Managing God’s wealth as if your future depended on it

Sermon for Trinity 9

1 Chronicles 29:10-13  +  1 Corinthians 10:6-13  +  Luke 16:1-9

If you give enough money to the church, can you purchase the forgiveness of sins? No. We had a Reformation over that; the sale of indulgences was one of the sparks that led Luther to write the 95 Theses. Money won’t get you into heaven. If you send enough money to the preacher—maybe enough so that he can finally buy himself that private jet he’s always wanted…to spread the Gospel around the world, of course—will God pour down even more blessings into your lap? I’m afraid not. False prophets tend to spend a lot of time talking about money, and specifically, how you should be giving a lot more to them, and promising that, if you do, God will smile on you and forgive you and send all sorts of blessings into your life. But that’s not what we preach here.

Still, that doesn’t mean that God has nothing to say about money, or that Christians are free to use money however they want.

As you know, and as you heard again today in the First Lesson, God has made us all stewards and managers of certain things. King David humbly confessed, All that is in heaven and in earth is Yours…Both riches and honor come from You, and You reign over all. He said that in the context of the Israelites giving rather enormous freewill offerings for the building of the first Temple in Jerusalem. And he recognized that they weren’t giving their things to God. For all things come from You, and of Your own we have given You. David recognized that God is the Owner of all things, and that we are but stewards and managers of resources that belong to Someone Else.

As the Owner of all, God sets the general areas and the directions in which His money is to be sent: (1) to the support of those who minister to you with the Word of God; (2) to the needs of your family; (3) to the needs of your brothers and sisters in Christ; (4) to the needs of your neighbor outside the Church, including the poor and needy; (5)  to taxes—especially the ones that pay the salaries of those who serve us in our government, from soldiers to politicians; and then, finally, last and, in fact, least, (6) to the things that you and your family want. Those are the six areas where God, the Owner, who has placed different amounts of money into each person’s hand, has commanded you to direct His funds.

But He doesn’t micromanage our behavior with His wealth. He doesn’t tell you, such and such an amount to this person or to that area. He doesn’t draw the fine lines for you between wants and needs or lay out the percentages you should assign to each of the six areas. He doesn’t even command the ten-percent tithe anymore. He places resources into our hands and He says, use it for all the good purposes I have laid out for it. Use it wisely.

Now, in order to do that, you have to actually sit down and do some math. If you would be a wise manager, you have to calculate your income and plan on where to send it, every dollar. And you have to do this regularly and thoughtfully and intentionally, with your Master’s desires and best interests as the driving force behind your decisions.

But that’s not what the unjust steward did in Jesus’ parable that you heard in the Gospel. He was entrusted with managing a certain portion of his master’s wealth. But he was wasting it. Not stealing it, necessarily, but wasting it, not thinking about how to spend it wisely, for his master’s benefit and according to his master’s wishes.

Word got around that that was the case, and finally he was reported to his master, who set up an appointment to go over the books with the steward before firing him and sending him out into the streets.

The steward didn’t have much time before that appointment. But a little! What to do? He’s going to lose his job. No unemployment benefits to fall back on, no welfare or government program to keep him fed. He has three options: Hard manual labor? No, he’s too weak for that. Begging for handouts? No, he’s too proud to beg. Only one option sounds decent to him: hurry up and make friends, purchase their loyalty, so that they will take him in when he loses his job. But he doesn’t use his own money to purchase their friendship. He uses his master’s money, the debt owed to his master. He cooks the books in favor of his master’s debtors, being generous toward them as if his very future depended on it, because, as far as he knew, it did. It was unjust stewardship.

But when his master heard about it, he wasn’t upset. On the contrary, he commended the servant for acting shrewdly, for wisely calculating the best use of the funds at his disposal to purchase the good favor of others in order to secure a future for himself, for being generous as if his future depended on it.

