Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 22, 2019
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

This is a strange story. Hearing it set in our time might help. This modern retelling was offered by ELCA Pastor Elizabeth Rawlings^[1] (with some editing by me for ease of speaking).

Imagine this:

Sam works for an investment company, managing a portfolio of repackaged debt. They sell packages of medical debt, mortgages, credit card debt, etc. for pennies on the dollar to investors who then either continue to collect debt payments with obscene amounts of interest or attempt to collect on the debt. Now, imagine Sam’s boss hears through the grapevine that his performance is less than spectacular. Sam is asked to come to a meeting and give an account for everything bought, sold, and earned. Facing the prospect of termination, Sam comes up with a plan to make some friends in case of unemployment; he goes into the system and reduces the amount owed by hundreds of people. Sam emails those people to let them know that their debts – under which many were drowning – have now been cut by at least half. The recipients of Sam’s debt forgiveness are now more able to pay off their debts, and more able to do other things – like pay rent and buy food.

Sam gets fired, but not before the story goes viral – grateful people have posted all over social media about the generous stranger who erased their debt. Someone starts a GoFundMe for Sam. Sam’s boss, though angry, is also quietly impressed at the moves Sam made. He texts Sam a mes- sage: ‘Well played. You’re fired’. A master of working people over for money, ,the boss recognizes and appreciates the way Sam used the system to work over the business and gain from it. The company realizes they can take credit for the debt relief and lure more borrowers to the company.

Sam’s shrewdness ends up getting him a promotion instead of a firing. This retelling helps me get a sense of what’s going on in this parable. I’ve never understood why Jesus tells a story in which a dishonest manager is commended and why he tells us to make friends for ourselves by means of dishonest wealth.

Yet the manager’s actions do benefit those who had crushing debts – a very common problem in the ancient world. Rich landowners, like this manager’s boss, were like loan sharks charging exorbitant interest rates that caused real harm to ordinary people.

Jesus is not a fan of this kind of stuff, to put it mildly. Jesus has the very heart of God and throughout scripture we see that God is deeply concerned with the poor. We see in our Amos reading today, throughout the Psalms and the Prophets, that God has special concern for the poor. And Jesus’ whole ministry, especially as interpreted by the Gospel of Luke, is focused on bringing down the rich and mighty and raising up the poor and lowly so that all can experience God’s abundance, both in this life and eternally.

I think Jesus is commending the manager here for helping others to have enough, even though the manager’s motives seem a bit sketchy, even though it seems he’s just doing it to get ahead, himself.

In the end, his actions do serve to relieve the pain of the poor and that’s really important to Jesus. Perhaps Jesus is saying he wants us to take action to help others even if our motives aren’t completely pure. He knows our actions will never be totally altruistic and people need help, anyway.

The modern retelling also helps me make sense of that strange phrase that is often translated, “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth.” The original Greek that usually gets translated “dishonest” actually means unjust, unrighteous or wicked. That changes the meaning of Jesus’ words quite a bit. Because when you think about it, in this broken world, all our wealth is in some way unjust – even if we’ve worked hard and earned our money in honest ways, even if we don’t work for unjust companies that make their money charging predatory interest rates. As Pastor Rawlings points out, “All of our money filters through the global economy … and somewhere along the way our money has been run through the hands of some person or business that is unjust.”

We could get paralyzed thinking about injustice and macroeconomics and all the implications of the way money is used. Or, we can focus on using our money to help others.

Jesus teaches here that we can’t serve both wealth and God. And he works to set us free from enslavement to wealth and debt so that we might know the joy of serving God and being in relation- ship with others.

This story seems to be showing us how we can experience that freedom and help others to experience it. We can use the wealth and the influence we have to free others from crushing debt. We can advocate for debt relief policies for poor nations and individuals and for caps on predatory payday lending. We can advocate for policies that help to make sure wealth is more evenly shared.

When we do this, we are living in the ways of Jesus, in ways that help us and other people to be at home in God’s abundance, now and always. Our church body, the ELCA, gives us help in such work. We have a shared ministry called ELCA Advocacy. Here is a description of that ministry:

“As members of the ELCA, we believe that we are freed in Christ to serve and love our neighbor. God uses our hands, through our direct service work, and our voices, through our advocacy efforts, to restore and reconcile our world. Through faithful advocacy, the ELCA lives out our Lutheran belief that governments can help advance the common good.

ELCA advocacy works for change in public policy based on the experience of Lutheran ministries, programs and projects around the world and in communities across the United States. We work through political channels on behalf of the following biblical values: peacemaking, hospitality to strangers, care for creation, and concern for people living in poverty and struggling with hunger and disease.”

