Better reasons to be generous

Sermon for Trinity 9

1 Corinthians 10:6-13  +  Luke 16:1-9

As you know, we follow the traditional practice in the Church of using an assigned lectionary for each Sunday, with the same Epistle and the same Gospel repeating on the same Sunday in the Church Year every year. We do that for a few reasons, one of which is to keep us from focusing too heavily on the themes that the unbelieving world is obsessed with—or on the themes that the pastor himself may be occupied with. It forces us to consider the whole counsel of God, every year, regardless of what’s going on around us in the world, although we certainly often find that the pre-assigned readings speak directly to what’s going on around us.

You may not have the godly use of money on your mind today, but today’s Gospel is about money. There’s no getting around it. Earthly wealth, or “mammon.” In fact, in a few weeks the lectionary will have us talking about mammon again, with a different emphasis. Today’s Gospel is an instruction on the faithful use of the wealth that God has entrusted you with, whether you’re young or old, rich or poor. It isn’t a plea for you to increase your pastor’s salary; it’s a message about the wisdom of generosity, the wisdom of being generous with your use of God’s wealth, especially when it comes to helping your fellow Christians. To teach this lesson, Jesus uses the example of an unrighteous steward, who found that, after years of unfaithful stewardship, he finally had a compelling reason to be generous. As we’ll see, you and I, as Christians, have much better reasons to be generous.

A steward is basically a manager of someone else’s goods. The steward in Jesus’ parable was guilty of squandering his master’s wealth. We can identify four reasons why he failed to carry out his stewardship faithfully: (1) He obviously had no love for his master. (2) He had no love for his job. (3) He wasn’t worried about the consequences of unfaithful management. And (4) he wasn’t at all concerned about the wellbeing of anyone but himself.

It was that last reason, that strong desire for self-preservation, that finally woke him up to change his behavior. When he was called to account for his unfaithful stewardship, he knew he had little time left to save his skin. So he sat down and thought up a plan. He knew it was no use begging his master for mercy, nor could he get away with stealing his master’s resources and making a run for it. Instead, he thought of a way to use his master’s resources to the advantage of the people who were indebted to his master. He called them in one by one and gave them each a great deal, lowering the amount of their debts. He figured that if he could get them to be grateful to him, then some of them would take him into their homes when he was finally let go from his job.

In the end, it was a wise plan, even though it was purely self-serving. He used his master’s wealth to show generosity toward the debtors, so that they would later use their own resources to help him when his were gone, and even his master had to compliment him on the wisdom he showed, when he was finally forced to change his behavior in order to save himself from financial ruin.

Jesus concludes the parable with this sobering observation: The sons of this age are wiser toward their own kind than are the sons of the light. When the people of this world, the unbelievers out there, realize that an act of well-timed generosity will buy them the much-needed friendship of others, they often become quite generous. On the other hand, the “sons of the light,” Christians, sometimes fall into an ugly stinginess toward their fellow Christians, as if we could love God while callously withholding good from our brothers and sisters in Christ.

Jesus tells this parable, first, to rebuke the impenitent, those who have grown callous toward their fellow Christians and selfish or careless in how they use the wealth at their disposal. He calls us to recognize and repent of the sin that still dwells in our hearts, the sin that would have you always looking out for #1, managing your money to serve all your own interests, without recognizing your duty to manage it according to God’s directives, your God-given duty to show generosity to others, as He has been so generous toward you.

But it’s that very generosity of God that now calls out to all the penitent, “The Lord has not only lessened your debt. Christ Jesus has paid it off completely. Trust in Him, and your many sins will be forgiven.” God calls no one into His service, into His stewardship, without first forgiving them all their sins through faith in Christ Jesus, and without first promising them the continual grace of His forgiveness, of His providence, of His care, and of His Holy Spirit, to preserve you through His Word in repentance and faith, even as He is doing right now at this moment.

So, you see, while the steward in Jesus’ parable had no love for his master and had to fudge the books in order to make his master appear merciful to his debtors, you have a much better reason to be generous, because your Lord truly is merciful. He has shown you generous mercy by giving away everything for you, even the life of His Son on the cross, and by calling you out of darkness into His marvelous light. More than that, He has shown His generous mercy to all by paying for the sins of all and purchasing eternal life for all, so that you don’t have to make God seem merciful to others; you can simply tell them the truth of His mercy in Christ. You have a better reason to be generous than that unrighteous steward did: your God is merciful and generous beyond measure.

