“The Road To Jerusalem: Stewardship”
Rev. David E. Gray
Bradley Hills Presbyterian Church
March 8, 2009
Luke 10: 38-42; Luke 16: 1-13
It can be a difficult thing making choices. To choose is to risk closing doors. It is to risk making mistakes. It is to risk disappointing others. Within the broad provision of providence, God gives us the capacity and responsibility to choose. The spiritual discipline of making choices underlies all others.
At the Academy Awards last week, the Indian film, Slumdog Millionaire, won Best Picture. The film is about an eighteen year old orphan from Mumbai named Jamal, who wins 20 million rupees playing the game show, “Who Wants to be a Millionaire.” In the game, Jamal is asked progressively more difficult questions and chooses between four possible answer choices. The shows’ sponsors believe Jamal is cheating because they think there is no way a street kid could know all the answers, and they arrest him. As the story evolves, we discover that the reason Jamal knows the answers is his life story. As he tells his life adventures with his brother and with the girl he loves, each chapter of his life reveals an experience that allows Jamal to choose the correct answer to each specific question. It is a beautiful thing watching Jamal choose between his four options on each question. Maybe because he has nothing to lose or because he seems fated to win Jamal is remarkably calm, even when a dishonest game show host seeks to lure him to cheat or when he doesn’t know the answer.
Our second lesson for today is a tale about another millionaire and how that rich man’ financial manager made choices. In it, Jesus tells a parable about a dishonest manager who proved to be everything Jamal was not – a worrier, a cheat, incorrect and unfaithful. The parable is certainly about money, but like many things Jesus said, there was a deeper meaning too. The point here, as St. Luke describes it, is that when one has to make difficult choices, faithfulness is what matters most.
Reading now from the sixteenth chapter of Luke’s Gospel and God’s Holy Word.
As we enter Lent, we do well to think about the spiritual disciplines that will sustain our walk in life. In a culture that maximizes personal freedom, it takes spiritual discipline to make choices, to set priorities, to recognize limits and to say “no” to some options so we can focus our energy and resources on the most important things. In the church, such disciple of making choices with scarce resources is called stewardship.
At Bradley Hills, we take stewardship seriously. I have been impressed by your commitment to steward your resources to care for the future of this church, your commitment to care for the environment, and your commitment to care for each other. We’ll be honoring our commitment to all three at our March 21 service day.
Stewardship is an important Biblical concept. In the book of Genesis, Joseph was the steward of Potiphar’s property. In the Book of Numbers, Moses was the steward of God’s house. In Isaiah, stewards were defined as chief servants of their master’s property. In the Old Testament, stewards are supposed to have two qualities – competence and faithfulness.
The steward in our second lesson for today had neither. Luke recounts how Jesus tells the story of a rich man who had a steward who mismanaged his property. Knowing that he would be fired, the steward worries greatly and Luke records that he went through several possible choice options in his mind. The steward chooses to approach those people who owed the rich man money and he unilaterally reduced what they owed the master the master without asking him. So he told the person who owed 100 jugs of olive oil to sit down and make the debt he owed to the master fifty. You might think this sounds eerily like the federal government’s rescue plan of the banking system. In doing so, the steward fails the test of faithfulness. Jesus makes a theological point - that the goal of stewardship is faithfulness. Michael Dukakis said that the 1988 election was about competency, not ideology. Jesus says that faithfulness, not competence, is the hallmark of a successful steward. Not that we don’t want our managers to be incompetent, but the Jesus that St. Luke portrays throughout his Gospel upholds faithfulness as the higher value.
In our first lesson from Luke 10, that Donna performed so beautifully, we hear the well known tale of Mary and Martha. Jesus and the disciples came to a village where Martha and her sister Mary invited them in. Martha was busy working and serving while Mary sat at Jesus’ feet and listened to Christ. Jesus’ says, “Mary has chosen the better part.” The faithful Mary is praised over the competent Martha. Later in Luke chapter 19, the stewards who are given more responsibilities are the faithful ones as well.
In Luke 16, the dishonest steward frets over his various options and chooses to rely on his own shrewdness in seeking favor with the debtors by reducing the payment owed to the master. The rich man actually complements his steward for his shrewdness. But then Jesus makes the point that faithfulness is what God rewards.
Shrewdness requires relying on oneself. Faithfulness requires relying on someone else. Faithfulness requires us to recognize our limits. It requires us to let some things go and to rely on someone other than ourselves for our happiness and sustenance.
