“CHRISTS BODY AND BLOOD PRUDENT FOR YOU”
Saint Luke 16: 1-9
9th Sunday After Trinity: 2 August Anno Domini 2015
Father Jay Watson SSP
Parable or story it’s Jesus talking about Jesus. Right after the “heart” of Luke’s Gospel—the 15th chapter’s three stories of the lost being found by Jesus’ Grace, He continues with the story of the Merciful Lord. He is a rich man because his true riches consist of his mercy.
The seemingly “main character” of the pericope is the steward, the “house manager” for the rich Lord. This operations manager as well as book-keeper & paymaster, had full and binding “in the stead” power which was always to be exercised on the rich Lord’s behalf!
Saint Joseph, son of Jacob, was freed from the Egyptian prison house to be head steward for a Pharaoh. Joseph operated by the command of a King to be a viceroy, a vicarious under-King. The steward in the story had similar authority.
But for the Church’s benefit, this was to be the very role that Jesus would soon placing his listening audience into. For Christ was no longer talking to Pharisees and scribes, He was speaking with the “12.” Peter and James, Matthew and Thomas, would soon be Jesus’ stewards, house-managers, vicars, under-Shepherds, bishops and pastors in His fields of wheat and oil.
Not only pastors, but all disciples, all Christians are to hear and listen to Jesus’ Words.
The steward was wasting the Lord’s goods; he was squandering his master’s possessions. We’re not told specifically how. It matters not whether it was theft, embezzlement, or pathological incompetence. You know from Luther’s explanation to the 7th commandment that stealing includes failure to improve and protect your neighbor’s property and business. The steward didn’t just have an employment covenant but the very Command of the Triune God to obey!
As the steward was not using his Lord’s goods as they were meant to be used, so too, Peter and Paul, and all other pastors are admonished NOT to waste God’s possessions. And what does God possess that He wants freely utilized and most liberally applied? Mercy and forgiveness are Jesus’ wheat and oil! Any pastor or any Christian who squanders and stingily limits and restricts Christ’s absolutions is sinning.
Repent!
There will be an accounting brothers. It won’t be about what you did or how you thought you were good. The accounting will be of your faithfulness in believing in the goodness and grace and mercy of your Lord. Your Lord is The God/Man Christ Jesus!
Don’t dare brag, even to yourself, about your good works, for “[you] are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that [you] should walk in them.”[Eph. 2.10] They are simply what your new man and new woman, Baptized into Jesus does…you are faithful stewards, in your own vocations, and you do not squander His gifts to you; you embrace them, you live in them, and you copiously share them with others. Mercy begets mercy.
The steward was to assist his Lord in the rich man’s business of being a successful and prosperous land owner. The pastor is to serve Jesus in Christ’s sheepfold keeping the flock prosperous in Jesus’ gifts: forgiveness of sins, life, and salvation.
The details of Jesus’ story are not the point. Fifty measures of oil for 100 owed or 80 measures of wheat for 100 owed aren’t important. This is not commendation from Christ for stealing or more “cooking of the books.” This is Jesus telling you how important and prudent, “shrewd,” it is to believe, teach, and confess, unto eschatological preservation [unto the end] the true nature and gifts of the Lord. That is, hold fast to Christ until the end.
The steward shows forgiveness of monetary debt, a wiping away of that which was owed, to tenant farmers. They would have been overjoyed and grateful to both him and his Lord—the landowner. The rich man’s fame and reputation would have become legendary. The good will fostered would have made him even richer in the end. The steward was trusting, believing and having faith in that which he could not “see,” that his Lord would in turn be merciful unto him and neither prosecute him or imprison him. Indeed, Jesus tells us that the Lord actually commended the steward for being prudent.
This is not about the steward. Jesus is the ultimate rich man Who became poor for you. Jesus showed the Grace of mercy when He forgave you your debt. Christ wiped away not fifty per cent, or the price of twenty measures of wheat, but He satisfied all your trespasses in thought, word, and deed. And after crediting you all full and paid, P.O.D. payable on death—His death—He continues to shower His gifts of mercy upon you. Jesus gives you not oil but the water of rebirth; not oil but His Blood to drink. Jesus gives you not wheat, though He does give you daily bread, but the true Bread of Life in His Body to eat.
Jesus commends to all His pastors that we use the unrighteous mammon (the world’s wine and wheat—whether grown by pagans or injected with “GMO’s”) to not just “make friends” but to feed brothers and sisters with more mercy!
If Satan’s pagans—the sons of this world—can be shrewd enough to do what’s good for them, Jesus gives you by His Holy Ghost, the Grace to be His children, “sons of Light” and hold on to His mercy.
You will be received into “eternal tents.” You will be taken into His heavenly pasture even as you now tabernacle in His earthly tent—the New Testament Church—even as He tabernacles in you with His Supper of Remission.
The mercy of Jesus endures forever. Jesus, though omnipotent, became the man too weak to dig. But in that physical weakness that allowed for Him to be arrested, tortured, and crucified, He showed the true strength to dig you out of the pit of hell into which you had jumped. Jesus though God in the flesh, was not ashamed to veil His divinity and to become a poor suffering servant for you.
At the end of the day; at the end of your life; and the end of the age; it is all Jesus and His tender forgiveness and feeding of you. It is all Jesus’ mercy.
In the Name of The Father and of + The Son and of The Holy Ghost
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