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+ + + In Nomine Jesu + + +
Please join me in prayer: May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts be pleasing in your sight, O Lord, our Rock and our Redeemer. Amen.
Dear Brothers and Sisters in Christ,
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.
Cases of corporate executives fired for mismanagement regularly make the news, and we can be sure that small‑business bosses are similarly canned for dishonesty even if their cases are not usually reported. In today’s Gospel Reading, we heard about a dishonest manager whose shrewd actions on his way out earned his master’s commendation and whose shrewdness in physical matters in some sense serves as a model for what should be our spiritual shrewdness, and we heard about the faithfulness that should naturally follow as a result of such spiritual shrewdness. This morning we consider today’s Gospel Reading under that theme of “Spiritual Shrewdness”.
Today’s Gospel Reading comes in the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke’s Gospel account essentially right after last week’s Gospel Reading (Luke 15:1-10), in the same important context. You may recall that tax collectors and sinners were drawing near to hear Jesus, as He had bidden all who had ears to hear to do (Luke 14:35), but the Pharisees and scribes were grumbling about Jesus’s receiving sinners and eating with them. So, Jesus told what we usually consider to be three parables—one each about a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son—calling the Pharisees to repentance for not rejoicing over the sinners who were repenting. As the spiritual leaders of the day, the Pharisees themselves arguably also should have been seeking those sinners but apparently were not faithfully fulfilling the role entrusted to them, which lack of fulfillment Jesus in today’s Gospel Reading seems to address.
Largely unique to St. Luke’s account, today’s Gospel Reading, both in its Greek original and all the more in its English translation, presents a number of difficulties for us sinners as we try to understand it rightly. Yet, the basic point seems to be that just as the dishonest manager dealt shrewdly with his temporal matter, realizing the desperate and urgent nature of his situation, so the Pharisees should have been dealing shrewdly with their spiritual matter, realizing the desperate and urgent nature of their situation. And, Jesus also made related points about faithful service for His disciples, those who in some sense would be the Pharisees’ successors, those to whom God would entrust the future spiritual care of His people. Those points about faithful service in the Office of the Holy Ministry can also be both applied narrowly to today’s pastors and applied more broadly to all of God’s people, who likewise should not be dishonest but be faithful in their “management” of that which has been entrusted to them.
The manager of the Gospel Reading, at least allegedly, previously had been wasting his master the rich man’s possessions, and then the dishonest manager discounted the debts, legitimately or not, owed to his master, in order for the manager to be received into the debtors’ houses, after the manager was removed from management. In effect, the dishonest manager tried to serve two masters, the rich man and himself. He was dishonest, not faithful, in what was entrusted to him; he was commended as “shrewd” by the rich man, but, as far as we know, he was still out of a job in the end. The Pharisees, whom the Divinely‑inspired St. Luke tells us were lovers of money, heard all the things Jesus said to His disciples, and they ridiculed Him (more literally, they turned up their noses at Him [confer AAT]), proudly justifying themselves before people and stubbornly rejecting God’s messenger, Who was again calling them to repent. Not only would the Pharisees soon be out of their jobs, as it were, but, as we discussed this past week in Midweek Bible Study, the Pharisees would suffer greater torment in hell for their abuses of God’s trust (Mark 12:40; Luke 20:47).
Like the dishonest manager in the Gospel Reading, like the Pharisees and their successors the disciples‑turned‑apostles, each of us, pastors and people alike, one day will have to, as it were, turn in the account of our management (Matthew 12:36; Hebrews 4:13; 13:17), whether at the moment of our deaths or on the day of judgment, whichever comes first. Do we try to serve two masters, God and ourselves? Are we dishonest or faithful in that which God has entrusted to us? Are we shrewd enough to realize the desperate and urgent nature of our spiritual situation and act accordingly? Or, do we justify ourselves and stubbornly reject God’s messenger’s calling us to repent? God knows our hearts better than we do ourselves. King Solomon, who heard that message about God’s knowing hearts from his father David (1 Chronicles 28:9), proclaimed it publicly at the dedication of the Temple, as King Solomon also called on God to forgive those who came into God’s presence there seeking forgiveness for their sin (1 Kings 8:39), as we come into God’s presence here seeking forgiveness for our sin today. Imagine how the rich man in the Gospel Reading might have responded to his dishonest manager’s plea for mercy and forgiveness! The dishonest manager asked himself what he should do, but, if he had asked St. Peter whom the crowds on the Day of Pentecost asked what they should do, the dishonest manager likely would have heard what the crowds heard: repent and be baptized in the Name of Jesus Christ for the forgiveness of your sins (Acts 2:37-38).
When we repent, then God forgives us. God forgives our sinful nature and all our sin: our trying to serve two masters, our dishonesty and other unfaithfulness in that which God has entrusted to us, our failure to deal shrewdly in our spiritual situation, our self‑justification and previous rejection of His messenger’s calling us to repent. God forgives all our sin, whatever our sin might be, for the sake of His Son, the God-man Jesus Christ. As we heard in today’s Epistle Reading (1 Timothy 2:1-15), God wants all people to be saved by coming to know the truth about Christ Jesus, Who is the one Mediator between God and people and Who gave Himself a ransom for all. There, on the cross, the debt of our sins has not been discounted in part but paid in full, as Jesus Himself said from the cross, τετέλεσται, “It is finished” or “It has been paid” (John 19:30; see, for example, ESL #5055). As we sang in the Hymn of the Day, “We’re justified / Because He died, / The guilty being guiltless” (Lutheran Service Book 557:2).
The forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake is not only read from God’s Word and proclaimed as now from this pulpit to groups like this one, but the forgiveness of sins for Christ’s sake is also individually received by faith with water in Holy Baptism, with the pastor’s touch in Holy Absolution, and with bread and wine that are Christ’s Body and Blood in Holy Communion. At the Baptismal Font, God Himself makes us His children, children of light (confer John 12:36; Ephesians 5:8; 1 Thessalonians 5:5), but God does so working through the Pharisees and disciples‑turned‑apostles’ successors, faithful pastors. Likewise through such “managers” of the mysteries or “sacraments” (1 Corinthians 4:1-2; 9:17), the Lord Jesus Himself feeds us with Himself, as we are scheduled to sing, freely giving the treasures of His grace, what earth could never buy (LSB 642:2). In this vale of tears, His Supper refreshes us and stills our fears and is our priceless treasure (LSB 622:6).
The faith that receives God’s forgiveness through Word and Sacrament naturally brings forth the kind of faithfulness and eternal reward that Jesus describes in today’s Gospel Reading. Better than the dishonest manager in the Gospel Reading—or any reported or unreported terminated corporate executive or small‑business boss—we have “Spiritual Shrewdness”. We repent of our sin; we receive God’s forgiveness; and we use that which God has entrusted to our “management” as He intends: for the work of His Kingdom in this place and to help those in need with whom He brings us into contact. As with the unrighteous deeds against the poor in today’s Old Testament Reading (Amos 8:4-7), the Lord remembers the righteous deeds for the poor. As the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther once wrote in a sermon on today’s Gospel Reading, the poor “will be the reason and witness of our faith, which was used and demonstrated on them, for the sake of which [faith] God receives us into the eternal dwellings” (Luther, AE 78:327; confer 324, 325).
Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.
+ + + Soli Deo Gloria + + +