Lent is a time of acknowledging limits and giving some things up. On Ash Wednesday, we realize that our lives have physical limits and that we should make the most of the time we have. During Lent, we look to add some spiritual practices to our days and to our walk towards Jerusalem with Christ. If we are going to add some prayer, scripture reading or reflection to our days and make these exercises long term practices, we may have to take something out of life to make the new stuff fit.
We are very busy people and our businesses can get in the way of our spirituality. Underlying all our spiritual practices is our ability to steward our time and resources, to honor limits and to make appropriate choices.
John Calvin was big on humans having limits. Calvin wrote that God asks each one of us “to look to his or her calling so that we do not transgress our limits.” Calvin thought that Christians should listen to God, determine their calling, and stop doing everything else.
Rick Warren writes that “Whenever I used to see one of my mentors, Peter Drucker, he would say, ‘Don’t tell me what new things you’re doing. Tell me what you’ve stopped doing, for the mark of leadership is knowing what not to do.’”
As we walk the Road to Jerusalem and the faith journey of life, we carry with us our concerns, our insecurities, our ambitions and all those over commitments we have made, sometimes to do things we know we shouldn’t be doing. To lighten our loads for the spiritual journey, it can help for us to say “no” to some things.
At the end of our lesson for today, Jesus told his disciples that “No one can serve two masters.” Choices must be made. Priorities are important.
After the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus tells the multitude of Galileans who had come to hear him that they should "seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness.” Jesus was telling the people that having priorities is important. It’s not right to give equal time to every option. We must make choices about how we steward our time. Setting priorities allows us to filter out those options that are simply distractions in order to free ourselves for our most critical needs.
In Lent, we look to gives things up because it helps us develop good stewardship. If we are going to protect God’s creation, we have to be willing to give up some of our consumption. If we are to care for others at this very difficult economic time, we may have to defer something. If we are to listen to God’s priorities for our lives, we may have to spend more time in prayer than we do now.
Recognizing and then acting on our limits is not always easy. If we can’t quite close the door on some options, perhaps we can put our choices in the proper order. When writer Anna Quindlen tried to balance her work and her family lives, she found that she had to put things in order to be successful. But that did not mean never pursuing some options. It meant pursing them in their proper season. As Quindlen concluded, "I can do everything, just not all at once.”
Quindlen, like Calvin, showed a healthy recognition of human limits. But that’s not easy to do. In Roald Dahl's classic book, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, the spoiled boy Augustus is one of five lucky children who get to visit Willy Wanka’s magical chocolate factory. However, Augustus is simply overwhelmed by the options of candy in Mr. Wanka's garden and is unable to resist the forbidden river of chocolate, despite Wanka’s pleas that it is off limits. Like Adam and Eve, he falls in a garden, in his case, quite literally, and is swept into the chocolate river. Augustus simply could not say "no" to what was off limits because he had never known any limits.
We are children of God. We begin Lent by recognizing our limits and our need to make choices about how we steward our time and resources. We proceed on our Lenten journey looking to simplify our lives in order to focus on those activities that we know in our hearts are most important. The point of walking the road to Jerusalem at Easter is to realize that God has been faithful to us. When we realize that, it can be easier for us to let some things go in order to rely on God.
There are two underlying themes of last year’s top movie, Slumdog Millionaire – faithfulness and providence. Beaten by police, encouraged to cheat by the game show host and given many opportunities to forget the woman he loves, Jamal remains faithful to his life story, to the girl of his dream and to himself. His faithfulness is rewarded as he wins the game and gets the girl. But there is something else going on bigger than Jamal. The movie suggests that Jamal’s story and success were predestined. “It is written” are the words the movie uses, without explaining what force has written the outcome. There is a connection between faithfulness and the guidance of some force greater than Jamal.
The Christian Bible, in many ways, is written as a story of faithfulness and providence. Of Israelites trusting God to walk through as parted see. Of Noah having faith enough to build and ark. Of exiled people having faith that they would return to Jerusalem. Of fishermen who dropped what they were doing to follow a carpenter. Of a steward who chose shrewdness over faithfulness and had his position taken away. Of a women who chose faithfulness and as Jesus said, “…that better part was not taken from her.” Behind all of it is God’s providence.
Choices can be difficult. We can try to use every bit of reasoning and decision making power we have and we still might not get the outcome we like. We can work around the clock for a hundred years and not complete all the activities we’d like. We can put the weight of the world on our shoulders and wonder why our backs and hearts hurt.
Or, we can choose to sit at the feet of the one whose steps have already walked the road to Jerusalem before us. So that our path could be a little clearer. Thanks be to God. Amen.
