with it, they were negligent.”

The church’s attorney argued like this in response: “A church is a nonprofit organization manned for the most part by volunteers. No one has a right to expect it to be run with the smart efficiency of a business concern. Abigail, therefore, has no real claim.”

If you were the judge, asks the writer, would you award damages to Abigail?

What I found interesting in this hypothetical situation was the characterization of the church. “A church is a nonprofit organization manned for the most part by volunteers. . . No one has a right to expect it to be run with the smart efficiency of a business. . . .”

Why not? What if we were as good at what we do as McDonald’s is at what they do, or Coca Cola or Microsoft? What if we were as committed to spreading the good news of the kingdom of God as American business is to winning new customers? This is the point Jesus is trying to make. He wants people who bear his name to not only be nice people but to be people who make a difference in the world.

King Duncan, Collected Sermons, http://www.eSermons.com

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Play It Safe or Take a Risk

Rev. Mark Trotter tells of a mission in Mexico, sponsored by Mercy Hospital, in San Diego, and by Rotary International. Thirteen doctors from San Diego, and twice that number of nurses and other support staff, total of about fifty-five persons, paid their own way to go down as a surgical team to minister to poor children in Tehuacan, in the southern part of Mexico. He says,

“The call went out through the Rotary Club in that city for all those who do not have the means for medical attention to bring children with birth defects and crippling diseases to the clinic.

It was amazing. They came by the hundreds, mostly the very, very poor, carrying their children. Some teenagers, as well, some of whom have spent their life with their hand held over their face because they were ashamed of the way they looked. Some had been hidden by their parents because they did not want their neighbors to see what they believed was a curse upon their family. After an hour, or less, in surgery their appearance was changed, and they received new hope and a new life.

If you are hard-headed, you might conclude that the thousands of dollars that were spent last week in Tehuacan was just a drop in the bucket. It’s not going to make any difference. I mean, the enormous suffering in this world, just wave after wave. It’s not going to make any difference.

I talked to one of those Rotarians in Tehuacan who spent two years setting up this project. It’s a complex business establishing this kind of a clinic in Mexico. I said, “Why did you do it?” He said, “We believe that we can change the world, and we are going to start right here.” It sounds naive. It is naive, when you compare it with the problems that exist, even the problems in his own state. But you are confronted with a choice in this life. That’s the point of these parables. You are confronted with a choice. You can do nothing, and play it safe. Or, you can take a risk.”

Adapted from Mark Trotter, The Model of Success

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Looking Past Oneself

An enormously rich man complained to a psychiatrist that despite his great wealth which enabled him to have whatever he wanted, he still felt miserable. The psychiatrist took the man to the window overlooking the street and asked, “What do you see?” The man replied, “I see men, women, and children.”

The psychiatrist then took the man to stand in front of mirror and asked, “Now what do you see?”

The man said, “I see only myself.”

The psychiatrist then said, “In the window there is a glass and in the mirror there is glass, and when you look through the glass of the window, you see others, but when you look into the glass of the mirror you see only yourself. The reason for this, “said the psychiatrist, “is that behind the glass in the mirror is a layer of silver. When silver is added, you cease to see others. You only see yourself.”

Whenever your devotion to money and material things causes you to be self centered, you in essence deny God’s intention for your life. It is also a denial of the Christ, for Jesus came into the world so that we might be in union with God.

Maxie Dunnam, Turn in an Account of Your Stewardship

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Subprime Stewards

Recently, the news of trouble in the housing sector has been unavoidable. The media has been reporting a new facet of the housing sectors financial problems daily. The stock market doesn’t know what to think, swinging several percent up and down on a daily roller coaster. Mortgage lenders have finally been caught holding the bag, literally, as lower quality loans are revealed for what they are – risky investments.

No doubt this is affecting some of you, either with higher mortgage payments as that fabulous adjustable interest rate starts to bump up or those of you who are suddenly questioning the value of your home as prices start to ‘adjust.’ The problems are widespread and that is exactly what everyone is so worried about. Who is to blame? It would seem everyone involved in the process may share some of the blame, but perhaps the biggest flaw is the breakdown of relationships that make smart mortgages.

Perhaps I am naïve, but I would hope that if the relationship between the homeowner and the mortgage broker was an honest one, the homeowner would end up with the best possible loan to meet their needs – not one that creates problems and heartbreak for the homeowner in the future. Perhaps the abstraction of the human relationships involved in this contract making is what we should really blame when we look at the big picture of this housing market.

How does the manager in this text save himself from an uncertain future? He maximizes his relationships with the people with whom he is doing business. At first glance, he does this at the expense of his employer, but his employer’s reputation is greatly enhanced and his own business relationships are strengthened. When push comes to shove in business, it is often the relationships that are forged over time that are the most important asset a company can have. The stewardship of relationships is often the key to true success.

Staff, http://www.eSermons.com

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Living as if There Is No Future

A man bought a parrot. He taught that bird to say one word. That word was, “Today.” When he got up in the morning and when he came home at night it was beaten into his eardrums: “Today.” There was no procrastination around that bird. “Today, today, today,” he screamed.

