Turning Bad to Good

Turning Bad to Good

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, O.A., Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

September 18, 2016;  18 Pentecost, Proper 20, Year C, Track 2

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 16:1-13) 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."

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The whole economic system in Jesus' day was unjust and exploitative. During his lifetime, there was a profound transfer of land ownership in Israel. Parcels of land which generations of families had owned and farmed were lost. The Roman economic system was stacked against them. Local peasant farmers found themselves manipulated into debt and eventually forced to forfeit their property to wealthy, absentee international overlords who often retained these same peasant families to work as sharecroppers for foreign masters on what used to be their own land, and to do so for wages that were at or below subsistence level. In the Roman Empire, wealth and income became concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer elites. It was a corrupt and ruthless system.

A wealthy absentee owner would employ a local manager to oversee his business interests. A manager was under great pressure to produce big profits to enhance the owner's power and prestige in the deadly competitive world of Roman social and political politics. Here's how it worked:

A manager contracted with the local sharecroppers by creating a debt. The manager paid a certain amount of money for an agreed amount of oil or wheat due at harvest. But Jewish law forbade the charging of interest on debts. So the merchant hid the interest by including the price plus interest in a single figure. The hidden interest rate was 25% for money and 50% for goods that could spoil or be tampered with.

So imagine a sharecropper and a manager agreeing to a harvest price for 50 jugs of olive oil. The manager would then write on the books 75 jugs instead of the agreed 50, hiding the interest in the total. Everything written down would belong to the absentee landowner. The manager made his money under the table, with an unrecorded payment from the sharecropper for the privilege of making a loan at 50% interest to deliver 75 jugs of olive oil for the price of 50.

It was a rotten system, and everyone hated everyone else because it was so fundamentally exploitative. Owners squeezed their managers for high profits, managers squeezed the sharecroppers for low prices, then the managers embezzled what they could off the books, while money flowed uphill toward the elites. Suspicion abounded.

So Jesus tells a story of some debtor sharecroppers exposing a manager's fraud. The absentee owner calls for the books, a sign that he will fire the manager. Quickly the manager calls in the debtors before they know he is to be fired, and he cooks the books, reducing their debts by the amount of hidden interest which was the owner's profit. The manager is trying to make friends. It's a risky and bold move.

In the Middle East everybody shares their news with everybody else. Very soon throughout the village everyone would have been praising the manager and his master for their generosity and honor.[i]

Now the master has to decide what to do. To retract the agreement would cost him great honor and turn all of that the praise into insult. In the Roman world, honor was more valuable than money. So the master praises his shrewd manager, knowing even without the hidden interest, he's made a good profit. And everyone is happy. Here's how one scholar explains it:

The parable began with the usual social scripts: owners distrust managers; peasants hate managers; managers cheat both tenants and owners.  But by means of his outrageous actions, the manager manages to reverse all these scripts so that, at the close of the parable, peasants are praising the master, the master commends the manager, and the manager has relieved the burden on the peasants and kept his job.[ii]

Out of this miserable system of deceit and exploitation comes something that seems like a piece of the kingdom of heaven, a new community of generosity and joy.

So here's where I'd like to take this parable. I find myself strained and conflicted right now by so many people and so many systems that seem dysfunctional, unjust and exploitative, from the EpiPen scandal to the presidential race. There is so much deceit and dishonesty, greed and corruption, suspicion and manipulation, that it is very easy to become depressed or cynical. But Jesus invites us to imagine a new order that can break though scandal and outrage, even by means of a dishonest manager and dishonest wealth.

Here is one of the ways I try to maintain hope. I have come to believe that nearly everyone is trying to do the best they can. When you consider the insight, resources, and emotional nourishment available to them, people generally are doing the best they can. Even when people do things that I think are wrong, if I take into consideration that person's own experience, their level of understanding and conscious awareness; if I take into account their fears, suffering, or their state of emotional nourishment, I can usually understand something of how they came to act as they did, as bad as it seems. If I can get to that understanding, I can usually nurture some empathy for them. Even when people are doing pretty wrong-headed and destructive things, they probably are doing the best they can. I find some consolation and even some hope in that.

The other way I maintain hope is to believe that God is always bringing new life out of death. God loves, God forgives, and God creates resurrection. That's what God does. That's the story of the cross. Look for the signs of new life emerging out of our brokenness.

Here's an example. Because I have experienced God as infinite love, and because I believe every human being is created in the image and likeness of God, I have a visceral aversion to a popular but wrong-headed way of presenting the Gospel. Some Christians divide humanity into saved and unsaved, us and them, and imply that God will eternally torment anyone who doesn't believe just right. It's a world view that is almost the opposite of what we see in Jesus. But that's the way some people have understood the Gospel, and they believe that conscientiously. But they bug the fire out of me.

