Worship for the week of September 18, 2022

Let us worship!

God gives us each many gifts and many joys,

much talent and much wealth.

When we are faithful with what all that is good and joyfully,

we are given even more.

But

when we are unfaithful,

all that is good becomes lost to us.

May we, who are asked to give an accounting of our talents, be found faithful.

A prayer to center you

God of grace and comfort,

we pause this morning to give you thanks.

We thank you for our blessings—for the depth and length, height and width—

especially those that we too easily overlook.

for the forgiveness of our ineptitude

for the grace that runs deeper than we could ever earn

for the joys, big and small, that come our way each day.

We come with open and hearts and open minds

that your spirit may swoop over us and call us back to you,

that we may stand in our bounty with happy hearts.

Amen

Luke,

Chapter 16,

verses 1 through 13

Then 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.”

Reflection:

I am not going to lie, I struggled with this text this week.  A quote a friend gave me about this one comes from Mark Twain, Twain once said, “It ain’t the parts of the Bible that I can’t understand that bother me it is the parts that I do understand.”  Well to be honest, the first 9 verses of this text fall into the first category given by Twain, the parts I can’t understand, and the last three fall into the one’s I do understand and that bother me.

This parable wonders a little bit for me and to some degree goes against what I am accustomed to hearing for Jesus.  The manager swindles his way into good standing by basically stealing from their boss.  Knowing that he is going to loss his job, he cuts the debts of those who own his boss money, thus gaining their favor.  And the boss praises him.  An odd parable indeed.

Even as a searched pod cast after podcast for insight into this text, I kept coming up with little to nothing.  But I must have been somewhat faithful with what little I knew, because when I started focusing on the word forgiveness, it started to fall into place.

We tell the parable a little differently maybe it will make a little more sense:

There was a God who was rich in love and forgiveness, who had heard that a beloved follower was about to pass away.  The follow knew they were nearing the end of their lifespan and that death was near.  They knew that soon they would be held accountable for their misuse of all the love and forgiveness that they had received from their God.  Knowing that their life was soon to be taken away from them, they wonder how to make things better.  (and because I love this next line, I am leaving it in)  ‘I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg.’ The dying person said to themselves.  Thinking it was too late to work off his debts and they were to ashamed to beg for the forgiveness they were seeking.  So the dying person goes a person with whom they had argued with in the past, and the dying man forgave the other person for all the hurt that occurred in the past and left in peace.  The dying person then found the neighbor whom they had wrong in the past, and restored all that they could, that they may show the neighbor grace upon grace.  When God then called the dying person home, God lavished grace upon grace upon them, because God had first them and eventually, they shared that grace with others. 

Now, I am not sure my new interpretation of this parable is correct, but the grace of the story speaks to me, and I have attempted to be faithful with what measure I did understand.  God has lavished grace up on grace down on us, God has displayed forgiveness time and time again for our sins and our faults.  We have been given much and we should be faithful in sharing what has been given to us.   

The Word in Action…

What grace abounds in your life?

We often focus only on the negative, the absence of what we have, but there is so much that God has given us; grace, love, joy, forgiveness, community. What are those gifts in your life?

How will you share your wealth this week?

God has blessed us with much. God has entrusted us with grace, love, joy, forgiveness, and community. How can you be faithful with all that you have been given? Go share your wealth! Share your ideas with us below.

Prayer of sending

As we go from this time,

God,

guide our hands to do your work,

open our hearts to our neighbors

and our minds to your ways.

May your Spirit guide each steps on the journey

and may we see glimpses of your kingdom come to life before us and through us.

Amen

Going out.

Be faithful in a little, that you may also be found faithful in much.

Be faithful in much, that you may be entrusted with the true riches that come from above.

Go to be faithful children of light,

And come to know the deep grace, hope and peace of the one who is truly faithful at all times.

Let all God’s people say: AMEN