Luke 16- God and money
Jesus’ parables have a way of sticking with you. It’s as if they
have barbs. They roll around in our minds and hearts. There are parts we like
about them and parts we don’t like and there are parts we just plain don’t
understand. But, eventually, if we spend enough time with them they start to
unfold and reveal their purpose.
There are parts we don’t like about this first parable. The
hero is a manager that mismanages his master’s money and then gets fired. When
he finds out he’s fired he makes some shifty deals that result in his boss losing
more money, but the end result is that because the manager makes these deals people
owe him favors. When he is tossed out of
his master’s house he will have people who owe him a favor and who will open
their door to him. Then, confusingly, the master praises the manager. Jesus
then tells us “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with
much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest
with much.” When we first read these teachings it’s hard to know what to do
with them.
What Jesus seems to be teaching us is not that we
should be dishonest and corrupt when dealing with other people’s money. Rather, Jesus is teaching us to think about
the goal and use of money. Money is a resource. It helps us reach a goal. Even
a corrupt manager knows this. The manager is about to be fired for misusing his
master’s money and he cuts some deals with people who owe his master. One man owes him nine hundred gallon of olive
oil and he makes a deal and cuts his bill in half. The second man owes one thousand bushels of
wheat. The manager makes another deal by cutting 200 bushels off the bill. Effectively
he has just put two people into his debt. He has used the resources he was
responsible for to build relationships so that when he no longer had any
resources to manage he would have a place to stay. The heart of the lesson is
this- Jesus says “…use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so
that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”
Jesus is showing us that even corrupt managers sometimes
understand something about wealth that we miss. Even a corrupt manager under the
right conditions knows to use wealth to build relationships. How much more should
the children of God understand this? If the corrupt understand this principle,
then shouldn’t the followers of God? Shouldn’t we also use the way we manage our
wealth to develop friendships with our neighbors and with God? If even a scoundrel who is just trying to save
his own skin understands this, shouldn’t the followers of Jesus? This manager
understood how the wealth he was entrusted with could serve a larger purpose. We too should see our wealth through this
perspective.
The way we use our wealth effects
relationships. We can use our wealth to build relationships, or we can use our
wealth to seperateus from others. Later
in chapter 16, Jesus uses another parable to explain this. In the parable of
the rich man and Lazarus Jesus teaches us that there are consequences when we use
our wealth to separate us from others rather than build relationships as the
manager did.
There are all kinds of questions
about how to hear this parable, and it is a parable. It is not a
description of a historical event. And as a parable it isn’t necessarily telling
us about the afterlife. The main point being taught is that the way we use our
money has an effect our relationships with others and also with God. The rich
man and the poor man, Lazarus, were separated by the rich man’s use of his
wealth. The rich man wants everyone to know how wealthy he is and so he dresses
the part. He wears expensive purple robes. He lived in luxury behind a gate
that protected his belongings and kept the rabble out. He used his wealth to physically
and socially separate himself from Lazarus.
Just outside
the rich man’s gate is a beggar. Lazarus is not clothed in purple, rather he is
covered in sores. He longs to eat the table scraps from the rich man's table,
but he is given nothing. The rich man
seems to not notice him. The guard dogs lick his wounds showing more compassion
to Lazarus than the rich man. The rich man doesn't abuse or remove Lazazrus
from the front of his house, he just ignores him. He pretends he doesn’t exist
and uses his wealth to keep them separated.
Eventually
both the rich man and Lazarus die. Lazarus is brought to a place of honour
beside Abraham. The rich man is in Hades- the place of the dead- and is
suffering. The rich man recognizes the poor beggar Lazarus standing beside
Abraham. In death, the way the rich man separated himself from the poor Lazarus
persists. The gate he bought with his wealth became a huge chasm that no one
could cross. This time, however, he has found himself on the wrong side of the
divide. Interestingly, the rich man
still will not speak to Lazarus. The rich man has now become a beggar and begs
Abraham, his ancestor, to order Lazarus to give him water. He is not repentant.
In fact he is trying to order Lazarus around- as if he was a servant- as if
social barriers and class distinctions existed even in death. In life he
refused Lazarus human acknowledgement, and this persists in death. The rich man
divided himself from poor Lazarus by creating the physical barrier of the gate,
but the personal divisions persist as well.
Abraham
speaks with compassion calling the rich man his "dear son". Abraham gets
no pleasure from seeing the rich man's suffering. Abraham and Lazarus even seem
willing to help the suffering rich man, but there is a great chasm that makes
it impossible to cross over to him. This is no mere gate that is easily opened
to give the man a drink of water.
Our apathy towards the poor is
challenged by this parable. Poverty causes suffering and we have a
compassionate God, who chooses the side of the poor. We serve a God that takes
sides. As we read through the Scriptures we see that God has little patience
for those who can alleviate the suffering caused by poverty, but don't. Over
and over we are warned that wealth is not to be used to divide us from each other.
