Luke 16:1-13 Why Can’t You Be More Like The Children Of This World?
Jesus also said to his disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager who was accused of wasting his possessions. The rich man called him in and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you can no longer be manager.’ The manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, since my master is taking away the management position from me? I am not strong enough to dig. I am ashamed to beg. I know what I will do, so that when I am removed from my position as manager, people will receive me into their houses.’ He called each one of his master’s debtors to him. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘Six hundred gallons of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and write three hundred.’ Then he said to another, ‘How much do you owe?’ And he said, ‘Six hundred bushels of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and write four hundred and eighty.’ The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the children of the light are. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon, so that when it runs out, they will welcome you into the eternal dwellings. The person who is faithful with very little is also faithful with much. And the person who is unrighteous with very little is also unrighteous with much. So if you have not been faithful with unrighteous mammon, who will entrust you with what is really valuable? If you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you something to be your own? No servant can serve two masters. Indeed, either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Allow me to introduce you to the god in your pocket. His name is Mammon. He has many faces; he can look like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, Hamilton or Grant. If you’re real lucky, you might meet him as Franklin, Cleveland, Madison, or even Woodrow Wilson on the $100,000 bill, although he hasn’t been in circulation for quite a while. But his real name is Mammon. What’s Mammon? Mammon was simply an Aramaic word for money, wealth, or profit. Jesus spoke Aramaic, so he was just saying “money,” although it was a rather uncommon word for money.
But when Luke wrote down what Jesus said, he translated everything into Greek, except for this one word, Mammon. He left that word alone. That would have meant about as much to his Greek readers as it does to us. “What’s Mammon?” they would have said. I think Luke did that because he understood that, to Jesus, it was a name. He was personifying wealth, as if it was alive, as if it had a name. You don’t translate names; you just tell people how to pronounce them.
So, meet Mammon. He can be a very good friend to have around, or he can be your worst enemy. He never seems to be around when you need him, and he can be really bossy. He’s not evil, but just by his very nature he has tempted people into all kinds of evil. It’s not money that’s the root of all kinds of evil, just the love of money, but those two are really hard to separate. Money and the love of money are bff’s, best friends forever; they’re practically inseparable, at least it seems that way until you find yourself without money, and the love of money still won’t leave you alone.
Jesus told us a parable today about this fellow, Mammon, that can be rather confusing. The hero of his story is the unjust steward, the bad business manager. We’ve heard other parables about no-good characters; there was the rich man who kept building bigger barns for his wealth, the rich man with Lazarus who died and found himself in hell, the servant who was forgiven a huge debt but refused to forgive a small debt owed to him, the Pharisee who prayed boastfully, “Thank God I’m not like that tax-collector!” The lesson is always the same: Don’t be that guy!
So we’re shocked and understandably confused when we get to the end of today’s parable and Jesus said, “Why can’t all you believers be more like this guy?” He tells us that unbelievers are better than believers at one thing. You could learn something from them. But what could that one thing possibly be?
We’d better start at the beginning, with the parable. There was a rich man, and there was a steward, a household manager. His job was to look after all the day-to-day concerns, the property and the business of his boss, the rich man. But he wasn’t a very good manager. Word got back to his boss that he was wasting his wealth. He wasn’t stealing. He wasn’t cheating. He was just negligent and inept and careless. As a steward, he should have managed everything that was entrusted to him as if it was his own, as if the loss or misuse of a single penny was his own personal loss. But it wasn’t his money, so he just didn’t care. And he wasted his master’s wealth.
The boss found out and told him he was soon going to be out of a job, but he wasn’t out of his job just yet. “What am I going to do? I am not strong enough to dig ditches for a living. I’m too proud to beg. I’ve been careless and unfaithful with this man’s money, so who’s going to hire me now to manage somebody else’s money?” His solution was to make some wealthy friends by telling everyone who owed his boss any debt to just change the number in their favor.
