Field Guide by Robert Hass
Aztec Philosophy: Understanding a World in Motion by James Maffie
How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question by Michael Schur
When the Light of the World Was Subdued, Our Songs Came Through: A Norton Anthology of Native Nations Poetry by Joy HarjoGood, Hard Lessons
Luke 16:1-13
by the Rev. Dr. E. Scott Jones
First Central Congregational Church
18 September 2022
“This is one of the strangest and most difficult of Jesus’ parables.” So writes Brandon Scott, one of the foremost authorities on the parables. As you listened I’m sure you thought it sounded weird. Just know that the scholars and commentators feel the same.
Amy-Jill Levine, that other scholar of the parables whom I like to draw upon, reminds us that the stories Jesus tells are often supposed to be disturbing. And that we can get too lost in trying to find their “meaning.” Instead, she asks us to “allow ourselves to be open to various interpretations” because then the parables can become tools “for good, hard lessons learned with a sense of playfulness.”
With a playful attitude then, let’s try to unpack this story Jesus told. Then we’ll try to make it mean something for us today.
Brandon Scott says we run into problems with this parable when we make two interpretative mistakes at the beginning. First, we have a tendency to turn parables into allegories and in this case that means we try to make the master into God. But, clearly, that doesn’t work. Which is one reason we are uncomfortable. So, give up the notion of trying to make this allegory, trying to make it tell us something about God.
The second mistake we make is reading our own capitalist economic system into the story. That wasn’t the economic system of Jesus and his compatriots. They existed in a very different system built upon patronage. So, as Brandon Scott writes, “Capitalist assumptions obscure the social structure implied by the parable.”
What social and economic system, then, is the story operating in?
Scott first points out some facts about the characters in the story. These are men of wealth. Wealth far in excess of anything the average person listening to the story would be familiar with. The debts are also very large debts. The characters can read and write, also not widespread in the time period. These, then, are all wealthy elites and the person listening would have understood it as such. This is a story, then, about how wealthy elites treat and mistreat one another.
Now, the average listener would have been familiar with debts. Usury was forbidden by the religious economic laws of Jesus’ time, but even that society had found ways around the laws and customs.
And as a result, we know from historical sources, that many common landowners had lost their property to the wealthy because they were unable to pay their debts. Many people who had been self-sustaining farmers had fallen to become tenant farmers. Families that had once sustained themselves were now peasants. Some were even sold into slavery. The burdens of debt were massive in first century Palestine, and a wealthy elite had benefited from the system. Brandon Scott reminds us, “The request to ‘forgive us our debts’ in the Lord’s Prayer is not an idle spiritual request, but a peasant’s plea of desperation.”
The manager, then, in this story, seems to be the property manager for the truly rich guy who owns a lot and is gaining even more property because of these exorbitant debts. The master might even be an absentee landlord, and the manager the one doing the real work of overseeing the properties and accounts.
But he isn’t an employee as we understand it in our current system. The master would be his patron, and he would be a client. Any power, authority, or wealth the manager has is because he is in the service of the master. If the master dismisses him, the manager can’t simply go get another managerial job elsewhere, he has lost his patron. And as the manager tells us in the story, if he loses his status, he fears he’ll be reduced to begging or digging in the mines.
Patronage systems work by doing the bidding of those above you in the hierarchy. You don’t have much freedom or agency unless you are on the top of the social pyramid.
So, what is it that the manager does when he loses his position? He goes to the various folks who owe the master money, who haven’t yet heard that he’s been fired, and he reduces their debts to the master. This is a way of getting back at the master, for the master will now lose his profits, and it is a way of currying favor with other potential patrons who might support this shrewd manager who saved them money.
Where the story surprises both its original listeners and us, is that the logical outcome would be for the master to become furious when he learns of this scheme. Instead, in the story Jesus told, the master praises the manager for his shrewdness. And then Luke adds those strange comments to the end of the story.
Brandon Scott writes that this ending makes it difficult for any of us to make sense of the story and what Jesus meant. He then asks us to consider, “what if the strategy of the parable teller is to frustrate our efforts to fit it together, to make sense of it, to relieve its tension?” Amy-Jill Levine would say that any meaning of the story slips away from us, inviting us to use our imaginations and engage playfully in meaning-making ourselves. And in that process maybe learn some good, hard lessons.
