You cannot serve God and Mammon

Address given at Ballingarry Church on Sunday 18th September 2022, the 14th afterTrinity

I wonder how many of you remember the theme song of the TV series, the Adventures of Robin Hood, back in the 1950s?

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, Riding through the glen,
Robin Hood, Robin Hood, With his band of men,
Stole from the rich, Gave to the poor,
Robin Hood! Robin Hood! Robin Hood!

Today’s reading from Luke’s Gospel (Luke 16:1-13) is all about the right way for Jesus’s disciples - whom he calls ‘the children of light’ – to deal with riches, with wealth. But at first sight, it is very odd, because it looks as if Jesus is commending dishonesty, that he is encouraging his disciples to be like Robin Hood, to steal from the rich to give to the poor.

 Now I don’t for a minute think that is what Jesus is saying. So let me try to tease out what message Jesus really wants us to take from his words.

The story Jesus tells, often called the parable of the dishonest manager, sounds very contemporary, doesn’t it?

A dishonest manager is about to lose his job because he has squandered his employer’s assets. Because he doesn’t want to do manual labour or receive charity, he goes around to all the people who owe his employer money and reduces their debts. He does this so that they will help him after he loses his job. To our surprise, the employer commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.

It is a story about as worldly-wise a set of rogues as we might meet anywhere today. The dishonest manager is a rogue who embezzles from his employer. The debtors are rogues, who are quite happy to go along with him. The employer is a rogue too, who admires the shrewd dishonesty of his manager – perhaps he might reconsider sacking him!

Jesus tells his disciples, ‘The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light’. In other words, the worldly wise, like the dishonest manager and his employer, rogues who are always ready to pull a stroke to their own advantage, are shrewder than they are. They should ‘make friends for (themselves) by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes’.

Is Jesus urging his disciples to be like Robin Hood, to steal what is not theirs, to give it to those who will welcome them? I think not. I am reminded of what Jesus said to the twelve disciples he sent out on a training mission as Matthew (10:16) records: ‘See, I am sending you out like sheep into the midst of wolves; so be wise as serpents and innocent as doves’.

What Jesus is saying is surely that they must be shrewd enough to see through the machinations of the worldly wise, so that they do not fall into the trap of imitating their dishonesty. Rather they must use whatever wealth they are blessed with, that they make honestly or receive as a gift, to do good for others, so that they may be eternally welcomed.

John Wesley got it right, I think, when he said in a sermon on the use of money: ‘No more waste! Cut off every expense which fashion, caprice, or flesh and blood demand. No more covetousness! But employ whatever God has intrusted you with, in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind and degree, to the household of faith, to all men.’

Jesus goes on to clarify for his disciples the proper use of wealth.

He points out to them that faithfulness and honesty in undertaking a small task is the best proof of fitness to be entrusted with a bigger task. This is surely true in earthly matters. No one is likely to gain a high, responsible position until they have proved their faithfulness, honesty, and ability in a lower position - though recent events in Westminster might lead one to doubt that this always applies in the world of politics!

Jesus then extends this principle to eternal matters. ‘If then’, says Jesus, ‘you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?’

The wealth we have on earth is not really ours, it is loaned to us by God. We may have earned it honestly by hard work, or received it as a gift or by inheritance, but we cannot take it away with us when we die - we are only stewards of it. If we choose to hoard it and use it only for our own pleasure, if we are driven only by the desire to accumulate more, we are being dishonest – in that sense it is dishonest wealth. Even if we have not, God forbid, cheated and exploited other people to get it.

The true riches we should seek are spiritual riches. We will receive these only in as much as we use earthly riches well, as God would have us use them. And if we do not use what God has given us well, how can we expect him to continue to give it to us?

The fact of the matter, Jesus teaches us, is that his disciples cannot serve two masters. ‘You cannot serve (both) God and wealth’.

I finish in prayer with a Collect of the Lord

O God, you are rich in love for your people:
show us the treasure that endures
and, when we are tempted by greed,
call us back into your service
and make us worthy to be entrusted 

with the wealth that never fails.

We ask this through your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ,

who lives and reigns with you in the unity of the Holy Spirit,

one God, for ever and ever. Amen.