Can he do that? Actually, he probably could. In Israel, it was against the law to loan money and charge interest. But people found a loophole, a way around that. They didn’t charge interest, they just negotiated a future price of goods in the loaner’s favor. So a farmer might go to his rich neighbor in the spring and say, “I need a thousand dollars.” The neighbor would say, “I’ll give the money to you today, in exchange for 600 bushels of wheat when the harvest comes in the fall.” Since that much wheat would normally sell for much more than a thousand dollars, the rich neighbor gets a decent profit without ever mentioning interest. If the bill is now changed to 480 bushels, nothing has been stolen; he’s just not going to get as good a deal on the wheat as he thought he was getting. The interest on this loan, that he was never supposed to charge in the first place, just doesn’t materialize.
So this unjust manager isn’t stealing or cheating; he’s just renegotiating the price of the wheat and the olive oil. And the debtors are all grateful for such a generous offer. For the moment, they might even think that it’s the rich man who is being so generous, not the steward. But when he comes around looking for a job later on, they will think of him as a good guy, a friend, a fair and generous business partner, and they’ll welcome him into their homes.
That’s why it’s not so surprising that when his boss found out what he did, he didn’t call the cops; he didn’t yell and scream at him. He commended the man for being so shrewd. He might have said something like, “You know, if you had only been this clever and resourceful at looking after my interests as you were just now, looking after your own interests, you wouldn’t be out of a job; you’d deserve a raise. That was brilliant. You lost me a lot of money, and you’re still out of your job, but it was brilliant anyway.”
Then Jesus says, “Why can’t you be more like this guy?” Really? Not exactly like him, not in everything he did. Don’t be wasteful with other people’s money. Don’t put your own selfish self-interests ahead of either your responsibilities or the good of those who have been trusting and counting on you. Don’t be that guy.
But for this one brilliant moment, here was somebody who had a single-minded goal, and he was determined to use everything in his control to accomplish that goal and secure a better future. The one way that Jesus says unbelievers are better than believers is in their single-minded devotion to what is most important to them, to their god.
Meet Mammon, the god of this world–money and wealth. To us, mammon is not a god, it’s not who or what we ought to love, trust, and respect above all else; it’s just money. It’s not evil. It’s not the highest good or our greatest treasure, either. It’s just a tool we can use to accomplish our goals in life. We’re all stewards; our money and possessions don’t even belong to us. They belong to God, but he has entrusted them into our care. And we are to use them, first and foremost, to serve God’s purposes. But we can make two mistakes. Either we let mammon become our god and let money and the love of money rule our lives, or we can become like the unjust steward before he got his wake-up call, careless, wasteful, and negligent in our duties. We may avoid letting money become all-important by saying it’s not important at all.
But money is important. Everything God gives us—possessions, wealth, health and strength, time and talents are all important. They’re precious gifts from God. And we should use them as precious gifts and an entrusted responsibility. Be as single-mindedly dedicated to our Lord and God as the world is to its god, Mammon. That’s the lesson we could learn from the world, to be as dedicated to one goal, one God, one all-important future, as they are to theirs.
We may tend to split our devotions. We’ll give God his God-time in church, give him worship and praise. And we might be like the people in our reading from Hosea, thinking to ourselves, ach, when will church be over so we can go back to the other part of our lives, as sinful and self-centered as if the one part of our lives has nothing to do with the other. Or maybe we love our time in church, praising God and learning about him, but we still put him on a back burner when we go back to the “real world,” to paying bills and handling daily stresses and finding time to relax, as if the one part of our lives has nothing to do with the other.
You can’t split your devotions. You cannot serve both God and Mammon. Not only is it nearly impossible to balance two great devotions in life without tipping in favor of one or the other, but with God, there’s no such thing as a balancing act. God expects one hundred percent of our devotion. We still need and use money. We still have earthly responsibilities and earthly goals and objectives. But everything we do and everything we have is to be in service, as good stewardship, to God’s goals and objectives.
