The Call to Be Shrewd

Based on Luke 16:1-13
(shared with the people of Friendship Church, September 19, 2004)

This past week, Martha Stewart held a press conference. As you know, this woman who is often referred to as a “domestic diva” and heads a major company (Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia) was recently convicted of engaging in insider trading on the stock market. At her press conference, Stewart made a stunning announcement: She’s going to take her prison time now.

While reporters and lawyers scratched their heads, savvy business people smiled knowingly. According to them, Stewart’s move was a shrewd one. Her company is hemorrhaging money. Her TV show has been pulled. Her magazines are losing advertising revenue and circulation. The value of Martha Stewart stock is way down. By taking her prison time now, these business experts say, Stewart is knocking all the bad news about her out of the headlines, allowing her to get back to running the company, and maybe, pulling it out of its tailspin.

That is shrewd, when you think of it. Whether you like her or not, Stewart is acting decisively to protect the health and well-being of the empire she has worked so hard to build.

In our Bible lesson for today, Jesus says that people who dare to follow Him need to be shrewd like that. But for very different ends. In the story Jesus tells there, a wealthy man learns that his manager is wasting the wealthy man’s money. The manager is called in and told, “You’re fired. Clean out your desk and give me a complete accounting of my financial situation.” The manager has a dilemma: He isn’t strong enough for manual labor and he doesn’t want to become a beggar, the only options that really exist for him.

So, like Martha Stewart, he does something very shrewd. He calls in his boss’ debtors. One by one, he reduces the amounts of their IOUs. By doing so, he figures that one of these grateful debtors will give him a job. He’s using the boss’ money to create his own golden parachute.

The story ends up strangely. The wealthy man gets wind of the manager’s scheme. But he isn't angry, as you’d expect. Instead, he commends the guy for his shrewdness. Jesus does too. He says: “...the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light [that is, people who follow Him]. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into eternal homes.”

To tell you the truth, I have long struggled with this passage. I knew that Jesus would never recommend dishonesty to those of us who follow Him. But what exactly, I have wondered, is His point?

I think that one thing He's telling us this: Use all the blessings God has given you wisely, shrewdly, as wisely and shrewdly as a domestic diva or a dishonest manager. Don't be dishonest, but for God's sake, be smart. Jesus wants us to employ as much shrewdness toward sharing His blessings with the world as that dishonest manager did toward saving his own neck.

In another place, Jesus tells us to be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. We’re to be street-savvy and pure at the same time. We’re to use our smarts not for our own selfish gain, but to help others experience Jesus and His life-changing love.

God has invested the life, death, and resurrection of His Son Jesus in us; God wants us to make good on that investment by using His blessings to attract more people into His kingdom.

I’m sometimes amazed by how otherwise intelligent, wise, insightful people who claim to follow Jesus Christ become so helpless, naive, and stupid when presented with the chance to make good on God’s investments in us. (And I include myself in that indictment.) The way we act reminds me of that character in Gone with the Wind, the slave Prissy. Do you remember the scene in which Scarlet O’Hara is in labor and desperately needs Prissy to help her. Prissy says, “I don’t know nothin’ ‘bout birthin’ babies.” She chose to be ignorant and helpless. And so do we followers of Jesus Christ sometimes.

We can be very enterprising about getting a promotion, but we can’t seem to find the time or means of promoting the good news of Jesus with our friends.

We use creative budgeting to buy the plasma TV, but we can’t leverage a few bucks from our wallets to help with relief efforts in places like Florida or Sudan.

We spend hours watching movies or playing video games, but we can’t find the time to volunteer in a worthwhile, God-honoring cause.

Among the things we say to excuse ourselves and our inability to share Christ in our words and deeds is that we don’t have enough.

We don’t have enough money.

We don’t have enough time.

We don’t have enough contacts.

We don’t have enough expertise.

We don’t know the Bible well enough to be Jesus’ shrewd agents in the world.

We say we don't have enough to live like God's people and so we do nothing. It doesn't have to be that way.

Back in the 1970s, Pastor Jim Killen saw the images of starving people in various parts of the world on TV and his heart ached. He knew he was called to help, he says, but the problems seemed so huge. He couldn’t see what he could do.

And then he realized God wasn’t calling him to solve the whole problem of world hunger. He was only to tackle what he could do. So, Killen and his wife figured out a way to contribute what little they could to the cause. He also became involved in telling others about hunger relief efforts. He did what he could do. He wisely---Jesus would say shrewdly--- used the money and time and ability he did have to do God’s work in the world.

After telling the story of the shrewd manager in our Bible lesson today, Jesus says, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much...”

I love the words of scholar and preacher Fred Craddock:

The life of a disciple is one of faithful attention to the frequent and familiar tasks of each day, however small and insignificant they may seem...[L]ife consists of small opportunities. Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, end a war, appoint a cabinet, dine with the queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake. More likely the week will present no more than a chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote for a county commissioner, teach a Sunday School class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor’s cat.

Each of us can do our seemingly small things and make good on God’s investment in our lives. I don’t know if Andre Agassi the tennis player is a Christian or not. But I learned something about him this past week. He’s made a lot of money over the years and he wanted to do something good for the world. He heard about some kids in inner-city Las Vegas and so he gave $2-million of his own money to start a school there. He said that he knew he couldn’t help every kid in the world. But he decided to try to help some kids. He wanted to give them hope. “A kid without hope,” he said, “is a walking suicide bomb.”

You and I don’t have two-million dollars to give away. (If you do, I want to talk with you after worship about tithing!) But the same principle applies to us as applies to Andre Agassi. We need to find a niche of the world and do what we can to shine the light of Jesus’ love into it.

As you do, don’t give in to despair. Don’t worry that what you’re doing is too small. Mother Teresa was fond of saying, "Small things done with great love can change the world."

By now, you’ve probably heard the story of the starfish many times. But it bears repeating. The story’s told that some guy used to walk out on an ocean beach early in the mornings and pick up starfish that had been washed ashore, tossing them back into the water. Someone asked him what he was doing. The guy explained that if the fish weren’t thrown back in, they’d die. "But millions of starfish wash onto the shore," his questioner said. "You can’t possibly make a difference to all of them." At that, the first fellow threw another starfish into the water and said, "I can make a difference for that one."

Be shrewd. Use the life God has given to you to make a difference in whatever part of the world you can. You might even want to invite somebody to be here with us on Friend Day. You could change a life forever. You could make a friendship that lasts through eternity. That would be a great golden parachute!

[Pastor Jim Killen tells about his desire to do something about world hunger in a sermon which appeared in The Abingdon Preaching Annual 2001.]