The Old South Church in Boston

Have We Adequate Resources for the Current Crisis?

Sermon by James W. Crawford

Third Sunday in Lent, March 18, 2001

Luke 16:1-8

Jesus never speaks in abstractions. When he describes the qualities of discipleship he uses images listeners instantly understand. If we follow that panel of parable windows up over our East balcony, for instance, from left to right, we see Jesus illustrate his vision with: grape pickers negotiating wages; vacillating young women finally excluded from a joyous wedding reception; a man left for dead on the roadside, saved by an enemy; a boy burying his face in the garments of an all-forgiving father; and finally, a sower spreading seed, hoping it takes root in deep and fallow soil. And in that biting and ironic parable we just read, Jesus uses a cunning larcenous fraud, a thoroughly corrupt businessman.

This businessman, this manager, so the story goes, serves as trusted overseer of his employer’s estate and he betrays the trust. Whether he takes bribes, lifts cash from the till, pads his expense account, we never learn. In any case, word of his fraud reaches his employer’s ear. “I hear you’ve been fleecing me, robbing me blind,” he charges. “Clean out your desk, hand over your keys, get the Devil out of here; you’re gone.”

Well, our now divested estate manager panics. His future lies in ruins. “What can I do?” he asks himself. “I’ve got that loan on my Porsche, I owe dues to my health club, mortgage interest on my beach house; I’ve got debts to my bookie. Frankly, I’m too weak to dig; I’m too proud to beg. I must somehow make a future for myself!” Suddenly, a light bulb! He devises another sly and brazen plan. He calls one of his employer’s debtors. “And how much do you owe my boss?” he asks. The debtor replies, “A hundred jugs of olive oil.” “Take your invoice,” replies our manager. “Sit down and cut your debt to fifty.”

Then our manager calls another debtor, “And how much do you owe?” he asks. “A hundred containers of wheat.” “Take your invoice,” urges the manager, “Sit down and make it 80.”

Our manager is set. He knows who will hire him now. He secured his future. No problem.

But the manager’s scheme to bribe his way into a secure future with accessories to his crime fails to escape his boss’s antennae. So again the employer confronts our friend. “Yes!” we say. Now, this thug gets excoriated. This two-bit, double-dealing crook receives his comeuppance. It’s time the boss calls the sheriff, time the D. A. takes the case; out come the shackles and cuffs.

But what happens? The employer commends this crooked manager! He applauds him. But—and friends, here lies the point of the parable—his employer commends the manager not for his corruption, but for his resourcefulness. The estate owner extols the manager, not for dishonesty—far from it—but for his shrewdness, his prudence, his astuteness, his foresight. As his future collapses, the manager, as James Moffat puts it, exercises his “capacity to look ahead.” He meets with wit, flair and perspicuity the crisis at hand. And then, the parable finished, Jesus drives home his point: “for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

Let us look at it again. Last August, Alec Guiness, one of the premier actors of the 20^th century, died. Many here will remember him for his major parts in the Star Wars trilogy as Obi-Wan Kenobi. For others he will be remembered as Fagin in Oliver Twist, Colonel Nicholson in Bridge on the River Kwai, Holland in The Lavender Hill Mob, Professor Marcus in The Lady Killers. Terrific pictures, all of them, but I remember him best in a film entitled Kind Hearts and Coronets where he plays eight different parts. The protagonist in this film (not played by Alec Guiness) finds himself written out of the family inheritance because of their perception of his ill-chosen spouse. He badly wants a piece of the family fortune but realizes eight of his relatives stand between him and his objective. He must remove them.

Alec Guiness plays each of those relatives destined for dispatch. With cold-blooded calculation our hero sets about the task of devising a series of ingenious murders. We see a powder-wigged judge (played by Alec Guiness) who, while calling court to order, dies as the gavel explodes in his face. A crotchety dowager (played by Alec Guiness) wastes away, poor thing, from an overdose of arsenic. An innocent nephew (played by Alec Guiness) finds himself framed for her murder and guillotined. Yet another cousin (played by Alec Guiness) goes up in smoke in a cataclysmic outhouse explosion. The film moves from murder to murder and rather than being repelled by the violence and gruesomeness of it all, you find yourself rooting for this fortune-chasing scoundrel, enchanted by his homicidal ingenuity.

