Pentecost 15, 2025
Amos 8:4-7
Psalm 79:1-9
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Amen.
I want to start by recapping a short story . . .
Once upon a time, there was a girl named Cinderella whose stepsisters teased her all the time. One night, her fairy godmother sent her to a ball until midnight. In her rush to leave, she left one of her glass slippers behind. The next day, one of the king’s servants took the shoe to the local Goodwill store. And Cinderella grew old and sad.
That is how we expect life to be. And that’s why a story like that would not be memorable. We wouldn’t tell this story to our kids, would we? We want fairy tales to tell us how life could be, or how life should be, or even how life might one day be. There’s a certain method to fairy tales. They’re supposed to encourage honest hard work, and to discourage dishonest lazy cheaters. Good stories are the place where innocent prisoners are set free, the poor become rich, and the dishonest get what is coming to them for breaking the rules.
We want our stories to fit an idealized worldview. A place where good is rewarded, and evil is punished. Fairy tales get passed down to us because they work like this. Bad children are eaten by wolves. Good children are saved by lumberjacks who happen by. A good story ends this way, with lazy animals starving and hard-working ones surviving, with cheaters getting cheated. The cruel proud king marches through the city naked, and the ugly duckling grows into the most beautiful swan. We’re so used to fairy tale endings, we think every kind of story should end that way. Which leads us to the parables of Jesus . . .
Many of Jesus’ parables end exactly how we want them to end. The lost son comes home, and the greedy man dies with his barns filled with grain. The fruitless tree is cut down and burned, and the widow who searches long enough finds the coin she had lost. On the surface, we don’t find these parables jarring precisely because they fit our fairy tale blueprint. We can get by imagining that Jesus is telling fairy tales, reinforcing the beliefs we already have. Good people get rewarded, and bad people get punished. And then we can all tell our children to be sure they act like the good people, lest they get punished.
And Luke usually plays right into this way of thinking . . . usually. Back at the very beginning of Luke’s Gospel we get the Magnificat—Mary’s song, where she sings that God has thrown down the rich and lifted the poor. Luke’s gospel more than any other fits our thinking about justice. God, like Don Quixote, will fight for the right, without question or pause, and be willing to march into Hell for a Heavenly cause.
But then we get today’s reading from this same gospel of Luke. Let me sum up for you:
A guy is so bad at his job that he is about to get fired. Rather than humble himself digging ditches, he goes to the outstanding contracts owed to his boss and reduces them by some percentage, so these people will be grateful and take him in when he is out of work and homeless. The guy’s boss says, hey, good thinking! And THAT certainly surprises us! But surely Jesus will set everybody straight by having the guy get hit by a bus or something, right? I mean, Jesus is not going to condone this kind of cheating behavior, is he?
Well . . . it’s hard to say WHAT Jesus is thinking here. We get three different statements, and all of them are unsettling . . .
First: Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into their eternal homes. WHAT?
Second: If you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you true riches? HUH?
Third: You cannot serve God and wealth. Okay, THAT one we get.
And the temptation is to ignore the first two and go with the third one—the one that makes sense to us: You cannot serve God and wealth. But what do we do with the first two? Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into their eternal homes? And isn’t Jesus implying that this guy has done the right thing with the money owed to his boss? What is going on here?
Well, for starters, I will tell you what my professor said in seminary when we came to this passage from Luke. I raised my hand in class and asked, “Um, is this the same Jesus we were just reading about in chapter 15?” She smiled and said, in her British accent, “Well, George, the parables are morally ambiguous.” That was meant to answer my question, but of course it didn’t. So I said, “But this isn’t morally ambiguous; this is just plain wrong!” She stared at me for a moment and said carefully, “The parables of Jesus are not fairy tales, George.”
Not fairy tales. So, okay, we shouldn’t expect the stories from Jesus to be simple little tales where everything turns out right and good and perfect. But shouldn’t we at least expect them to make sense? We don’t need a perfect little bow on top, but can’t we expect some, you know, ethics?
Well, let’s look at what might be going on in this story. And, admittedly, the emphasis is on MIGHT.
Lots of commentators make the claim that the guy who’s about to be fired is only writing off the share of the debt that would’ve been his commission. And that’s possible, but not certain; it’s kind of hopeful thinking, if you ask me. I mean, it would make it easier for us to swallow, right?
At the same time—and maybe more importantly—he is definitely taking a chance on hospitality instead of money. What do I mean by that? Well, even though it’s still a story about money, and self-interest, and possibly cheating, the guy who’s about to be fired is still putting his hope in people. He’s still saying, “When it’s all said and done, my hope lies in my neighbor, rather than in my money.”
But, then, isn’t he trading money for hospitality? Is he maybe, you know, buying friends? Maybe, sure. But, he’s turning them from debtors into peers. He’s making them his equals in a way. They’re no longer required to pay him back; a return favor is optional. A financial debt is a contract, and must be repaid. Hospitality is a choice they can make, one way or the other. They don’t HAVE to pay him back or welcome him into their homes. In a way, he has set them free. In a way, the guy who is about to be fired has given what little he had coming to him in order to set the debtors free. Maybe they’ll respond as he hopes; maybe they won’t. Either way, he gave up all he had, and has lifted the poor, freed the oppressed, set the debtors free. Hmmm . . .
As I’ve said before, the way to look at parables is to look for Jesus in them. Never assume that God or Jesus is the king, or the manager, or anyone in authority. Look for Jesus in the one who sacrifices. Look for Jesus in the one who gives up his life for another. More importantly, don’t assume that you and I are somewhere in the parable. The gospels are about Jesus. The parables are about Jesus. It really is all about Jesus, the one who saves us. The one who writes off our debts and is commended for acting shrewdly.
And we, of course, expect certain things of a Savior. We expect Jesus to be born in a palace. We expect him to grow up to sit on a throne and rule the nations of earth. We expect him to use his awesome Jedi powers to escape in the Garden of Gethsemane. We expect him to take that wooden cross like a sword and smash his captors’ heads in.
We want Jesus to climb to the highest tower, and to bring the glass slipper to the least likely candidate. We want him to slay the big bad wolf, and turn each ugly duckling into the most beautiful swan.
And instead, we get a conniving employee who cuts the master’s bills in half. We get a Jesus who will stop at nothing to redeem those who don’t even know they owe a debt. We get a Jesus who gives up everything in order to lift those who have debts they cannot pay.
No debt is too small or too big for Jesus to take on. All those fairy tales do in some way point to this same kind of Savior: one who will climb any mountain, take on any foe, even rewrite our debts owed to the manager. But the parables also offer us a glimpse into the sacrifice of Jesus, his willingness to meet with debtors and forgive their debts. And that same Jesus meets us faithfully at the Altar, in bread and wine. You are welcome at this meal, because Jesus has made you acceptable. Jesus has written off your debt, and has come to live with you in your house and in your life. So, yes, it’s true: The parables are not fairy tales, but they are good news. Very. Good. News.
Amen
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