We have not always been good stewards. And it goes without saying that we deserve to be fired from our jobs in God’s kingdom. It’s not just mismanagement we’ve been doing, but sin. But we aren’t God’s employees; we’re his children. He doesn’t fire his children; he forgives them for Jesus’ sake. He sent his Son to pay off our debt in full by his own sacrifice on the cross. And one day we will be welcomed into eternal dwellings by his grace. That is our greatest treasure and our one all-important goal in life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Jesus also said to his disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager who was accused of wasting his possessions. The rich man called him in and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you can no longer be manager.’ The manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, since my master is taking away the management position from me? I am not strong enough to dig. I am ashamed to beg. I know what I will do, so that when I am removed from my position as manager, people will receive me into their houses.’ He called each one of his master’s debtors to him. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He said, ‘Six hundred gallons of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and write three hundred.’ Then he said to another, ‘How much do you owe?’ And he said, ‘Six hundred bushels of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and write four hundred and eighty.’ The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the children of the light are. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon, so that when it runs out, they will welcome you into the eternal dwellings. The person who is faithful with very little is also faithful with much. And the person who is unrighteous with very little is also unrighteous with much. So if you have not been faithful with unrighteous mammon, who will entrust you with what is really valuable? If you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you something to be your own? No servant can serve two masters. Indeed, either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Allow me to introduce you to the god in your pocket. His name is Mammon. He has many faces; he can look like George Washington or Abraham Lincoln, Hamilton or Grant. If you’re real lucky, you might meet him as Franklin, Cleveland, Madison, or even Woodrow Wilson on the $100,000 bill, although he hasn’t been in circulation for quite a while. But his real name is Mammon. What’s Mammon? Mammon was simply an Aramaic word for money, wealth, or profit. Jesus spoke Aramaic, so he was just saying “money,” although it was a rather uncommon word for money.
But when Luke wrote down what Jesus said, he translated everything into Greek, except for this one word, Mammon. He left that word alone. That would have meant about as much to his Greek readers as it does to us. “What’s Mammon?” they would have said. I think Luke did that because he understood that, to Jesus, it was a name. He was personifying wealth, as if it was alive, as if it had a name. You don’t translate names; you just tell people how to pronounce them.
So, meet Mammon. He can be a very good friend to have around, or he can be your worst enemy. He never seems to be around when you need him, and he can be really bossy. He’s not evil, but just by his very nature he has tempted people into all kinds of evil. It’s not money that’s the root of all kinds of evil, just the love of money, but those two are really hard to separate. Money and the love of money are bff’s, best friends forever; they’re practically inseparable, at least it seems that way until you find yourself without money, and the love of money still won’t leave you alone.
Jesus told us a parable today about this fellow, Mammon, that can be rather confusing. The hero of his story is the unjust steward, the bad business manager. We’ve heard other parables about no-good characters; there was the rich man who kept building bigger barns for his wealth, the rich man with Lazarus who died and found himself in hell, the servant who was forgiven a huge debt but refused to forgive a small debt owed to him, the Pharisee who prayed boastfully, “Thank God I’m not like that tax-collector!” The lesson is always the same: Don’t be that guy!
So we’re shocked and understandably confused when we get to the end of today’s parable and Jesus said, “Why can’t all you believers be more like this guy?” He tells us that unbelievers are better than believers at one thing. You could learn something from them. But what could that one thing possibly be?
We’d better start at the beginning, with the parable. There was a rich man, and there was a steward, a household manager. His job was to look after all the day-to-day concerns, the property and the business of his boss, the rich man. But he wasn’t a very good manager. Word got back to his boss that he was wasting his wealth. He wasn’t stealing. He wasn’t cheating. He was just negligent and inept and careless. As a steward, he should have managed everything that was entrusted to him as if it was his own, as if the loss or misuse of a single penny was his own personal loss. But it wasn’t his money, so he just didn’t care. And he wasted his master’s wealth.
The boss found out and told him he was soon going to be out of a job, but he wasn’t out of his job just yet. “What am I going to do? I am not strong enough to dig ditches for a living. I’m too proud to beg. I’ve been careless and unfaithful with this man’s money, so who’s going to hire me now to manage somebody else’s money?” His solution was to make some wealthy friends by telling everyone who owed his boss any debt to just change the number in their favor.