Now friends, I am not up here this morning to celebrate murder, and neither is the film. What does command attention is the hero’s absolute devotion to gaining that fortune, and the fact he dares lay a booby trap in a privy seat to get it. Why, we might just find ourselves tempted to commend the film’s protagonist just as Jesus commended that crooked manager: for his shrewdness. There lies deftness, quick thinking, unflustered action. We might even find ourselves saying something like, “You rogue. You impudent rascal. You crafty, cunning villain. Of all the wily cleverness. You are an incredibly artful felon. We see something in you verging almost on the spectacular.” And again, like Jesus, we might exclaim: “For the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the children of light.”

Do you see what Jesus pleads in this astounding parable of the crooked manager? He says the manager works zealously, prudently, shrewdly, unflaggingly in his business of fraud and Jesus stands jealous of the same imagination and resourcefulness for the cause of good. “Too bad,” says the New Testament, “Too bad the children of light do not work as shrewdly at doing good works and spreading the gospel and its grace and peace as the children of this age work at their chosen tasks.”

This parable, you see, begs us in our churches to put some of our worldly wisdom and zeal to work for God’s sake. It challenges us to work as hard for the building of the realm of God as Whitey Bulger’s Winter Hill Gang works at building the realm of corruption. It calls us to put the same commitment others use for selfish and deceitful ends to work for Christ-like ends.

Consider for a moment how this works. Here we find a Boston entrepreneur with whom we may all be acquainted. It takes more than taxes, a volatile stock market, job discrimination suits to put her out of business. Late winter blizzards, MBTA botchery and Southeast Expressway gridlock cannot keep her from the office. A houseful of company will get sent home without dessert if she is needed on the job. Her family occasionally takes the back seat. The competition forges her spirit; she is always thinking of something, tries everything; with her cell phone and laptop she works 365 days a year. She will not call it quits. Now, we could question such a person, perhaps, for giving short shrift to her spouse and children. But that is not the point. That kind of zeal our Lord covets for Love’s service.

Or again, I have know grown men to sit for hours in downpours, or in hailstorms in Fenway Park, grown men huddling in ponchos, covered with soaking score cards, lips blue, hands frost bitten, happily risking pneumonia all for a team, obviously cursed, even as we worship this morning, a team bedeviled by shoulder twinges, hamstring pulls, wrist socket splits, the most errors and the fewest wins in Grapefruit League baseball. . . yes, risking pneumonia for the sake of this old town team. But heaven forbid a drizzle at the worship hour on Sunday morning.

My soul! Think of the fervor invested in mastering the game of bridge, practicing to get a little white ball to land consistently in the fairway, or even getting “abs” and tummy tight. If it takes more coaching, more books, more equipment, more time, more clubs, more clothes, we will spare nothing. Some of us know exactly where to go to look up the latest standings in the current basketball March Madness, or a stock price, or a Dilbert cartoon, but would be stumped if someone were to ask us in what book of the Bible we were to find the Ten Commandments or the Beatitudes. Some of us may find it easier to “curse out” the current administration in Washington, but find ourselves inarticulate when it comes to prayer. We can remember license plate numbers, telephone numbers, social security numbers, credit card numbers, but find ourselves paralyzed if someone should ask the number of our favorite Psalm. Many of us find it easier to articulate our political stances than to articulate the Gospel. The parable urges us to use the energy and imagination we invest in making money, seeking comfort, gaining reputations, messing around with trivia into the strengthening, the deepening the broadening of a commonwealth resting on the grace and held together by the justice of God.

