Monday, September 16, 2013

Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost, September 22, 2013 - Luke 16:1-13

The steward is a funny guy:
Quick-thinking, smart and very spry!
He finds a way to save his skin
By bringing all the debtors in,
And makes them happy - and what's more -
This steward really knows the score,
Since gen'rous will his master seem
To all the town; and now, redeemed
From grudging Daddy Warbucks fame,
All people will extol his name!
So while I still am puzzled by
The word, "dishonest," Jesus tries,
Still now, he calls us all to dare
Believe that nothing will impair
God's wish that we be reconciled!
Much like a father and his child,
Or debtors and the man who's rich,
These prodigals can help us switch
From thinking grace we understand,
To knowing grace we can't withstand.

Scott L. Barton

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. So 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.’ Then 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. I have
decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may
welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one
by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He
answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your
bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then 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.’ And 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. And 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.

“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. If
then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will
entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with
what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No 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.”

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