Can he do that? Actually, he probably could. In Israel, it was against the law to loan money and charge interest. But people found a loophole, a way around that. They didn’t charge interest, they just negotiated a future price of goods in the loaner’s favor. So a farmer might go to his rich neighbor in the spring and say, “I need a thousand dollars.” The neighbor would say, “I’ll give the money to you today, in exchange for 600 bushels of wheat when the harvest comes in the fall.” Since that much wheat would normally sell for much more than a thousand dollars, the rich neighbor gets a decent profit without ever mentioning interest. If the bill is now changed to 480 bushels, nothing has been stolen; he’s just not going to get as good a deal on the wheat as he thought he was getting. The interest on this loan, that he was never supposed to charge in the first place, just doesn’t materialize.
So this unjust manager isn’t stealing or cheating; he’s just renegotiating the price of the wheat and the olive oil. And the debtors are all grateful for such a generous offer. For the moment, they might even think that it’s the rich man who is being so generous, not the steward. But when he comes around looking for a job later on, they will think of him as a good guy, a friend, a fair and generous business partner, and they’ll welcome him into their homes.
That’s why it’s not so surprising that when his boss found out what he did, he didn’t call the cops; he didn’t yell and scream at him. He commended the man for being so shrewd. He might have said something like, “You know, if you had only been this clever and resourceful at looking after my interests as you were just now, looking after your own interests, you wouldn’t be out of a job; you’d deserve a raise. That was brilliant. You lost me a lot of money, and you’re still out of your job, but it was brilliant anyway.”
Then Jesus says, “Why can’t you be more like this guy?” Really? Not exactly like him, not in everything he did. Don’t be wasteful with other people’s money. Don’t put your own selfish self-interests ahead of either your responsibilities or the good of those who have been trusting and counting on you. Don’t be that guy.
But for this one brilliant moment, here was somebody who had a single-minded goal, and he was determined to use everything in his control to accomplish that goal and secure a better future. The one way that Jesus says unbelievers are better than believers is in their single-minded devotion to what is most important to them, to their god.
Meet Mammon, the god of this world–money and wealth. To us, mammon is not a god, it’s not who or what we ought to love, trust, and respect above all else; it’s just money. It’s not evil. It’s not the highest good or our greatest treasure, either. It’s just a tool we can use to accomplish our goals in life. We’re all stewards; our money and possessions don’t even belong to us. They belong to God, but he has entrusted them into our care. And we are to use them, first and foremost, to serve God’s purposes. But we can make two mistakes. Either we let mammon become our god and let money and the love of money rule our lives, or we can become like the unjust steward before he got his wake-up call, careless, wasteful, and negligent in our duties. We may avoid letting money become all-important by saying it’s not important at all.
But money is important. Everything God gives us—possessions, wealth, health and strength, time and talents are all important. They’re precious gifts from God. And we should use them as precious gifts and an entrusted responsibility. Be as single-mindedly dedicated to our Lord and God as the world is to its god, Mammon. That’s the lesson we could learn from the world, to be as dedicated to one goal, one God, one all-important future, as they are to theirs.
We may tend to split our devotions. We’ll give God his God-time in church, give him worship and praise. And we might be like the people in our reading from Hosea, thinking to ourselves, ach, when will church be over so we can go back to the other part of our lives, as sinful and self-centered as if the one part of our lives has nothing to do with the other. Or maybe we love our time in church, praising God and learning about him, but we still put him on a back burner when we go back to the “real world,” to paying bills and handling daily stresses and finding time to relax, as if the one part of our lives has nothing to do with the other.
You can’t split your devotions. You cannot serve both God and Mammon. Not only is it nearly impossible to balance two great devotions in life without tipping in favor of one or the other, but with God, there’s no such thing as a balancing act. God expects one hundred percent of our devotion. We still need and use money. We still have earthly responsibilities and earthly goals and objectives. But everything we do and everything we have is to be in service, as good stewardship, to God’s goals and objectives.
We have not always been good stewards. And it goes without saying that we deserve to be fired from our jobs in God’s kingdom. It’s not just mismanagement we’ve been doing, but sin. But we aren’t God’s employees; we’re his children. He doesn’t fire his children; he forgives them for Jesus’ sake. He sent his Son to pay off our debt in full by his own sacrifice on the cross. And one day we will be welcomed into eternal dwellings by his grace. That is our greatest treasure and our one all-important goal in life. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
