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Proper 20Year C9/22/19Fr. Bill’s preaching at St. Andrew’s today about their transition. I think that’s perfect and he’s the right person to deliver that message. But I wonder if he decided to talk about this interim period because he read today’s Gospel and didn’t want to preach about it.For millennia clergy, lay people, seminarians and commentators have been trying to figure out what in the world Jesus is talking about in this one.The one thing everyone can agree on is, as far as this passage goes, the Lord works in mysterious ways.Remember though, Jesus gave us lessons in parables to confuse us, to make us think. Jesus’ parables are meant to turn conventional wisdom upside down, leaving the listener scratching their heads, contemplating the meaning and praying for guidance.It’s easy to stumble over the nature of a God who doesn’t give us easy answers.Why doesn’t Jesus just give us the right answer and tell us straight out what he means and what we’re supposed to do with it?Why doesn’t God just give us straight forward easy answers?... because our lives aren’t supposed to be straight forward or easy. Sometimes there are no right answers. No matter what you do, or don’t do, someone is going to be hurt. We live messy lives in a messy world.Think of the times you’ve been stuck between a rock and a hard place. I’m sure we can all think of times when we’ve, at least been tempted, to compromise our integrity to get out of a messy situation, you’d do anything to get get it over with.When Jesus tells the story of the dishonest manager, it seems like He’s saying; “Make friends for yourself with wealth you’ve gotten dishonestly.” Jesus wouldn’t say that, would He?I don’t remember a beatitude that says; “Blessed are the shrewd, for they shall make eternal homes for themselves, by means of their dishonest wealth.”Let’s try to wrestle with today’s passage and try to make some sense of it.In Genesis, Jacob wrestles with God all night and in the morning God tells him; “You shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel, for you have wrestled with God and with humans.”Jacob came away wounded from the fight, but he received God’s blessing. Jacob attained his status as the head of his tribe by dishonest means and his life story is about his relationship with God despite Jacob’s self-serving motivations.The Shrewd manager sure seems to have had self serving motivations motivations like Jacob, doesn’t he? From the story we hear, it seems he stole money from the rich man. And when he knew he had been found out, he went to the rich guys debtors and reduced their debt and gave the proceeds back to the rich man, in hopes that he could buy himself some friends as his unemployment benefits. Sounds pretty shady and messy doesn’t it?And when we expect Jesus to tell us the dishonest manager gets read the riot act by the rich guy, He tells us he commends the crook for acting shrewdly. How can that be?Well there’s a lot to this story we’ll never know. Maybe the manager reduced the debt owed by forgiving the interest that’s compounded. “Pay your loan off today and it’s interest free.” Charging interest on a loan was forbidden in Deuteronomy, and the interest could have held the debtors in near perpetual indebtedness to the rich man.Or maybe the crook reduced the debt he collected by the amount he would have ordinarily kept for himself. If he did that, the rich guy would have received what he was due, the crook just didn’t profit.Or maybe the man got rich by trading slaves and the manager siphoned off money to fund justice for the slaves.The fact is we will never know all the circumstances surrounding this story. But even if you look at this parable as a crook buying friends for himself, in a total self-serving way; the good thing that happens is forgiveness. Debts are forgiven by both the dishonest manager and the rich man.The passage immediately before this one, in Luke, is the parable of the prodigal son. There again forgiveness is given where it would seem it’s not deserved. The fact is, we live in a messy world where we have to wheel and deal everyday. We try to “manage” our lives, trying to look good before the Divine and our neighbors. Perhaps today Jesus is trying to tell us, He sees right through us, he knows our motivations aren’t always pure, and He loves us anyway.Jesus knows we live messy lives, with mixed motives and emotions, sometimes we make bad choices, sometimes we don’t feel forgiveness. But He tells us not to wait for perfect motivations and complete charity in our hearts before we start forgiving, because if we did that we’d be waiting until eternity. We live in a culture that is quick to blame, every bad situation needs a villain. Today Jesus is telling us to choose forgiveness over blame.Forgive people even if you know they’re wrong, forgive everyone, forgive atrocities so big you’re afraid to think of them, forgive faults so small you’re even ashamed that they bother you. Just forgive. Jesus knows our forgiveness will never be perfect, but this world of blame and chaos, needs our forgiveness.Jesus knows we live our lives struggling with both messy, shrewd humans and with a perfect God. God blessed Jacob and changed his name for wrestling with him all night.Our tasks are to wrestle with God’s perfect word, and to spread our God given forgiveness with this messy world, no matter how impure our motivations are. God will bless us even when our forgiveness for ourselves and others is imperfect and incomplete. Any forgiveness is a step in the right direction. As bad as a situation seems, approach it with forgiveness.If you choose forgiveness, you’ve chosen to serve God.I’m going to give you a few seconds to forgive someone, maybe even yourself, no matter how imperfect or messy your forgiveness is, just begin to forgive…Amen ................
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