Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

In Luke 16, Jesus told about a rich man who lived in fashionable luxury and ate sumptuous food. Camped outside his front gate, with dogs licking his sores, lived the homeless beggar, Lazarus.

When Lazarus  died, the angels carried him to paradise and he became friends with Abraham. When the rich man died, he ended up in hell, tormented with fire. Looking across the gulf to paradise, he shouted to Abraham, “I’m in agony in this fire! Send Lazarus to dip his finger in water and cool my tongue.” 

Now that’s a typical rich man, giving suggestions to another rich man on how to deploy the servants.

But Abraham replied, “It doesn’t work that way any more. You had comforts in life, but now they’re gone. Lazarus had trouble in life, but now he lives comfortably. Besides, there’s no road from heaven to hell, so I can’t send him over.” 

This didn’t stop the rich man. He had another brilliant idea to keep the servants busy. “Why don’t you send Lazarus to my brothers on earth to warn them about the fire here, so they won’t have to join me.” 

Abraham said, “They have the Bible. They can read it.” 

“But they don’t listen to the Bible,” said the rich man. “They need a real shocker, like someone coming back from the dead. Then they’ll listen!” 

“Not likely,” said Abraham. “If they ignore the Bible, they’ll ignore someone from the dead too.” 

This story leaves more questions than answers. 

1. What did the rich man do to deserve hell? If he left his dead body on earth, why were fire and a drink of water a problem to him?  
2. How did the beggar earn his place with Abraham? 
3. Like the rich man, I’m in the top 10% of the world’s wealthy. Does that give me an uncomfortably hot prospect for life after death? 
4. What does Jesus’ story mean for me, if I’m neither a rich man living in luxury nor a poor beggar with dogs licking my sores? 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, the accounts don’t add up in this story. What did the rich man do to deserve hell? How did Lazarus become Abraham’s friend? 

Still, we feel the weight of your story, Jesus. That our store of wealth and status and privilege will soon vanish, that our rich and narcissistic lives will be burned away. That the lonely and troubled will be comforted. 

Jesus, you say that not even someone raised from the dead will convince the comfortably rich to believe. You came back from the dead, Jesus, and how many people listen to you? But we accept your message of resurrection. We believe your plan for the future. We believe that you give our lives meaning, both now and after death. And we believe that you will settle whatever accounts need settling. 

Amen. 

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”. 

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

After the story of the prodigal who wasted his inheritance on wild living, Jesus tells another story about wasted wealth. In Luke 16, a rich landowner summons his manager and says, “I hear you’re wasting my wealth instead of managing it. You’re fired!” 

The manager doesn’t know what to do. He has no unemployment insurance. He could try begging, but that’s way below his social status. He’s not strong or humble enough for manual labor. And he certainly doesn’t want to tend pigs like the prodigal.

Then he gets a brilliant idea! What he really needs to tide him over is not money, but friends. Friends who will supply bed and breakfast, take him for a leisurely lunch, and open a bottle of wine in the evening. But where can he find friends like that? “Perhaps among my master’s tenants,” he thought. “I just need to reinvent myself as a helpful friend instead of a hard-hearted rent collector. “ 

So the manager made friends by writing off part of every tenant’s debt. He gave the first one a 50% discount on the olive oil he owed. And the next one a 20% discount on the wheat he owed. And so on, down the list of tenants.

When the owner heard about the deals his ex-manager was cutting, he changed his mind and said, “That’s a creative solution to your problem. I like your style. Why don’t you stay on as my manager?”

What’s up with this? Wasn’t the manager ripping off his master by cooking the books? 

There are three ways we can look at this.

The first thought: maybe the ex-manager was not falsifying accounts. Maybe these were deadbeat accounts, and the master was glad to get any payment out of them. This view makes the bookkeeping in the story work out. But when did Jesus ever show concern for accurate bookkeeping? In another story, the master forgave a multi-million dollar debt with a shrug of his shoulders.

Here’s a second thought: perhaps the owner gave the manager a contract to collect rent. In this view, all the owner wanted was a fixed franchise fee. The manager could charge the tenants whatever he wanted–fair commissions or wild extortions–and he could keep the overage. If this is how it worked, then the manager was shrewd but not dishonest, because it was his own commissions he reduced to make friends.

And there’s a third way to look at this curious story: Perhaps the manager did indeed act illegally and immorally by reducing debts that were not his to forgive. The master’s response was completely unexpected and surprising. Perhaps he was a friendly, jovial, party-throwing type of owner, almost like the prodigal son’s father who didn’t complain that his wealth was wasted in a far country. Maybe this owner didn’t care that his manager was giving away bundles of money. Instead, he was pleased that the manager finally focused on building relationships instead of counting and accounting for all the money.  

Whatever interpretation you choose, here’s Jesus’ conclusion. He said to his hearers, ”Use the wealth of unrighteousness to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings” (Luke 16:9). 

Let’s pray. 

O Jesus, your story points out that we are far too focussed on bookkeeping. We in the rich world have accumulated the “wealth of unrighteousness” and we hoard it to protect our lifestyle. 

