Wednesday, September 26, 2007

Today’s text

Luke 16:1-6, 8

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 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

That you should find anything praiseworthy in dishonest dealing defies our logic, Jesus. But this may be the first sign that we have understood you properly, though we are totally confused and understand nothing at all. For your ways are not ours. Your reign contradicts the protocols that order our lives. And we know we have truly heard you when our dizzy minds implode in the gravity of vertigo.

A dishonest manager uses wealth not his own to ingratiate himself. He makes friends by giving away another’s property so they will help him when soon he is unemployed. The holy reign of God is like this, Jesus?

All the manager understood was that his time was up; he had to act decisively to save himself--now. It was time to burn his bridges, knowing the future could never be like the past.

Is this what made him shrewd, Jesus? Is this why you praise this scoundrel, because he knew the time?

Maybe. But if so, then may I be as shrewd as he, knowing that your holy reign has appeared, breaking the old protocols which ordered my life, shattering them when your resurrection exploded death and left it in tatters. A new time has come, and the unconquerable love I see in you is the face of the future and truest beauty in the present.

Tune my ear to the melody of your future that I might sing the songs of tomorrow.

Pr. David L. Miller