From my study and reading of this parable over the years as a pastor and teacher and simply as a faithful reader of the Bible, I’ve come to a way I understand it, that I offer to you today.
Part of what’s going on here is that Jesus is making fun of the wealthy elites and the way they treat each other. But he’s doing more than that. If that alone were the goal, then he’d end the tale in the predictable fashion. Instead, Jesus surprises the listeners with his ending.
Which invites us to think about the entire social-economic system. I think his original listeners were able to walk away puzzling about how strange and weird the patronage economy of their time was. And in that puzzling, maybe begin to engage in criticism and imagination of something better. What might that something better be?
The clue is contained in the story itself. What puzzles us is a strange act of grace. Of unmerited, undeserved favor. Power, debts, greed, shrewdness—those don’t surprise us. What surprises is the strange, maybe even foolish, act of grace that ends the story.
Maybe Jesus’ listeners then began to ponder—what would a social and economic system built around grace look like?
One reason I think this is the direction we can head in listening to Jesus’ story, is that so many of the other stories he told seem to point in the same direction. Many of the parables he tells about rich men, property managers, debts, money, income, etc. have really surprising outcomes. But grace, as opposed to merit, desert, or what one has earned, seems to be a common theme.
What then are we supposed to do with this story today then? Clearly we don’t operate in a patronage socio-economic system. We aren’t, generally, peasants losing our land to greedy landlords.
There’s an old adage that a sermon is best when it models the form of the story you are preaching. Earlier this week I realized that the best way to approach this text, then, would be to craft my own parable that exposes absurdities in our own socio-economic system and invites us to imagine alternatives. But I don’t think I’m that gifted of a story-teller. Especially to write something so clever in just a few days. After all, I’m not Jesus.
But I do think that Jesus’ story can invite us to use our imaginations to think about how absurd our socio-economic system is. Maybe reading about the disputes between Elon Musk and Twitter are a good example—elites treating each other poorly. I invite you to think of your own examples.
Because even if our economic system is an improvement upon the patronage and debt system of first century Palestine, I think we can all agree that our current system is clearly not an expression of the kingdom of God.
There remains too much inequality, too much injustice, too much greed and exploitation. It could be fairer, with more grace and generosity and kindness.
This summer on my sabbatical I read a number of books on climate change. Not about how the climate is changing, as that has become obvious, but more about what we can and should still do if we are to live resiliently and faithfully in this time of world history.
In one of those books, by the British theologian Timothy Gorringe titled The World Made Otherwise: Sustaining Humanity in a Threatened World, he has a chapter entitled “Economics as if the Planet Mattered.” Because, of course, it does. The planet does matter. But our current system isn’t very good at taking that to account.
He wants to return to the most basic sense of the word “economy,” which in its Greek origin means “household management.” What do we need to do to properly manage our household? What all is included in the household? Does our circle of concern expand to all creation?
Gorringe invites us to consider the question “What is it that people need in order to live well?” That seems like a key consideration for us as we try to live in this time as faithful followers of Jesus.
Now, Jesus didn’t tell his story and then lay out a set of economic policies to be implemented. And I’m not either today.
Instead, I believe Jesus wanted his faithful followers to start asking themselves such questions. To begin criticizing what was wrong about the system they lived in. To playfully imagine alternatives. And then to start trying them out. Make those changes in their own lives that they could make in order to further the values of a better, more gracious, more generous world.
And I think that’s what Jesus wants for us, his faithful disciples today. To imagine a better world. And to do what we can in our daily activities to make a better world—kinder, more loving, more gracious. A world where everyone and everything can live well. Those are the good, hard lessons I believe we can take from this very strange story that Jesus told.
I've begun reading Jeremy Bentham's An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and Legislation for the first time. What an opening paragraph!
A few chapters in, my pre-existing opinions of Bentham are being affirmed.
The theory has deep flaws because of a naïve understanding of human psychology and a complete obtuseness to some topics (he actually writes that no society ever created a plan to oppress and plunder). But . . .
What he was trying to do in his time was so liberative and so ahead of its time. When teaching him I often write on the board a list of views he held and how they'd locate him on the progressive left in 21st century America, much less 18th century Britain.
His basic intention was spot on--let's clear away all the clutter and free people up to live happy lives. Can we all leaves such a legacy?
One more thing. As far as a principle of legislation, as opposed to an ethical theory, it's difficult to argue for any better approach than the greatest good for the greatest number for the longest period of time.
