• What a Swindler can teach Saints, Luke 16:1-13, Randy Quinn   (see below)
   

• Saints and Swindlers, Luke 16:1-13, Thomas  Hall  
   

• One God, One Salvation, 1 Timothy 2:1-7, by Rev. Randy L. Quinn 
   

• Stories Matter, Luke 16:1-13, 1 Timothy 2:1-7, Philip Van Dam
   

• God is Crying Out, Jeremiah 8:18-9:1, Pastor Deb in Bangor  
   

• For Whom the Bell Tolls, Luke 16:1-13 John Donne  

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What a Swindler can teach Saints
a sermon based on Luke 16
by Rev. Randy Quinn

In case you are struggling to understand this parable, let me assure you that you are not alone. Saints and sages, pastors and scholars, people in the pews and people in monasteries have struggled with this parable for generations. Some have wondered why Jesus would tell it. Others have wondered why Luke would record it. And I suppose some wonder why anyone would use it for the basis of a sermon! The rest of us are wondering what in the world does this text have to say to us. What is the point anyway?

I don’t know if I have an answer for all of your questions today, but it isn’t because I didn’t spend time trying and it isn’t because I didn’t do my homework in preparing for this sermon. In fact, I prepared for this sermon as well as or better than most of the sermons I’ve preached.

One of the ways I prepare myself for preaching is to regularly participate in Continuing Education events. One event I attended a few years ago focused on death, dying, and grief. The speaker talked about a class he’s given to church members over the years to help them prepare for death. The first things he does in that class is to have people write down what they want to have on their memorial markers, assuming that they died yesterday.

Most of us haven’t thought about that much but it usually doesn’t take too long for people to write their names, the date of birth, and their fictitious date of death. One woman, however, was still writing several minutes after everyone else was finished. It seemed to the class that she was writing a book. Finally, the instructor asked her what was taking so long. "Well," said the woman, "I’m writing down my potato salad recipe. You see, at every church potluck the women ask for my potato salad recipe and I tell them they can have it over my dead body - and that’s where they’ll find it." Most of us, however, just list their names and dates of birth and death.

The instructor then reads the poem that many of you have seen before about the ‘dash’ between those dates. He says the best way to prepare for your own death is to live your life, living in such a way that we don’t leave just a ‘dash’, but a legacy.

The "manager" in today’s text left an interesting legacy. He was accused of being wasteful (Lk 16:1). But in the end he is remembered for being resourceful (Lk 16:8). I don’t know how the manager wasted things. I don’t know if it was simply sloppy bookkeeping or extravagant personal expenses. I don’t know if he was making frivolous purchases for the office or was too generous when dealing with merchants. I’m not sure anyone really knows, though Gene Peterson in a paraphrase of our text suggests he was "taking advantage of his position by running up huge personal expenses."

Whatever the truth of the story, we can imagine a scenario in which the master would want to fire him. But the manager’s response surprises us. It isn’t what we’d expect! The manager takes the books and alters them in favor of his master’s clients. In so doing, he makes the clients happy and hopes to reap some benefit from them. But he also makes it difficult for the master to recoup the losses because no business owner would dare charge his clients more than their recorded debt.

The master should be furious! Instead, he surprises us by praising the manager. The parable doesn’t tell us what happened next. It doesn’t say that the master changes his mind and decides not to fire the man, nor does it tell us if the people who benefited from the manager’s actions actually helped him out. It ends abruptly with the suggestion that we need to learn from the manager’s shrewdness (Lk 16:8-9). [continue]