Some of you remember Pat Robertson, a TV evangelist. Bugged the fire out of me. And yet, in his desire that every person be literate enough to read the Bible, his ministry developed and funded an excellent literacy program that they gave away free to anyone. We used that resource in my church in Jackson, Mississippi, for a tutoring program at a nearby elementary school. And I am grateful to Pat Robertson for that.

When my friend Sam Totten has risked his life to bring food to starving people in the Nuba Mountains of Sudan, one of the most dangerous and tragic places on the globe, Sam has received transportation and support from Franklin Graham's ministry in the ground there. I rarely appreciate Franklin Graham's interpretation of the Gospel, but I applaud his relief work in Sudan.

One more preacher-evangelist who is on my "thank you" list. Our former governor Mike Huckabee, whose theology I usually can't endorse, was a champion on behalf of Arkansas children, helping start our acclaimed "ARKids First" Medicaid program, as well as our ABC pre-school education that helps thousands of at-risk children get up to speed at the most crucial time of their intellectual development.

I am a fan of Pat Robertson, Franklin Graham and Mick Huckabee despite some significant religious disagreements.

So I invite you, when your buttons get pushed, when you feel depressed or cynical because the system seems corrupt or unjust, hope and pray for God to raise up people like the dishonest manager who beat the system for good. Look for signs of new life coming out of death. Pray for understanding for all of us who do harm even while we are doing our best. Try to bring grace and light to darkness, not just more hostility and darkness. Live in the light of God's unqualified love which is bringing all things into fullness in God's kingdom. And when you are afraid, remember "perfect love casts out fear." Let your anger, frustration, depression and fear be grounded in the perfect, infinite love of God. Then look for signs of hope. 

You never know when a desperate dishonest manager will turn everything around for good.

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[i] Paul McCracken, from his weekly email "Sunday Lectionary Texts" from the Jerusalem Institute for Biblical Exploration, September 13, 2016.

[ii] William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech, Westminster John Knox, 1994, p. 257.  I edited the terms to be consistent with the rest of the sermon: "owners" for "masters" and "managers" for "stewards"

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The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate

God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and its life and mission, please contact us at

P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

More sermon texts are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org

Click the “Video Online” button to watch full services and sermons live-streamed or archived. 

Be Loved, Then Be Love

Be Loved, Then Be Love

Sermon preached by the Rev. Lowell E. Grisham, O.A., Rector

St. Paul's Episcopal Church, Fayetteville, Arkansas

September 4, 2016;  16 Pentecost, Proper 18, Year C, Track 2

Episcopal Revised Common Lectionary

(Luke 14:25-33)  Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple. For which of you, intending to build a tower, does not first sit down and estimate the cost, to see whether he has enough to complete it? Otherwise, when he has laid a foundation and is not able to finish, all who see it will begin to ridicule him, saying, `This fellow began to build and was not able to finish.' Or what king, going out to wage war against another king, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to oppose the one who comes against him with twenty thousand? If he cannot, then, while the other is still far away, he sends a delegation and asks for the terms of peace. So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions."

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People from the Middle East, like some Southerners, are prone to using exaggerations in conversation. I remember being frightened for just a moment when my grandmother gave me a swallowing bear-hug saying, "Ooo, I love you so much I could squeeze you to death." Would she? I wondered. She also loved me enough to "eat me up." Spooky…, until you know who grandma is.

Jesus uses an exaggerated colloquialism to illustrate the potential costliness of following his new way of living: You must hate your family and give up all your possessions. Spooky…, until you know God is.

In today's 10:00 class we are looking at Guidelines #15 & #16 of Thomas Keating's 42 Guidelines for Christian Life, Growth, and Transformation. Listen for a moment.

"15. God is not some remote, inaccessible, and implacable being who demands instant perfection from His creatures and of whose love we must make ourselves worthy. [God] is not a tyrant to be obeyed out of terror, nor a policeman who is ever on the watch, nor a harsh judge ever ready to apply the verdict of guilty. We should relate to [God] less and less in terms of reward and punishment and more and more on the basis of the gratuity – or the play of divine love."

And here's the key passage: "16. Divine love is compassionate, tender, luminous, totally self-giving, seeking no reward, unifying everything." [i]

With tender, boundless compassionate love, God seeks to relate to us in deep friendship. Like the friendship between the Father and the Son. God wants to draw us into that infinite bond of love. Loving friendship.

But we block that friendship. Today I want to suggest two ways we block friendship with God. Two ways we also sabotage our true identity and purpose. One is in the direction of false pride; the other is in the direction of false humility. Hubris and self-abnegation.

Hubris. Many years ago I knew a man who was one of those people who had to be smarter than everyone else. He knew what was right and let everyone else know. He could only deal with others in a condescending way. He had to be in control. So when his oldest child went through the predictable stages of adolescent rebellion, it was a deadly sin. The child was banished, and they remained alienated for life. In his office, he couldn't work with peers. Only subordinates. Oh he could be witty and jolly and fun. As long as he was in the center. His wife, God bless her, stayed with him, constantly forgiving, cleaning up his messes with her gentleness.

