Using earthly wealth for heavenly purposes

Sermon for Trinity 9

1 Corinthians 10:6-13  +  Luke 16:1-9

Elon Musk recently said, “I do believe that the teachings of Jesus are good and wise.” He was talking about teachings like “turn the other cheek” and other practical teachings. We have one of those practical teachings before us in today’s Gospel. But I truly hope that Mr. Musk has some real Christians in his life who will tell him that those practical teachings of Jesus aren’t the heart of His teaching. You can’t start with them. You have to start where Jesus started, which was, “Repent and believe the Gospel!” The God who created all things sent His Son into human flesh to redeem fallen mankind by His perfect life and by His innocent death. So repent and believe in Jesus, and be baptized in His name for the forgiveness of your sins! Come into the Lord’s house, that is, the Christian Church, and find a Father’s welcome, for this life and for the next! Become a child of the light! Only then can you begin to live as a child of the light.

Jesus speaks of “sons of the light” in today’s Gospel. His practical teaching is for them, and only for them. So let’s turn first to the end of our Gospel to hear Jesus’ summary of the parable He told of the unjust steward, and then we’ll go back and look at the parable itself.

For the sons of this age are wiser toward their own kind than are the sons of the light. And I say to you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon, so that, when you become destitute, they may welcome you into the eternal dwellings.

What’s the problem Jesus is addressing in the parable of the unjust steward? What’s the sin He wants His people to recognize in themselves, to repent of, and to avoid and correct in the future? It’s the sin of negligence in our use of mammon, that is, the earthly possessions that our Master has entrusted to our care. And to teach us that lesson, He contrasts the negligence of believers with the shrewdness of an unbeliever, to drive home the point that we, the sons of the light, need to be better than that. We need to loosen our tight grip on our wealth and possessions put some time and effort into using our earthly wealth for heavenly purposes.

Jesus calls unbelievers the “sons of this age,” people as they are naturally born, born of the flesh only. They’re the people who live only for this age, for this life. Everything for them, every aspect of their life is about secular, worldly affairs, getting by in this world, having the best life possible in this world, enjoying life here. The unjust servant in the parable, the rich owner of the business in the parable, and the people who are indebted to that owner, all represent “the sons of this age.”

But the sons of this age are not completely incompetent. Even though they don’t acknowledge God, they use their God-given reason to solve earthly problems. Take the unjust steward, for example. When he was about to be fired from his job, he had to sit down and come up with a plan for his own survival. As it turns out, that plan involved using the little bit of time he had left as the manager of his master’s resources to gain the favor of as many people as possible by being generous toward them with his master’s wealth. You recall, he called in every person who owed his master something, whether it was oil or wheat or money. You owe my master 100 measures of oil? Change it to 50. You owe my master 100 measures of wheat? Change it to 80. 50% off here, 20% off there, and so on, and so on, until he had gone through the whole list of debtors. Imagine how those debtors reacted to the steward’s generosity, which they had to assume was actually the generosity of the owner who was authorizing these huge discounts. Imagine what would have happened if the owner had ended up firing the steward! The steward could have gone to each of those debtors and told a sob story about how the mean owner had fired him for the kindness he had shown to the debtors. And they would have welcomed him into their homes, while thinking poorly of the owner himself for firing such a kind and generous steward.

Yes, it was a wise plan. And, in the end, everyone benefited. The debtors had their burdens lightened, the owner appeared generous and magnanimous in the eyes of the debtors, and the steward was praised by the owner for coming up with that plan, whereas, previously, the steward had acted haphazardly with his master’s wealth, squandering it, being negligent with it, which is why he was going to be fired in the first place. But, when it became a matter of survival, when he had to rely on being liked by other people, he finally wised up and used the wealth at his disposal to do them some favors.

