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Andrew Garner
23 September 2007
17+ Pentecost, C
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Luke 16.1-13

Let us pray.

Holy and most gracious Father, you have been made known to us through your Son. Thank you for sending Him so that we may have eternal life. Bring your spirit here in this place this evening and speak through me so that what I speak may be heard. Thank you for this day. In Christ’s holy name, Amen.

I just want to start out by saying thank you for allowing me to come before you again on the tail end of a stormy weekend. I am going to have to be honest with you today, I have been reading and studying the gospel reading for the week and I wasn’t comfortable with it. It just didn’t sink in very well with me. Yes, I got the general picture and I even finished typing my original sermon for this evening yesterday. But even after I got done with it, I still wasn’t happy.

So, I got up this morning thinking that I needed to write it again, and how correct I was. I went to church hoping that I would get some inspiration and thankfully, I got it. At St. Mary’s in Andalusia, we are searching for a priest and interim priests come every Sunday to fill in. I was anxious to hear the priest’s sermon today to get what she had to say about the gospel reading. It wasn’t as if I was cheating by all means, but picking up pointers.

Let us now turn to the gospel reading for this evening. Jesus, and I love how he does it, gives us another parable to help explain a complex and hard message for a lot of us to follow. It is of the dishonest manager and as I read just a few moments ago was the manager’s response to getting caught for accounting his master’s money the wrong way. That in itself is just a simple telling of the message, but like Jesus, he loves to make it cryptic so we have to think on it and digest the true meaning. I ask all of you this. How do you use your material possessions?

When I ask myself this, I think, well… I am very selfish. And I think everybody here can say that as well. Yes I know that many of you are on a budget while in college and cannot spend the huge amounts of money that we want to, believe me, I was there. Jesus in the gospel lesson makes it very clear that we are to use what we have for His glory and His glory alone. If your material wealth is in money, than why not give most to charities or more importantly to the church? In materials, donating them to the poor or giving stuff away that you never use. I can think of a few things in my possession that I can give away at the drop of a hat because I have no use for them.

This reading reminds me of and I am paraphrasing the wealthy man asks Jesus, “How does one inherit eternal life?” Jesus says simply, “Give everything to the poor.” If in our current world that we live in today Jesus asks us to do that, would we?

I honestly don’t know what my answer to his summon would be, but I think I would say, “Lord, If I were to give you all of my possessions, than how am I to serve your Father in heaven to His glory?”

So, I ask a very simple, but complex question, “What can you do with your possessions for Him?” I hope that you take that with you back to your dorms, apartments or houses and look around to see what you can donate or just do without. Remember, there are more people that need it more than you do in most cases. And most importantly, what can we do for His glory?

Let us pray.

Thank you Lord for allowing us again to come before you this evening on this day of rest. I humbly ask that you be with us in our daily lives and that all will be well in this week that lies ahead. And, as we partake in the Eucharist in a few moments, please help to remind us of the sacrifice of your Son on the cross. It is in the most precious and holy name that I pray, Amen.