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"True Riches"  September 18, 2016

9/19/2016

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Amos 8:4-7; Luke 16:1-13

        “You’re fired!”   Remember those famous words pronounced by Donald Trump in the TV show called “the Apprentice”?  Mr. Trump has since moved on to bigger and greater things.   But for the person who’s fired, the opportunities are stopped, the plug on the dream is pulled, and the rug is pulled out beneath you.
​
“You’re fired!” has anyone heard or known someone who’s been told those stinging words?  You want to fight back.  What do you mean I’m fired? 

 I gave the best years of my life to this company!  Fantasies of revenge start to creep in.  Emptying out the supply closet.  Leaving condemning comments on Facebook. Slashing the bosses’ tires.   However, most of us would rein in our impulses and behave ourselves and, in fact, try to be on our best behavior for one thing only: a good reference.

Today’s gospel lesson is one of Jesus’s most unusual parables.   People have tried to make heads and tails of it for centuries.   It appears Jesus is applauding the actions of a crooked man who cheats his employer.  How can this be?

The story is clear.  A rich man, with lot of properties, has an incompetent manager who apparently is squandering his employer’s business.  He’s not being a good steward in other terms.  He’s mismanaging the business and losing money and resources.  
The rich man learns of this so he calls the manager in on the carpet and reads him the riot act:  he calls for an audit and by the way, he says, don’t let the door hit you on the way out. The manager sees the writing on the wall.  The boss is going to find out the extent of his subpar work and how he has been slacking on the job all this time. 
The manager faces a dilemma:   “I got a bad back so I can’t dig ditches, and I’m too proud to beg.  I need to keep these business contacts so I can be welcomed, fed and clothed, and get by.  

So the manager comes up with an ingenious plan.  One by one he goes to each of his employer’s debtors and gives them generous discounts.  He reduces their debt by 20 percent, 50 percent.  The olive oil guy, the wheat guy, the carpet guy, the grape juice guy, the fig man. All the vendors.   He earns their gratitude for the discount so know he can bank on their support in the unforeseen future.

Did the rich man get angry when he found out that his manager had not only been a poor steward but now swindled him out of all this money? 

Imagine if someone owed you a debt of $50,000 that was suddenly reduced to $25,000.  How would you feel? So this astute, rich man praises, even commends, his crafty manager for his shrewd, proactive ways, even though it was sinful.  Too bad he hadn’t been so industrious like this all along -- he might not have lost his job.

Jesus says something important here: the children of this age are shrewder in dealing with their own generation than are the children of the light. 

Does this mean that we are to become like Bernie Madoff, the great fraudster, and rip people off?  No we are to learn to understand the world we live in and see that everything works for the kingdom of God.

Jesus wants us to see ourselves as managers of God’s wealth – which includes everything – our very bodies, nature, the goods of the earth, our talents, our wealth and money. It all belongs to God.  

Will we be good, shrewd managers, or poor managers?  To use another parable of Jesus, The poor manager is like the slave who buries the talent in the ground out of fear.    The good managers are the slaves who invest their talents in the world and double their return.  

God wants us to be good managers.  To work hard to get a return on our investment.  Managers who are honest, generous, hard workers, even shrewd, clever for the kingdom, willing to invest and keep the kingdom running well.  So God wants us to get involved shrewdly in the world for the kingdom’s sake.  

So we take risks and invest in the world – not just here in our church or where it’s safe,  but out in the world—in the community – in the homeless shelters,  in how we advocate for peace and justice issues, in immigration matters. 

We reach out to those who are unchurched, and invest in them because God wants us to invest in this way.  We take risks with our resources, we don’t hoard on to them.
That person on the subway? Help him.  

That woman with the grocery cart of bottles?  Stop and help her. 

That hurting, acting out teen? Get involved.

John G. Wendel and his sisters were some of the most miserly people of all time. Although they had received a huge inheritance from their parents, they spent very little of it and did all they could to keep their wealth for themselves.

John was able to influence five of his six sisters never to marry, and they lived in the same house in New York City for 50 years.