ELCA Advocacy regularly sends out alerts and opportunities to use our voices and influence. There is an advocacy alert right now related to a proposed change to SNAP (food stamp program) that would impact 3.1 million children, family and disabled adults. Look for the Social Justice Subcommittee on laptops during Fellowship Hour today to participate in that. You can also sign up at www.elca.org/advocacy to get additional information and have the alerts sent to your email.

Christ Jesus is always at work to set us free from enslavement to money and debt and to empower us to help set others free. Christ is always at work so that we and all people may know God’s abundance.

Let’s join in that work today and each day.

And let’s take a moment for silent prayer.

^[1] Rev. Elizabeth Rawlings at https://www.disruptworshipproject.com/rcl/the-season-after-pentecost-25

Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 15, 2019
Good Shepherd Lutheran Church
Decorah, Iowa
Rev. Amy Zalk Larson

Click here to read scripture passages for the day.

Beloved of God, grace to you and peace in the name of Jesus.

These stories give us such beautiful images for God: God is like a shepherd who won’t stop searching for one lost sheep, like a woman down on her hands and knees scouring her house for a lost coin. God will not stop seeking us out when we’re lost and oh, how God rejoices when we’re found.

This is great, good news for us and those we love because we all get lost. We’re all lost sheep sometimes – cut off from community, wandering on paths that beat us down, in danger. Other times we are like lost coins trapped in deep pits and dark corners. What good news to know our Good Shepherd beats the bushes for us and enters every nook and cranny to find us.

These are beautiful images, but they’re even more powerful when we zoom in a little closer. If we just glance at these stories, they can give us a fairly simplistic picture of how God searches and finds us.

Looking closely can show us even more good news.

For instance – If we just take these stories at face value, we might imagine that the whole searching and finding thing happens really quickly. In each of these stories it takes just one sentence for the object to be both lost and found. That fast-paced losing and finding could give the impression that we’ll only ever feel lost for a short time before God will swoop in to save us. And, when God doesn’t quickly act to get things back on track, we can get discouraged.

But, finding a lost sheep in the rocky hillsides of ancient Israel would have been a long and dangerous process. A shepherd would have to scale perilous heights and enter treacherous valleys.

Searching for a small lost coin amidst a whole household, with only lamplight, would have been a pains- taking, time-consuming process – so many dark corners to scour, so much dust to clear away. Searching and finding is a long, involved process.

At times it will feel like we or those we love are lost for a really, really long time. Yet all is not lost.

God has committed to searching for us no matter how long it takes. In Jesus we see that God will go to any length to find us and love us. God will go into the darkest places of our world and our lives to draw us into God’s loving arms. God will trudge up perilous heights – even up on a cross – and enter the most treacherous valleys – even descending to the dead. God’s search for us continues even into death.

God will roll up sleeves and get down on hands and knees. God doesn’t just stay above the fray and swoop to save us quickly. There are times we might prefer to have a God who does that, a God who waves a magic wand and fixes everything. But, God has committed to be among us not as a superhero or a magician but rather as a shepherd caring for sheep, as a woman searching for a lost coin.

This is good news because getting lost and being found is also more complicated than these stories present. These stories could give the impression that we’re either completely lost or totally safe within the fold – gone astray or clearly on the straight and narrow path. The truth is we all get lost and found over and over again. We get tangled up in our pride, we trip up on anger, we get stuck in a pit of self-pity, often many times each day. We don’t need a superhero to swoop in and rescue us once in a while. We need to be sought out as often as floors need to be swept; we need a shepherd who is on the path with us every day.

It is only with the help of the shepherd that we can repent. The word repent means to turn and go in an- other direction. And, we need the constant help of a shepherd to lead us from paths that will leave us lost, to get us turned around and following the way of life, well-being, and true joy.

Too often these stories have been used to say, “We have to repent in order to be saved” – as if repentance is something that we can do on our own, as if God’s saving is dependent on what we do. Yet, thinking we can do it on our own gets us lost. Thinking it all depends on us gets us lost. Besides, sheep and coins can’t do anything to repent. They need to be found by a searching shepherd, a devoted woman. We who are the sheep of God’s pasture need God to search us out each new day, to turn us back to the path of life – time and time again.

This is what God does for us. In Christ Jesus, God has entered our world and is present with us on the paths we travel each day. God is there to find us, to turn us, to lead us. Each week, we are led back here to receive God’s word and the meal of God’s forgiveness – we are nourished and healed for the journey.

There are hard roads ahead in this world that is plagued with religious violence, racial tensions, a refugee crisis, climate change. Sometimes we’re tempted to get off the road and go hide. But that, too, would leave us lost.

Instead …

Let’s follow our shepherd who leads us on paths of love, forgiveness and service to others.

Let’s follow the woman holding out a lamp, shedding light, searching for a treasured object.

Let’s go shed light and convey the good news that all are treasured and beloved.

And, let’s take a moment for silent prayer.