by the Rev. Dr. John Fairless
Click here for today’s readings
Click HERE for the Lectionary Lab Live podcast
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Jeremiah is not called “The Weeping Prophet” for nothing!
His brokenness over the sin and rebellion of Israel is God’s brokenness, as well. How it pains God when we are willful and choose our own paths, come hell or high water!
The irony of the situation is that there IS plenty of balm in Gilead (known for its soothing ointments — probably a form of myrrh — in the ancient world.) But, a sick person must be willing to be healed.
Psalm 79:1-9
What recourse do we have in the aftermath of God’s judgment upon sin? It can be pretty tough to accept discipline in our lives (have any of you parents ever had the “I hate you!” moment from your kids when you were in the midst of a course correction?)
The closing verses make an excellent prayer of penitence — when we are genuinely in a place to understand that. Our hope — our only hope — is in the deliverance and forgiveness that comes from God, for God’s own name’s sake.
Amos 8:4-7
Are we ever impatient in accomplishing our assigned or expected “holy tasks” so that we can get on to real life? And why do you think God is so doggone interested in the poor and needy, anyhow?
Psalm 113
I’m loving so much about this psalm, but I am immediately captivated by v. 2. There is simply no better time to praise God for God’s goodness than right now — “from this time and forevermore.”
Again — with the needy!
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Fill in the blank: God would like to see ____________ be saved.
Luke 16:1-13
There’s a very interesting discussion of this passage — one of the more difficult in Luke’s gospel, and among Jesus’ more quizzical parables — on The Lectionary Lab Live podcast this week.
Perhaps we are called both to be like and unlike the “shrewd manager” in our handling of the gospel. We don’t really need any extra deceit, but there sure is an advantage to getting focused on our tasks when time is of the essence!
Sermon
by the Rev. Dr. Delmer L. Chilton
It is a strange story. A business owner finds out that his office manager is guilty of mismanagement. He calls in the manager and says “You’ve got two weeks to get ready for an audit. Now get out of here.”
The manager knows he’s in deep trouble. Too proud to beg; too weak to work; what to do? What to do? Suddenly, he has an idea. He calls in some of the company’s biggest customers. “Have I got a deal for you?” he says. The plan is simple. He cuts their bills in half, destroys the paper trail and writes new invoices.
Now when the audit happens, no one can prove that he cheated and all the richest men in town will owe him a favor. His future is secure. Of course, when the owner looks at the doctored books he knows what has happened but there is nothing he can do about it. He knows he has been conned. And here’s the surprise. He says to the man:” I have to admit it, you were pretty smart. You got me. Now get out of here.”
Up to this point the story makes perfect sense to us; maybe even more so in these years after the Wall Street crash involving loan schemes that nobody understood, financial sleight of hand that caught everybody off guard. What doesn’t make sense to us is the fact that Jesus seems to join the owner in praising the manager for his dishonesty.
But a careful reading of the text shows that Jesus is not praising the man for being dishonest.
Rather, he is pointing to the man as an example of someone with single-minded devotion to a cause, which in this case, happens to be himself. Jesus’ point here turns out to be pretty simple. Here, he says, is someone who knows how to give his entire heart, mind, and soul, to the service of his god, the thing he values most.
“Hey,” Jesus says, “what if we, the citizens of the Kingdom of God, were to give such single-minded and complete devotion to the cause of the one and only true God!”
Martin Luther, in the Small Catechism, says: that to which your heart clings and entrusts itself is, I say, really your God. This story of the unjust steward confronts us with some serious questions we have to ask ourselves, the first one being “What really is my God?” Is it my #1 concern in life to preach good news to the poor? To heal the sick? To give sight to the blind? How much of my valuable time do I spend each week in prayer and Bible Study? In visiting the sick and lonely? How much of my time and money is given pursuing help and justice for the poor of the world? These are the question Jesus is asking us in his story of the con-man office manager. He’s smart and devoted to serving his god; are we smart and devoted in serving ours?
NT Scholar and preaching professor Fred Craddock said: “The life of a disciple is one of faithful attention to the frequent and familiar tasks of each day, however small and insignificant they may seem. The one faithful in today’s nickels and dimes is the one to be trusted with the big account, but it is easy to be indifferent toward small obligations while quite sincerely believing oneself fully trustworthy in major matters. The realism of these sayings is simply that life consists of a series of seemingly small opportunities.
Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, end a war, appoint a cabinet, dine with the queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake. More likely the week will present no more than the chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote for a county commissioner, teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor’s cat.” [Luke; Interpretation Commentaries pp. 191-192]
Amen and amen.
Thanks for this, both the notes and the sermon – read 3 years later. Just listened to your podcast for Sept 18th, 2016. Thank you for that too! It’s neat to see the connection between Jeremiah, Ps.79, the Timothy reading and the gospel lesson.