Now, how does Jesus apply this to His people, to the “sons of the light”? Listen again to His summary: The sons of this age are wiser toward their own kind than are the sons of the light. In other words, unbelievers are often more careful, more thoughtful, more deliberate about using earthly wealth to gain earthly friends for themselves than Christians are careful, thoughtful, and deliberate about using earthly wealth to gain heavenly friends for themselves. Unbelievers sometimes show more kindness to others than Christians do, even if they’re only doing it for self-serving reasons. And that should make each of us pause and consider: How deliberate have I been with my earthly possessions, in using them to help others—especially to help them know the Gospel and receive the ministry of Word and Sacrament, which is what they need more than any earthly thing? How deliberate have I been? How intentional, how kind have I been with my possessions, which are actually God’s possessions?

You, the children of the light, are stewards, managers of things that ultimately belong to your Father. How much have you squandered on useless things? How much have you horded out of greed, or out of fear? How often have you neglected even to think about how God would have you divvy up your paycheck or your investments or your bank accounts? Has it occurred to you to take a portion of it and give it away in an act of charity? Give it away, not recklessly, but thoughtfully, wisely, deliberately, for the purpose of helping someone to know the Lord Jesus Christ, whether that means lightening some of their financial burdens, or whether that means seeing to it that others can have access to the ministry of the Word, which does have costs associated with it?

Now, every year we come to this Gospel from Luke 16, and every year I remind you that it’s not intended to be some sort of fund drive or appeal for more offerings to the church, and certainly not for a raise in the pastor’s salary. It’s not that at all. It’s an appeal to you, God’s people, to take Jesus’ words to heart, first to convict you, and me, where we need convicting, because the sinful flesh is always wrapped up in the things of this life, and our possessions are the number one thing that ties us to this earthly life, because what we have here stays here. It will never see the kingdom of heaven. And yet our hearts, by nature, are tied to the things we possess, and we do not part with them easily, unless it’s to get some other earthly thing that we can use and enjoy here in this life. It doesn’t come naturally to us fallen creatures to think about giving away any amount of our possessions for things that won’t benefit us in this life at all, for things that we will only see the benefit of after this life, in the eternal dwellings of heaven. And that’s what charity is truly about. That’s what supporting the ministry of the Word is also about. It does you no earthly good, not really, to come to church, or hear a sermon, or support a mission far away. But the things that you give away so that the ministry can be carried out among you and among others, in other places—those things will have heavenly results, for you, and for others who benefit from the ministry that you support.

Again, this is not a complaint about not enough offerings. Far from it! As your pastor, I’m so thankful for all the good you’ve done for your fellow members, for all your support of the ministry here, for the ministry in Latin America, and for the ministry among our long-distance members. But we need to hear the Lord Jesus telling you and me, in today’s Gospel, the truth about ourselves, that we are not yet as wise or as deliberate or as selfless as we should be with our possessions. And if God’s favor depended on us being shrewd enough or good enough stewards of His things, then we would never have God’s favor or a place in heaven at all. No, God loved you and sent His Son to die for your sins and failures, to pay everything that had to be paid, to give away all that He had, even His very own body and blood and life, so that He might welcome you into eternal dwellings, at no cost to you whatsoever.

You have God’s favor through faith in Christ Jesus, apart from any wealth management you have or haven’t done well. So put your faith in Christ Jesus, and don’t think for a moment that you need to earn the favor of your Father in heaven. But if you love the God who loves you, for Jesus’ sake, then also listen to His practical teachings and put His words into practice. Take this annual message to put to death the deeds of the flesh and its desire to hold on tightly to every last penny or to use your pennies only for your earthly benefit. Arise each day to walk in the new life that Christ has given you, a life that doesn’t ask, “How can I serve myself today?”, but that asks, “How can I manage the things God has entrusted to me today, for the good of His kingdom and for the benefit of my neighbor?” And know for certain that, with your gifts and your charities and your offerings, you are, even now, making friends for yourselves, not for this life, but for the next—friends who will be there, in the end, to thank you and to welcome you into eternal dwellings in the presence of God. Amen.