Friday, September 28, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 16:1-6, 8

Then 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 in 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 you bill, sit quickly, and make it fifty.’ … And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly ….”

Prayer

We should thank you for this difficult story, Holy One, though it is hard to do. Most of us wouldn’t miss it had faithful scribes not preserved it for us to trip over. The tripping is good for us, or so we tell ourselves.

Jesus, your words invite us to take you seriously when our understanding is dark, and our minds find no familiar foot holds to leverage comprehension and buttress faith. We walk into this difficult story and enter a dense darkness that vision and understanding cannot penetrate.

And there you invite us beyond well-worn ways we have trod so often we walk them in our sleep. It is little wonder that souls who have loved you so dearly talk of dark nights and clouds of unknowing, of the hidden God and the negative way beyond where sign posts of sight and sound mark the journey.

The journey into you, Jesus, leads, sooner or later, into the darkness where we walk by naked faith or not at all. There come times when we do not see the way ahead and the way behind is closed to us, when the only choice is to freeze in fear or put one foot ahead of the other in hope that your light and gracious presence will again become sensible to our flesh.

The night can endure for an evening … or for years; it is a darkness of soul some of your great ones endured for decades. I doubt I have the faith for that, but I am glad for them. Their witness invites me deeper into your mystery. They light candles of hope in my soul.

There are days when I know that I know nothing and that nothing is my truest knowledge of you, and humble silence is greatest praise of your unspeakability. But today I will speak.

Praise the Holy and blessed Trinity. Give praise all creation, all the souls of earth lost in the darkness of your understanding. Shout out your praise for the darkness you enter is the embrace of Eternal Wonder.

Pr. David L. Miller