Sermon on Luke 16:1-13

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Some of Jesus’ parables seem straightforward, and others require some more unpacking. And this one is downright perplexing!

The main character was getting fired for “squandering[his boss’s] property.”

He then effectively stole a bunch of his former boss’s future profit by lowering debts owed to him.

And then, his former boss said, “Good job!”

But instead of explaining this surprising reaction, Jesus went on to teach about “children of this age” and “children of light, “dishonest wealth,” “eternal homes,” “true riches,” and not serving “two masters.”

Jesus taught over and over again that his disciples should give up their earthly possessions and not trust wealth. And yet, this parable seems to glorify committing fraud.What are we supposed to get from this?

One thing that really helped me get a better understanding of this text this week was finding out that this might be a collection of a couple different teachings that the writer of Luke put together because they had similar themes, which explains why Jesus seems to be glorifying a dishonest manager and then discouraging being dishonest and why the teaching jumps around so much.

We know that no one was following Jesus around with a tape recorder or furiously scribbled notes day by day throughout his ministry. None of the Gospels were written until decades after Jesus’ death.

That’s not to say they aren’t faithful representations of Jesus’ teachings, but they may not be completely chronologically accurate.

So, when someone sat down to write this Gospel, they wanted us to know about these teachings of Jesus, and it made sense to put a parable about gaining friends through “dishonest wealth” next to a poem about “dishonest wealth” and “true riches.”

They’re similar in theme, but we can take the pressure off trying to find a single takeaway from this whole reading. We might think of it more like listening to two songs from the same album and seeing how they enrich each other.

So, let’s look at these teachings on their own and then look for common themes.

First, we have the parable.One of the ways Jesus uses parables is to tell a story and then say, “how much more”—for instance,how much more is God going to listen to your prayers than this unjust judge listened to this persistent widow.

In today’s parable, it’s surprising that the rich man doesn’t have the dishonest manager thrown in prison either at the beginning or the end.

We can understand this parable as teaching that the manager was trusting his boss’s mercy. When his boss merely fired him, he figured he could do more to secure his future without feeling the wrath of his former boss.

Jesus, then, is essentially saying, “if the dishonest manager trusted his entire future on his boss’s mercy, how much more should Jesus followers trust God’s mercy and provision for our future?”

And with Jesus’ explanation of the parable— “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes”—he encouraged his followers to be cunning and creative in the ways we build community.If this sketchy manager could store up favors, how much more should Jesus followers be investing in relationships instead of finding security in accumulating their own wealth?

Then, the poem that follows goes on to contrast being “faithful” with being “dishonest.”Taken on its own, it can be understood that God wants us to be faithful with the earthly things God has entrusted us with before giving us God’s true riches. We shouldshow faithfulness to God instead of wealth.

A more faithful translation of the word “wealth” that’s confusing for modern audiences is “Mammon,” a personification of wealth.It’s like wealth as a god or idol. We can’t serve both God and Mammon. Take a look at the iconography of any celebrity magazine or the holy ritual of Prime Day or Black Friday, and it’s not hard to recognize Mammon today.

So, if you take these teachings together—the parable and the poem, these two songs from the same album—they do bring richness to each other.

Jesus was encouraging his followers to renounce their service of Mammon to secure their futures and instead build community. Money doesn’t last, but relationships do. His followers should hoard friendships, not gold—stockpile community, not goods. That’s how we declare our allegiance to God instead of Mammon.

That also sets the stage for next week’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus, so stay tuned.

But these teachings are hard to hear. They go against dominant American middle-class respectability.

We’re taught that if we work hard, we’ll succeed. We shouldn’t depend on anyone else, because we should be “self-made” people. Anyone can pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and anyone who doesn’t is just lazy, and we definitely don’t want to be lazy.We’re encouraged to succeed on our own and not let others know if we’re struggling.

But that’s not the way of Jesus.The way of Jesus is not about independence but interdependence.

Depending on each other builds bonds and strengthens community. There’s an African proverb that says “if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together.”

We followers of Jesus need to go far, together. It’s been 2,000 years since Jesus’ death and resurrection, and we don’t know how much longer it’ll be until the fulfillment of the Reign of God. We need to keep our stamina up—together.We need to trust each other, not Mammon.

