Blogging Towards Sunday

September 23

Psalm 113

& Luke 16:1-13

Taming the Shrew and

Freeing the Shrewd

I've had a crappy week. I'm sitting here nursing my bitterness with a friend's homemade beer and Brandi Carlile playing in the background. In my grumpiness I'm realizing how God's written Word is truly alive, speaking to me, challenging me, shaping me even now when I feel so lame.

I find myself irritated...by many things (not really new if you know me)...but in particular by some of the shrews in my life this week and their comments of criticizm and condemnation. So I'm shocked as I reflect on my studies today of the Lectionary Passages suggested for this coming Sunday....about Jesus commending a shrewd manager, or steward. I think all too often we act as shrews, thinking that it's not that big of a deal, choosing mistrust over trust in our relationships, as opposed to living as Jesus thought and acted...shrewdly. That doesn't mean evil, sneaky, passive-agressive or violently...but that we live, act, speak and move with purpose, intention, and strategic vision - looking to the big picture, not just what we want at a given moment or feel jealous about.

It's a crazy scripture (Luke 16) - and yet God's Spirit is speaking to me through it. Here's this manager, steward, guy, who is getting into trouble for messing around ENRON-style with the big man's money. So the rich man comes into the story all Eliot-Spitzer-like, telling the dishonest steward that judgement is coming, the accounts are due....it's pay up or he'll have to pay. Why? Doesn't say. But judgement time has come, D-Day is here. So the steward sets out to ensure that when he's fired and forced out onto the street, he'll land on his feet Kenneth Lay-style, not in the gutter. So he goes to all those that owe him money and reduces their debt (basically getting rid of the interest he's charged them on top of the principal loaned to them by the rich man in the parable). In his shrewdness he makes friends with his opportunely-timed faithfulness to ensure that he'll be welcomed into their homes in the future, the unavoidable fact of his looming unemployment without any sort of a compensation package.

He's commended for being shrewd..for thinking ahead, for using what he has been given in order to move into the future. WHAT? So maybe I'm bitter because I haven't been shrewd enough? Maybe I've been too nice, too trusting, too believing that things will work out in life, that some sort of karmic reality does actually exist in the universe. Does this scipture mean that instead of biting my lip I shouldn't be biting another? What is Jesus saying? It seems to fly in the face of everything else he's said about....loving your neighbor as yourself....picking up your cross and following after him....whoever has done this to the least of these has done it to me.

The second half of the Luke 16 scripture changes tone. It's about faithfulness and unfaithfulness, most likely a secular or popular saying. The sort of expression that you'd share in a personnel meeting after an interview. Those who succeed in little will do so with big stuff. But Jesus pushes it further, saying that you can't have 2 masters. You can't serve both money (or mamon) and God.

In the end I think the scriptures talk about idolatry, that we often mistaken the means to an end, as the end in itself. The dishonest manager was shrewd and commendable because he recongnized (maybe just in time?) that the money was just a means to an end, not the end in itself. We seem to most often get lost when we serve money and wealth instead of realizing that it's in the service of what God created, redeemed and desires for and in the world.

Maybe we struggle so often in life because we're looking at the little picture instead of the big, switching the means to the "end" for the end in itself, settling for second best when we don't have to?

God isn't the God of those that stick it to the man, swipe wealth from others and cheat themselves to power. The theological poetery of Psalm 113 reminds us that the God of the Universe is on the side of the poor, the foreigner and the barren woman - the people most excluded in ancient Israelite culture and society. It's not about who is a loser and who isn't. It's about who recognizes what the real, authentic, and God-given "end" of life is versus the means to the end.

Maybe I'm bitter tonight because I'm irritated about the means, when I should be thinking about the ends we're moving towards? My reflection opens my eyes to our sinfulness - the brokeness - the evil that is in all of us - myself included (if not foremost). We all switch the means and the ends, choose idolatry over clear vision, opt for hypocrisy over risky authenticity.

"How could this scripture not be from God?" That's my thought at the moment. For it strikes the nail on the head, calling the sin of our human condition what it is - sin, brokeness, mistrust, evil. Yet it doesn't end on that destructive note. Jesus articulates who we are and how we are in our human condition and points to another way, a different exit strategy to the quagmire of our sin and blinded idolatry.

I feel better, not because I realize everything is "ok", but because I realize I'm not alone.

E-P-I-C Ideas for Worship

*How can we sit with, lift up, and even celebrate the difficulty of scripture? Can we use this scripture, proclaiming it, without feeling the need to wrap it all up in pretty paper of resolution and reconicilation?

*How can we experience this story for ourselves? We all know shrews and shrewd managers....how can we call out the life-experience of our auditors to enable a radical participation and experiential hearing of this scripture in our Sunday gatherings?

*How could this be interpreted experientially in a time of confession and pardon? Maybe a long silence? Maybe there's no resolution...no explanation....just the experience of grace....what might that look like? Everyone speaking words of grace to each other as opposed to just coming from the pulpit? Maybe it'd be a long time of silence and reflective meditation?

*This passage from Luke 16 makes me think of the challenging teachings of Jesus. It's muchc harder to be a follower of Jesus - putting his teaching into practice, than to subscribe to a Christian worldview, like some sort of entrance pass to a club or party. How can that be lifted up? Maybe by writing those challenging teachins on the bulletin cover?, or as liturgical decoration? or on a powerpoint show going as people enter the worship space for preparation?