I’d like to draw rather a long bow between the
Jeremiah reading and the Gospel text (The parable of the Shrewd Manager). The one is about grief – the grief of
Jeremiah for his erring Israelite people, who have turned their hearts from God
and worshipped idols. This passage might
echo the very heart of God’s grief too, when we stray into unholy territory. The other is about a very shrewd
business man.
We might feel like Jeremiah sometimes because many of our own people
here in Australia have also fallen off the faith wagon; they have turned their backs on the Christian
faith which nurtured our nation in its infancy. And like Jeremiah, we long for
our nation to turn back to belief and embrace the grace, mercy and peace of
Christ.
But the first, unlikely thing I thought about both these passages
when I read them was that grief and redemption can go hand in hand. We can’t
ask for God’s forgiveness, until we can see our error. We first must grieve over our fallen state,
before we can seek God’s pardon. But people these days have no desire for all
that confession and admitting to a fallen nature. They don’t want the clarity
to see themselves as they really are, before God. They have no need of
Him; they do not grieve over their
hedonistic lifestyle or their embracing of the very worst of depravity,
gambling, pornography and so on. They
see no need for repentance. They have no need for forgiveness. Perhaps a little shrewd spirituality on our
part is called for.
That’s where the dodgy business manager comes in. In the Luke reading, we have this off-putting
story about the Manager who appears to conduct some very dishonest business
deals on behalf of his Master, yet still comes out smelling of roses. He
manages to keep onside with the boss and his clients, and keep his job at the
same time – all with some clever manoeuvring and deals made with the debtors.
He was very shrewd and he was definitely thinking outside the box.
This parable has many layers about our attitude to money, to the
poor, to redemption, but in essence one of its main themes is Jesus saying to
his followers “If only you lot were as crafty and concerned and as focussed
about MY business, as this wily fox was about saving his own interests and
reputation. If only you would think outside the box now and then; if only you would take every opportunity to
showcase my Business, as well
as this Manager looked out for his. Take
a lesson. Be as frank with yourselves and as clear headed about My Kingdom as
these astute operators in the secular world.
I say again. Grief can be
redemptive. This is out of the box
thinking. When I first heard this
notion, I found it very confronting. I’ve proved it to be true though. With God, any grief can have a redemptive
quality; not just our grief when people stray from faith, but personal grief,
even communal grief. Grief and
suffering have a spiritual shrewdness about them; grief can lead to insightfulness; it can sharpen and refine faith. The grief someone feels over a failed
marriage can lead them to understand why it failed; it can redeem them from making the same mistake twice. When God and grief are spliced together, the
result is often redemption – redemption of many different kinds – not just
eternal salvation.
You will have heard in the media that last month was the 50th
anniversary of Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream” speech. It’s a well-known speech. Just two weeks
after that speech, in September 1963, the 16th Street Baptist Church
in Birmingham, Alabama, was bombed and 4 little black girls were killed. Birmingham Alabama was no stranger to
violence, especially this church, because it was a gathering place for black
Christians who campaigned for civil rights.
But the violence was mainly perpetrated on black people by white
supremists – this was the case in the church bombing. Eventually, in 1964,
Lyndon Johnson passed the Civil Rights bill and this ensured that black people
were equal in law, and it banned segregation.
But they still couldn’t vote. And there was another significant piece of
oratory, before laws were passed to secure this right.
In 1964, Fanny Lou Hamer, a negress, addressed the all-white,
anti-civil-rights Democratic National Convention. This is part of her description of the
violence perpetrated on her and her race..
Fanny Lou told how she had been carried to the county gaol, because she
had encouraged black people to be registered to vote. Play sound clip. She told how she was put in a cell next to a
young black woman, Miss Ivester Simpson. She described how she could hear this woman
being beaten. Her attackers were
shouting at her, calling her nigger and other awful names, and making her say
“Yes Sir”. Fanny Lou told how her
screams reverberated through the cell.
She said that after a while Ivester Simpson began to pray, and she
prayed for her attackers. She asked the
Lord to have mercy on them, and forgive them for what they were doing. She was, through her suffering, asking for
redemption, not for herself, but for those beating her. Her prayers for them
became, eventually, redemptive for the nation of America – redemptive in the
sense that it was freed from its evil racism and inequality.
The whole equal rights movement in America began with black
Christian people. It was based, in its
purest form, in non-violence and redemptive suffering – Dr King’s Movement had
as it’s motto “To redeem the soul of America”. The black people were suffering
but redemption would come to America because of how they behaved in that
suffering as Ebester’s prayer so powerfully exampled. I am convinced that this is God’s best, most
effective work; that of turning bad into
good, turning grief into joy; turning
wretched ungodliness into redemption. It has power beyond our reckoning or
imagination. This is the work of the Kingdom, about which we must be so shrewd.
It is perhaps to draw a long bow to call
this spiritual shrewdness, but the parable introduces
us to the astute man who became righteous – not by begging for mercy and
praying on his knees – but by forgiving the debts of others in the Master’s
name. A key component of God’s Kingdom is all about forgiveness, mercy and
grace to the undeserving. And sometimes,
as we walk across the bridge of our own grief, or someone else’s, we cross into
that most shrewd and unlikely of God’s gifts – that of redemption and grace to
help in time of need. We cross the
bridge of suffering, into God’s grace.
Just as the Shrewd Manager was retained, and benefitted from his
prudence, Jesus uses this example to assure us that as we are shrewd managers
with his forgiveness and grace, He will entrust us with the riches of heaven.
As we forgive the debts of others, we ourselves are forgiven; as we struggle with our own suffering, we
become perhaps, the catalyst for another’s redemption, or even our own.
The dodgy manager could have followed the convention and been given
his marching orders or dragged through the courts; instead he made some succinct decisions and
thought “what can I do to bring good out of bad; what can I do for a positive outcome?
What can we do for a positive outcome in the face of either our
nations backsliding or grief? We can
decide to be astute and prudent with our emotional energy and spend it praying
for others. We can be the vehicle of redemption through God’s amazing ability
to bring good out of bad. Packaged up with grief is opportunity for the Kingdom
of God to be passed on to people who may not receive it from a person who is
powerful and with well-established social prominence.
It’s not that we want to experience grief or disempowerment. We don’t want others to have it either, but
let’s remember that God is never defeated by grief; God’s Kingdom was started with grief and
suffering on the cross. God, who is the
convener of life and death, the author of redemption, used grief very shrewdly
– outside the box of what we think should happen, to bring redemption to us, to
others, and especially to those who hurt us.
Forgiveness
looms large in this because it’s not the norm – the norm is to hate those who
hurt abuse and use us, but like the woman in the cell in Birmingham, we can
pray for those who hurt us – God can take that attitude, those prayers, that
resolve, to release and grow his Kingdom in very powerful ways. Oh that we can strive to be this shrewd with
his Kingdom to his glory and for the redemption of others.
