Proper 20C

September 19, 2004

Saturday a week ago the remembrance of third anniversary of the attack on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, the sudden deaths of some 3,000 people, brought another reminder of the accounting we all must one day give.

Fear and anger are powerful motivators. I am frequently motivated to clean up my desk and organize my files by the experience of not being able easily to find something there; I’m afraid I’ve lost the paper, and angry at the waste of the time I have to take to search for it. Fear and anger can motivate us to begin to make major changes in our lives. But while those emotions can begin positive change; they cannot sustain it.

What sustains is faith, faith in the justice and rightness of those to whom we will give our account. We have a choice. We can fear, but we can also choose to have faith, faith and trust that those who will receive our accounting will be just and fair, understanding, and gracious.

Fear locks us more and more into old habits of thought and behavior.

Faith and trust make new behavior possible. We see this in the parable Jesus tells: the dishonest manager (the King James version has "unjust

steward") was able to make some changes. He asked one, "How much do you owe my master?" He answered, "A hundred jugs of olive oil." He said to him, "Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty." Then he asked another, "And how much do you owe?" He replied, "A hundred containers of wheat." He said to him, "Take your bill and make it eighty." And, Jesus said, "his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly." The commentators say that what the steward was doing was discounting his commission, reducing the part of the payment that would go to him so the debtor would be able to pay. The steward was able to think outside the box, to re-evaluate his own position to his advantage.

Jesus goes on to comment generally about the place of money in the Christian life, "You cannot serve God and wealth." Someone once did a survey asking people how much money they made, and how much they would need to be comfortable and not worry. Most said, about 10 percent more.

The one who made $25,000 wanted $25,5; the one who made $100,000 wanted $110,000.

That’s one reason God gives us the tithe, so we can learn to live on 10 percent less than what we make, and be able to give to accomplish God’s purposes in the world he made and redeemed in Jesus Christ.

Wealth does not bring security and happiness; nor does poverty. In the Epistle to Timothy we are commanded to pray for those in authority to the end "that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity." We need an orderly civil society; we need a just economic system, we need a reasonable level of income so "we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity." We are commanded to love God first with all that we are and have, and to love our neighbors as ourselves.

We are blessed in Jesus Christ the word of God. We are rich in hearing his word. God grant that we may hear it, read, mark, and inwardly digest it.

Our faith and trust in the love and mercy of God is greater than wealth.

Our life is in God, not in our wealth. The poorest person in this land is rich compared to many other people in the world.

All of us will be called on in the last day to give a final accounting of our management of the freedom and the life God has given us. Let us so live that we will not be ashamed in that day. Jesus said, "A rich man summoned his manager and said, ‘Give me an accounting of your management . . ."