September 21, 2025

Sometimes the most difficult part of preparing a homily is figuring out what the opening anecdote is going to be—the way that I'm going to frame the outset of the homily to make it feel somewhat relevant and connected to our current circumstance. There were two things that struck me about the reading today as I was reflecting on it earlier this week. The first is, I thought about my experience of learning foreign languages. I've dabbled over the course of my life with a variety of different languages. In undergraduate, I studied Greek and then later on Mandarin Chinese. At one point after graduating and when I was in seminary, I returned to biblical languages, studying Hebrew. I've tried my hand at Arabic and Irish at one point, and since very early on in my life, I've at least had a peripheral knowledge of Spanish.

But in a lot of circumstances, I'm not that great at language acquisition. The best I've ever been able to do is to listen very attentively and carefully to what's being said and to get to the end of the statement and say, "Oh, I kind of have an idea of what you were saying. I understand the last thing you said. It kind of framed everything else." I think, in truth, our gospel passage today can be somewhat like that. It's a very confusing, nuanced, ambiguous passage. But there's very little ambiguity in hearing, "No slave can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and wealth." That seems pretty straightforward, no?

The other thing that this passage makes me think of, every year when it comes up—or every three years, actually, because this is a unique Lukan passage—is satire. Satire is kind of in the news today, being very politicized and discussed as to its appropriateness. But one of the greatest satirists in the entirety of the English language was a fellow Anglican, the late 18th and early 19th-century priest and writer Jonathan Swift. And in the midst of being a clergy person, actually a quite successful clergy person, he ended up being the dean of a cathedral. He devoted himself to tearing apart, tearing down, and critiquing all of the misanthropic and misplaced priorities of the society around him. One of his most popular and famous works is the novel Gulliver's Travels.

I suspect many of you have encountered it at some point in your life. Towards the very end of Gulliver's Travels, this narrative of a sea captain who repeatedly gets stranded in these exotic and foreign lands, he ends up in one desolate location where life is inverted from the way we experience it. There are these kind of primal humanoid creatures who are essentially the animal servants to a very intelligent and wise equine society, a society of horses who control these humanoid creatures. At one point in this particular journey, Gulliver discovers that these humanoid creatures, even as their base needs are being cared for by the horses, still obsess over these shiny stones that have no discernible value. They hoard them. They lament and become depressed when they lose them. They fight wars and battles over them. It's very clearly a critique of our own monetary system, and I think it's actually quite a close parallel to what Jesus is talking about today.

I can't help but think that Jonathan Swift, in his framing of that particular part of the story, was reflecting on this specific parable. But there is a lot of ambiguity here, even as we hear this very clear statement at the end of our lesson today. There's a lot to think about, unpack, and try to understand. For one thing, I think the King James actually does a better job when it says, "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." Because "mammon" is closer to the original Greek here, "mamanos," and "mamanos," while a Greek word, actually has an older Semitic origin. It meant not just money, which we so often think about it as, but any treasure a person trusts in. And I think one of the things that Jonathan Swift so brilliantly points out—a habit we still fall into today—is that we often get obsessed about things that are of no value in and of themselves.

I fall into this trap all the time, spending hours thinking about 401Ks, pension plans, and concerning myself over how much money we have stored away. In times of great anxiety and uncertainty, that seems very reasonable. But that storing up of earthly treasure for nothing of significant account is serving a master that is not our God. Money, at the end of the day, is of nothing if it's not translated into the material goods that we use it to mark or to symbolize. Jesus is, I think, really pointing our attentiveness to that reality today.

One of the things that's interesting about this passage, when you really begin to kind of dig into it more thoroughly, is that it's not as strange as we might initially think. As scholars have pointed out, one thing we miss as 21st-century hearers of this parable is that it is very likely when this manager, realizing that the game is up and that he's being called to account, goes to settle these accounts, what he is doing is he is eliminating his commission. That is what these reductions in payment are. It's not that he's shorting his master. He's saying, "I did not do what I was supposed to, so I'm going to take my cut out of the equation so that my master's affairs are settled. And when I am out of a job in just a few weeks, these folks will remember the good turn I did them, that I didn't take my portion of what was due. And maybe by not taking my portion of what is due, they will be sensitive and sympathetic to me and invite me in in their own hospitality."

Sometimes, when we are called to account—when we slip up, screw up, and make mistakes—the place of return is to make that place of sacrifice, to apologize, to find a place of restitution and renewal of relationship. If we take all of our readings together, that is fundamentally what we're hearing explicated throughout all of Scripture. In our passage all the way back from Amos, that section of verse 5 where the people are obsessed over the new moon or the ending of the Sabbath, they're getting themselves tied up over material concerns of this world. They are not focusing on the things of true and lasting importance and substance, the things of the kingdom. And they are being called to account for it, being judged by God for their inhospitality, their uncaring, their cynical material obsession with the things of this world.

But then also, in our epistle from 1 Timothy, St. Paul is not just calling us to be, in a sense, subservient, removed, disengaged followers, letting the world be what it is, even though he says, "Lead quiet and peaceable lives." Pay close attention to what he says in verse 3 and 4. It is in living those quiet and peaceful lives that we find right and acceptable position in the sight of God who desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. It's not that we just simply give up, that we take our lot as it is, and not try and strive for a better future, a more fulsome and honest reflection of the kingdom. It is in being humble, it is in leading lives of quiet humility, of dignity, of compassion, of charity that we don't just get taken advantage of, but that we offer the world an alternative that is transforming and renewing.

Over and over and over again, we have examples throughout history where that sense of quiet confidence does break down the barriers of hatred, of discord, of distrust. I saw an article just this past week that suggested in times of great kind of authoritarian upheaval, where the powers of this world are ascendant, that often, and especially in the 20th and 21st centuries, that period of upheaval actually turns back to a period of greater stability, a period of greater freedom, a period of greater democracy. And that's hard to see, that's hard to see in the midst of times of darkness and struggle. But it's in remaining faithful to the call that we have, to the call to serve God, to remain singularly focused on the things of the kingdom that allow us and empower us to show forth that alternative—to give life back into a world that is in the midst of death, to be the children of light in a great and overwhelming time of darkness.

So today as we hear a parable, as we encounter a teaching of Jesus that seems quite foreign, quite difficult, quite challenging, may we not be caught up in the confoundingness of the teaching, but instead reawakened to that simple and clear truth: that we are to serve God, that we are to be children of light, that we are not to be consumed, obsessed, or distracted by the shiny little stones of this material world, but instead always and forever focused on the things of the kingdom, the things of love, the things of ultimate life and transformation. As Robert R. Brown, the great 20th-century theologian, observed about this passage in Luke, "Its overall service in Luke's theological view is to make the point that abundant wealth, abundant treasure of any of these different ways we frame treasure, power, influence, worldly material possession, that those things corrupt. And the right way to use them is to give them away to the poor and to make friends who, when they go to heaven, can help us." Our invitation today is to upend our priorities, to be not a slave to the material things of this world, but to again center ourselves anew on the things of the kingdom and of ultimate value. That we in our quiet confidence may be communicators and proclaimers of that gospel good news, even to a world that struggles to hear it. In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.