We are the unjust manager. You gave us the world, and we waste its wealth to make our lives comfortable. We rip off your tenants all over the world to maintain our standard of living. We pollute the atmosphere, oppress migrant workers, and treat the poor like slaves. We are hard managers, proudly self-sufficient and independent. In the economy we have built, the man robbed by thieves or choked to death by police is “Not Our Problem.” 

O Jesus, help us be like the manager in your story, to use the wealth you give us for good, to share it with every tenant who works on your land in the world.

May we gladden the heart of God by using his resources to make friends for this life and the next. 

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”. 

For interpretations of the parable see: 

Beavis, Mary Ann. Ancient Slavery as an Interpretive Context for the New Testament Servant Parables with Special Reference to the Unjust Steward (Luke 16:1-8) in Journal of Biblical Literature, Vol. 111, No. 1 (Spring, 1992), pp. 37-54. Found at: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3267508?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=luke&searchText=16&searchText=1-8&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dluke%2B16%253A1-8%26amp%3Bfilter%3D&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search%2Fcontrol&refreqid=search%3A2272f7cd05dbb56c7c242b2363b3d17e&seq=15#metadata_info_tab_contents

Gachter, Paul. The Parable of the Dishonest Steward after Oriental Conceptions in The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, Vol. 12, No. 2 (April, 1950), pp. 121-131. Found at:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43720193?Search=yes&resultItemClick=true&searchText=unjust&searchText=steward&searchText=oriental&searchUri=%2Faction%2FdoBasicSearch%3FQuery%3Dunjust%2Bsteward%2Boriental&ab_segments=0%2Fbasic_search%2Fcontrol&refreqid=search%3A2c508063082f61a10cb2640420da4f1e

Capon, Robert Farrar. The Parables of Grace. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1988. pp. 145-151.

Hello, I’m Daniel Westfall on the channel “Pray With Me”.

Do you ever read National Enquirer headlines while in line at the supermarket? Stories like “Housewife’s Death Reveals Hubby’s Corpse in Freezer” (Jan 10, 2020) or “Columbian Drug Lord. . .Plotted to Kidnap JFK Jr. . .” (Feb 20, 2020)?

Jesus didn’t have a National Enquirer subscription, but he had other news sources for his inquiring mind. In Luke 13, people told him about some Galileans who were making sacrifices to God in Jerusalem when the Romans killed them, mixing their blood with the blood of their sacrifices. That headline might have been, “Daily Devotions Go Bizarrely Wrong” or “Sacrificed on Their Own Altar”. 

In response, Jesus had his own headliner story, about eighteen men who died when a tower fell on them.

He said about the stories: “Do you think these violent deaths prove that the victims were worse sinners than others? Don’t believe it. Unless you repent, every one of you will perish.” 

“Unless you repent you will perish?” What did Jesus mean? Was he saying, “You are sinners like the people who died, and you too are headed for horrible and unexpected deaths if you don’t repent”? 

But everybody dies, whether they repent or not. Was Jesus offering a bonus to people who repent? Perhaps those who repent will be spared a horrible, violent  death that makes headlines. Instead, they will get a nice peaceful death?

Then Jesus told this story: A landowner’s fig tree didn’t bear fruit for three years. So he said to his gardener, “Chop it down. I don’t want it using up my good soil!” But the gardener answered, “Let’s give it one more year. I’ll dig around it and put on some manure.  Maybe it will bear fruit next year. If not, you can cut it down then.” 

Do you ever feel that God is a gardener in your life, digging around, and pruning and fertilizing and inspecting? And that his activity makes your life painful and difficult? 

If Jesus’ gardening story is his comment on the shocking news of the day, perhaps this is what he’s saying: Your life is God’s gift, it’s a tree where God wants to find fruit. Perhaps the fruit of love, or thankfulness, or faith. 

Jesus’ call to repent, to change your ways, might be God saying to you, “Quit complaining at me! Tell me some things you’re thankful for. Don’t blame and criticize me for everything that’s wrong in your life and in your world. Give me credit for the good things I do down there.”

And perhaps, like the landowner and gardener in the story, God is conflicted about whether to cut down your tree. Part of him thinks, “I’ve given this customer all the time he needs.” And part of him says, “But maybe if I’m patient for another year, and dig a bit fertilize a bit, he’ll turn out OK.” 

Let’s pray. 

Our father, you have been waiting a long time for us to bear fruit. Thank you for your activity in our lives–digging and pruning and fertilizing and inspecting. Here is our repentance: 

…We confess that we are wrong to complain endlessly about you and others and our world. 

…We thank you for the opportunity to enjoy the world, to appreciate its beauty, and to build relationships with the people you have put here. 

…Thank you for time to correct our faults, to love our neighbors, to talk with you. 

…We pray, “Your kingdom come.” Fix what is wrong in us, in our church, in the world. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven.  

Amen.

I’m Daniel on the channel “Pray with Me”.