The New Negro: The Life of Alain Locke by Jeffrey C. Stewart
Words for a Dying World: Stories of Grief and Courage from the Global Church by Hannah MalcolmThe Atlantic this week published a very scary article about what a second Trump term could look like.
This morning I returned to the office after my summer sabbatical. Yesterday I attended church services and our annual Homecoming Picnic--it was a beautiful, wonderful day and Katie's excellent sermon on the topic of coming home really spoke to me.
So, let me review the summer a little.
I read a bunch of books on dealing with our current global crises, particularly climate change. My goal was to make sure that as a congregation we are doing what we need to as we live with the effects of a changing climate, that we are being faithful and resilient and effective. I am almost finished with the last of those books, Hannah Malcolm's Words for a Dying World.
If I had finished all of those, I had other things to read, but never got to them. I'm still not close to finishing the philosophy book I've been reading all summer--Jeffrey Stewart's 878 page Pulitzer Prize winning biography of philosopher Alain Locke, The New Negro. Because it's so long I saved it for this sabbatical summer, but even after three months I'm only on page 581.
One thing I learned with the last sabbatical is that even with all that extra time you don't get everything accomplished you thought you might. I did take that into account this time when planning. And I think I did get less reading accomplished than six years ago because then I had a one-year-old I was home caring for much of the time, and I also didn't travel as much as this summer.
I got most of my home projects accomplished. The last one on the summer list is in process right now, so I think it will finish up within the next few weeks. Feel really good about where I am with those.
My main goal with this sabbatical was simply to take a break, after two years of pandemic, social turmoil, and divorce. Ironically, one of the first things I read this morning was a New York Times article on pastor burnout which claimed “Your pastor needs a long break, probably longer than they think.”
That goal was achieved. I had a wonderful summer, full of rest, relaxation, fun, adventure, renewal. I'm so thankful I got to have it. And it also felt like a foretaste of retirement.
The only feature which I really missed this summer was that with all my freedom and flexible schedule for three months, there was no romantic interest to spend time with. The sabbatical fell during a dry spell in that regard. But that lack didn't rob my summer of joy. And I'm probably now in even better shape for any potential relationship than I was before, after spending that time on self-care.
As I've written in previous posts, I had three revelations that turned into resolutions during the course of the sabbatical. First, was how much I find joy and comfort in my home (which was not always the case over the last three years), and so I'm going to prioritize more time and energy in making it more beautiful, comfortable, and enjoyable.
Second, is that I really want to get back to a regular writing practice. That feeds me, and I have so many ideas in various stages of work. I didn't get too much writing accomplished this summer, but just enough. So I need to figure out what routine is going to work for me now and make it a habit.
Third, is that I've always wanted to do more outdoor activities and have been frustrated many times over the years that this has often fallen to the wayside. When I re-entered the dating world last year, I thought I'd look for some outdoorsy guy who could help me prioritize these activities. But after our successful trip to Yellowstone I realized how much I want to do these things, that I can do them myself and can figure out the things I don't currently know how to do well, and that I don't need to wait for someone else. So I'm going to prioritize these activities as well--my recent purchase of a paddle board was one step in living into this resolution.
So, thanks for a splendid summer. Onto a fabulous fall.
On our final day in the Boundary Waters Robyn said that she had expected to feel deprived of something at some point in the trip--hungry, cold, lacking something essential, etc. But, she said, it hadn't happened. She didn't feel as if she lacked or was deprived of anything.
I honestly felt that we never needed something we didn't have, that the trip had gone incident free (despite the rain and thunder and her journey down the rapids), and that it had only added things to us rather than deprived us of anything.
And with that calmness and sense of satisfaction, we packed up our campsite Monday morning, but also made sure to take the time to sit and drink a couple of cups of coffee and take in the view one final time.
Then we set out for the return journey, the eleven miles of canoeing we'd done a few days before.
And what a glorious day it was. Clear blue skies, temps in the sixties and seventies, calm water, and no people. It was the longest time before we ran into other people. And only in the last hour or so of our rowing did we encounter a lot--that days allotment of new folks canoeing into the wilderness. In other words, the day was heavenly.
We didn't talk much, but took it all in.
By the second portage the heat was approaching eighty and the sun was starting to beat down and I finally began to feel the energy draining, but we then only had a little ways to go.