It’s a little early, but I’m reminded of the classic Christmas film It’s a Wonderful Life, where after George Bailey has kept having to defer his dreams to help others, he faces almost certain financial ruin. After miraculously witnessing the difference he had made in so many lives, he watches in astonishment as his community rallies around him, donating the money needed to thwart the plot of greedy Mr. Potter.

The town toasts George as “the richest man in town,” and his angel companion Clarence leaves him some parting words: “Remember, no man is a failure who has friends.”

George’s actions have a surprisingly similar outcome to the shrewd manager in our parable today.

Relationships formed over time can beat overwhelming circumstances and can fortify us better than any bank account.

We can depend on our merciful God and the Beloved Community gathered through the Holy Spirit.

So, be shrewd: serve God by abandoning the idol of Mammon and investing in relationships instead. Loving relationships with God and our neighbor are the true riches.Be like George Bailey and become the richest person in town.

Sermon on Luke 15:1-10

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

Our readings from Exodus and from Luke show us what seem like two unsettlingly different sides of God.

In Exodus, God was angry—ready to smite the newly-freed Hebrews and start over, creating a new nation from Moses. That doesn’t sound like the God of mercy and love that I know.

Then in Luke, Jesus told some parables that illustrate different behavior from God. In them,a shepherd and a woman rejoiced over what had been lost. The familiar parable of the prodigal son follows these, which also shows a father rejoicing over a son who had been lost.

The religious leaders had grumbledbecause Jesus ate with “tax collectors and sinners,” so Jesus told them these parables, which show that God rejoices over finding what had been lost.

Those who had been lost—like maybe the lost Hebrews who had made an idol to put their trust in, because they were too anxious that Moses might not come back down the mountain after being gone for forty days? They seem like they were pretty lost.

So, does God rejoice over the lost or become overwhelmed with anger? These readings seem to contradict each other when it comes to God’s character. What is God actually like?

We can find a clue in our reading from Deuteronomy from last week.

God framed the giving of the Law after the Exodus as a choice between life and death. God wanted the Hebrews to choose what was life-giving: a covenant, a trusting relationship with God.

God was angry that the Hebrews so quickly created a substitute lower-case god, a golden calf with no life or power. They had just been freed from hundreds of years of enslavement. God had worked wonders on their behalf, even tearing the Red Sea in two so they would have safe passage to freedom as God’s people. And now, mere weeks later, they lost their trust in God.

Anger is an understandable reaction to that, though it’s distressing to think that God was inclined to wipe them out.

But God returned to Godself when Moses gave a reminder of God’s character. God “brought [the Hebrews] out of the land of Egypt with great power and with a mighty hand.” God swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob by God’s own self that their descendants would multiply “like the stars of heaven” and that they would inherit the land God promised them.

God had done great things for these people and had made promises to their ancestors. Moses reminded God that God had been faithful to them and had promised to continue to be faithful.

Faithfulness is God’s character. Inviting people into what is life-giving is God’s character. Love is God’s character.

We see that character in our Luke reading. Jesus illustrated beautifully and repeatedly that God rejoices when people choose life in God. These “tax collectors and sinners” were choosing life by choosing to spend time with Jesus and live into the Beloved Community that Jesus was fostering.

They could choose life because God’s grace had found them. God loved them and sought them out. They didn’t have to pass a test or quit their jobs or change their behavior before sitting with Jesus. They didn’t earn their place at Jesus’ table—none of us do. Jesus rejoiced at their very existence.

The final parable ends with the older brother refusing to join the party for his prodigal younger brother and his father reminding him of how much he values him too, not just the younger brother.

Itends without telling whether the older brother went in to celebrate.

The religious leaders who were complaining about Jesus’ company were like the older brother who was unwilling to celebrate the “wrong” kind of person. It was up to them to write the ending of the parable. Were they willing to associate with the “wrong” kind of people for Jesus’ sake?

Not only were tax collectors known for skimming off the top for themselves, but they were also collaborators with the Romans.They were hated for being greedy and crooked and for contributing to the occupation of their land by the Roman Empire.

Jewish people in the first century understood the word “sinners” differently from us. We recognize that we’re all simultaneously saints and sinners. We mess up all the time, hurting ourselves and others, and we completely depend on God’s grace and forgiveness.

But in the first century, according to New Testament professor Greg Carey, the word “sinners” meant people who “so habitually transgress the ways of God that they are sinners in need of repentance.” They were so consistently removed from the life-giving way of life that it would take a serious change of behavior to realign with it.

