September 21, 2025, Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
“What Is Money For?”
Psalm 113; Amos 8:4-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-10; Luke 16:1-15
Divine Service IV with Holy Communion
Hymns: #852 “O God of Mercy, God of Might”; #857 “Lord, Help Us Walk the Servant Way”; #783 “Take My Life and Let It Be”
Dear Friends in Christ,
Grace, mercy, and peace to you, from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
I hate talking about money, especially in Church. Money and finances is a very personal thing, a touchy subject. And it seems like every time I’ve talked about money in a sermon, or done a stewardship Sunday, some guy will be there who hasn’t been to Church for years; and afterward he’ll say, “I told you so – all they want is my money!”
The thing is, though, the Bible talks about money more than any other subject, because it is so near and dear to our hearts and touches us where we live. And Jesus certainly didn’t shy away from talking about money either - the parable He tells in our Gospel today being a primary example. Money, we have to remember, is only a tool – a tool that can be used for good things or bad. Money is a tool just like a shovel or a hammer. It can be used to build up or used to tear down. Money is neither good nor evil; it’s just a tool God has given us, that we can either use or misuse. The Bible never says, “Money is the root of all evil.” What it says is, “The love of money is a root of all kinds of evil.”
The other thing to keep in mind, as we tackle this “money parable” this morning, is that when Jesus says, “You can’t serve both God and money,” the much better translation there is “mammon” - “You can’t serve both God and mammon.” Mammon is much more than dollar bills and coinage and bank accounts; it’s our worldly goods, our possessions, all of it – all the blessings God has provided to us. Back to the good old First Commandment: “You shall have no other gods before Me.” What Jesus is warning us about in this parable is putting anything we have in this world ahead of our love for God. It’s not our pockets or purses or wallets He’s after – it’s our loyalty and our attitudes and our hearts. Is there anything you have that you’d hesitate to hand over, if God showed up today and said, “Give it to Me?”
The picture on the front of your bulletin, that penny, shows us exactly what we’re up against. The penny (although they’re not going to make those anymore) is the “coin of the realm.” It’s considered legal tender; it’s what we use to buy the things we want and the things we need. And yet, there on the face of the coin, is written, “In God We Trust.” So who do we trust more, God or the coin? Do we trust God enough to let go of the coin, or do we pinch Mr. Lincoln as hard as we can, until old Abe’s eyeballs pop?
Jesus’ parable – the Parable of the Shrewd Manager we call it – is a parable about sin and fallen human nature, and about the state of the world we live in. Everyone in Jesus’ parable is a scoundrel – the rich master, that sneak of a manager, and even all the people who agreed to make a side deal with him. They’re all in the wrong. Everyone in the story is in on the grift, and you and I know well enough that people haven’t changed a bit and things are no different in the world today. “An honest man who can find?” And yet we who know Christ are called to be different and not to play that game.
So here’s what our Lord says: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'” The manager is a steward. A steward is someone who’s been put in charge of looking after his master’s house and safeguarding his money and possessions. (As you and I are stewards of what God has given us). This steward had evidently been caught with his hand in the cookie jar and broken his master’s trust. He was embezzling, in other words, a common enough story. It was happening back then, and it still happens today, whether it’s skimming from a multi-million dollar corporation, or a treasurer stealing from a church, or someone stealing from a Little League pizza fund. It’s always a temptation if you’re handling someone else’s money. And of course, if you’re caught, you’re liable to be fired, and prosecuted, and maybe even thrown in jail.
So the manager, the steward, said to himself, “I’m about to get fired; what am I going to do now? I’m not strong enough to get a real job, and I have my pride, after all, so I refuse to beg. What I need is another scheme… I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, I’ll still be well off…” So the steward, knowing the jig was up, called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' 'Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied. The manager told him (wink, wink), “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.' Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?' 'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he answered. He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.'
He cooked the books! We’ve already seen that the steward was a dishonest man – but what about those men who took him up on his offer? None of them said, “No, I can’t sign that; that would be fraud; it wouldn’t be honest or decent or right.” They were happy enough to put the money in their own pockets, and had no qualms about it at all. (The story doesn’t say so, but I’d be willing to bet the master had words for them later). Would you take a little money under the table, a shady little tax break, a little bribe to look the other way, if you thought you could get away with it? I saw a poll where people were asked about this question; and let’s just say the results were disappointing; about 75% of those who answered said they would.
