Pentecost 15, Year C, Track 2
Amos 8:4-7
Psalm 113
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-13
What comes to mind when we think of examples of Christian virtues? We have examples and lists throughout the New Testament that instruct us what characteristics of Christ we should emulate in our daily lives, some of which take a life of their own in proverbial phrases like: “Patience is a virtue.” Paul lists the “fruits of the Spirit” in Galatians, and his commentary on “faith, hope, and love” in 1 Corinthians 13 is a staple of marriage ceremonies. But how often do we think of shrewdness as a virtue?
Today’s parable from Jesus is, in a word, weird. We find it in the middle of a longer discourse about how our relationships with material wealth affect our relationships with one another and with God. Specifically, this parable comes right after the Parable of the Prodigal Son, where a young man demands his inheritance early. As we know, the young man promptly goes out and squanders this money, only to return sometime later to his father, who welcomes him home with love and celebration. This celebration brings into focus the father’s priorities—not the earthly wealth that his son had squandered, but the son himself. Today’s parable also comes right before the Parable of Lazarus and the Rich Man, which will be our lectionary reading next week. In this parable, Jesus illustrates the reversal of fortune of a rich man and a poor man in the life to come. Both of these illustrate broader themes throughout Luke and the Gospels generally: redemptive grace and the inverted kingdom that Christ promises us, where the mighty are cast down and the lowly are uplifted.
Then, right in the middle of these two parables, we have another in which Jesus rather shockingly tells us to “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into eternal homes.” Jesus commends the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. In biblical terms, we often perceive shrewdness and dishonesty as related, if not synonymous. After all, Jesus also tells us in both Matthew and Mark to have a faith like that of little children.
Our reading from Amos today can help us contextualize Jesus’ words. Amos was a prophet who lived around the time of King Jeroboam II, a king who brought great wealth and military success to Israel. He is also an evil king, and in Amos, the prophet calls out Jeroboam and the religious elite of Israel for building the kingdom’s wealth from the exploitation of its people, especially the poor. Amos calls out this behavior in three specific ways in today’s passage.
First, he affects the voice of those against whom he is speaking, saying, “When will the new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale?” In Amos’ time, there was no weekend. There was no forty-hour work week. The only respite the average Israelite had from labor was the sabbath and religious festivals. These were times specially set aside for the rest and refreshment of body and soul, and for maintaining those precious relationships with community and with God. For many, however, it is only seen as a day of lost profits.
Next, Amos speaks against deceitful trade, saying, “We will make the ephah small and the shekel great.” The ephah was a standard unit of measurement for grain, while the shekel was a unit of currency. Again affecting the voice of the unrighteous, Amos indicts them for manipulating the cost of food to line their own pockets.
Finally, and perhaps most damningly, Amos expounds on the previous statement to address the most direct exploitation of people: slavery. They are “buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals.” More specifically, he is condemning the practice of debt slavery, which had grown so great and perverse that people were being sold into slavery for the cost of a pair of shoes.
In all of these specific judgments, we can see one theme: the laws God had given to Israel were being twisted, abused, and begrudged by those who only saw in them a means to enrich themselves. As the saying goes, they were living by the letter of the law, rather than the spirit of the law. And that brings us back to today’s parable, because in it, we actually see an inversion of what Amos spoke against. Consider some of the other options the manager in our parable had for dealing with his boss’ accounts. Each of the individuals he approached about a debt had every reason to believe he still spoke with the full authority of his employer. Couldn’t the manager have collected on the full debts and skimmed a little off the top for himself? But no, instead of that perhaps more obvious option, he uses his last advantage to reduce the burden of debt for each of these accounts, an outcome that arguably even benefited his former employer, whose reputation and esteem would undoubtedly increase because of the act.
A few years ago, Trinity Moravian Church in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, embarked on a campaign to raise $5000 for what they called the “Debt Jubilee Project.” Partnering with a non-profit that purchases portfolios of medical debt and sells them for a fraction of their value, their $5000 bought $1.3 million of medical debt for over 1,000 households in their area. On a joyful Sunday morning after their campaign concluded, celebrating with confetti and bells, they burned a list of account numbers representing those debts. Meanwhile, those thousand households received a letter notifying them that their debt had been anonymously purchased and canceled. This became an ongoing project for Trinity, with each year’s campaign more successful than the last. By the end of their second campaign, they learned that they had purchased literally all eligible medical debt in their county and in the surrounding counties, so they began expanding even further. By the start of 2024, they had bought and forgiven over $14.6 million in medical debt affecting over 10,000 households in North Carolina. Inspired by their actions, over a hundred congregations around the country have embarked on similar campaigns to buy and forgive medical debt.
Jesus knew that a day would come when he would have to leave his disciples to fulfill the purpose of his life on earth. He knew that he would be leaving them—and us—in a world where injustice reigns on a systemic level. Transaction permeates everywhere in our daily lives, and so too does money. Since we cannot escape it, we are called to interact with it righteously, prudently, and yes, shrewdly. We are reminded that the true measure of our faithfulness is not found in how much we accumulate, but in how generously and creatively we use what we have to bless others and embody the radical grace of Christ, lifting burdens and in the process, building a community of people whose lives have been transformed by that grace. Amen.