Sermon for the 21st of September - Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity

You can not serve both God and wealth – this is a teaching we may well be familiar with. Paul writes to Timothy that the love of money is the root of all evil, Jesus comments on how hard it is for someone rich to enter the kingdom of heaven. We’ve heard this message many times.

And whilst we might not like this teaching, it is relatively easy to understand… although possibly harder to put into practice.

For which of us does not love what money can give us – things like not having to worry about expenses, the ability to do interesting things in life, the ability to make ethical choices when shopping (have you noticed how much more expensive organic food is?). And what about the ability to be generous and support others, the ability to provide for our families? When we have these things we enjoy them, and in many ways quite rightly.

For wealth is not a bad thing in and of itself…what God is asking is that we hold it lightly and don’t put our trust in money (Psalm 62 says “whilst riches may increase, do not set your heart on them”) …and this isn’t always easy to do in practice, especially if we are used to having a lot of money…but today we are challenged to try.

Leading up to this teaching, we have the parable of the shrewd manage, which at a first glance is somewhat baffling. Is Jesus really commending the actions of the manager in writing off some of his master’s debts, so that people will welcome him in? It appears that he is…..

This parable has caused much debate as to what Jesus is really saying – most people agree that Jesus can not really be praising dishonesty and selfish gain – elsewhere he condemns these things rigorously – so what’s going on?

Let me come back to that question….

I’ve just been on a silent retreat at St Bueno’s, at which the focus was on receiving from God – receiving God’s love, receiving God’s affirmation of the whole of me, all of who I am – not just the bits I’m happy to show in public.

And one of the messages my spiritual director was keen to communicate was that God loves us exactly as we are and made us, with all the gifts and skills we possess – and none of that is bad.

We are all God’s beloved children, and we all have a unique set of gifts, talents and experiences, none of which are wasted when we offer them to God.

So, coming back to the manager – Jesus is commending his shrewdness - it’s a gift from God to have enough self-awareness to realise that he won’t be able to beg or dig and to be able to think in such a way as to come up with a plan to be ok.

Elsewhere in Matthew 10, Jesus tells his disciples to be as shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves.

Shrewd means to be smart, astute, discerning, to have good judgement, particularly when navigating the practical matters of life.

This is a good thing and Jesus is affirming this – being a Christian is not about being so nice to everyone that we are naïve and mismanage our resources. He comments that we need to learn to be wise with how we manage our affairs.

And so even though the manager has behaved badly and not served his master well, he has the gift of shrewdness which he uses here… this is what Jesus is commending. He is not praising the original dishonesty, but rather the use of his gifts when in a difficult situation.

Bishop Michael Marshall, when preaching on this passage, recalled the story of FRANK ABAGNALE, JR, told in the film “Catch me if you can”.

Frank was someone who had a gift in the forgery of cheques and was an excellent conman. By his 19th birthday he was thought to have conned millions of dollars out of businesses and individuals. The FBI agent who eventually tracked Frank down and arrested him could see the skills he had, and in the end, he served out much of his prison sentence working for the FBI, helping them detect fraudulent cheques and uncovering bank fraud.

This story is a great example of someone who turned his life around through using his skills to work for good. Whilst the truth of this story is now seriously questioned, the story itself is a great illustration of someone with amazing gifts who has the potential to use them for both good and ill….just like all of us.

Each of us is uniquely made by God and loved by God. Each of us has specific experiences, talents and resources including, in many cases, wealth.

We have a choice over what we do with these gifts – they all come from God – are we willing to use them to honour God and each other? Are we willing to respond to God’s love and offer all that we have – our wealth, our gifts, our very self to God?

I’d like to finish with a prayer from Saint Ignatius:

“Take, Lord, and receive all my liberty, my memory, my understanding, and my entire will, all I have and call my own. You have given all to me. To you, Lord, I return it. Everything is yours; do with it what you will. Give me only your love and your grace, that is enough for me."