rick morley

What’s that they say about ‘best laid plans?’ Months ago I had planned this Sunday as a ‘welcome back’ Sunday where we’d have all the kids in church, and have them come up and get involved in the sermon… There’d be a tear in every mother’s eye, and the fall program year would be kicked off successfully.

And then a few weeks ago I checked the Gospel lesson of the day.

Ooops.

Nothing like telling a bunch of kids to make friends by dishonest wealth this year. Tears of rage in every mother’s eye…

I’ll figure out later what to do with this day of worship… But, this particular passage from Luke is not just vexing, it’s also set within a unit of Luke where Jesus is talking a lot about money.

Just prior to today’s text is the story of the Prodigal Son who asks for his inheritance early and then squanders it on loose living. Immediately after our text is the story of Lazarus and the Rich Man, where the Rich Man fails to share what he had with poor destitute Lazarus and therefore ended up in eternal torment.

This story, known universally as the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, sits sandwiched right in the middle. That’s not coincidence.

He too was squandering someone else’s wealth that he was entrusted with – just like the Prodigal a few verses prior. We aren’t told for sure whether he was failing to share what he had with others, as the Rich Man was a few verses later, but it wouldn’t be surprising.

What happens next is the difficult part. He tells the people whose accounts he’s managing to slash what they owe to his master. The master commends him. (!)

I wish this guy worked for the bank which holds my student loans…

He’s made friends with this money (that wasn’t his money to begin with) so that he could be invited into their homes when he was no longer employed – a situation that was immanent.

Commentators and preachers have been trying to figure out this one for millennia, and I am not going to proclaim here that I’ve got it all figured out.

But, this much I’m sure of: whatever funny transactions he was making with his master’s clients he was certainly NOT squandering opportunities. He wasn’t just losing money for laziness or ineptitude. He was losing money for a purpose: to find himself a home.

I’m not sure how this would help his master, unless this was his master’s wish all along. Was this steward meant to be making friends with his master’s money from the beginning? Goosed by the realization that he was about to be sacked, did he finally start to use his master’s money in the way that he wanted him to?

Funnily enough, it appears so.

God, our Master, blesses us with uncountable riches. But, do we squander the opportunities to make friends for ourselves, and the Master, by not using what is given us?

If we look at the man’s master as a brute who was only out for a few bucks, his commendation is mystifying. But, if we understand the Master as God who always has our interests in mind, then I think this parable becomes a little more intelligible.

God gives us what we have so that we’ll share what we have. And by doing so we earn friends and a home with the sons of light. Failure to do so means an eternal pink slip.

We’ll see what the severance package looks like next week when we delve into Lazarus and the Rich Man.

Spoiler alert: it’s not favorable.

Imagine going to the store and buying a box of 100 crayons in preparation for your children going back to school. You bring your shopping home, you sling your bag of goods onto the table, and you take out the box of crayons. You open up the box of crayons… and there are only 99 of them.

One has gone missing.

You were sure that they were all there when you bought them. The crayons didn’t jiggle in the box as you took it up to the cash register, indicating, again, that they were all there.

But, now on the second row there is a spot where one used to be, but is no longer.

That little empty space just looks up and you and taunts you.

You don’t even know what color it is that’s missing.

What do you do? Do you tear the back of your car out to search for it? Do you retrace your steps? Go back to the store to look in another box to see what color it is that’s missing? Do you buy another box?

Seriously, don’t you just deal with it? Do you even give it a second thought? If your house is anything like mine another 12 crayons will go missing before sun up tomorrow.

But, what if it was your favorite color? What if you bought the box of crayons just so that you could have that wonderful Burnt Siena in your collection? What if it was your child’s favorite color, and upon realizing that it’s missing your child breaks down into uncontrollable sobbing.

NOW don’t you go and look in the back seat of the car? Now don’t you consider retracing your steps, or going back to the store to get another box?

Because all of a sudden that one little crayon isn’t just one more crayon out of another 99. Now that crayon is special. It has worth all on it’s own. And, it’s that worth-factor which changes the rest of your day.

After college I worked for a wilderness school where we had about 100 boys living in the woods 365 days a year. Each night before we went to bed and each morning as we awoke we made sure that everyone was accounted for. We were in the middle of the woods after all.

If one of the boys came up missing, we didn’t go back to bed comfortable that we had 99% of the school accounted for. That was a child we were talking about. A child with parents, a child with a future – a child with worth.

When a child would turn up missing we’d turn the place upside down and call in reinforcements until the child was found.

When the shepherd sees the one sheep missing, there is no time for comfort in knowing that MOST of the sheep are there. The shepherd jumps into action. Because the shepherd places infinite value on that sheep.

And when Jesus loses us he comes to find us because we are worth that much to him.

In a version of the story of Jesus that didn’t make the Bible (from the Gospel of Thomas) the shepherd goes out to find the one sheep because it was ‘large.’ That author felt the need to add extra value to the lost sheep because without that little detail the story was just ridiculous.

It was just a sheep. Just a crayon. Who even knew what color it was?

Jesus. That’s who.

The little parables of the lost from the Gospel of Luke are icons of God’s love for us. They are there to demonstrate the breadth, length, height, and depth of God’s love for each of us. They tell us that we are all precious, and we are all worthy of God going to ridiculous means to bring us home when we are lost.

There are other stories in the Gospels which focus on our need to return to God (like the Prodigal Son). But, here, just bathe in the wonderful peace that comes with being God’s favorite color.

Because we all are.

“What stress I am under.”

Jesus felt stress. Jesus was, in the modern vernacular, stressed out.

Of course he was, he was on his way to his death. His death bore the sins and weight of the whole world.

You’d be stressed too.

But, it’s not a common subject, to talk about Jesus’ stress.

As I write this, I’m sitting in the Cuxa Cloister, in The Cloisters – the branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to medieval art and architecture. It’s situated in such a beautiful setting, that one has to remind oneself that one is in Manhattan.

As I ruminate on various sermons throughout this day of sermon retreat I take time to walk around and take in the beauty and history that is here. There seem to be a countless number of Madonnas with Child. There are many crucifixes. And depictions of Jesus as infant, teaching adult, and hanging on the cross abound.

There are pieces here which show Christ in majesty. Christ in agony. Christ as a rigid corpse. Christ in resurrection triumph.

But, I can’t find a single depiction of Christ under stress.

There are many of Mary under stress, both in annunciation, and by the cross.

There are even some of St. John, also in stress, and also under the cross.

But, Jesus is either regal or dying.

In our world, at this time, maybe we need to create some sort of icon to Christ Under Stress. More and more people feel more and more apathy towards God and the church, presumably because they think the church has no meaningful intersection to their busy stressed-out lives.

There’s the boss breathing down your neck, the mortgage payment to make, the fluctuations in the market, there’s terrorists who are out for your death, and swine flu which might break out any moment – and then there’s the really scary stuff like making sure your kid isn’t late for soccer practice, and that she has the right shoes to go with the right outfit.

How would God ever relate to that? How could the church ever relate to that?

Well, Jesus did.

In the ‘good old days’ the faithful would inflict all kinds of bodily torture upon themselves so that they could experience the pain and agony of Christ – so that they could feel closer to Him. We saw that in gory detail in the DaVinci Code.

But, in our world, everyday we already embody some of the sufferings of Christ – albeit in silly, small ways. But, are they any smaller or sillier than whipping ourselves or strapping on a celise?

See Jesus here with the weight of the world’s sin on his shoulders. Our sin. Your sin.

And see how he is stressed.

Pray on that.