17 Pentecost Proper 20            September 22, 23 2007
The Rev. Barbara Schlachter

Who Do I Serve?

Every once in awhile scripture comes along like a thief in the night and hits us on the head with the proverbial 2 by 4.

And today we are the thieves who have been hit—in the head and the heart, by these scriptures. The reading from Jeremiah is a lament.  My heart is sick, he says.  My eyes are a fountain of tears.  The psalm is also a lament and both are prayers of supplication to the One who can provide consolation and deliverance.  These open us up to hear the words of the Gospel. It is as if we are moved to take off our hats and reverently bow our heads by the sadness of these two readings, and then the Gospel comes and gives us a whack while we are not looking.

I suppose I am not the only one who doesn’t like Jesus commending the dishonest steward or like his suggesting that we are those stewards.  At the very least, it is confusing.  We know that honesty is akin to faithfulness, and so we are puzzled by this parable.

It seems to value the trickster, like our patriarch ancestor Jacob who deceived his father, cheated his brother and made off with most of his father-in-law’s flock. 

But that’s just the first part of the Gospel.  The final zinger comes at the end:  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.”

I prefer the old translation of this:  You cannot serve God and Mammon.  According to Webster’s Third International, the word mammon is defined as material wealth or possessions, esp. having an evil power or debasing influence.  This is probably closer to what Jesus was saying about the seductive and trickster part of wealth, possessions and work itself.  We become twisted in our goals and the way we spend our time and money if we are not careful, if we are not keeping a clear vision and focus in our lives.

More than one person started off deciding to give their lives to the betterment of others and somehow ended up amassing wealth that got no further than themselves.  It is not sinful to make money or to have things; it is just always important to remember that we are stewards of all that we have and are and that one day there will be accounting for how we have lived our lives and used what we have been given.

My son told me the other day of another variation of trickster wealth.  Apparently many students end up graduating from college with such massive debt that they cannot go into the helping professions they had hoped to enter because they do not pay enough to enable them to repay their debt.  What a shame for them and for us.

We are stewards—of our wealth, of course, and in this just opened season of the Every Member Canvass, we are reminded of the importance of our being good stewards of our wealth.  We know that is about more than supporting a church budget, it is living out of the abundance we have been given to share our treasure, time and talent.  We need to give because we are created in the image of a God who gives and gives and gives.  And that leads me to the next issue of stewardship where we might all have to confess that we are indeed dishonest stewards. And that is we are stewards of the planet that God has given us. 

We are becoming as a society, as a world, as a church, as individuals painfully aware of  how we have dealt less than faithfully with our mother the earth, the only source of our life in this world.  It is if God has summoned us as his managers as in the Gospel today and said to us, “What is this that I hear about you?  Give me an accounting of your management.”  And we have to confess as individuals and as a society that we have not been faithful.  Our lack of faithfulness comes home to haunt us daily—we cannot deny that we have changed this planet and put it on a course of destruction.

But here is where we are invited to make the dishonest steward our model:  He doesn’t protest his innocence; he doesn’t deny there is a problem.  He just wonders what to do next, and he comes up with a clever solution.  He at least gets some of the payment due his master—which his master appreciates, and he makes sure that he will always be welcome in the homes of those who he is helping by not charging the full amount of what is owed. 

It is his cleverness and his energy we are invited to emulate.  We can accept that we have used the resources of this planet shamefully, not only in what we have done to the environment but also in the way we have allowed them to be distributed unequally so that so many have more than they need and so many others have so much less than they need.

We are not innocent and we do not need to deny either the problem or our complicity in it.

Given that, the real issue is what are we going to do about it?  What is our equivalent of redeeming the situation?  The Millennium Development Goals are working to end extreme poverty in the world by 20015 and in so far as we work toward these goals as individuals, as a church community and as we steer our country toward this end, we are dealing with one debtor.

