Devotions
Rev Gav
Wealth
Luke 16:1-13
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. 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.
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
Reflect
When I was a church leader in Devon in the UK, the church council planned to make a change to the interior of the church building, and one of the wealthiest congregation members approached me and said, “If you make that change I will leave the church and take my giving with me!” Wow! I won’t tell you how I replied, but spirituality is not defined by how much money one gives to the church!
Today’s Bible Reading, about wealth, is one of the most difficult parables to understand. In it, Jesus tells the story of a steward who, knowing he’s about to get fired, in the hope that they will look after him when he loses his job, gains favour with the locals by dishonestly reducing their debts. And rather than being punished, his boss commends him for his shrewdness!
The mistake we make with this parable is thinking that the boss is God. No! The boss represented the oppressive monetary power systems of the day — the corrupt holders of money and power. In a corrupt monetary system, all wealth gained through oppression is dishonest wealth, and the steward was living and working in a corrupt system, and so, he used the system against itself to bless others who were being extorted by the systemic corruption. Clever lad!
For us, the message is that as we too live under systems where there are corrupt powers and monetary authorities, we must not squander those resources but be wise and use them generously to bless others. Why? Because none of us can take money with us when we die, nothing belongs to us because it all belongs to God, all money and material resources are placed into our care by God (entrusted to us) in order to meet the needs of those around us, and one day we will have to give an account of our handling of God’s resources.
Our Western culture is skewed to individualism and materialism, and we are taught and encouraged to put our own needs and wants first, and that what we possess belongs to us and is owned for the purpose of meeting our own needs. The truth is we ‘serve’ that which we seek to possess, therefore, if we seek to possess material things because we believe they belong to us then we are serving money and not God. We should worship only the creator and not any aspect of God’s creation, or as Jesus put it, “You cannot serve God and wealth.”
Our stewardship of resources (our time, money, possessions) is an important aspect of our Spirituality, therefore we should be conscious that what we own is only borrowed from God. We should seek to meet the needs of those around us and be on the lookout for opportunities to give, oh, and don’t use your wealth to blackmail or threaten your church minister!
Pray
Holy God
May I be reminded that
my time, money, and possessions
are all on loan to me from you.
May I be both wise and generous
as I seek to bless those around me,
especially those who are poor
and need support and encouragement.
This day and forever.
and then