Don't Do LOST Alone!

Luke 16:1-13

Then 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.”

Parables are stories that take us from somewhere familiar to a place we might see the Divine from a new point of view.  The characters… the sheep, coins, managers… they are just vehicles to get us there.  They are not the destination.  We are NOT meant, for example, to read the Parable of the Lost Sheep and conclude that leaving 99 sheep unattended in the wilderness to go looking for one is good shepherding practice.  Only Wile E. Coyote would suggest that shepherding practice and he’s never had any sheep’s best interest at heart!

 

Last week Jesus used a sheep and a coin as vehicles to take us to a place where we could see how humans get lost and how God responds.  Head down, eat some grass, wander off, look up and discover… we’re lost OR be suddenly dropped by life right on our heads… or on our tails… like a coin.  A sudden and painful crash… and we’re lost.  In this week’s Gospel Jesus uses a Manager to drive us back to that very same place to look once again at a human getting lost.  LOTS of people I read this past week were absolutely sure this Manager was the “sheep wandering off” kind of lost.  They were sure he was guilty as charged.  BUT let’s read it again…“There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to the rich man that this manager was squandering his property.  So the rich man summoned his manager 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.’

So basically Chad came up to the rich guy at the country club and told him, “I heard on the back nine that your manager is a shady dude.”  The rich man gets in his car and races back to the shop.  He calls in the manager, accuses him, tells him to turn in the books, and tells him he’s fired.  No investigation.  No evidence.  No defense allowed.  Just fired on Chad’s rumor from the country club.  

So, was the manager guilty as charged… lost like a sheep who wandered off?  Maybe.  Or was the manager lost like a coin, dropped on his head by an unsubstantiated rumor spread by Chad?  The answer is “The text doesn’t say!”  It could actually be either one and I think Jesus told this parable that way ON PURPOSE to remind us all one more time… THE WAY WE GET LOST JUST DOESN’T MATTER TO GOD!  Why?  BECAUSE FINDING THE LOST, HOWEVER THEY GOT THAT WAY, IS BOTH THE DIVINE’S SPECIALTY AND GREAT JOY! 

Whether he got lost as a result of his own long practiced book cooking or because Chad at the Country Club did him dirty, just doesn’t matter.  Either way is reputation is ruined.  Either way he’ll never get another accounting job.  Either way he can’t dig ditches.  Either way he doesn’t want to beg.  Either way he’s just… LOST.  The Good News for the Manager… the Good News for You and the Good News for me is that the ONLY thing any of us needs to DO to get God out searching for us… the only prerequisite there is for God scooping us up and carrying us home… the only requirement we need to fulfill in order to get the Divine to call for a party with the Heavenly Host… is that we be totally, completely, absolutely, and unequivocally LOST.  Lost like a sheep.  Lost like a coin.  Lost like the manager.  Lost like an American in 2025.  Doesn’t matter the KIND of LOST you get.  God could not care less.  Why?  Because God just LOVES finding the lost, bringing us home, and throwing a party to celebrate!  Finding the Lost, Bringing Light out of Darkness, Raising the Dead… It’s God’s Jam!  The church calls God’s Jam “Grace” and Jesus thought that understanding the radical, unconditional, and unlimited nature of God’s Grace was SO important that he told around 16 different Parables of Grace… ALL driving us to the same place in the hope that we might finally see and then reflect into the world the radical, unconditional, unlimited nature of God’s Grace and allow it to change the world into the dream God has for it!

As I looked out at the world and into my mirror this week my first thought was, “Hey Jesus!  16 Parables of Grace weren’t enough!  We still don’t get it!”  But then it occurred to me that Jesus had a second place he was driving us with this parable.  We see that second place in what the manager did AFTER he got fired.  In THAT place he chose NOT to do LOST alone.  He reached out to his community by any means necessary.  He gave radical, unearned, un-asked-for grace to those around him and unashamedly hoped to receive the same in kind.  Was THAT the shrewdness the rich man saw in his manager’s actions?  Choosing NOT to do LOST alone but to instead lean into his community DOING radical grace and not caring if the world thought it was shrewd or dishonest or anything else?  

Many of us feel quite lost these days.  I know I do.  Perhaps it isn’t an undiscovered 17th parable of Grace that we need for study, but rather to start DOING what that manager did:  Invite our community to come in close.  Be unafraid of using both hook and crook to get them there and then start DOING radical acts of grace without caring if it is seen as shrewd or foolish… honest or dishonest.  Perhaps we don’t need to hear any more stories ABOUT Grace.  Perhaps it is simply time we start DOING it.  Amen.