Trinity 9

Luke 16:1-9 - Trinity IX - August 5, 2012 

Forcing Mammon to Serve Our God

There are two religions in the world.  People either believe and trust in the one true God, or they believe and trust in a false god.  People either worship the God who made them and who gives them all that they have, or they worship false gods who have no power at all to provide lasting satisfaction.  The essence of idolatry, that is false worship, is the worship of creation instead of the Creator.  True worship, on the other hand, is not simply an intellectual recognition that God exists or that he is the Maker of all things.  To know that there’s a creator is not to know God.  It’s not simply a matter of admitting that there’s a higher power out there, or that this higher power is ultimately good that one worships God.  Even unbelievers, who see no use for God to become man, or to shed his blood on the cross for sins, are able to figure this out – that God is good.  So what of it?!  So God is good because he gives to people what they love more than him?  That’s a fine way to define God’s goodness, isn’t it?  Yet we see this all the time as the insatiable world chases after all the stuff that fills the earth. 

But no, true worship that is not by nature idolatrous requires something much more than this. 

It requires knowledge of God as God wants to be known in his Son Jesus Christ.  True worship requires true fellowship and communion with God.  And this is gained only through him who established peace between us and our Maker by his blood on the cross.  (The words of the Proper Preface make this clear: that the same God who made all things is the one who was born of Mary.  And this is vital to know!)  Only a Christian can truly worship the Creator because only a Christian truly knows him.  And you know him precisely where he gives to you what the world cannot afford and what the earth cannot contain. 

In order to worship God with true knowledge, we must know God as he reveals himself to us in Scripture.  God is Triune: He is Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.  He reveals himself as our Father by revealing himself as the eternal Father of His Son Jesus Christ, our Lord.  He is our Lord.  He is our Brother.  By his sacrifice on the cross, Jesus purchased us to be his own and He established a relationship between us and our Maker – not one that’s based on our fickle devotion, so easily enticed by idols, but a relationship that is founded and sustained by His Father’s … our Father’s love toward us.  It is this love by which Christ continues to rule us as Lord of all things, because this love covers the multitude of all our sins.  It is through faith in Him who loved us that we become heirs with Christ and rightful possessors of all that belongs to Him.  By hearing the Gospel that all our sins are forgiven on account of Jesus’ suffering and death, the Holy Spirit converts our hearts away from what the world calls lovely, and toward a love for God.  And so you see here the whole Trinity at work in order to make God our God.  Without knowing this, something else will be our god, because apart from this something else will claim our love. 

Don’t think that you can love God on your own.  We are not so in control of our affections that we can choose by power of our will to love God.  Just think of what else you love.  Think of how much you love it.  Loving God above all things is not merely knowing in theory who we ought to thank for such things as our money, houses, vacation homes, spouses, children, and health.  Loving God is not just to tip our hat to our Maker in appreciative recognition that all these lovely things in life somehow come from him.  No, it’s not possible to love God while we love these things more.  To love God above all things is to love God and want to possess God himself more than all these.  This is the righteousness God requires.  This is the devotion God requires.  This is what it means to have a god. 

These earthly things are indeed good.  Very good.  But that’s the point.  The one who gives it all is better.  All things belong to Him.  And he who is good withholds nothing good from us.  He knows what we need in our many weaknesses because he who made us took our weaknesses upon himself in order to redeem us.  St. Paul says: “He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?”  And He does freely give us all things.  He who adorns the lilies of the field and feeds the birds of the air also gives us all material necessities and more.  All because He loves us very much.  In Christ, we know this love and by faith we have begun to see the height and depth and breadth of this love; and so we are able to receive all other gifts besides with thankful hearts, knowing who gave them to us: God did – the God who called us by name when he placed His name on us in Holy Baptism. 

In our text for this morning, Jesus tells us a parable about a shrewd steward who worshiped the same god as most folks do.  A steward is one who manages another’s property.  It’s not his, but he’s in charge of it.  This steward worshiped what his master had entrusted to him in the same way that sinners worship the temporary things of this world – the things that God who owns everything lets us have for a little bit while we live here on earth.  We are stewards of what we have.  But God owns it all. 

The steward in Jesus’ parable was an idolater.  His god was money; his god was the comfort and ease of life that money could buy.  His master, of course, was the one to whom all his money belonged.  But he did not love or honor or respect his master.  He loved his master’s money.  His misdirected devotion eventually incited the displeasure of his master and so his master informed him that he would be fired from his position. Such separation from what he loved troubled the steward very much because without his position as steward, he would not have money.  And because money was his god, he was determined to find a way to hold onto that which he feared, loved, and trusted the most.  So he devised a plan to make sure that his god and lord, that is, his money, would continue to provide for him the life he loved so much.  He showed generosity with what was not his in order that he might gain friends who would return to him that which he worshiped. 