Instead, it is to be used to build relationships.
In the parable, the rich man wants
someone to warn his brothers so they don’t end up like him. Abraham says that they have Moses and the
prophets to teach them and warn them about the consequences of misusing their wealth.
This basically is a reference to the Old Testament. So it’s worth looking in
the Old Testament to see what it tells us about wealth.
One message it gives us is that
having money is not inherently wrong. Private property is assumed. The Ten Commandments condemn stealing and
coveting, and Israel is encouraged to be generous. So it is not wrong to have
'things'. It is assumed that we will have property and goods. The Old Testament also promises rewards to
people that live rightly. For example, in Proverbs 3:9-10 we read "Honour
the LORD with your wealth, with the first fruits of all your crops; then your
barns will be filled to overflowing, and your vats will brim over with new
wine". The Promised Land itself was
promised to be a place of prosperity. The people are encouraged to celebrate
and have feasts. So wealth in itself is not evil. In fact, it is considered a
good thing. …. On the other end of the spectrum, the Old Testament never
says that poverty is a good thing. Poverty causes suffering and so it is not
what God wants for His people.
While we do
have some rights to our property we are also taught that in essence all that we
own really belongs to God. We are managers of the resources that have been
given to us. It is a difficult concept for most of us because individual
ownership has been emphasized in our culture. We don't really believe that our bank account,
or house, or car, belongs to God. We tend to think that God would be stealing
if God drove off in our car. But Deuteronomy 10:14 reminds us, "To the
LORD your God belong the heavens, even the highest heavens, the earth and
everything in it."
We are
managers of what God has given us, and we have certain rights as managers when
it comes to property. However, the Old Testament teaches that care for the poor
overcomes our rights to private property. The Bible teaches that when the
people harvested they should not try to harvest too efficiently so that the
poor could come and harvest some as well. Our property rights give way under
the obligation to care for the poorer and weaker members of society.
Some of
these laws are a bit alien from our world. Most of us don't harvest, and most
of our poor are in the inner city. But, the essence of the message still speaks
to us. Our own rights to private property must give way to our obligation to
help the poor. Wealth cannot be used to divide human beings. Wealth is to be
used to build relationships, not to separate people. The rich man was obligated
by the Law to help Lazarus, not build a gate to keep him away where he won’t
have to see him.
The Bible
also speaks to us about the spiritual dangers of wealth. Wealth is often associated with a lack of
ability to repent, to greed, gluttony, and covetousness. Wealth
can become a false god when we trust in it rather than in God- especially when
we pursue it as an end in itself. Wealth has the ability to mimic deity by
giving us a sense of security, inspiring intense devotion, and by granting a
sense of freedom and power.
There is
much more that the Old Testament has to teach us in matters of money and
property, but I think we have the overall point. To be religious without any
concern for justice or the poor is to live a lie. If we can reject the poor, or
ignore the poor, then we cannot embrace God. This is because God chooses to
align himself with the poor and oppressed. In Jesus' parable, if the rich man
who ignored the poor Lazarus at his front gate had followed the teachings of
Moses and the writings of the prophets, then he would have understood that his
riches were given to him to manage- they were God's riches. God gave
instruction as to how do deal with his wealth. If he followed the teachings of
Moses and the Prophets he would have realized God's compassion for the poor and
there would have been no surprise that the poor Lazarus was with Abraham in the
afterlife. If the rich man was reading the scriptures and taking them seriously
there should have been no surprise. He should have known that there would be
consequences.
If we were to find ourselves in this parable, we would most likely be
the 5 brothers of the
rich man- who he wants to warn. If we follow the teachings of Moses and the
Prophets we would see a very clear image of how to deal with our wealth. In the
parable, Abraham says these words should be enough. But, we stand in an even better place in
terms of being warned. We have someone who has come back from the dead.
We have been given the message from beyond the grave that was denied the 5
brothers in the parable.
When God
took humanity onto Himself, being born as Jesus, he was born to a poor couple
out of wedlock, and he was laid in a feeding trough. He was born as a part of a
people oppressed by a politically superior Roman Empire. Jesus so identified
with the poor that he taught his followers that when the poor are clothed, and
fed, that his followers are in fact feeding and clothing him. If Jesus saw
himself in the Parable he would be Lazarus, locked out of the rich man's home.
By locking Lazarus out, the rich man locked out Jesus, who is the means to his
salvation.
Our wealth is to be used to build relationships. We, like the
manager in the first parable, are to use our wealth to build relationships so that
when the day comes we have built relationships with our neighbor and ultimately
with our Lord and so will be welcomes into eternal homes. If we use our wealth
to separate us from others we may find that the gate we have built has become
an impassible chasm and that we are on the wrong side of it. Wealth is a
resource to be used not a god, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will
hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise
the other. You cannot serve both God and money.” We must make a choice were we
will store our treasures- here on earth, or in the eternal reality.
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