What is in Kelvin's Head?

Sermon on the Dishonest Manager

19/09/2016

Here’s what I made of yesterday’s dreadful gospel reading…

Why am I preaching on this terrible gospel reading?

Why do bad things happen to good Provosts?

In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit.

I ranted and I raved. I roared and roamed about the Cathedral office like a prowling lion seeking whom I might devour whom resist steadfast in the faith.

“Why” I cried. “Why am I on the preaching rota scheduled to preach on the parable of the dishonest manager?”

What’s the point of having a Vice Provost if you end up preaching on the most difficult of gospel readings yourself?

How come, I shrieked – how come I’m preaching on this? Who was it put me down to preach this week.

Members of the cathedral staff in the office looked at me in a bemused way and reminded me that against their better judgement it is me, the same very provost who was complaining who compiles the preaching rota. It was me who had scheduled myself to preach on this wretched story.

Wretched?

Difficult?

Impossible?

Why so?

Well, how on earth do you preach the good news when the gospel reading is all about seeing the good side of a dishonest manager?

Really, what on earth was Jesus on about?

And so I grumbled and moaned and sulked.

My joy is gone. Grief is upon me. My heart is sick, I opined channelling the very spirit of the prophet Jeremiah at his gloomiest.

Why do bad things happen to good provosts?

Why do bad things happen to good people?

Who hasn’t asked that question at one time or another?

When you are merely cynical you ask why bad things happen to good people.

When you graduate to being both cynical and bitter you ask why good things happen to bad people too.

Those questions come up in Scripture. There are answers to those questions too – different contradictory answers which indicate that asking questions like that is part of the human condition. We’ve recently been reading the book of Job at morning prayer and it is page after page of people trying to find answers to those questions.

I have no idea how you cope with a story in which a dishonest manager is the central figure.

Is the dishonest manager being likened to God?

Are we really being encouraged to behave like dishonest managers and with what are we being expected to be dishonest.

This is one of those bible stories which make me wonder whether they even heard Jesus correctly when they were trying to remember all that he said.

The sudden blast of wisdom that we get at the end “That you cannot serve two masters, you can’t serve God and money” is brilliant, instantly memorable and both true and profound. Yet it goes no way at all to answering the question of whether Jesus is promoting dishonesty or what we should make of it if he is.

It seems to me though, on reflection that there’s a nougat of glory stashed away in this parable that might make us forget for a moment at least about that question.

Isn’t it amazing that a dishonest manager might remind us of God?

And isn’t that truth something that we might need reminding of.

We are so ready to divide the world into the good and the bad (most of us presuming that we fall into the good category automatically).

The thing is, problem with the very question “why do bad things happen to good people” is not the answer but the very question itself.

In telling a story about a dishonest manager that someway is a way of passing on something about God and goodness, Jesus is reminding us that everyone bears the image and likeness of God.

If we are going to ask pertinent questions, we might well ask why it is that bad people can sometimes be good.

Why might a murderer be kind to an animal? Why might someone who is known in one context to be kind be cruel in another?

The trouble is, we are complex creatures.

For a long time I used to think that no-one was intrinsically evil.

I have to admit that this was challenged when I became an ordinand and found that original sin was the only way I could really understand the cruelty of some of those who were trying to shape me and form me as a priest.

But do I believe that people are utterly, intrinsically wicked and by nature separate from God?

Plenty of bits of the Christian faith teach that this is so. Indeed I grew up having to sign up to the believe that and I quote: “all men have become sinners, totally depraved, and as such are justly exposed to the wrath of God.”

I don’t think that now.

I don’t think that because I believe people are more complex than that. And I don’t believe it because I think God’s love is more simple than that.

I don’t think that now because I don’t believe in a God who is in the business of wrath. And I believe that human beings are generally more complex than simply being bad and depraved and then suddenly saved into being good.

God’s love is either for everyone or God isn’t a God worth dealing with.

And part of my justification for that is the existence of this story of the dishonest manager.

All kinds of people are heaven bound – dishonest managers amongst them.