We arrived back at the boat ramp at Fall Lake and began the process of loading the car. After a quick and easy experience dropping everything at the outfitters, we headed to the liquor store for some beer to drink while we were taking turns showering at the motel. Long, luxuriant showers.
Then some downtown shopping, dinner, more beer, some TV, and comfortable beds.
Tuesday morning we grabbed coffee and breakfast at a great little shop that also was an art gallery ( I bought two pieces of pottery and a watercolor painting). I loved the vibe and would clearly hang out there if I lived closer.
Then we drove through the beautiful Superior National Forest to Duluth and the shores of Lake Superior (Robyn's first time to see Gitchee Gumee). We also briefly stopped at Jay Cooke State Park, which I had seen in someone's Facebook posts earlier in the summer. After that, we just drove the long and boring journey back home.
On the trip I read Conor Knighton's Leave Only Footprints, which ends with the line "I always want the moment of nature to last just a little bit longer."
We may have never traveled together before, but one reason we traveled excellently with each other is that we knew when to shut up. We didn't have to fill every moment with talking and noise. We had long moments of silence, particularly in our campsite. One morning I was awake first and Robyn woke later but never said anything and sat quietly behind me for a long time. We left each other alone when we saw the other one sitting on a rock, staring out into the landscape. We understood about each other that when we were quiet meant everything was good, though we talked about how sometimes when we are quiet others think something is wrong with us, when those are often the moment we are at our best, just enjoying calmly taking everything in. And that's especially true when there's water and trees and skies to just stare at.
I was also doing a lot of reading. I'd brought along Leave Only Footprints, a memoir of one man's one year journey to every national park, which I had purchased in one of the gifts shops in Wyoming in July. It was a great read in this setting, and I would often burst out with delighted giggles and laughs. Robyn said she wished she had a recording of that.
Sunday morning we awoke to heavy fog. At its worst we couldn't see the end of our cove, so we took our time again and let it burn off.
Then we decided to head back to Basswood Falls and where we'd played the day before. We saw our otter again along the way.
But when we arrived, instead of staying at the Falls, we carried our supplies along the mile portage to the river and spent the day there--relaxing on the rocks, reading, eating lunch, but also playing. When we went swimming, Robyn decided to cross again into Canada. From there we decided to walk/swim along the shore past the rapids (much gentler than the ones she had traversed accidentally the day before). I had said I wanted to try floating down them wearing our life jackets.
And so we did. And it was so easy, with no rocks at all in the main channels. Robyn said, "Let's do it again!" So we did.
That evening, back at our campsite, we began packing up so that the next morning we could more easily and quickly leave. And we both walked around taking last pictures and enjoying the view. We had enjoyed our time in this idyllic spot.
"Scripture is from first to last a vision of a world made otherwise than that based on hierarchy, domination, and the rule of money and violence," writes Timothy Gorringe based on the theology of Ton Veerkamp. This book concludes with a final chapter drawing everything together for what transitions we need in order to create a different/better world.
He asks what kind of culture any community needs in order to be resilient. I found this important, and one of the reasons I have been reading all of these books this sabbatical summer, to be sure that our congregation is aware and prepared and doing what we should for the age we are now in and what is coming.
Gorringe believes too much around the climate is doom and gloom that has the effect of people feeling that they cannot act. Instead he wants to follow the lead of some other scholars who believe that we need a vision of the future that entices people to participate. Also a wise point for any preacher and pastor.
He believes our need for resilience is at root a spiritual problem. Spirituality keeps people focused on hope and the future instead of succumbing to despair. I was reminded of our Lenten worship series that focused on spiritual practices given the reality of climate change.
He writes:
These dimensions of resilience--solidarity, compassion, an ability to cope with tragedy, a sense of purpose, and an understanding of faith, hope, and agape--seem to me to be the real heart of 'inner transition.'
Church's might have to become arks, sanctuaries for the good life. He returns to his idea of Benedictine communities in the dark ages, that he brought up in the introduction. He concludes:
If I am right then a rigorous return to the traditions, practices, and virtues that Christians have nourished for so many centuries, but which at the same time the church has compromised so abjectly in relation to the present imperium, may be, to put i no more strongly, amongst the most important things that help to make and to keep human beings human in the dark ages already upon us.
"The question turns on what it is people need in order to live well." That's how Timothy Gorringe approaches the practices of economics, if we are going to create a better world.