Still, it required an element of human judgment from the religious leaders to decide who was a “sinner” and who wasn’t. We humans excel at judging one another. “Tax collector” was an objective identity, but even then, the religious leaders complained that Jesus hung out with them, which condemns their very presence as unseemly.

But Jesus himself didn’t require those “tax collectors and sinners” to change their ways before spending time with them. He rejoiced that they wanted to be near him.

The religious leaders, on the other hand, missed out on time with Jesus because they wouldn’t mingle with those socially unfit people.

Jesus, instead of calling them out on their judgmental behavior, started to tell stories, stories about things that were lost and then found. And then about an older brother who wouldn’t join the party because he was so upset about his habitually transgressing brother getting celebrated.

Just as the father invited his elder son into the party, Jesus was inviting the religious leaders to reevaluate their understanding of who was on the outside—who was irredeemably lost and immoral—and just join the party already.

We too can get distracted from simply rejoicing in God’s presence.

We can be like the Hebrews and forget God’s past faithfulness, instead putting our trust in idols that aren’t life-giving for us.

We can become overly concerned with fitting in, changing ourselves to who we think others want us to be, instead of seeking the sense of belonging that comes when we’re seen and valued as the beloved children of God we are.

We can seek the security of wealth and status, putting our trust in retirement accounts, security systems, insurance, and knowing the “right” people, instead of trusting God to provide and keep us secure.

We can create an idol out of a political party, a golden donkey or elephant, and forget that the Reign of God doesn’t fit into any one box but brings communion, abundance, and belovedness that the world cannot understand and human beings can’t create on our own.

And also, we can be like the religious leaders in our story: concerned with the image our social circle projects, unwilling to associate with those we deem on the outside. We put others in boxes or label them as the wrong type of person instead of seeing everyone through God’s eyes.

Our God, whose character is faithful, life-giving, and loving, saved us all by grace without us doing a single thing to be worthy of it and instead doing many things that make us unworthy of it. God recognized our lostness and didn’t rest until we were found safe in God’s hands.

God set a place for us that we’ll never earn. It’s out of gratitude for that inclusion and belonging that we can set down our judgment, our categories, and our labels that keep us from recognizing the face of God in everyone we meet.It’s only because of God’s grace that we can choose what is life-giving for us and the world we live in.

God rejoices that you are found by God’s love. This table is set for you. You belong here, and so does everyone else. Thank God!

Sermon on Luke 14:25-33

Pastor Jennifer Garcia

When Jesus talks in Luke about hating family members, carrying crosses, and giving up all possessions, one could be forgiven for thinking twice about following him.

Jesus seems to have turned the sharp wit he used in last week’s reading about the dramatic dinner party to the “large crowds” that were now traveling with him.Jesus didn’t stop at turning the social ladder upside down—he warned his followers that difficulties would come, so they should be prepared.

After all, Jesus knew he was provoking the powers that be to the point where we know it ended: execution by the state. We also know what happened after, but Jesus’ followers still needed to know what was at stake: their reputations, their comfort, and even their lives.

Jesus was setting before the crowds a choice that was life or death, similar to what God presented in our reading from Deuteronomy: “I have set before you today life and prosperity, death and adversity.”

Jesus’ words seem harsh because he was deadly serious about his mission and wanted his followers to commit to living the Beloved Community.

It’s meant to be tough to hear these words. Surely Jesus didn’t literally mean that we all have to intentionally hate our families—that would be at odds with the greatest commandments to love God and neighbor.

But Jesus needed his followers to know that following him—this unpredictable rabbi who was challenging the Roman Empire—might cause family members to disown them. If they couldn’t handle that possibility, it would be better if they turned back now.

And as I already mentioned, Jesus’ teachings and works of power would get him executed, and his followers needed to be ready to accept that fate too, because the Romans weren’t known for their mercy.

As for Jesus’ insistence that people can’t follow him without giving up all their possessions, he had a precedent of sending his disciples out pretty much empty-handed, dependent on others’ hospitality. It created the mutuality of the Beloved Community. If his followers weren’t willing to be dependent on the generosity of others, maybe they weren’t cut out for what he would ask them to do.

As the crowds around him grew, he needed them to realize that this wasn’t just a matter of following him around watching him do miracles.

