Grace and Peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
I've held a few management positions in my life. I've also hired, supervised and fired others in management positions. I have found that the best way to determine their future success is by asking how they have handled situations in their past. This type of interviewing is known as "Behavioral" and is thought to be an excellent indicator of future performance. Perhaps you're familiar with behavioral-based interviews – they sound something like this:
- Describe a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills.
- Give me a specific example of a time when you used good judgment and logic in solving a problem.
- And, my personal favorite.... Tell me about a time when you were forced to make an unpopular decision.
In todays' message we hear that Jesus wants us to be children of the light. Meanwhile, he pushes us to develop some of the business savvy or ingenuity of the children of this age. Jesus would like us to take some of the skill, effort, time and determination that we give to our "professional" work and apply it to life as disciples of God. What would happen if we applied professional standards to our spiritual life? Is Jesus telling us to be dishonest managers? No, I think not! He is calling us to become ingenious about what really matters in life. He is calling us to be ingenious when we are faced with unpopular decisions…ingenious when solving a problem…ingenious in times of crisis. It is the managers' ability to respond to a crisis which is the key to this story….the character displayed in crisis is what the master admires…the character in crisis is the example that Jesus asks of us, his disciples.
It seems to me that the Scripture readings for this Sunday lift up the powers of human ingenuity in crisis. And in so doing they challenge us to think very seriously about what we truly value. They invite us to reflect upon what it is that compels our attention and energies. The prophet Amos is well known for his fearless preaching about justice. Amos was not very concerned with cushioning his message; he is quite forthright with his prophetic words. In this reading he confronts those whose governing desire is their own self-interest, people who are determined to enrich themselves even if it means exploiting the poor in the process. He depicts such people as driven individuals. They cannot wait until the Sabbath and the lunar days of rest are over so that they can get back to business. And are they smart! Even ingenious! For they know just how to rig the scales for cheating in order to increase their profit margin. In the process, they leave the poor strewn about the path they have just traversed.
Jesus' story about the wily, crafty steward may seem to us like a strange and uninviting parable. It is a notoriously difficult story to interpret, even for professional Scripture scholars. Why would Jesus ever hold up this man as an example for his disciples? After all, this steward seems to be concerned about only one thing: his own self-protection. Some would say that his voodoo economics and backroom "cooking of the books" would make him a well-qualified participant in a big city political machine. Listening to this story, you can almost smell the cigar smoke in the room where he secretly meets with his master's debtors to decrease their debts. But one thing is certain: this steward is enterprising, he is very ingenious. He knows how to seize the initiative; he takes resolute action in a crisis. Jesus expresses his own wish that his disciples would only exhibit the same kind of initiative and resolve in living the gospel.
Most of us who work, have jobs, are responsible to some higher authority. What if God became as important to us as our jobs? We would become much more deliberate and intentional about discerning what might be God's will for us in specific situations. God is our ultimate higher authority. True discipleship can be tough and demanding. We are called to lives of self-sacrificial love, mercy, compassion, forgiveness, reconciliation, charity and justice. We have an authority, higher than our professional bosses that we need to attend to --- and that authority is God.
Successful workers imagine and work outside the box. They are innovative, seeing, developing new ways, more helpful ways, more effective ways of doing things. One interpretation of the parable that we began with is this: the owner of the resources, the rich man, the master, is God. God is pleased when the manager, all of us, begins to be shrewd about helping those with few resources to share more in God's abundance. We are called to be shrewd stewards of God's creation, shrewd about mercy and justice.
This parable closes with a clear statement: we cannot serve God and mammon, or property. When God is the center of our lives then all resources are to be seen as God's; and as stewards, we are to see that as many as possible share in God's resources.
When we are passionate about something we usually find a way of getting it done. But that which we value, what drives us and consumes our attention, will determine the kind of person we become. If we allow greed or ambition to be the dominant force in our lives, we will gradually lose the ability to recognize what is truly good and worthwhile. We may even lose the ability to see the people whom we have stepped on in the pursuit of our aims. We will become a being who is less than human. Greed has many faces. It may involve the fervent desire to accumulate a bigger bank account and amass great financial security. It may entail the passion to advance our careers, whatever those careers may be. Or it may mean the search for more prestige and recognition among friends or within the community. When these desires control us, we shirk our responsibility as sons and daughters of God.
Every Sunday we come to the Table faithfully. We repeat this behavior so that we can go back out into the world stronger, unified through our community, ready for whatever crisis we might face as we go forth in our mission as disciples of God. Jesus commanded us to love our neighbor as ourselves. As Christians we are called to promote the ingenuity that comes from that kind of love. Humanity is capable of producing more sophisticated weapons of mass destruction. But we seem to have a difficult time mustering up the ingenuity to address the scourge of hunger in our world and even in our own cities. We can design and build computers that seem to work faster than our minds. Meanwhile, we seem to find it much more of a challenge to provide affordable housing for the poor or health insurance for the almost 50 million U.S. Americans who are uninsured. Love is indeed ingenious.
God's grace transforms our affections into an ever deepening love of him and into active care for those around us. Each one of us is painfully aware of how often we fall short in this challenge of loving God with our whole hearts and caring generously for our neighbor. Still, Christ invites us to turn to him with confidence because he has revealed to us that God's love, too, is ingenious. The love of God is amazingly ingenious. In fact, the ingenuity of God's love was manifested in the crisis of Christ's death and resurrection.
There are no job interview questions… God accepts all of us… those waiting in the room along with us …those who are homeless…hungry….widows…orphans…resident aliens…those without education…those whose lives differ from ours. For it is in these times of crisis that the character of God shines through and the ingenious love of God continues to work in our lives, showing us what is of lasting value, what is worthy of our attention, our energy, our passion.
Gracious God, thank you for giving us the gifts that we use daily for other jobs and for ourselves. Help us to be mindful of using these gifts for your creations in times of crisis according to the values that Christ has demonstrated. We ask your guidance in crisis so that we may model your Son's ingenious behavior in our future performance. We ask all this in Jesus' name. Amen.
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