You have another better reason to be generous. The steward in the parable viewed his employment as nothing more than a way to support himself financially, and so he grew lazy in it, squandering his master’s wealth, being careless with how he managed his master’s resources. But you, baptized Christians—you have been placed in the service of your God and Savior. You, who were a miserable slave in the devil’s kingdom, have been made a son or daughter in the kingdom of light, and you have been given work to do that is pleasing in God’s sight. What an honor!

You’ve actually been given many tasks in God’s service, all the tasks of your various vocations. Tasks as sons and daughters, husbands and wives, church members, neighbors, and citizens. In fact, your whole body and life have been dedicated to the Lord who redeemed you and made you His own. That life includes the money and resources that God has gotten into your hands in one way or another, either through work that He has provided and prospered, or through inheritance from relatives whom He has blessed, or through the pure generosity of others. And He has made you a steward of those things, to use every dollar for the purposes He has outlined in His Word: for the support of His ministers in the Church, for the support of His ministers in the state, for the needs of your own family, for the needs of your church family, for the needs of all, and for your own enjoyment. It’s that last one that sometimes gets emphasized to the detriment of the others, which is why the Lord Christ told this parable, lest we become complacent about our stewardship, as the steward in the parable did. Remember that you have been given a better reason to be generous toward others: you have been given the honor of serving as the Lord’s steward.

If that weren’t reason enough, the Apostle Paul also issued a stern warning to the Corinthian Christians in today’s Epistle. They were becoming complacent Christians, Christians who said, “We’ve been baptized. We’ve been redeemed by God. So it doesn’t really matter how we live now. We stand firm. Nothing can possibly move us.” It’s one thing to confidently rely on your Baptism for salvation. That’s good! It’s another thing to imagine that you’re so strong you could never fall away. Paul cites the example of the Old Testament Israelites as proof that those who had been “baptized,” in a sense, “into Moses,” who had been redeemed from slavery in Egypt, did, in fact, fall away by turning away from God in their hearts, by willfully turning away from His commandments, and by relying on their own strength to remain firm. Paul says, don’t be like those Israelites. You have their example. You have been warned. Don’t become complacent in your faith—or in your stewardship, as if faithful stewardship didn’t really matter—but learn from the Israelites’ bad example and the severe consequences they suffered to continue relying on God for salvation and to continue hearing and heeding His Word.

Finally, you have a better reason than the steward in the parable to be generous stewards. He viewed those debtors whom he helped as nothing but a means to a self-serving end. He showed them generosity with his master’s wealth so that they might show generosity to him in return with their own wealth, welcoming him into their homes when he lost his job. But you know that your fellow Christians are your own brothers and sisters, born again of the same water and Spirit that gave you new birth. You know that they are members of Christ’s body together with you, no matter what they look like, no matter where they are in the world, and that they are loved by Him. And you know that you will spend eternity with them in the heavenly dwellings that Christ is even now preparing for those who love Him. Even more than that, you know from Scripture that Christ views every good deed done for these brothers and sisters of His, even the giving of a cup of cold water to a little child who believes in Him, as having been done to Himself. Yes, you have great reasons to be generous with God’s wealth toward your brothers and sisters in Christ.

Does that mean your generosity should not also extend toward unbelievers in their needs? Of course not. Your Father in heaven makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. And you, as His sons, His children, are called to imitate Him. In fact, you, showing tangible kindness toward unbelievers, may sometimes be used by God as a tool for drawing them to hear His Word, and so to be converted and regenerated and made into your brother or sister in Christ.

So, yes, today’s Gospel—and today’s sermon—has been about money. But it’s about much more than that. It’s about all these reasons God has given you to become more and more like Him, from His generosity toward you in the forgiveness of sins, to His generosity toward you in giving you an valuable stewardship in His kingdom, to His generosity in giving you ample examples from Scripture to keep you from falling away, to His generosity in giving you opportunities to help your brothers and sisters in Christ, who will love you all the more as you help them in their time of earthly need. May we, by His grace, become ever more faithful stewards of these temporary things, until we are welcomed by Him and by all the saints into the eternal dwellings above. Amen.