Let us look at this once again. This last week we have seen what some commentators define as “volatile markets.” Let me tell you of another market firestorm. I remind you of one of America’s fabulous 19^th century scoundrels, Jay Gould. One of his biographers describes him as being “a straightforward Deacon type,” but possessed of a “calculating unscrupulousness.” You would find, when you met him, a “Puritan in manner, upright in family life, but as well, an indiscriminate briber of judges and politicians, a defrauder of creditors, a brilliant indefatigable schemer.” In one of his memorable frauds, Gould sold thousands of shares of Erie Railroad stock to Cornelius Vanderbilt who, from his perch on the New York Central, tried to gain control of the Erie. Gould’s printing presses sent tens of thousands of shares of Erie stock onto the market and into Vanderbilt’s coffers. Of course, as one man observed, “those thousands of shares exploded like a mine” and another remarked, “the Erie went down like a dead heifer.” Vanderbilt, of course, caught onto the game, and called out the sheriffs to arrest Gould. Gould dashed to cross the Hudson, his detectives throttling with brass knuckles the Vanderbilt shills trying to stop him, and thus, evading capture, absconded with his profits to New Jersey, there, “to grow,” as he said, “with the West.”

But Gould was not finished. He bribed the New York State legislature to legalize his fraudulent stock. He then hired spin doctors to paint Vanderbilt as a bloated monopolist, and finally, when Gould, under public pressure for his mismanagement, resigned from the Erie, investors felt such elation, that the stock increased in value and he made millions. Carl Sandburg included Gould in his “Bandit Biographies.” Another observer saw Jay Gould as a symbolic figure of evil incarnate, “unmitigated by any discernible decency.” Gould more modestly suggested, “We have lost nothing but our honor.”

Jay Gould, you confounding reprobate! You reprehensible fraud! You nefarious, duplicitous scalawag! You consummate crook! You pulled off some of the most tantalizing Wall Street hoaxes of the 19^th century, and you were hideously magnificent. Our compliments to you on schemes assuring the ruination of your rivals and your eluding Sing-Sing. For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light.

Oh friends, you get the point. Jesus says we Christians could learn a little from the dishonest managers and Jay Goulds of this world. He calls us to discipleship as good in its way as theirs was bad.

Marian Wright Edelman, the founder and vital spirit behind the Children’s Defense Fund, it seems to me, captures the essence of this searing parable. Speaking to our friends in the Disciples of Christ she said:

We are living at an incredible moment in history. Few human beings are blessed to anticipate or experience the beginning of both a new century and a new millennium. How will we say thanks for the life, earth, nation and children of God that are entrusted to our care? What legacies, principles, values and deeds will we stand for and send to the future through our children to their children, and to a spiritually confused, vulcanized, violent world desperately hungering for moral leadership? How will progress be measured over the next thousand years, if humankind survives them? By the kill power and number of weapons of destruction we can produce and traffic at home and abroad in the name of peace and security? Or by our willingness to shrink, indeed, destroy, the prison of violence that we have constructed? Will we as Christians and Americans be remembered by how many material things we can manufacture, advertise, sell, and consume? Or by the rediscovery of more lasting non-material measures of success, a new Dow Jones for the quality and purpose of life and our families, neighborhoods, congregations and national community? Will we be remembered by how rapidly technology and corporate merge-a-mania can render human beings and human work obsolete? Or by a willingness to struggle to find a better balance between corporate profits and corporate caring for children, families and communities? Will we be remembered by how much a few at the top can get at the expense of the many in the middle and at the bottom? Or by our efforts to establish a concept of enough for all Americans and all of humankind? Will we be remembered by the glitz and style of too much for our culture or by the substance of our struggle to kindle an epic of caring, of community and justice, in a world driven too much by money, technology and weaponry? The answers lie in the values we stand for and in the actions that we take today.

To be children, not so much of this age, but rather children of light, is that possible for us, for you, for me? It demands the gifts given to the likes of that dishonest manager and Jay Gould: imagination, courage, resourcefulness, and tenacious resolve. But in our case, these gifts mean to convey the compassionate, transforming reign of Christ in today’s world.

And so we close. Somewhere one of the apologists for Jay Gould, our notorious fixer of watered stock and dubious enterprise, remarked that Gould was not more bound to be a high moralist than those “whom he baffled by his superior adroitness.” Well, friends, this morning I pray we may be bound by the high vision of Jesus Christ and the new humanity Christ promises. I pray we place at Christ’s service the likes of Jay Gould’s “adroitness,” that amid our own age we may in truth, be children of light.

Scripture Reading

Luke 16:1-8

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.