A Portal for God's Peace We warmly welcome single persons, people of all races and families of every kind.   Sunday Service: Holy Eucharist at 9:30 am Child care is available   Church of Our Saviour 191 Flanagan Way (Rt 153) Secaucus, NJ 07094 Map and Directions   Tel: 201-863-1449 Fax: 201-863-1474 Mark A. Lewis, Vicar MLewis@secaucus.org Dorothy Fowlkes Pastoral Associate   This page revised 26 Sep 01 http://www.secaucus.org/ oursaviour		The Church of Our Saviour in the Town of Secaucus, New Jersey Home | Welcome | News | Sunday | Bulletin | Sermons Bookshop | Stewardship | Justice | Community | Links ----------------Leave frames---------------------   An open-handed steward A Talk on Stewardship on the 16th Sunday after Pentecost 23 September 2001 By The Rev. Mark A. Lewis, Vicar Amos 8:4-7 / Psalm 138 1 Timothy 2:1-8 / Luke 16:1-13   I had a favorite uncle. My grandmother's brother, Uncle Alva -- we said "Alvie" . And he had a reputation for being very generous and very happy. And he was. In addition to that, he was also very poor. Raised on a hardscrabble farm. Later a sharecropper. Then, when that system faded away, he worked in a sawmill and then wound up on what folks called "relief" -- welfare in effect -- for people who didn't ever register on the Social Security charts. One thing I can remember people who knew him saying was how "open-handed" he was. Local dialect. But I like the term better than "generous" or even the more metaphorical "open-hearted". I get a picture of his big, rough, open hands giving and sharing, but also shrugging with an easygoing "go with the flow" kind of approach to life. That was Uncle Alvie all over: Open-handed. It's another one of the paradoxes you get from Jesus all the time. How can a dirt-poor person be generous? Don't you need a lot of stuff to be generous? And if you give your stuff away doesn't the generosity give out pretty soon? Not really, Jesus says. Rich folks give lots away, spend lots. And poor folks scrounge and hoard. Regardless of their bank balances and storehouses. It's just a fact. And, Jesus points out -- it can happen in your life. In fact, he doesn't come out and say it, but it inevitably WILL happen in your life whether you like it or not. You WILL be either rich or poor and how you look at the world has everything to do with it. Today's gospel seems to me to be right on that mark. Never mind it's one of the most complicated parables we have. It starts with a story, but packs in several other sayings of Jesus that were floating around when Luke was looking for someplace to fit them into his book. He fit them in all right. But he stretched to do it and now it's doubly hard for us to get inside what he was thinking about at the time. Here's this guy, presented to us as a crook. But he seems to wind up being praised for further dishonesty by the very person who just fired him. Just what about this does Luke think Jesus wants us to emulate? Well, if you don' t get it right away, you're not alone. Bible scholars all over the place puzzle over this one. In seminary, I can remember a teacher flatly saying that there really wasn't a watertight reading of this text -- so riddled with internal contradictions. On the internet you can spend a whole morning paging through various writers' attempts to make sense of the parable of the unjust steward -- as it's called. Believe me, I did just that. One thing they all have in common is the way they go all out for deep background information. Greek pronouns. Obscure commercial law principles. Details about commodities trading in the ancient Near East. But I'm just not in the mood for all that these days. And besides, after all their details none of the experts I skimmed ever really came to a clear reading of the text. Or maybe, again, it was just me. The chief ambiguities in this parable are three. (1) Is "the master" here that boss? Or is it a term Jesus uses for himself? (2) We don't know if the unjust steward's write-off is genuinely dishonest, or just a discount cutting into his own commissions. And (3) Maybe the act of forgiving debts is a not-too-subtle slap at a lender who everyone knew was price gouging to begin with. Does the steward just bring the master back to market rates? I'm not going there today. But I am interested in the steward's cry of "What will I do? . I'm not strong enough to dig and I'm ashamed to beg". You can't fault him on self-awareness. So, what DOES he do? He makes a plan and acts on it. And here's where I try to make a connection between today's gospel and the everyday call Christians must answer to be good stewards of everything God has placed in our hands for a fleeting moment to use with freedom, mission, and creativity. The steward is afraid for his future and plans a strategy to ensure his continued quality of life. He makes a shocking (really) decision not to build up a nest egg for himself. Instead he builds up a community. He does something -- although it's not totally clear to us just what he did -- to make his world a better place. He invests in good karma. Because he knows that lasts better than cash. You might say he was trying to buy friends for himself -- with stolen money perhaps. Or, you might say that he showed generosity to make the world a better place for everyone -- himself included. And don't overlook another important factor. He made an intentional choice. Planned for it. And acted on it. That's an often-slighted, but crucially important component of the stewardship life. It seems to be true -- ever since long before Jesus talked about it -- that you can hoard things and live behind bars. Or you can focus the way you handle stewardship of all kinds -- including giving to support the work of God's church and other good works-- and walk around as free as a bird no matter what the bankers think about your monthly statements. Would the steward in this parable have been better off with a treasury full of ill-gotten money and enemies after him from all sides? I doubt it. He has to live in the world he has to live in. So he gave up the illusory security that comes through association with power and through carefully amassed assets. He chose hope over control. Hope that relationships founded in acts of mercy and solidarity would bear fruit. The steward understood that the rewards of hope and faith and community trump all others hands down. Shortchanging and inflation and sudden disaster can't erode them. [I can't resist just a little Bible trivia. That's what Amos was talking about in the old testament reading. An ephah was an 8-gallon dry measure. Crooked traders in wheat and such would put a false bottom in a regulation ephah basket and sell 6 gallons for the price of 8. Likewise, a shekel was a set weight of silver. Raise the standard weight of a shekel and everyone's net worth goes down.] The open handed are the rich -- even if they seem poor in the eyes of this world, the Bible says. It's just so. And a stewardship vision of life can make you more and more into an open-handed person. [Remember, you have to be open-handed and intentional with your time and talents just as much as with your treasure. But today we're talking about money.] Perhaps I should have cut to the chase much sooner in this talk. But here I go now. By opening our hands instead of clenching them we can let go of mammon and give God another chance to remake our whole lives into something truly wonderful. -- Mark Lewis   Your comments or questions are welcome MLewis@secaucus.org. Readings from the Bible for this Sunday. Links to additional sermons by Mark Lewis will be found at the bottom of the Sunday web page. © 2001 -Church of Our Saviour Home | Welcome | News | Sunday | Bulletin | Sermons Bookshop | Stewardship | Justice | Community | Links http://www.secaucus.org/oursaviour Webmaster - DRoberts@Secaucus.org