IF GRACE IS THE BASE, AND IT IS.

QUESTION: WHOSE SLAVE ARE YOU?

Luke 16:1-13

Luke 16 Then Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2So he summoned him and said to him, “What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.” 3Then the manager said to himself, “What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” 5So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” 6He answered, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” He said to him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.” 7Then he asked another, “And how much do you owe?” He replied, “A hundred containers of wheat.” He said to him, “Take your bill and make it eighty.” 8And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
10 ‘Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.

The temptation is to hear these words of Jesus as sagely advice on how to survive in a world that seems to spin on the power of money and then extrapolate that on how to turn that around on so that we instead use our money to serve God. “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” But if that is what Jesus intends us to hear in these verses, where is the Gospel….the good news of Jesus’ transforming power in your life and mine…in that. To hear these words as such, then Jesus is nothing more than just one more financial wizard that tells you how to take control of your money. And if you have ever lived under the scrutiny of a budget, as needful as such living always is in this world, you know that there is no grace in that, but just a leash to keep us from running into trouble.

So, where’s the grace, or is there any grace to be found in these words from Jesus? I believe it is found in the very words that I quoted before that the screens of sin covering our ears filters out. When Jesus speaks of slaves not being able to serve two masters our ears tend to filter out the fact that slaves did not choose their masters, their masters chose them. Slaves were people who were captured and put to work for the conquering ones. Slaves were people who were bought and sold. One did not go up to another and say, “Let me be your slave.”, and even if that conversation would have happened, it was the master who would have chosen to be become the lord of that person.

According to Brian Stoffregen, who carefully dissects the words of Jesus, the word for “serve” that Jesus used would better be translated “be enslaved”. Doing so, we would hear Jesus words to be, ““No slave can be enslaved by two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot be enslaved by God and wealth.” And therein lies the good news that gives hope to life.

We might, like the Pharisees who tried to tell Jesus, “We are descendants of Abraham and have never been slaves to anyone.” (John 8.33) try to tell Jesus and ourselves the same thing, “We have never been slaves to anyone.” But the thing is that the Pharisees and we know the truth. They had been enslaved by the Pharoah, and we have daily been enslaved by countless powers in this world. We are all slaves, enslaved by something.

When Jesus tells us about the “shrewd” manager, he is painting a picture of what it is like to be enslaved by money, and the struggle to life that that brings. And as he paints that picture, he gives us “advice”(rules) to live by as a slave to money. Slither your way through life with deceit and manipulation. Who wants to live their life that way?

Notice that the verses we are examining today immediately follow the story of the Prodigal son, the story of a father who had two sons and they found out that the father’s love for them was so great that it reached as far as they strayed from him, and brought them back to him, like a bungee cord. A young man, who saw himself as a totally free person, not tethered by anyone or anything said to me, who wants a God who holds on to you like a bungee cord and doesn’t let you be free? My response, and Jesus’ response, “No one is totally free.” So the most important thing to consider is to whom are you tethered? In the story of the prodigal son, Jesus gives us a picture of what it is like to be tethered to God. In the story of the shrewd servant, Jesus gives us a picture of what it is like to be tethered by money.

The good news is that God has decided to tether us to himself and he will not let anything else put its leash on us. As Jesus said, “You cannot be enslaved by two masters.” Nothing, not even money, will be able to take us away from our lord and master, the Lord Jesus Christ. And that is good news. Great news!