Sacred Using the Secular
The scripture reading this morning from Luke 16 is a rather nuanced one. Some have called it questionable, questioning if Jesus really said it. I’d call it pragmatic and realistic for the world we live in. So, let’s review the story, known as the parable of the shrewd manager and the applications of the story that Jesus lays out.
The first thing to recognize is who Jesus is talking to. He’s talking to his disciples. Jesus and his disciples are living in a communitarian - communitarian not communist - way. They live as a single, insular community and share all things in common. They live like traveling monks and together share everything. They are living in the secular world, but are not of that secular world. They are building the foundation of God's kingdom!
So what’s the story Jesus tells his disciples?
Well, there’s a landlord and a property manager of that land. The landlord is dissatisfied with his property manager's work and decides to fire the manager. The property manager sees the writing on the wall and just before he’s about to be fired, he meets with some folks who owe the landlord money and makes a deal with them, basically lowering the rate owed to the landlord. The property manager does this expecting the folks owing the landlord money will take care of him after he’s fired. In other words, the property manager is securing his future, knowing there’s a big change about to happen.
The landlord eventually finds out about the property manager’s shrewdness and praises it. The landlord cannot deny that the property manager is doing what he has to do for his own future and is impressed with that.
Beginning in verse 8, Jesus tells us what this parable means for those listening.
Basically, Jesus says to his community of disciples, you, kingdom of God people, be shrewd like the property manager, but, unlike the property manager, do so to benefit the kingdom, not yourself.
Since you live in the world, it is okay to take advantage of the secular world to help us build God’s other-worldly, sacred kingdom.
Using the secular for the benefit of the sacred is a wise thing to do, in fact. As long as we’re coming from a sacred place and are committed to God, as long as the sacred grounds us as we approach the secular, it is okay, even a good thing, to use secular things for the benefit of the sacred realm.
Jesus and his movement seems to have practiced this ethic. While the Jesus movement practiced a communitarian way of being, historians confirm the movement had wealthy patrons supporting it, sort of like wealthy patrons support monasteries today.
Some years ago, in my first pastorate, I decided to do something different for my sermon. I’ve done something similar here a few times. I played recordings of secular music and used the secular songs to point to spiritual truths. That first time I did it at my first pastorate, I got push back from a congregant who didn’t like this approach. Playing secular music in church, even if it had spiritual themes, felt wrong to her. After all, the rock and roll lifestyle isn’t exactly laudable, she stated.
I took what the congregant said to heart. But I couldn’t agree and still don’t agree with the critique. Why? Because Jesus, I believe, would have been okay with using the secular to point people to the sacred. Pointing people to the sacred means there are more hands to build the kingdom, after all. Jesus teaches this in Luke 16.
Pointing to the spiritual themes and spiritual lessons found in the world we live in, that is wise, meaningful, and helpful to the church’s mission of building the kingdom. For one, it means that we meet people where they are in order to help them progress to a better place.
The Apostle Paul gives us a similar ethic in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 9. Paul says, I have become all things to all people for the sake of the gospel. For example, Paul writes, to those who don’t have the law, to Gentiles who don’t follow Torah, I become like a Gentile who doesn’t have the law.
To apply this to our example, to those who love secular music, I dismiss any prohibitions against secular music and seek to find something positive in secular music so I can win the secular-music loving folks over and have them join us in building the Beloved Community of Christ.
Here is another example.
CCP and many churches like ours unknowingly follow Jesus’ ethic taught in Luke 16 by investing in the stock market.
Like Jesus and his disciples, the earliest church practiced a communitarian way of being. Read Acts 2 if you want to see what I mean. Despite this, Jesus would have been okay with using capitalism to the kingdom’s benefits like we do today.
CCP and countless churches across the country have investment funds that earn the church money thanks to our market-based, capitalist economy. This is an example of the sacred using the secular for its own benefit, which Jesus is okay with.
Of course, there are limits to this. Jesus isn’t calling for an “ends justify the means” ethic. God will still condemn harmful actions even if the consequences of those action are used to benefit something good down the road. Investing in companies that practice some hidden kind of enslavement or abuse, for example. Even if that investment makes the church money, it is not something Jesus would condone. The love your neighbor commandment, the do unto others as you’d do unto yourself rule, supersedes all else.
We see this in the case of Judas, the betrayer. Judas’ betrayal led to the world’s salvation, right? Did that justify Judas betraying Jesus which ends in his brutalization and crucifixion? Not at all. Judas is condemned in the gospels of Luke and John especially.
Everything within reason – that humane approach always applies.
Let me end with a few words about our reading from I Timothy 2.
Maybe you’ve noticed how often in my pastoral prayer, I pray for our leaders, from local leaders to national leaders to world leaders. One of the reasons I do this are the wise words from I Timothy that urges us to pray for our leaders. We might not like our leaders. In fact, we might think they’re doing a horrible job. But we still ought to pray for them.
This command is related to the ethic Jesus teaches in Luke. From the sacred realm, we ought to pray for those in the secular realm, especially leaders in that secular realm. Why? So that they might come around to seeing the way of the sacred, so that they might be transformed by God’s wisdom and love, so that they might go from ungodliness to godliness in the way they lead.