As far as the environment goes, we need to work to change attitude and policy about what the earth is to be used for.  When we think about the need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to stop the build up of carbon in the atmosphere we can become discouraged.  What alternative do we have to driving our cars?  What can we do about industries that use so many of the non-renewable resources?  We can begin to get bogged down in questions that take our energy from us and replace it with lethargy or hopelessness.

But think of the dishonest steward!  He was clever and energetic and we can be,too.  Those of us who heard from Dr. Jerry Schnorr last Sunday at the Adult Forum got some ideas of what is being done now and will be offered soon in the way of technology that will reduce our dependency on fossil fuels.  We are putting our cleverness to work in some very exciting ways—sun panels instead of shingles on your roof, for instance. 

And while we wait for some of the technology to become practical, there are things that we can do as individuals to give us a sense of hope and involvement.  Here are just a few: recycle everything you can and buy things made from recycled materials whenever you can.  Take your own bags to the grocery store instead of using plastic bags that are indestructible and are mother’s earth nightmare as they clog up landfills and seas.  In the US alone we throw away 100 billion plastic bags each year—the equivalent of 12 million barrels of oil.   There is now in the northern Pacific a non-biodegradable petrochemical blob that’s twice the size of Texas!  As you replace appliances and vehicles buy the ones that are more energy efficient.  Use compact florescent light bulbs in your homes and turn out lights when you are not in the room.  These are four little things that can be done without hardship to you.  And so they are things that we can all do without great sacrifice.  But if we all did them they would make an incredible difference in our world.

And here is another practice that perhaps you haven’t linked with the environmental crisis:  take some time to appreciate beauty every day, whether it is created or natural beauty, feed your soul with it every day.  Teach your children and grandchildren to look up in the sky and marvel at the world we live in, and teach them that we are all guests here. 

The other day I went to a workshop on the nature poet Mary Oliver, and as the thirty or so women who were there shared, I heard one beautiful story that I want to pass on to you.  Some of the women had been raised in farm families, large families of 9, 11, or 13 children, and I can’t remember which one of these families this particular woman was from.  She said that every evening when the sun was getting ready to set, one of her parents would call to the other parent and to the children to come and watch the sunset.  And her parents would stand with their arms around each other, and sometimes some of the children would join in, and they would all watch the beauty of the sun as it was setting.  What a simple thing to do, but what a profound thing to do.  What can you do in your life to create rituals or time or space to love the natural beauty of the world?  For how can you really want to save something if you don’t love it and how can you love it if you don’t spend time with it?

Spending time with the beauty of the earth helps to keep our focus on serving God, the Creator.  It can provide the breather and restorer of perspective that we need in order to keep God as our focus and not our stuff and our need for more stuff or our belief that a big enough bank account can keep us from all danger. 

This has been put very succinctly by David Edwards in “Nothing to Lose But our Illusions:”  Once you start to see through the myth of status, possessions, and unlimited consumption as a path to happiness, you’ll find that you have all kinds of freedom and time.  It’s like a deal you can make with the universe:  I’ll give up greed for freedom.  Then you can start putting your time to good use.”  And I would add, money.

The dishonest steward took a risk; he threw caution aside—what did he have to lose at that point?  Jesus is saying that as his disciples we need to be shrewd in whatever crisis is facing us at the moment.  Our wealth and our problems can be great opportunities for faithfulness.  They provide us ways to serve others.  You turn off a light, you are helping to save this planet for the generations to come.  You buy a mosquito net and you are saving a child’s life.  You buy a chlorinator or participate in the Alternative Gift Market and you are helping people live better lives and empower them to provide for themselves.  Small things done regularly and faithfully add up to big things.  Never think that your small action does not matter.  Each of us is necessary and important in our service.

The whole thing boils down to the questions of why are we here and who do we serve?

Bob Dylan was right back in the 60’s when he sang “You’ve got to serve somebody.”  We all have our foci, and every once in awhile we need to have our heads and hearts opened to a good internal inspection:  What do the choices I make with my time, talent and money reveal about who I serve?  And what am I doing in this time of extreme urgency to prevent disaster?  Decisive action is required by those of us who will stake our all on the Dream of God for this planet.