Now, of course, this guy eventually lost, because eventually in death God would take away all the stuff he had.  His mammon would fail.  And the god he chose would leave him helpless in death.  But, although his god was false and useless, and his devotion misplaced, Jesus still used this idolatrous thief as an example for us Christians to follow.   It was not his greed that Jesus commends.  It was his shrewdness.  Jesus makes the point clear that those who worship mammon sure are devoted to serving their god.  We have to grant them that.  Sure they fail in the long run; but their persistence in the meantime is unmatched.  Jesus remarks that the world's devotion to money and power, and its determination to acquire all sorts of temporal riches exceeds even the devotion that Christians have for their God.  As Jesus says it, “The sons of this world are more shrewd in their generation than the sons of light.” 

The point of Jesus’ parable is simpler than it might seem.  If those to whom this world does not belong are clever in their use of material wealth, should not Christians to whom this world does belong be just as clever?  If sinners expend great energy and ingenuity in sinning, and in rendering service to mammon, should not Christians spend as much energy and ingenuity in doing what is right, by subjecting mammon to its proper place?

We are to make mammon useful.  Jesus tells us to do what this unfaithful steward did – to make friends for ourselves by means of unrighteous mammon.  But aren’t these the very fleeting things that fade like the flowers and sift through our hands like sand?  Well, yes.  But Jesus knows they will fail.  All our money and our health, our youth and strength, our time – it’ll all be gone.  Jesus says as much.  And we know it too.  But if these things are useless in the eternal long run, they are still useful to your Christian brothers today.  Make friends for yourself with these things, Jesus says. Use what God gives to you to confess him who gave it. St. Paul admonishes us, “Let us not grow weary when doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.  Therefore, as we have opportunity, let us do good to all, especially to those who are of the household of faith.” 

The things that we need, the things that your brothers and sisters need, the things that are needed to support the physical wellbeing of those men who preach the gospel to you and to others are the very things that our sinful hearts are inclined to idolize.  The things that God is willing to give, the things that the idolatrous steward schemed to retain, these things claim the affection even of those who have known God.   Even we who know better still strive to get more of and hold onto what we know is passing. 

Perhaps it would be best if God were to just take it all way.  Remove all idols from the thrones of our hearts.  Leave us destitute and trusting in Christ alone!  Perhaps then, we will learn to be devoted to God who lives forever and not to our stuff that fails.  And so maybe we should renounce all we have and live a life of poverty.  But this won’t work.  Brothers and sisters, it isn’t your poverty that makes you a Christian.  It is God’s immeasurable wealth.  And so even when we are surrounded by blessings that our hearts craft into idols, we look to God who puts them all in their proper place.  And he teaches how to do that. 

God is generous toward us for a reason.  He knows why he makes us rich.  He doesn’t give us money, and opportunity, and success in order to squeeze something out of us.  No, no more than he gives it to us for us to serve ourselves.  It all belongs to him anyway.  But he gives you good things, and then he teaches you how it is that he is good.  He points you to Him who abstained from what was rightfully his for you.  He points you to him who loved his Father in heaven above all things; and bound to this love that he had toward God is the eternal love that God has toward you.  Through the preaching of the Gospel of Christ, we learn why it is that God blesses us with anything, and so we learn why he blesses us with everything.  Because the love of God is found flowing from the veins of the Son of God become Man — He who suffered in your place as the idolater, as the coveter, as the stingy one, as the greedy one, as the self-righteous one (to whom this list seems not to apply).  But He who knew no sin in reality became in reality the sole object of God’s disappointment, anger, and punishment for you.  And by his obedience Christ our Lord possesses a righteousness that far outshines everything else that in his resurrection and ascension was placed under his feet.  That is everything in the world – it is his, and more surely than the fact that God has given you stuff – and he has – he gives to you by faith the righteous life of Christ that lasts forever in heaven.  What belongs to him is yours.  This is the basis of our hope. 

This means that when we give, when we support the preaching of the Gospel with our offerings, we are not losing anything.  We are simply placing all the treasures of heaven and earth in their proper place.  And what an opportunity to do this.  This is why God gives us so much.  He does not need what we have.  But we love what he gives; that is we love the forgiveness of sins.  And so we confess this love with all that we have and are.  

When we do this we subject all the things of this world, all wealth and pleasure, and all false gods of unrighteous mammon to the one God who is worthy to be worshipped and praised.  Unlike mammon, this God will never fail.  What God gives cannot be spent.  What God promises cannot be taken away.  And what God has prepared for us is better than what any idol will offer.  All those who put their trust in Christ alone our Lord, our Brother, our Friend, God will welcome into an everlasting home. 

In Jesus’ name, Amen.