Jesus has a warning for His disciples in the Gospel. Jesus tells this parable because He observed a sin that affects people of all times. Not greed, although greed is a sin. Not stealing, although stealing is also a sin. But sloppy, haphazard, disinterested stewardship of God’s possessions that have been entrusted to us. You may not be a thief. You may not be an especially greedy person. But who of you can say that you haven’t been sloppy with God’s things? Sloppy, and disinterested in sending your income to all the areas where God has directed it, as if God weren’t the real owner of your things, as if you weren’t required to be a conscientious and zealous manager of His goods, as if you didn’t have to answer to God for it, as if nothing at all depended on it.

But the Law accuses the wasteful and disinterested manager. You’re supposed to be serving God with your pennies and with your dollars and with the other resources God has entrusted to you. But, as Jesus declares: the sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light. Unbelievers spend more time trying to make earthly friends with money than believers spend trying to be conscientious and faithful with God’s wealth. And that’s a shame. More than that, it’s shameful. And if we knowingly disregard the Lord’s will, as the Israelites did in the wilderness where the people sat down to eat and drink, and rose up to play, then, as St. Paul warned the Corinthians in today’s Epistle, we will forfeit the inheritance He has prepared for us, just as those Israelites did. So the Lord calls us again, as He called them, to repentance.

But for the penitent, for the sorrowful, what do you do now? Do you hurry up and start giving out money to other people, to try to avoid the punishment of hell or buy your way into heaven, like Ebenezer Scrooge after he was scared half to death by the spirit who showed him his dismal future if he remained a miser? No, as we already said, you can’t purchase God’s favor or buy your way into heaven. Here God sets Jesus before you and says, Look! Here is the One who suffered for your sins. Here is the One who purchased God’s favor, not with gold or silver, but with His holy precious blood and with His innocent suffering and death. He is your entrance into God’s favor. He is your entrance into heaven. Trust in Him and you have God’s favor and forgiveness and eternal life as a free gift. Faith in Christ is counted as perfect, faithful stewardship, without you doing a single good deed, without paying anyone a single penny.

But you realize, don’t you?, that God’s free favor in Christ gives you more reason to manage God’s wealth wisely, not less. You have more reason to send your income out to others, especially within the house of God!

And, look, I don’t keep track of your individual offerings throughout the year. But I know that as a congregation you continue to support your minister and that you have been generous toward other pastors in our diocese, to pastors’ families, to other congregations, to one another, and to strangers in our community who have come to us for help. That’s good. Can you be more faithful, more intentional? That’s something you have to consider, and it’s something you’re never “done” with. As long as God entrusts you with His things, whether many things or few, you have a responsibility as God’s stewards to keep acting wisely with them.

And while your eternal future doesn’t depend on your works, but on your God-given faith in Christ, you should still live as if it did. When your conscience condemns you, flee in faith to Christ and don’t ask how faithful a steward you’ve been. But when it comes time to live your daily life, don’t sit back and say, it doesn’t matter what I do or how I spend my money. On the contrary, manage your wealth and be generous with it as if your future depended on it. You’ve been placed in God’s service and entrusted with God’s things. Be careful with how you divvy out God’s money.

We who have been reconciled with God through faith in Christ crucified have been given wisdom from above to think of others first. Parents of their children, and children of their parents. Family members for their family members, pastors being generous with the teaching of the Word of God and hearers being generous in their offerings. Helping all men where we are able—relatives, friends, neighbors, strangers, and so on.

And when you do that, you’ll find that you will have made any number of friends for yourselves, not just unbelievers, but also fellow Christians who have benefited from your wise and devoted stewardship, children, family, neighbors, fellow church members, pastors, and any number of Christians who will make it through this life into their heavenly dwellings, partially because God used you to provide for them in their earthly needs. And they will receive you into an everlasting home.

Ask for wisdom to manage God’s wealth wisely and apply yourself to it as if your future depended on it. And may God grant you that wisdom and keep you firmly believing in Christ Jesus alone for salvation, even as you work hard here below in all the tasks God has assigned to you, in thankful obedience for the free gift of eternal life. Amen.