When the last sister died in 1931, her estate was valued at more than $100 million. They were like the kind of person Jesus referred to "who lays up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God" 

These are important issues to guide us as we gather on this homecoming Sunday to kick off a new season in our church life.   Time and wealth are precious. 

We don’t want to bury our talent in the ground.  We don’t want to act selfishly like the unjust manager and swindle God’s wealth, or hoard the wealth we have been given.
We want to be the source of new life, the purveyors of hope, we want to bring forth the wealth of God’s kingdom to God’s people – especially those new to Christ, unknown to Christ, who know nothing of the church. 

So that is our choice today, as Jesus says, “to be in the world but not of the world.”   “To be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.” 

     As we celebrate homecoming and being church family, we also celebrate the completion of a Mission Review.  
 
A mission review that took over three years to finalize. This mission review reveals some of the true riches of Union church.  

A vision to Spread the Good News of Christ as Our Lord and Savior.
A vision to Worship God.  To inspire our members/ attendees to be creative and constructive participants in the message of the gospel.

In addition, there is a vision now for the new pastor who is very active in the community to ascertain its needs and opportunities for Union Church to serve those needs.  To organize volunteer programs to reach out to help with community needs.

To encourage members to participate in community activities. 
To be active in meeting with other heads of houses of worship in Bay Ridge.  

To work with leadership to create worship services/ programs to attract younger adults who are new to Bay Ridge. To work with leadership to create social activities for members/ attendees. 

In other words to be good manager  of the riches here at Union Church.
These are the true riches that all of us, as managers in the kingdom, need to sign up for.   It’s either one or the other, Jesus says. 

We can’t serve two masters. One will be loved, the other, despised.   We cannot serve God and wealth.   We must choose the world or the kingdom.  Let us choose True Riches.

In 1928 a group of the world's most successful financiers met at the Edgewater Beach Hotel in Chicago. Collectively, these tycoons controlled more wealth than there was in the U.S. Treasury, and for years newspapers and magazines had been printing their success stories and urging the youth of the nation to follow their examples.

Twenty-five years later, this is what had happened to these men:  They ended up broke, in prison or several committed suicide. All of these men had learned how to make money, but not one of them had learned how to live.

This is this message underneath it all that Jesus wants to lead us to.  

The worldly cleverness of the dishonest manager may be admired in the world, but he doesn’t cut it by kingdom standards.  Worldly wealth is not number one value. 
So God say’s:  You’re hired!   To be my servants in the world!

God says: You’re hired!  To preach the gospel of Jesus Christ – in your words and deeds.

God says:  You’re hired! So be the true riches that proclaim God’s love and the salvation of Jesus Christ in the world. Amen.

inspired by: file:///C:/Users/Gracie/Documents/The%20Parable%20of%20the%20Dishonest%20Manager%20%E2%80%93%20Pastor%20Mark%20Driscoll.html
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Hold On, September 11, 2016

9/15/2016

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Picture
(September 11, 2016 (originally preached September 16, 2001)
 
For as long as you or I shall live, September 11, 2001 will be a day forever etched in our memory. It has been called, “The worst terrorist attack on American soil, even in the modern history of the world.”

Over three thousand people have perished. Who can ever forget the horrific images of that day? Smoke, flames and ash billowing up in the sky, darkening the southern skyline of Manhattan. The twin towers collapsing like a child’s structure made of blocks, not tons of concrete and steel. Final cell phone conversations on a doomed airliner to a mother, “mom, I want you to know if I don’t make it out alive, how much I love you.” To a spouse from a smoke-filled office; “honey, I want you to know how much I love you and the kids.” We will never forget the collective nightmare we have shared.

It is seared on our minds forever. The we have endured evokes a range of responses in us – shock, numbness. We feel anger. Rage. Hatred. Fear. Anxiety. Binding all the confusion and fury together is an unremitting, chocking grief. A grief that falls heavy on our hearts like that horrible concrete soot that blankets southern Manhattan.

We seek answers, but there are none that satisfy, none that can exonerate us from the heavy burden of spiritual, emotional and mental grief and pain we carry. If we are not careful, loss can make us hard, nasty and hateful, as reflected in the taunts hurled at a Muslim woman walking in Brooklyn or in the hate messages that are being left in many Islamic and Arab-American centers around the nation.