Jesus knew that hardships and suffering were coming for him and his followers, but also that their participation in creating Beloved Community would lead to more freedom, abundance, and love for them and the world.

He offered them a life or death choice, just like God’s Law in Deuteronomy, and he wanted them to choose life in him.

We as Lutherans might find this idea of the Law being life-giving a little uncomfortable. We focus so much on God’s grace that we have a hard time knowing what to do when we read parts of the Law that God gave God’s people after the Exodus. We worry that we might be getting too much into the “shoulds” or maybe the “shalt nots” and losing sight of God’s grace.

But our reading from Deuteronomy tells us that the Law wasn’t about restriction or mindless obedience—it was meant to be life-giving to the newly freed Israelites.

It was about deepening their trust in God and helping them live in ways that honored God, their neighbors, the earth, and their own selves.

Luther named three uses of the Law:

1.    First, that it gives us a way to live together as large groups of human beings in ways that guide us toward not hurting each other.

2.    Second, it shows us a standard that we can’t fully attain, and so it convicts us of our sinful, imperfect nature and evokes gratitude for God’s grace.

3.    Third, specifically for Jesus followers, it helps us love God and our neighbor better.

Luther himself found life-giving help in the Law, and so can we, as long as we always remember that we’re not saved by our actions but by God’s grace.

The particulars of the Law can be perplexing and even troubling to a modern reader, but it was given to people in a different time and place. We have refrigeration, which allows us to eat shellfish that was dangerous to the Israelites. Most of us wear clothes made of mixed fabrics. Our norms, around marriage for instance, are very different from what we read in the Law.

The particulars of what is life-giving can vary over the course of thousands of years, and we need to think deeply and pray deeply about how we interact with the Law as people of faith in our time, but it is meant to be life-giving. It’s meant to show people how to love God and their neighbor better and how to participate in the Reign of God, just like Jesus was encouraging his followers to.

Our world could certainly use more love of God and neighbor.

There’s so much pain in the world.

I’ve been barely able to wrap my mind around yet another school shooting last week. The pictures of starving people in Gaza haunt me, and my stomach churns when I think of people being held hostage.I hold my breath when I check the news, waiting to see what new devastation is being wreaked around the globe.

Faced with all that’s wrong with the world, it's so easy turn to things that bring us enjoyment in the moment to numb ourselves from the pain: scrolling, buying things, binging tv, food, alcohol, etc.

But numbing doesn’t satisfy. It can even exacerbate the deterioration of our mental health. And it can lead us to consume even more in a world that’s falling apart under the weight of our overconsumption.

When God implores God’s people to choose life in Deuteronomy, it sounds so pertinent for us today. We may not observe the Law the way the ancient Israelites did, but God still has a way of life for us that is life-giving.

Are we willing to renounce the ways we numb ourselves to the pain of others as we work to make the world a more just and peaceful place?

And when Jesus charges his followers to count the cost of following him, that has resonance today, too.Jesus called his disciples to “hate” or give up whatever had a hold on them that would keep them from God’s mission.

Are we willing to give up our reliance on things that make our lives more convenient to the detriment of the future of our planet?

Even our reading from Philemon has implications for us. The interpretation of this letter over the course of history, especially in this country, is fraught. But though it deals with the topic of enslavement without directly calling for its termination, Paul makes it clear that Philemon is to consider Onesimus his brother in Christ and treat him as he would treat Paul. We are one in Christ. The image of God is in each of us, and we should treat every person accordingly.

Are we willing to divest ourselves the best we can from, for instance, supply chains that exploit others?

These are big questions, and we can’t make any significant changes alone. But also, nothing will change unless individuals like us step up.

Choosing life is complicated.

But we can rest in the knowledge that we aren’t and in fact can’t be perfect, and God knows that and loves us anyway. God saves us by grace alone, not by anything we do or don’t do.

We can forgive ourselves as God forgives us when we fall short of our ideals of renouncing numbing, giving up overconsumption, and divesting from exploitative systems.And that frees us to love God and our neighbor the best we can.

We can’t measure up to the cost of discipleship. It’s only because of Jesus’ journey to the cross that we can even try to follow in his footsteps.

But now that we are freed in Christ, we can foster the Beloved Community as best we can—together. It’s a community, after all. We can’t make a huge difference on our own, but together, we can change the world with God’s love.

Whenever you can, however you can, choose life—together.