About six months later the man bought another parrot. He taught that bird to say one word. That word was “Tomorrow.” He said, “I have been living as if there were no future. Today is all there is, and I’ve found it isn’t so.” The two birds together helped him keep his mind on the realities of life: today and tomorrow. Would that the steward could have heard both voices. Tomorrow is God’s judgment on today.

Carveth Mitchell, The Sign in the Subway, CSS Publishing Company

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Shrewdness in Business

There was once a young businessman in Germany named Neckerman who had a burning ambition to build his small retail store into a large chain of department stores. His problem was that no one knew his name. He couldn’t attract customers. He had only limited capital.

This was shortly after World War II. As you might imagine there were shortages in Germany of almost everything. Thus, the existing big department stores saw no reason to cut prices. They sold whatever they could get at healthy margins. Neckerman saw this as an opportunity. If only he could position his store as the low-cost, high-value leader, he could build the enterprise of his dreams.

As it happened, Neckerman managed to acquire a large shipment of spools of thread. Thread was in great demand in those days. Clothes also were in short supply. Women were constantly repairing their families’ old garments. The obvious step for Neckerman would have been to sell these spools of thread in his own store. It would undoubtedly attract more business.

Instead he offered the whole shipment of thread to the buyer for the largest department store chain in Germany at only a slight profit. The buyer for this chain jumped at the opportunity and in only a few weeks had sold all the thread at a much more substantial profit.

It usually takes several months to use up a whole spool of thread. Thus, the whole transaction was forgotten by the time the executives of this large chain started to notice crowds of people shopping at Neckerman’s. Soon the reason became apparent. It was the spools of thread the large chain had purchased so eagerly from this young upstart. As German housewives finished their spools of thread, a piece of paper that had been wrapped about the spool under the thread fluttered out. It read like this: IF YOU HAD BOUGHT THIS THREAD AT NECKERMAN’S, IT WOULD HAVE LASTED TWICE AS LONG. Overnight, everyone knew the name Neckerman. From then on, the firm had no trouble attracting customers.

Shrewd. Even a little sneaky. Sometimes in business the line between ethical and unethical, shrewd and outright dishonest, is a little blurred. And nice guys, or gals, don’t always finish first.

Peter Engel, The Exceptional Individual (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), pp. 63-64, adapted by King Duncan

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Back in 15 Minutes

Where we used to live in Missouri, in rural St. Charles County, we had the smallest, stand-alone, full service post office in the country, with it’s very own full-time postmaster. It was something the citizens of our area were very proud of, because it had grown out of years of previous postmasters trying to juggle both their small business and their job as postmaster.

A lot of stories were told about the difficulty of trying to run a business and trying to serve the people of that area and their postal needs. One of them that I especially liked was about a gas station owner, who was also the community’s postmaster.

This man had no helper at his service station, so when he had to leave his store to meet the mail truck, he was consumed by thoughts of people stopping for gas, or soft drinks, or candy, but finding him gone and his store closed. So, one day he hit upon a very shrewd solution. He printed a sign in bold letters that solved his problem during those required absences. The sign read: Back in 15 minutes–Already been gone 10.

Tom Rietveld, Shrewd Managers

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Wiser than the Children of Light

This text seems like it is one which could be ripped out of our own newspapers. Dishonest managers try to gain friends by cooking the books. How could such a thing happen? And perhaps even more importantly, why in the world does it seem like the master in the story commends this unjust steward, as he is usually called, for his dishonestly? Jesus doesn’t even call it dishonesty. He calls it shrewdness.

It certainly is a strange text, and one that is worth our consideration. What is it about the children of this world which make them wiser than the children of light? Why is it that they get farther, do well, and generally seem like they understand how things work better than the Christians? That is really the question. But in order for us to understand it, let’s look at the contemporary situation for a moment.

In both the Enron scandal and the WorldCom scandal, we have companies and their accountants cooking the books in order to appear to be better off than they really are: hiding losses as equity, moving numbers around so that things are not what they appear, trying to impress their stockholders while lying underneath. Why did they do it? Well I guess the answer to that, ultimately, is pretty easy. They did all of this to make money. Or at least to keep the money they had. Money is a great motivator in our day and ago for a lot of things.

Todd A. Peperkorn, One Thing Is Needful

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When the Tigers Circle

A Zen story characterizes life as a Buddhist monk fleeing from a hungry tiger. The monk comes to the edge of a cliff cutting off any hope of escape from the pursuing tiger. Fortunately for the monk, a vine happens to be growing over the edge. He grabs hold of it and begins to climb down the cliff, out of the tiger’s reach, who is by now glaring at him from above. But alas, as the monk is climbing down, he spies another tiger waiting for him below; circling impatiently at the bottom of the cliff. To make matters worse, out of the corner of his eye he notices a mouse on a ledge above him already beginning to gnaw through the vine. Then out of the corner of his other eye the monk sees a strawberry growing from the rock. So he…

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