All kinds of people reflect the essence and nature of God. And not the people who would come at the top of our lists.

For in this kingdom we are heading for things are not quite what you expect anyway.

From time to time I ask people for suggestions for the badge stall at the back of the church. One of the surprising good sellers is a badge that simply says, “make no assumptions”.

And we must make no assumptions about the bad and the good.

For all are made in the image and likeness of God and all are loved anyway.

All are loved anyway.

Must make that into a badge.

dishonest manager

7 responses to “Reclaiming the web”

Paul Hutchinson

14/10/2015

Thank you for making me think in a different direction just before pausing for lunch. I have never had a blog, so came quite late to Internet social discourse, and have engaged more since joining one major network in 2010 and another in early 2014 – normally using those networks rather than a comment box such as this. Not all of us are natural creators of substantial original content, but like to be thoughtful in brief exchange, and so both those major networks, though cursed with many difficulties, serve those brief exchanges quite well. I do agree that the endless recycling of links (on both of them) can be wearying, and I do wish that some old friends would be a little more self-critical. But the price of any kind of social discourse is that one is vulnerable to the otherness of the other.
I feel I ought to be writing a more substantial comment here, but hope that this is enough. The time is not always there to offer deeper reflection: but sometimes a blogger needs to hear at least a small splash from the stone thrown down the well!

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  14/10/2015
  
  Thanks for the comment, Paul. I’m aware that not everyone is a content creator, but perhaps what I miss is the sense of discovering different communities online and keeping the comments more or less in one place helps with that.
  
  The glory days of 50 or more comments on a post are probably over. I suspect I mourn the sense of community being created even more than I miss the interesting reflections of others. Retweets and shares are always welcome – but they are the means of amplification. Becoming loud isn’t the same as becoming wise, nor the same as becoming connected.
  
  Reply
Seph

14/10/2015

It’s a damnable shame—and mostly the fault of Facebook. Twitter at least has an etiquette of sorts, wherein it is considered impolite not to respond to the original tweet, which is usually made by the blogger in question.

Facebook, in short, is the scourge of the Internet. I have often been in groups which have decided to do all of their organizing on Facebook, despite my protests that I’m not on Facebook and don’t want to be, and really an e-mail list would be just as easy, and would they like me to set one up. This inevitably leads to my marginalization within the group, as no-one bothers to keep me abreast of the discussions to which I am not party.

Can you tell I’m upset about this?

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Daniel Lamont

14/10/2015

I am only an occasional user of Facebook but I know what you mean, Kelvin. And indeed, I never read the comments ‘below the line’ on newspapers like ‘The Guardian’. You offer some useful advice. I read yours and one or two other blogs on a regular basis but don’t always comment. However, I can see that the author of a blog would like some feedback. I would be sad not to have the blogs that I do read because they do give me a sense of what people are thinking and an odd sense of community.

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Father Ron Smith

14/10/2015

My own contribution to the blogopshere is, I’m afraid, Father Kelvin, limited to comments I make on other people’s blogs (such as ‘Thinking Anglicans’ and ‘Anglican Down Under’ – a local NZ forum; plus my own blog ‘kiwianglo’, where i pluck articles that interest me personally from the web and provide my own commentary. This still interests me, personally, and provides my few readers with information they might not otherwise be bothered to glean for themselves. Like you, I am no longer an avid Facebook fan.

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David Campbell

16/10/2015

Hi Kelvin – thoughtful as ever – and yours is invariably the first blog I turn to each day. That you bring pressing issues to a wider audience and to people who know, or used to know, the church you serve is a great thing. I’m still blogging relatively strongly, but it’s certainly a different blogging experience when work is set in a very different context and especially community from previously, writing these days mainly for myself about things that interest me, although not quite at the address you have in your Blog Roll. http://www.limpingtowardsthesunrise.com is where it’s “all” happening.

Reply
1. Kelvin
  
  16/10/2015
  
  Thanks David – nice to hear from you. I’ve amended the link.
  
  I don’t think many people use blogrolls to find blogs these days but whenever I remove it my mother complains…
  
  Reply