Loss can make us even more rigid, shut down or suspicious, more convinced than ever to cling to the status quo. Loss can render us so powerless that all we have left are visions and dreams of another world. We currently have no shortage of end-time prophets identifying Asama bin Landen as the Antichrist or seeing in the events of the past week the beginning of Armageddon - the war of the last days. Sustained loss, unless addressed can devolve into violence and warfare. Armed conflict, in some form or another, we are assured by President Bush, is imminent.

This will be the first major war, we are told, of the 21st century. How do we begin to handle loss? There’s a story about a woman who lost her beloved only child and fervently prayed to God to restore her child to life. God answered her prayer, saying her child would be spared if she could find one house, just one house, where tragedy hasn’t struck. Eagerly the woman canvassed her country, up and down, back and forth. To her amazement, she found not one house where loss was not a familiar inhabitant. She returned, although she still grieved for her child, her spirit was changed. Entering into the sorrow of others began the transformation of her own sorrow.

We have lost so much in these past few days. But the loss we bear can open us to recognize that our pain is part of the pain that is shared by so many in the world on a daily basis. It is the pain of the world that God entered into in the incarnation of Jesus in human flesh. Because of this, we are reminded that all around the world, millions live in a constant sense of vigilance. We are reminded that we share with others who endure long lines, inconveniences, and shortages of basic necessities. There are those for whom the disruption of services like phone, light clean water is a fact of life. There are countless left stranded. Left without work or home. Or who come home to find love ones disappeared or murdered.

There are millions in our world who sympathize with our sufferings, as our pain awakens us to their plight. There is a saying, of a student who asks the rabbi, “why does it say in the scripture that the Law should be written on the heart?” Because the Rabbi responds, when the heart breaks, the law falls in. Not the law in the legalistic sense of the term. But the law as distilled in by the prophet Micah: “What does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God?” It is the Law that is distilled by the teachings and words of Jesus: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your mind, soul, body and strength , and you shall love your neighbor as yourself.; and in the commandment Jesus gave: Love one another as I have loved you.”

Our loss has broken our hearts, but our brokenness can be the soil in which the gospel of Jesus takes root and God’s strength becomes visible. This is happening. In the worldwide outpouring of support and care. In the firefighter who risked his life to reenter one of the towers because his buddy was trapped. In the coworkers who carried down a handicapped employee down dozens of flights of stairs rather than leave him stranded. In the five hour wait to donate blood. In the doctors and nurses and others who are freely volunteering their time. In the deluge of donations to assist. In the employers who are determined to keep employee on the payroll until they have other secure work or committed to provide for the families of deceased employees.
So much kindness and bravery that resulted in response to evil. In our darkest, bleakest hour, Light has triumphed and refuses to be extinguished. We can honor those people who perished by imitating their last acts. They did not speak out with self-pity. They did not speak with hate or bitterness. Instead they reached out and left messages meant to console, to encourage, to affirm love and life. We can honor them by not letting hate or revenge conquer us.

Let us affirm life. Let us remember in the difficult days ahead the poem of the World War II resistance fighter, Karl Loes. The poem was found on the walls of the hidden cellar where the Nazis murdered Loes and others dedicated to freedom:
"I believe in the sun even when it is not shining
I believe in love, even when no one’s there
I believe in God, even when God is silent
I believe through any trial there is always a way.
But sometimes in this suffering and hopeless despair My heart cries for shelter To know someone’s there But a voice rises with me
Hold on, my child I’ll give you strength. I’ll give you hope. Just stay a while."

Hold on, children, hold on. Jesus is there. And so are many others. As we weep. As we rage. As we begin the hard work to seek a response, to rebuild and restore.. Hold on for justice, not just for ourselves but for all people. Carried on the shoulders of Jesus, in his strength, a new way will be found. Amen. 

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    Moirajo is a minister, social worker, wife, mother, writer and animal lover. That's just for starters. Join the story, there's so much we can share together! 

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