Sermons 2025

Text: Luke 16:1-15
Theme: Just Stewards

Outline:
1.    Unjust Steward parable
a.    What’s going on? Steward erases some debt knowing master is merciful
2.    JC erased our whole debt
3.    Through Christ we are made just stewards of what God has given to us.

Sermon

Grace, mercy, and peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.

My dear beloved flock, the text for our mediation today is the Holy Gospel according to Saint Luke the sixteenth chapter verses one through fifteen.

Boys and girls, I pray that you are doing well today. Have you had to take care of something that was not your own? Maybe you had to help take care of kittens or puppies. You have to feed them, water them, clean up after them. They are not yours, they belong to mom and dad, but you help to care for them. That is an example of what a manager or a steward is, they care for something that their master gives them. Do we always do a good job of this? Not always. How does Jesus help us to make the best use of what God has given to us? Ponder that question as you hear the rest of the sermon. You may go back to your seats and those who love you. 

1.    Unjust Steward parable

Today we are presented with some very difficult texts. Whether it is our epistle lesson with women being silent in church or our Gospel reading with this most difficult to understand of parables, this is a Sunday of difficult understandings. As you know a parable is an earthly story with a heavenly meaning, so let us unpack this parable to see what our Lord is telling us. 

At first glance this parable is easy to understand. There is a rich master who has given control of his possessions and management to a manager, a steward in the old King James Version. He finds out that this man is wasting away his possessions and not making the best use of them. How would you feel if you gave control of your house to a friend for the weekend and came home to find it an utter mess? Dishes piled up in the sink, clothing everywhere, trash overflowing. You would be pretty angry. So too with this rich master. He calls the man and says, “You are fired. Hand everything over for review.” The man does so but before his termination, he calls people that own his master money and tells them, “Hey, lower the amount that you owe.” He cuts one man’s debt in half and another’s by twenty percent. They do not know that he is facing termination for wasting the master’s possessions earlier. These men rejoice because they think that the steward is acting on the master’s behalf because of his goodness and graciousness. They had 16 months of debt payments completely canceled. 

The master’s reaction comes as a surprise. Rather than being angry at what the manager has done, he praises his shrewdness, his wisdom in this matter. The reason the manager was now commended, though he had previously acted dishonestly, may be that he had at last learned how one’s worldly wealth can be wisely given away to do good.  Good for the master, such a forgiveness of debts would probably have helped the master’s own reputation for being merciful and kind. Good for the manager because he knew his job and reputation were gone because of his previous mishandling of funds. He needed friends; and, by foregoing the customary interest, he won friends among the creditors. Therefore, the master admires the manager’s shrewdness. Then comes the hard to understand part. Jesus uses this parable to show that the “people of the light” could also accomplish much by wisely giving up some of their “worldly wealth.”

2.    JC erased our whole debt

It is in being people of light that we find both the meaning as well as the application. How do we become “People of the light”? Because of a reduction of debt. Whereas the manager canceled a small fraction of the debt that was owed, how much greater has our Lord canceled our debt? 

We owed God a massive debt that we could never repay because of our sins. Our sins, no matter how large or small we may think they are, show how imperfect we are. Our anger, our frustration, our words hastily spoken that we wish we could take back, much less our sins of thoughts and actions. The misuse of our time for our own pleasure. The misuse of our money or possessions for our own glory and gain. The debt just keeps adding and adding up, and we cannot even begin to pay the interest on it.

Yet, God in His love, has mercy upon us. He sends His only-begotten Son, Jesus Christ, to pay what we could never pay. Jesus took upon Himself all our sins. He bore all our punishment upon the cross. There, the Father turns His face away from His Son as He who knew no sin became sin for us. Jesus bore the full wrath of God that you and I would never have to. He took our great debt, covers it with His precious blood, and says, “It is finished.” Every single cent is washed away and you are forgiven.

3.    Through Christ we are made just stewards of what God has given to us.

Because of the forgiveness given to us by Jesus through His death and resurrection from the dead, we view our possessions and income differently than the world. Rather than using the possessions that we have unjustly, for our own increases and our own desires, we can indeed use them justly.  We can learn from this unjust steward how to use the things we have been given for good, for such a time as we have them.

We realize that everything we have is not our own. We are merely managers, stewards, of what our loving Father has given to us. We are given life every moment our heat beats, every time our lung fill with air. We are given food, clothing, a roof over our heads, husbands and wives who love  and care for us, the blessing of children. We have friends, animals, pets, and much more. None of this is anything that we deserve. All of it is, as we confess in the 1st Article of the Creed, “purely out of Fatherly divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me.”

As we live upon this earth, we merely manage what we have been given until the time when our management is at an end, when death occurs. We manage not for our own praise and glory, but as children of light, we strive to manage everything for God’s glory and praise. We look not for earthly gain but to be joyfully welcomed into eternal dwellings. With His Holy Spirit living with us, we strive to use our time wisely, doing the work that He has given to us while it is still day (John 9:4), we use our possessions and wealth, not to make ourselves richer, but to help those around us. As Saint Basil once remarked, “If you begin to guard wealth it will not be yours. But if you begin to distribute it, you will not lose it.”

May the Lord grant that we can indeed be wise and just managers of everything that He has given to us, using them for the praise and glory of His name and bringing others to saving faith in His wonderous works.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, guard, and keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.