In Jesus’s teaching for Proper 20C, we get a vision of complexity that leads to clarity. It isn’t one or the other.
For Sunday
Proper 20C
Collect
Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever.
Amen.
Reading
From Luke 16:1-13
“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.”
Reflection
It is easy to hear Jesus’s words about faithfulness and dishonesty and know intuitively that they are true. Most of us quickly get his meaning.
Many of us, however, struggle to understand what it actually means.
Part of that is due to concrete thinking. We can hear the words too literally.
We also might struggle with how the binary works here. If having a little faith means you’re very faithful and a little dishonest means you’re a lot dishonest, then we might find that we don’t really know what we are. Are we faithful or dishonest? And when the wise among us say: “yes!” then we go even more crazy.
Jesus uses these either/or distinctions in different ways throughout the gospels. Often it is simply as a contrast. Other times, it is about simply distinction. Sometimes it is to describe right and wrong.
Differentiation
What we get this week is multiple uses of differentiation in the same teaching. And it can get easy to get lost in it.
In the parable, Jesus offers us a distinction between a rich man and his shrewd manager. Then he offers a distinction between being faithful and dishonest. Lastly, he offers a distinction between serving God and serving wealth.
Each part functions differently. And if we treat them all in the same way, literally, we have a total mess. We don’t know which end is up.
But if we recognize what the teachings at the end suggest, we will realize that the distinction within the parable is not nearly as important as the distinction of the teachings to the parable.
The parable, which seems to validate shrewdness, is recast by Jesus in the teachings that follow as being about serving wealth. That, at best, the attempt to get out from under the rule of wealth is itself half the requirement so that we might serve God.
What is remarkable about Jesus’s teaching style is that it is so unlike the American educational system, which drives us to see everything as possessing a singular, definitive answer. [Which is part of the hubris of Western orthodoxy as well.]
The truth in these teachings is complex and challenging, but ultimately, vibrant and intentional. And can offer us clarity in spite of that complexity.