But what about the rich man? What about the master? He “commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” Why would he do that? Because he would have done the same thing himself! This is the way the “everybody does it” shell game is played. I heard the world of high finance described once as “get whatever you can get from whoever you can get it from.” The master was amused; angry, but amused. He could appreciate a clever scam when he saw one. Doesn’t mean he didn’t fire the man anyway; it just means he was impressed at the man’s audacity. The truth is, we live in a world where people are expected to put themselves first and look out for number one. “For,” says Jesus, “the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.”
And here we come to the great divide. Here’s where God calls us to be separate, to be distinctly different, from the world around us. We Christian believers are supposed to be “the people of the light.” The light is truth. (Remember truth?) We’re called to be honest, to be upright, to have integrity, in all our financial dealings and in every other way. All the scheming and conniving people do to get ahead, to get rich, to get over, to come out on top, is the work of the children of darkness. We’re called to have no part in lies or deceitfulness. It’s in the light, Jesus says, that shameful deeds will be exposed.
Jesus says this in John 3: “This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but men loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that his deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what he has done has been done through God.".
So what is money for? If all it does is lead us to evil, wouldn’t we all be better off poor? Again, money, and all the other ‘mammony’ things, are only tools, blessings to be rightly used. If God has blessed you with worldly wealth, He has a reason for it. Not so you can hide it or horde it or clench it in your fist, but that you can be a blessing to the world around you, an especially to the hungry and homeless and poor. Jesus says, “Use your worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Use your wealth to make friends – that is, to do good things, to be a blessing to others, to help where help is needed, and to do your best in Jesus’ name make the world a better place.
We’ve all heard about rich men who are greedy as sin, and that’s too bad; but I’ve also known a few who were genuinely generous and giving and godly and did a lot of good in the world while they were here. It’s a beautiful thing when that happens. And it’s also proportional. Even if you haven’t got a lot in the way of worldly wealth, there are still great things you can do with whatever you’ve been given. And God has promised that if you’re one of those generous souls, He’ll multiply His gifts to you so you can do even more. Money and wealth and all the mammon in the world won’t get you one step closer to heaven – but a generous, God-loving, people-loving heart certainly will. And that’s what Jesus if after here.
Jesus says, “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?” Trustworthiness again is the key. Honesty. Integrity. Being children of the light, rather than children who contribute to the darkness. Set apart, different from the world, in a “stand out like a sore thumb” sort of way.
Now, here comes the gist of Jesus’ argument, the “nail it down” part. He says, “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon." Render unto Caesar and pay him what you owe him; “the tax man cometh,” and we’ve all got bills to pay. But give God what belongs to God. And what belong to God is your love, your obedience, and your undivided loyalty. Recognize and keep in your mind that everything you have – all your money, all your goods, all your mammon – is a gift of His grace, on loan from Him, to be used to do good and give Him glory in the world. This world has lots rich men and kings in it, all claiming their own piece of ground - and they all seem to want to own a piece of us – but there’s only one King who made us and loves us and cares for our souls. So, “We must obey God rather than men.”
The Pharisees listened to what Jesus had to say, and they laughed at Him. “How naïve You are, Jesus! The world doesn’t work that way. He who has the gold gets to make the rules; everybody knows that. And who wants to be poor? Anyone who won’t play the game is just a fool.” And He said to them, “You can bend over backwards to justify yourselves and your behavior all you want to – but God knows what’s in your hearts.” The things men value most of all are all turning back to dirt; but the things most precious to God can’t be counted or measured or weighed. “Faith, hope, and love” matter most, St. Paul said, “and the greatest of these is love.”
The oldest trick in the devil’s playbook – one trick pony that he is – is to try to get us to trade our souls for things. He tempted poor Eve in the garden with what was essentially a “mammon tree.” Never mind what God says, Eve; the fruit of that tree will make you wise, it will make you a god on your own, and it will give you everything you’ve ever dreamed of. The devil tried to tempt Jesus with mammon in the wilderness. “All this I will give You, if You will bow down and worship me.” Jesus chose the will of His Father, and His love for us, over every good thing this world had to offer. He could have made Himself a king on a high throne and ruled over every kingdom in the world. – and he had every right to do that. Instead, He chose to be a King on a cross. “For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,” St. Paul says, “that though He was rich, yet for your sakes He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.”
Because the God who loves us values us above all other things.
“God wants all men to be saved and come to a knowledge of the truth,” Paul says. That truth, children of the light, is what we’re called to live for. May we who belong to Him be deliberately, delightfully different from the world around us. May we who know what true riches are tell everyone about the riches of His grace, until all of us are home again. In Jesus’ name; Amen.