From the very top to the very bottom, we desire that all would be saved by the compassion of Christ and come to know the truth of love. We pray from that desire.
Hope must never be lost.
Amen?
Amen.
The first thing to recognize is who Jesus is talking to. He’s talking to his disciples. Jesus and his disciples are living in a communitarian - communitarian not communist - way. They live as a single, insular community and share all things in common. They live like traveling monks and together share everything. They are living in the secular world, but are not of that secular world. They are building the foundation of God's kingdom!
So what’s the story Jesus tells his disciples?
Well, there’s a landlord and a property manager of that land. The landlord is dissatisfied with his property manager's work and decides to fire the manager. The property manager sees the writing on the wall and just before he’s about to be fired, he meets with some folks who owe the landlord money and makes a deal with them, basically lowering the rate owed to the landlord. The property manager does this expecting the folks owing the landlord money will take care of him after he’s fired. In other words, the property manager is securing his future, knowing there’s a big change about to happen.
The landlord eventually finds out about the property manager’s shrewdness and praises it. The landlord cannot deny that the property manager is doing what he has to do for his own future and is impressed with that.
Beginning in verse 8, Jesus tells us what this parable means for those listening.
Basically, Jesus says to his community of disciples, you, kingdom of God people, be shrewd like the property manager, but, unlike the property manager, do so to benefit the kingdom, not yourself.
Since you live in the world, it is okay to take advantage of the secular world to help us build God’s other-worldly, sacred kingdom.
Using the secular for the benefit of the sacred is a wise thing to do, in fact. As long as we’re coming from a sacred place and are committed to God, as long as the sacred grounds us as we approach the secular, it is okay, even a good thing, to use secular things for the benefit of the sacred realm.
Jesus and his movement seems to have practiced this ethic. While the Jesus movement practiced a communitarian way of being, historians confirm the movement had wealthy patrons supporting it, sort of like wealthy patrons support monasteries today.
Some years ago, in my first pastorate, I decided to do something different for my sermon. I’ve done something similar here a few times. I played recordings of secular music and used the secular songs to point to spiritual truths. That first time I did it at my first pastorate, I got push back from a congregant who didn’t like this approach. Playing secular music in church, even if it had spiritual themes, felt wrong to her. After all, the rock and roll lifestyle isn’t exactly laudable, she stated.
I took what the congregant said to heart. But I couldn’t agree and still don’t agree with the critique. Why? Because Jesus, I believe, would have been okay with using the secular to point people to the sacred. Pointing people to the sacred means there are more hands to build the kingdom, after all. Jesus teaches this in Luke 16.
Pointing to the spiritual themes and spiritual lessons found in the world we live in, that is wise, meaningful, and helpful to the church’s mission of building the kingdom. For one, it means that we meet people where they are in order to help them progress to a better place.
The Apostle Paul gives us a similar ethic in his first letter to the Corinthians, chapter 9. Paul says, I have become all things to all people for the sake of the gospel. For example, Paul writes, to those who don’t have the law, to Gentiles who don’t follow Torah, I become like a Gentile who doesn’t have the law.
To apply this to our example, to those who love secular music, I dismiss any prohibitions against secular music and seek to find something positive in secular music so I can win the secular-music loving folks over and have them join us in building the Beloved Community of Christ.
Here is another example.
CCP and many churches like ours unknowingly follow Jesus’ ethic taught in Luke 16 by investing in the stock market.
Like Jesus and his disciples, the earliest church practiced a communitarian way of being. Read Acts 2 if you want to see what I mean. Despite this, Jesus would have been okay with using capitalism to the kingdom’s benefits like we do today.
CCP and countless churches across the country have investment funds that earn the church money thanks to our market-based, capitalist economy. This is an example of the sacred using the secular for its own benefit, which Jesus is okay with.
Of course, there are limits to this. Jesus isn’t calling for an “ends justify the means” ethic. God will still condemn harmful actions even if the consequences of those action are used to benefit something good down the road. Investing in companies that practice some hidden kind of enslavement or abuse, for example. Even if that investment makes the church money, it is not something Jesus would condone. The love your neighbor commandment, the do unto others as you’d do unto yourself rule, supersedes all else.
We see this in the case of Judas, the betrayer. Judas’ betrayal led to the world’s salvation, right? Did that justify Judas betraying Jesus which ends in his brutalization and crucifixion? Not at all. Judas is condemned in the gospels of Luke and John especially.
Everything within reason – that humane approach always applies.
Let me end with a few words about our reading from I Timothy 2.
Maybe you’ve noticed how often in my pastoral prayer, I pray for our leaders, from local leaders to national leaders to world leaders. One of the reasons I do this are the wise words from I Timothy that urges us to pray for our leaders. We might not like our leaders. In fact, we might think they’re doing a horrible job. But we still ought to pray for them.
This command is related to the ethic Jesus teaches in Luke. From the sacred realm, we ought to pray for those in the secular realm, especially leaders in that secular realm. Why? So that they might come around to seeing the way of the sacred, so that they might be transformed by God’s wisdom and love, so that they might go from ungodliness to godliness in the way they lead.
From the very top to the very bottom, we desire that all would be saved by the compassion of Christ and come to know the truth of love. We pray from that desire.
Hope must never be lost.
Amen?
Amen.
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