Sermon:Seeking the Persistent Light
Luke 16:1-13
At the Children’s Time today, I shared my delight in arbutus trees with our children and with you, beloved children of God. While I prepared the message, including an internet search for some pictures of arbutus trees, I think I began to truly recognize the tree’s quest is to pursue and secure a place in the sun. Twisting and turning, dropping old branches and stretching out new ones, matching its orientation toward the sun, the arbutus tree keeps growing when other trees would wither and fall. I was reminded of one habit I have developed while working in this church; I search for the sunlight. Having my own desk at the office is very cool, but sometimes it is literally ‘cool’ even in the summer. So when everyone has gone home after the work party on Thursdays, I get up from my desk, passing our sanctuary with its blessed quiet and beautiful darkness, like a mole finding its way above the ground – to the green couch in our CE Hall, where I happily settle myself on the cushion, holding something to read. Hmm, cozy and warm. It’s my own sort of ‘quiet’ party time, immersing myself into quietness, peacefulness, and the sunlight. The Thursday afternoon sun has already warmed and graced that small corner with its light; quite a place of grace for me -an open space for the blessing of sunlight.
Most Korean women don’t want to have their face tanned or made darker by the sunlight. Whenever I am with them, either at Transfer Beach or sitting on a bench at a playground supervising our children, the Korean friends who are sitting in the shadow call me, “Ha Na, your face can get tanned. Come over here.” Then I shout back, “I’m okay, thanks anyway!”
I personally find today’s Gospel story to be one of the hardest parables to understand; you can understand most parables intuitively, but this one really needs help from a commentary book. But when understood, the message is quite simple: utterly and completely open yourself to the radicalness of the Gospel, to the pure light of Jesus’ insight, to the dawning kingdom of God which is realized only upon the realization of economic justice. It is a radical call from Jesus to ‘shatter’ away what we possess - anything that hinders us from building right relationships with one another, anything that breaks the circle of solidarity and friendship. In the Gospel of Luke, that ‘thing’ is money.
Whenever I study the Gospel of Luke, I admire how this particular Gospel is so relevant and challenging to our own era where materialism prevails over generosity, where half of the world – over three billion people – live on less than two dollars and fifty cents a day, (and 1.3 billion people live in absolute poverty on less than a dollar-twenty-five per day.) where the First World maintains its cheap abundance by depending on the underpaid, overworked men, women and children of the Third World, where a year’s worth of funding for adequate food, water, education, health and housing for everyone in the world is equivalent to what the world spends on arms every two weeks. Every morning I get twitter messages from Stephen Harper and Barack Obama, one day almost at the same second, and the stark contrast between their almost opposite worldviews and concerns for the economy makes an impression on me; It seems that Harper’s only concern is about creating more jobs. But he does not seem to pay needed attention to whether those created jobs are temporary or stable, and whether those industries are really helping the sustainability of the community, culture and environment.
The treasures I find in today’s Gospel story are the following three words: “unjust wealth” and “squandering.” As for the “unjust wealth”, Jesus says, “I tell you; make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone they may welcome you in eternal homes.” The wealth in our world has not been always created justly. We live on ‘stolen’ land, upon the historical injustices of colonization. Our abundance has been built upon stolen wealth; unjust wealth. “How will you use this unjust wealth?” is a provocative question Jesus asks in this story.
Another interesting word is ‘squandering.’ The dishonest manager in today’s story is ‘squandering’ his master’s property. The Greek word that is translated here as squandering is diaskorpizo which describes an act of ‘broadcasting or scattering something such as seed.” The dishonest manager is scattering away his master’s property as if he scatters seeds. Either dispersing generously or carelessly, he acts as if what belongs to whom is no longer relevant. In viewing the parable of the dishonest manager in economic terms, Ched Myers describes this story as part of the Biblical vision of Sabbath Economics; “In this story the dishonest manager is congratulated in terms of keeping money moving. Money is a resource so long as it is given or spent – scattered or broadcast – especially for providing to those in need and releasing people from debt.”
Well, I love that quote; money should be kept moving. Like water flowing down from the mountains into the plains and eventually reaching the delta and on to the sea, it keeps moving, enriching, churning and changing the environment. I love the idea of squandering: forgetting my economics. Forgetting my household. Theoretically, it’s quite an intellectually thrilling idea. It reminds me of the time when I let myself be flooded by a state of selflessness listening to techno music. Then I am alerted to the realization that “An ideal is just that - ideal. How it would make me good, if I am bankrupt?”
I hope this highest, radical ideal of Jesus about the economy and our possessions does not frighten us or make us seek a philosophy that’s more positive about wealth. Rather, His high calling encourages us to think about a way to become a people of quest, searching for the sunlight, searching for what we can do to use our wealth to create possibilities for a new economic order, and set us free from our chase of power and possessions, to actually practice the belief that money should move - not just stay locked up, useless and safe. I believe that this is the best we can do in our own present and pressing circumstances as a response to today’s radical message from Jesus about the Kingdom of God. “You cannot serve both God and money.”
To live as a follower of Jesus means, I believe, living as if we receive the whole vertical rays of the Sun directly, with all of our being and self, placing ourselves in the centre of the light, without saving or withdrawing any part of ourselves from it. We don’t stop growing - we accept the radical call to openness.
Remember how it feels to sit or lie under the persistent sun at noon on a summer’s day. In that sun-inhabited realm, so close to our bodies’ own temperature, we experience an inability to differentiate ourselves from the heat that fills the air. We merge with the summer’s effervescence. Well, this is where the Gospel call us; the boiling point. The compass and extent of the sun’s effervescent light shatters away who we are and who we used to be. The radicalness of the Gospel is persistent; it remains as itself. It does not allow its demand to be reduced to any easy message we can conveniently adapt to satisfy our self-interest.
There is a deep yearning in us to be poured out into one another. There is a common call and our heart’s desire toward union with God. May we welcome the overflow of God’s abundant grace, and scatter it freely, to the end of making friends and setting people free, just as God does with the sunlight for the whole Creation of God’s world.
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