September 19, 2010
(Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost; Proper 20)
(From The Lectionary Page)
Baffled by Grace
by The Rev. Canon Susan Sommer
My best friend’s father taught me how to hit a baseball when I was about 10 years old. Back in those pre-Title IX dark ages, there were no girl’s softball teams in the schools, and Little League at that time was exclusively our brothers’ domain. But Sharon was a tomboy like me at that age. All our friends were. And so Sharon’s dad would periodically round a bunch of us girls up on Saturday afternoons. And over time, he taught us how to field, and how to bat.
When I envision a saint, I envision Sharon’s dad. Lord knows I tried his patience. Not only did my eye-hand coordination leave a lot to be desired, but I also didn’t come equipped with a lot of trust. He would lob an easy one over the plate, but I wouldn’t swing. “What was wrong with that one?” he’d ask. I couldn’t answer. I didn’t have the words to tell him I was simply intimidated by how few chances I had. See, I knew how the game was played. If I swung and missed three times, I’d be out. Besides, I’d watched the Detroit Tigers on TV enough to know that pitchers trick the batters. I couldn’t quite trust that he WANTED me to nail the ball. I didn’t believe that he was DYING for me to take a swing and feel the satisfaction of bat making contact with the ball.
Our Gospel for today confronts us with our own places of distrust. For what it’s worth, this parable, the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, is probably the most difficult and most baffling of all the parables we encounter. When faced with the real possibility of losing his job, this manager character cuts some shady deals with his master’s debtors. We’re all set up for the master to let this weasel have it in no uncertain terms. But look what happens instead. The master commends him for his shrewdness. And while our mouths are still hanging open, Jesus takes it over the top by saying, “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”
Like I said -- difficult and baffling. Perhaps the only way to make sense of it is to view it in the broader context. And the context is that Jesus was on his way to Jerusalem when he told this parable. His ministry had been marked with some success in the healing and teaching department, but by this time he also had managed to make enemies out of most of the religious authorities. They were the ones who accused him of false teaching, of blaspheming, of squandering the Law of Moses by eating with sinners and failing to obey the 613 laws found in the Torah, laws which the Pharisees rigorously strove to keep. To the righteous people of that time, Jesus came across as unscrupulous. Righteous people simply did not hang out with sinners. To claim to be a teacher AND to hang out with sinners was to break the rules -- to be dishonest. Period.
By contrast, Jesus played fast and loose with God’s laws because he understood God differently than the Pharisees did. And as Jerusalem loomed closer and closer, as he got closer and closer to losing his life -- of no longer being the manager -- he kept on offering forgiveness to all those who owed God big time. “How much do you owe my master? Forget it. I’ll take care of it for you. How much do YOU owe my master? Forget it, I’ll take care of it for you.”
See, the old “honest wealth” -- the Law of Moses -- wasn’t bringing the people into relationship with God. Too many people in power used the Law to bring about their own ends, trampling on those who had no power. Prophets, such as Amos whom we heard this morning, tried calling the people back to righteousness, calling them to lean into the weightier demands of the Torah, but usually to no avail. Something far more daring, more unconventional, more risky was called for on God’s part.
We call it grace. It’s God’s wealth -- God’s possession -- which God chooses to give away freely, whether we deserve it or not. In fact, grace is given to the righteous and the unrighteous in equal measure. For people who are interested in keeping score, of rigorously totaling up who is deserving of God’s regard and who is not, grace looks dishonest. Those of us who receive it didn’t earn it and for the most part don’t deserve it. The dishonest wealth Jesus stuns us with in this parable is grace! What kind of manager forgives his master’s debtors with such reckless abandon? What kind of manager dispenses grace to deadbeat debtors as though it were his own to give away?
The one we call Jesus Christ.
Long before most of us reach the Seventh Inning Stretch of our own lives, we learn that it’s risky business to put trust in those who have the power. Life has taught us the hard way to be distrustful. Certainly in baseball, any batter who puts her trust in the pitcher, who believes that the pitcher has her best interests at heart, is in for a rude awakening. And maybe that’s why we have such a hard time with this parable. We can’t quite persuade ourselves that the manager in today’s parable was doing the right thing, much less believe that rich man could possibly be pleased with his manager’s conduct. We have so woven distrust into the very fabric of our lives that when human sin is met by God’s grace, we find ourselves baffled. We’re so convinced that God is primarily interested in counting up the strikes against us that we can’t fathom a God who acts differently -- a God who gently lobs grace over the plate and who says to us, “Come on, swing! Get that bat off your shoulder! Here’s another. Yes! See how far it went? Let’s do it again.”
