Fiscal Faithfulness

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Luke 16:1-13

¹Then 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 accounting 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."

Sermon: “Fiscal Faithfulness”

I want to tell you the story of Oskar.  Oskar was a businessman; he owned an enamelware factory in Poland.  That factory had over 1,700 workers.  1,100 of them were Jewish.  The year was 1940.  Oskar was a member of the Nazi party, but when they wanted to move his Jewish workers to a labor camp where they would be subject to random killings and abuse, he refused, and bribed Nazi leaders to save them.  He was a businessman after all – he did not want to lose most of his trained work force.  Money was his motivation to save their lives.  But gradually things changed.

Oskar began seeing these Jews not just as moneymakers, but as human beings, and took greater and greater risks to protect them and their families.  He used more and more of his fortune to bribe Nazi leaders with black market luxuries so they wouldn’t take away his workers.  When it became clear that, at their current location, they would most certainly be placed in concentration camps and killed, Oskar convinced a Nazi commandant to let him move his factory, workers included, and he did.  A list was compiled of the number of Jewish people moved and saved.  There were 1,100 names on that list, including many children. 

Oskar continued to bribe Nazi leaders with black market items to keep his workers safe until the end of World War II.  He spent his entire fortune to protect them.   Having spent all he had, Oskar had no material wealth left, and he failed at new business ventures.  By many standards, it could be said that Oskar died a poor man.  But by the standards of Jesus, he died very rich indeed. 

I didn’t tell you Oskar’s last name, but you know it already.  It’s Schindler.  And I’m betting you’ve heard of his list of Jewish people he saved.

Jesus said, “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. "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. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? You cannot serve God and wealth.”

Oskar made friends by means of black market dishonest wealth, understanding that the holy cause of saving a people from racial cleansing was more important than the riches earned at their expense. 

His story gives us a glimpse of the economy of the kingdom of God Jesus is speaking about in this perplexing parable.  This economy of eternal riches is entirely opposite to what we understand a healthy economy to be.

You will never find a credit card company who adopts this policy of forgiving debt and only taking a portion back and not the whole thing (with interest).  You might find “In God We Trust” on our money, but you will never find a dollar bill with, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” printed on it.

Jesus is incredibly revered in our country – you need only look at bumper stickers proudly proclaiming, “Jesus is my co-pilot/rock/Savior/Lord/GPS” even.  But I guarantee y’all, that you will never see a bumper sticker that says, “Jesus is my accountant.”

It is simply not profitable to follow his financial advice.  Unless of course, he wasn’t talking about this world’s idea of profit.  Oskar Schindler lost a lifetime of hard-earned money.  But ask a family member of one who was spared a cruel death because of his selfless courage, and they will tell you that each life was priceless.

We hear quite a bit about “fiscal responsibility” these days.  We raise children with bank accounts as soon as they get their first lawn-mowing or babysitting money so they will know how to be financially responsible.  We invest our resources with wisdom so we will get more back.  We work hard to avoid spending more than we take in.  We are fiscally responsible.

But Jesus does not just call us to be fiscally responsible.  Jesus calls us to be fiscally faithful.  Faithfulness to God with our money means placing God above the bottom line, risking ourselves and our livelihoods to seek those things that are profitable in the kingdom of God.  However hard we might work, God is our Provider, and in this family of God on earth, we are called to then share that provision with others.

You see the economy of God’s kingdom and the economy of this world are very different.  In God’s kingdom, God is God, not money.  This economy does not operate from a place of scarcity, where there isn’t enough to go around and so we better not share it, lest we run out.  God’s economy runs on abundance: abundant life, abundant grace, abundant second chances. 

The world’s economy is very different.  Money is god.  And this money god does not share.  You only get what you deserve, and there is never enough to go around, so serve yourself first.  If there is nothing leftover to share with others, after you’ve made for yourself a comfortable life, well that’s just tough.  You can’t change that reality.

If Oskar had operated according to the world’s economy, 1,100 people would have certainly died.  Because our world is centered around this economy of scarcity, only sharing when it benefits us to do so, lives are lost every single day to entirely preventable things, like hunger.

Every 3.6 seconds, a person in the world dies of starvation, and most of them are children under the age of 5.  This means that 250 people will have died of hunger during the course of this sermon alone.   The United Nations estimates it would cost $30 billion a year to eradicate world hunger through agriculture and food distribution programs.  We in the United States spend $31 billion each year…on lottery tickets. 

Jesus is calling us to make a choice: to serve God or wealth.  It is a simple choice, we cannot have both, and whatever we decide will demand much of us. 

If we choose to serve wealth, there will never be enough.  We will never be truly satisfied, and the poor of this world will give their lives for our indifference, because they happen to have been born in a country or a neighborhood that is not as wealthy as ours.

But if we serve God, we trust that God will provide for us to the extent that we share our resources with faithfulness, courage and generosity.  We do this next Sunday when we bring canned goods for the hungry in our community and see this as a holy decoration for our worship space.  We serve God about wealth in the time, effort and energy we put into the Street Fair, so that with the profits gained, rather than using them to up my salary or improve our buildings, we give them away to those who most need them. 

I don’t know if any of us will emblazon our cars with “Jesus is my accountant” bumper stickers.  Somehow, I don’t think so.  But I do know that we cannot allow a discussion on the economy in our nation and world to only take place among politicians.  We as followers of Jesus are called to serve the kingdom of God above the kingdoms of this world.  And that kingdom runs on a very different economy, an economy of true riches that never run out. 

Oskar Schindler saw those true riches for what they were: each and every human being, invaluable as a child of God, and worth whatever it takes to save.  Amen.