Of course our current economic practices are largely to blame for the depredations of the environment and the coming dark age he outlined in the introduction. And in particular, he blames neoliberal capitalism of the last half-century.
I remain a capitalist and couldn't go along with all of his criticisms, though I do agree that the neoliberal turn fifty years ago, especially away from Keynesianism and the New Deal consensus, was full of mistakes.
His basic point in these chapters of the book is that we've created our system and can chose to have a different/better one. On that I do agree.
I also agree that theology has a lot to say about economics. Gorringe quotes Wendell Berry that one way of translating what is usually "kingdom of God" would be "the Great Economy."
What we do need is an economics that prizes cooperation and is focused more on grace than growth.
His chapter on monetary reform was interesting, as I'd never read a chapter on that topic in a theology book before. Though I didn't find his arguments there persuasive. It's also a topic I know very little about.
Finally for this section, there was a chapter on agriculture and the need to replace the devastating industrial agriculture we find ourselves with now. That chapter I mostly skimmed, already being convinced of this point from decades of reading Wendell Berry.
Sitting and reading in the quiet and taking in the view was how I started my first full day in the Boundary Waters. We brewed and drank our coffee and eventually cooked our breakfast. We were in no rush. It was grand.
Late in the morning we piled into the canoe with a few supplies and rowed to upper Basswood Falls, a narrow spot on the lake where Canada almost touches America. Along the way we encountered an otter swimming in the lake. As we came near he poked up his head to look at us. He furrowed his brow and then dived down under the water. We'd see him the next day, and he would do the same thing.
That otter and a beaver we watched swim across our cove the night before, were the biggest wildlife we saw on the trip.
I was surprised we didn't see more birds, having gotten used to the massive flocks of waterfowl that live and migrate along the Missouri River. But we only saw isolated birds here and there. I fell hard for loons, which everyone seems to. Beautiful to look at and of course even more mesmerizing to listen to. They are fun to watch on the water, as they suddenly disappear under the surface with no sound and hardly a ripple, and just as surprisingly reappear sometime later.
From the falls we hiked the one mile portage--but without portaging--and it was good to stretch the legs and back. This brought us out on the river below the falls and some rapids. We hung out there for a while and chatted with a guy who was portaging the full mile on an annual canoe trip with his son and friends.
Then we walked back to our canoe and the falls for lunch and to go swimming and play in the water there. We wanted to swim to Canada, so Robyn found a spot above the brink of the falls and we swam over. There was a small metal pillar on top of the rock that marked the border. The moment we climbed ashore, however, a bald eagle flew down and landed on the first tree on the American side and watched us. We wondered if this was some service the nation provided or we were being scolded?
We decided instead of swimming back that way to cross on the rocks and walk along the shore a ways and then cross between the falls and the next set of rapids. I went first that time and easily made it past the current and to a rock I could climb up. I assured Robyn she'd be fine--she's stronger than I am and swims for exercise. Yet from the moment she jumped in the water it was clear the current was pulling her on a sharper angle than it did me, and she ended up swept down the rapids. Luckily, no scrapes or bangs and very luckily no hitting her head on any rocks. I yelled out, "Was that fun or scary?" and she replied, "It would have been more fun if I hadn't been so scared."
As we made our way back to our canoe we enjoyed finding a chipmunk snacking on the trail mix some other folks had left unsecured in theirs.
Back at our campsite that evening there were two highlights. First, we watched a mother duck and her ducklings travel through our cove. We first spotted them at distance and weren't sure what they were, but as they came more clearly into sight we could see the mother leading. The ducklings were skittering along behind, often climbing up onto the rocks, clearly playing with each other. She eventually got them to a rock and got them all on top and settled down. Then she went and sat two rocks over. We laughed at that. Eventually, when we got up from our chairs to begin cooking dinner, she seemed alarmed at our movement, and before long, had the ducklings all lined up, following her dutifully this time, as she crossed the cove and rounded the point out of sight.
The other highlight was the clear skies which afforded marvelous star gazing that night as we stayed up late, lying on the rocks. Unfortunately we did not see the aurora. I have never seen it and was hopefully, especially since on Thursday morning as I was getting ready for our trip, I heard a report on NPR that we were to expect a geomagnetic storm that weekend. In the car I informed Robyn and asked if she wanted the good or bad news about that first? The bad news was that the storm could disable GPS, which we would be using to navigate. The good news was the aurora. We never saw the aurora, nor lost our GPS signal.