September 21, 2025

 Good morning and welcome to one of my favorite passages from the Bible!  Luke has spent all summer firing scriptures at us one after the other about priorities that we place before God, money, family, and the rules.  Today we get another on the same theme, but this one I find a little more fun.  It has a surprise twist, a Robin Hood figure, and everyone is happy in the end.

I partly love this scripture because I was the poor one in my home congregation when I was growing up.  When the poor get their debt cancelled, I am always happy because I know that means we can have tacos, a very special meal in my house because cheese was almost always too expensive for our family.  When I was 16 my mom sent me to the store with $6 dollars to feed our family dinner.  Normally she fed our family of 6 on a dollar per person per day, she explained to me that very day, but she was going to splurge that day and $6 would cover our dinner.  I was to go to the store and buy what I needed for any dinner I wanted with that amount.  I decided I wanted tacos and I was within a dollar of what she had given me, added my own money to that from my mom and our family feasted on tacos that night.  It was a good lesson on the cost of food and the budgeting that went into feeding our family. 

We have a story here that reflects our world today, a story of income disparity.  We have a rich person, a manager who might be middle class, and the debtors.  This story is further illuminated by the stories on either side in the Gospel.  The story previous to this is the Prodigal son who is squandering his property as this manager is described as doing.  The story directly following we will read next Sunday is the rich man and Lazarus with the rich man being oblivious to the suffering of his neighbor and a rift opening up between them in the afterlife where this rich man suffers.

So we first might need to shake the idea that the rich man in this story is God.  So many times we have seen the rich person or the landowner as God, but Luke is quite critical of the rich and their priorities.  The second part of this is who the advice not to serve wealth and God is for.  We sometimes think it is for the manager, but it is good advice for the rich person as well.

The context of this story is that rich people went around and bought up the farms of the poor and then made them servants on their own land.  They charged them interest which was against God’s laws and these farmers fell further into debt as their crops did not perform as well as they hoped.  The rich exploited the poor and acquired more and more for themselves.  This is as much a form of dishonest wealth as anything the manager did, squandering the rich man’s property.  Both exploited others to enrich themselves.  The rich man was able to hire a manager to do his dirty work so he wouldn’t have to be involved, so he could keep his hands clean. 

What we have is a terrible system that takes advantage of the poor to enrich those already rich, much like we have today, with a great disparity and income inequality, to the point that some are unable to eat and pay their bills and meet their daily needs and the needs of their families.

It seems like things could go on like this perpetually, except someone gets into a pickle and that is the manager.  Those with power don’t like how he’s conducting himself with what they see as theirs, their profits, their land, their collections.  Those in power are going to take away his position from him.  He going to have to get creative because he’s about to lose everything.  How can he scrape together something that will help him get by?  He goes and cancels the debts, slashes the debts.  This is good for the tenant farmers because they aren’t underwater anymore.  They aren’t going to lose their farms and their ability to feed their families.  They aren’t going to starve.  This is good for the rich man because he really isn’t going to miss a few hundred jugs of olive oil.  How much profit can one person really use?  And it’s good because he will have the goodwill of the farmers who can be productive and fulfill some of his other needs.  What is good for the rich is good for the poor.  Good relationships are more important than money.

Do you see that we have here is a description of Jesus?  We have a world of injustice that takes from the poor and gives to the rich.  We have Jesus who came into this world a poor child with nowhere to live, only a manger his bed.  He grew up and became a Rabbi, someone who made no income but relied on the goodwill of others.  He became a kind of manager, a person who negotiated between powers.  He had the scriptures in one hand and the people needing help, both rich and poor coming to him for answers.  And he looked to the well-being of all, just like this manager.

But the way of Jesus, not following the normal rules of taking from the poor and giving to the rich was offensive to the rich and powerful who then let Jesus know he would be losing his position.  They would crucify him there in front of everyone to make an example of him, to keep everyone in their place.  But Jesus on the cross canceled the debts of us all, made us all equal in God’s family, and gave us all what is of ultimate value, new life and relationship with each other.  And everyone celebrates at the same table at the end of our story the same as this story in the scripture.

We live in a messed up world and sometimes we don’t know what we can do to make a difference.  But we are encouraged to be creative and shrewd.  We don’t worship the rules. The rules are simply how this world has been set up to benefit some more than others.  We are invited to build unexpected relationships, to challenge what has always been, to look out for other people’s needs and to build each other up, to surprise each other with grace. 

In community organizing we talk about self-interest.  What is personally affecting someone?  That’s why we asked you in Lent suppers to share around the table what was going on with you as far as housing, money, where you’ve come from, and so forth.  We want to get at what is affecting your life.  If your child or grandchild can’t afford to buy a house but also can’t afford to pay rising rents, that is in your self-interest.  You are more likely to show up to a discussion about creative solutions.  You are more likely to want to take action to put pressure on our legislators to build more affordable housing.  This manager was paying attention to self-interest.  He had his own, which was survival, but he had a good idea about other people’s self-interest.  The poor wanted to eat and live.  The rich wanted to be in relationship and connection and needed those workers to continue to work the land.  And the manager knew what they were willing to let go of to come together. 

Jesus, too, knows us well.  Knows our hopes and fears and struggles and he knows when we have too much, when we are so divided.  Jesus is willing to be our manager, to broker deals to help us let go of what we don’t need anymore so that others may live.  He is so creative that he took an instrument of death and turned it around to make it a gift of new life and unity for all people. 

Today I will use the word “debt” and “debtors” in the Lord’s Prayer.  I often do anyway.  That is a more accurate word for what the Lord’s prayer is talking about.  Trespass doesn’t really get at the meaning of owing something, like we do to first God who made everything and gave us our very lives, our families, our food, all good things.  And we owe so much to Jesus who redeemed us, came and found us as lost sheep, brings us home to the family of God, gives us forgiveness and hope.  And yet this debt is not one that we carry heavily, because Jesus paid the price, forgave us our debts, and he wants us to live and he wants us to thank him by forgiving debts of others, what they may owe us, or freeing them from hanging on to how they may have hurt us. 

This is a scripture about letting the resources of God flow and not locking them up tight for a few.  It is about the goodness of God of this earth and of relationship can give life to all, and bring us together in hope of something different from the injustice of this world.

I love this reading, because I am the poor one whose debt has been cancelled both the poverty I grew up in and the debt I owe to Jesus for giving me everything.  I hope you love this scripture too because it is about the moment when Jesus cancelled your debt and about how life consists of more than possessions.  Freedom, relationship, and new life is something to get excited about.  Let’s get out there and let the debt-relief flow so that everyone can live abundantly as God intends.