Take What You Can And Give Everything Back

Luke 16: 1—13

Pastor JonAlden Pedersen

How many of you played the game of life before? I loved the game of life growing up and still do. The rules are simple: make the right choices between college, career, family, car, children, pets, house, and retirement: either countryside acres or the other wrong option.  I would always choose college of course, because I was taught that while it slows you down and keeps you confined in a classroom for the most active and ambitious years of your life, it would pay off eventually. Maybe it has paid off for you or maybe it hasn’t. The career was always a tricky choice because everyone wants the big ole doctor salary ($100,000!). But being a police officer is what I would always go for  because then I could take money from other players if they spun a 10. Taking money from other players? That was like the best part of the game! It was a pirate’s life for me: “Take what you can and give nothing back!” Why not, the player with the most money at the end of the game wins!

I think it is safe to say that no one here thinks that way about real life, I don’t think anyone here is focusing their whole life on gathering and accumulating more wealth just for themselves or their family. But if you are, or if you have, then Lord-willing today we will discover that Christ does indeed call us to take what you can! Because Christ truly has given us all things, including money! But give everything back. For in this way we are serving God who brought us into this world with nothing and will take us out of this world with nothing. 

The first verse of our text notes a critical change in target audience for Jesus. No longer is he addressing the Pharisees who grumbled and complained about who qualified for the Lord’s grace: now he was addressing those who were truly in that grace, his disciples. He was giving them a hard lesson on shrewdness. And you know what that means even if you don’t use that word very often. To be shrewd is to put 15% of your generated income into a Roth IRA. To be shrewd means to set up passive income so that you have more money. To be shrewd can also mean to set aside a portion of your income to serve the Lord through your offerings. To put it more simply, to be shrewd means to take what you can and use what you can take for a purpose. 

Now what was the purpose of the manager’s shrewdness? He says “What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg—I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.” And even though his shrewdness was dishonest business, he was after all using his position to cut away income from the master, even the master had to admit that he was finally being resourceful! 

What confuses me about this section of scripture is that you would think Jesus would address this parable to the Pharisees! Because they were the ones who were being dishonest, they were the ones who were squandering the truths of the Torah and prophets, they were the ones serving their love of money and not God. But critically we know in verse one that Jesus is telling this to the disciples! Why is that? Because since the time of the golden calf in the Old Testament, money and our idea of wealth has always gotten between us and the Lord. 

Solomon gives us more wisdom on this: “Those who love money never have enough money.” That insatiable feeling of never having enough, that gluttony that always hungers for more is waging war inside all of us. Solomon goes on “As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them.” You see, we can be shrewd and take what we can and succeed easier and quicker in life by accumulating more and more money, but the second we have a hard time letting go of money is the second that the very root of all evil finds purchase in our hearts. And we enter a game, a scheme orchestrated by evil, a concoction where we are designed to lose, where all of a sudden a number matters more than flesh and blood. 

And what does it look like if we let numbers continue to rule in our hearts? Maybe men and women become willing to be taught things that totally contradict God, because if they complete those courses then they get paid a larger number. Maybe pastors and teachers compromise the tougher teachings of the Bible in order to please the people who pay them. Maybe workers hold their tongues at work because they can’t risk losing their job because of their faith. Maybe we devote all of our time and energy into our own gain and not the gain of others. Like Judas, taking thirty coins over the very Son of God. 

Jesus’ message to the disciples in this parable was this: the people of the game of life are better players of their own fake game than are the children of light in real life. We get sucked into this game of debt slavery whether it’s paying for a house or a degree and we forget the infinite value and benefit we have because of the death and resurrection of Christ. You might say “Well pastor that’s well and good but I still need to feed my family! You see, pastor we need money to survive, what in the world would we do without money? Won’t we hunger? Won’t we thirst?” No. Here these priceless words from Isaiah 55:

“Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without cost. Why spend money on what is not bread, and your labor on what does not satisfy? Listen, listen to me, and eat what is good, and your soul will delight in the richest fare.”

Brothers and sisters, let our wealth come not from ourselves. Instead, take what we can: the benefits of being a Christian. Let our thirst for wealth be quenched by the waters of baptism, that wiped your debt, be it 37 trillion under, clean before God. Let our gluttony for goods be filled by the body and blood of Christ given to us in the bread and wine of communion. Let your mind find rest from the slavery of debt by the good news the Word of God has:

That the Lord himself went before us and humiliated himself by entering the world infected by sin, played by the rules, didn’t cheat and won the ransom for our souls. The only debt that matters was paid in full by Jesus Christ. He, the one who reminded us time and time again not to store up treasures for ourselves in this world but in heaven, who reminded us to ask and it will be given to us, who told us not to worry about what we will eat, drink, or wear, he also gave us the ability to do all of those things because he himself paid the only ransom that was due in God’s sight: the blood of a sacrifice. Now death leads to life!

So while we have life, and while we know the game of life is won, hear Jesus’ charge to his disciples from our text: “Use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” We here at Salem certainly have been entrusted with much, let’s not squander our resources but be shrewd, taking everything we can from all of the resources we have been given and giving it all back for the benefit of the people of light. Give your resources to the projects to bring to the family of believers, the families who pay a lot of money to send their children here, the organizations that focus on spreading the Gospel to the ends of the earth. In this way we are no longer serving money, but we are serving God with our money, using earthly means for eternal ends exactly as God intended.

You know I still like those games where it is survival of the fittest, player against player, scheming against each other and trying to win, a friendly competition like the game of life. But the games I really like to play are the ones where it is the players against the board. Where the most competitive players turn into teammates and utilize  the best qualities in each other in order to gain the advantage even though the odds are stacked against them. We know that outside of games and outside of these walls while the odds may seem stacked up against Christians, the victory is already ours in Christ. So let’s focus on reaping the benefits! May God grant us the wisdom to focus on the real enemy, the shrewdness to use all of our resources to take every advantage we can, and the confidence that while we give everything we have back into our communities and to each other, we have been given everything that we already need. Because God has granted eternal dwellings for each of us, for Jesus’ sake. Amen.