In terms of Jesus' teaching in today's Gospel, that man had too many possessions. His need for possession of knowledge, status, and control blocked him from his full humanity. If he would only give up all his possessions—his insistence on being in charge, being right, being on top—he could enter the full friendship of God, which is simultaneously full friendship with all humanity. But that is costly. It requires a kind of self-emptying that seemed too much for him. I think he was trying to live up to the unreasonable expectations of his earthly father instead of the tender grace of his heavenly Father. Over time, he grew lonelier and lonelier as more and more human beings failed to live up to his standards. Hubris.

Self-abnegation. My mind goes to a woman whose wheels fell off and our church tried to help her. But she was certain that it was impossible to overcome her obstacles. She knew herself as a failure. She was a sinner; she guessed she deserved her suffering, she said. It's always been this way, she said. She knew if she took two steps forward, she would fall three steps back. She felt cursed. "You are God's child," I said with as much conviction as I could utter. "Oh, no," her sad eyes said back to me in silence. "God wouldn't have anything to do with someone like me." She couldn't yearn for something more, something better, something beyond. Self-abnegation.

In terms of Jesus' teaching, she needed a change of identity, a new family. She needed to hate the voice of father and mother and sister and brother inside her head, the voice that told her she was no good. But that change was too costly. The failed her was the only "her" she knew.

I think all of us drift toward one end or another of this continuum from time to time. Between hubris and self-abnegation; between oppressive behavior and fatalistic temerity; between being inflated, full of ourselves, and empty, flat, nothing; between excessive pride and excessive humility.

As is so often true of opposite extremes, the two states are really very similar. The conditions of hubris and self-abnegation are both conditions of self-centeredness. Either thinking too much of oneself or too little of oneself.  

Let me suggest a way out of the dilemma, a way out of one's self-centeredness. And I want to borrow from one of my favorite writers, conservative columnist David Brooks of the New York Times. In Tuesday's paper, Brooks wrote of the complaints from veteran college teachers about how emotionally fragile today's students seem to be. Students are more accomplished than past generations, but more emotionally fragile, teachers are saying. So Brooks wrote about what toughness is in today's world. [ii]

"The people we admire for being resilient… are ardent. They have a fervent commitment to some cause, some ideal or some relationship. That higher yearning enables them to withstand setbacks, pain and betrayal… There are moments when they feel swallowed up by fear. They feel and live in the pain. But they work through it and their ardent yearning is still there, and they return to an altered wholeness."

So Brooks says, "If you really want people to be tough, make them idealistic for some cause, make them tender for some other person, make them committed to some world view that puts today's temporary pain in the context of a larger hope."

"People are really tough only after they have taken a leap of faith for some truth or mission or love. Once they've done that they can withstand a lot." David Brooks.

Jesus invites us into his cause, his ideals, his friendship. He invites us into an ardent commitment to a relationship of love. Divine love, which is compassionate, tender, luminous, totally self-giving, seeking no reward, unifying everything. Divine love tells your self-abnegation that your weakness, brokenness and sinfulness is known and loved and accepted infinitely, so be strong and whole, a beloved child of God. Divine love tells your hubris to pour out your self-centeredness into radical acceptance of other human beings, actively loving your neighbor as yourself.

But count the cost. This is a completely different way of being in the world. It carries no pride of place or pedigree; it offers you no possession except the free gift of grace, God's unqualified acceptance and love, offered as freely to everyone else as to you. It makes us all equal; all one. There's nothing to accomplish; nothing to fix. All is well and all manner of things shall be well, because God loves you to death.

Live within the love that knows you completely – knows your highs and your lows, your pride and your shame – and loves you infinitely, accepting you fully, just as you are, here and now.

Be filled with that love and light. Be filled with God. Be loved, beloved.

And then in the security of complete acceptance, simply love your neighbor as yourself. Be love, beloved.

That is friendship with the divine Presence. In Thomas Keating's words, "It is like coming home to a place I should never have left, to an awareness that was somehow always there, but which I did not recognize."[iii] Be loved, then be love. You can give up everything else, because you are already given everything.

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[i] Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart, Element, Rockport, MA, 1986, p. 129

[ii] David Brooks, Making Modern Toughness, New York Times Opinion, August 30, 2016

[iii] Keating, p. 137

The Mission of St. Paul's Episcopal Church is to explore and celebrate

God's infinite grace, acceptance and love.

For information about St. Paul's Episcopal Church and its life and mission, please contact us at

P.O. Box 1190, Fayetteville, AR 72702, or call 479/442-7373

More sermon texts are posted on our web site: www.stpaulsfay.org

Click the “Video Online” button to watch full services and sermons live-streamed or archived.