Ninth Sunday after Trinity—Faithful Stewardship and Eternal Friends
In the Name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.
Presidents and politicians understand the score, and military leaders too, if you pay attention to the news.They know their time is limited, and so they act accordingly. A president issues last-minute pardons—sometimes to protect allies, sometimes to secure favors for the future. Politicians vote for or against laws, not necessarily for the common good of their constituents, but because of the donors who will fund their future campaigns, or the corporations who might reward them with a profitable job once their term is through.
Some even pass legislation that conveniently benefits the companies in which they hold stock. And like I said, military leaders—you’ll oftentimes find generals that, after they retire, go work for weapons manufacturers. They may have worked together to secure these deals in our country and other countries.
These things happen because the sons of this age understand. They understand when they have things they can use to make their life better, and so they use them shrewdly. Maybe not honestly all the time, but shrewdly, wisely.
This is the picture Jesus puts before us in the Gospel this morning: a dishonest and unrighteous steward, caught squandering his Lord’s possessions, uses the little time that he has left to make deals with those indebted to his Lord (Luke 16:1–8). He cuts what they owe, makes friends for himself, and ensures that when he is removed from office, he will not be left all on his own.
The Lord Himself cannot help but commend the steward’s shrewdness—not his dishonesty, but his shrewdness. Jesus isn’t telling us to imitate the steward’s dishonesty, his theft. But He is telling us to learn from the steward’s recognition of the urgency of the time, of that moment, and the foresight to use what we have now before time is up—for the sake of a future that endures forever, that really matters, that truly exists after this temporal life is through.
Everything we call ours in this life—our body and soul, our family, our money, our possessions, our time—isn’t really ours at all. It doesn’t really belong to us. It belongs to God who created us and provides for us even to this day.
We are stewards of these things—even our own body, even our own money, even our own savings account, even our own time. We are stewards of these things, not owners. Nothing in this life really belongs to you, and our stewardship lasts only for a little while until our Lord calls us to give an account of what we’ve done in the body, whether good or evil (2 Corinthians 5:10).
If our bodies will return to dust, if our possessions will rot away, if this whole world is passing away (1 Corinthians 7:31), and that these things can come upon us suddenly—our end, our temporal death can come upon us suddenly—if this is the case, then Jesus says, all the more reason to use what we have now in such a way that it will last forever. "Make friends by unrighteous mammon," He says (Luke 16:9). Not to gain wealth and pleasure for yourself in this world, to get while the getting is good just for this life. But to love, to give, to support, so that others may be received with us into everlasting dwellings.
So let’s look at this shrewdness of the sons of this age first. If what the steward in our Gospel did happened today, and I crunched some of the numbers, you can look at your little footnotes in your Bible of what these measurements are, because one of them, they’re not both measure. One is a measure, and one is a bath, and you have to look up what that means.
But if you look up what that means, and then you crunch the numbers today of what olive oil goes for per gallon, and what grain, wheat grain, there’s fluctuation with that, but wholesale, what it goes for per bushel today—what the steward did just with the two examples, and from the text, it sounds like there were more than just two debtors to this Lord—but he gives examples of the kind of thing he was doing. And just from the two examples, the steward stole about $25,000 to $30,000 from his Lord, and then gets commended for his shrewdness.
Just from the two examples, and now remember, he called them one by one, all the debtors. But just with two of the examples, $30,000, he stole from his Lord. This means that a steward managing the possessions of his Lord first squanders his Master’s property (Luke 15:13), same word as the parable before of the prodigal son, where he squandered the inheritance given to him by his father.
He first does that—squanders the property of his Lord, who he was supposed to be stewarding the possessions of—squanders it, and has to give an account, is about to be fired, no longer to be a steward, and then proceeds to steal more of his Lord’s property in hopes that this theft will provide him with a softer landing when he is finally thrown out of his job. And his Lord commends him for his shrewdness. The steward is shrewd in the same way that the sons of this generation, this temporal existence, are more shrewd than the sons of light, more shrewd than us in the church (Luke 16:8). When they know that their time is short, they do what they can to improve their position, like last-minute pardons.
When they hear on the news that a few inches of snow are coming, the sons of this age go to the store and buy as much bread and milk as they possibly can. When the sons of this generation heard COVID and shutdowns were coming, they went and bought all the toilet paper before you got there. If they were members of the legislative branch of our government and were in secret meetings where they were figuring out what kind of restrictions were going to take place, they immediately went out of that meeting before anybody else knew, and they changed their stock portfolio.
That’s what the sons of this age do, and yes, it’s kind of dishonest and greasy, but it’s shrewd, and we could learn something from that—that is what Jesus is telling us. I’d be here all day if I gave you all the examples of how the sons of this age get that, but those are just the examples I’ll give you today. That’s their shrewdness.
They understand. And what we need to understand from the example is first the true owner and giver of our possessions in this life. I already told you the answer, but I’m going to stress it again. Jesus is telling us that so often the world is wiser, more shrewd in using their passing possessions than we Christians.
They know their time of wealth, authority, status, and other such things are a gift to be used for gain without really losing anything—because so often the wealth or the notoriety or the authority the sons of this age get doesn’t belong to them and is randomly given. Like if you were an online influencer, it is so random that something becomes viral and that you make loads of money. It is random and fleeting, and it doesn’t really belong to you.
So if you use it, if you use that to your advantage while you have it and risk it, you’re not really losing anything because it was randomly given to you in the first place when it really comes down to it. And they understand this. You’re not really losing anything by making use of these unrighteous possessions while you have the time because they never really belonged to you in the first place.
So they go all out to get while the getting is good. We can lose sight of the score. We can easily forget that it is God who owns everything we have, even our retirement accounts, even the money that we’re using to pay off debt before we give it to other things, even our time that we think we don’t have enough of to do the things we know as Christians we ought to be doing with that time.
It doesn’t belong to us. So when we use it faithfully, the way the Lord would have us use it, we aren’t really losing anything. But we so often as Christians trick ourselves into thinking we’re losing, that we’re missing out, that something is not going to come about that we need to have come about if we don’t use these things for us first.
We forget that "every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning" (James 1:17). Or as the Small Catechism puts it:
I believe that God has made me and all creatures; that He has given me my body and soul, eyes, ears, and all my members, my reason and all my senses, and still takes care of them. He also gives me clothing and shoes, food and drink, house and home, wife and children, land, animals, and all I have. He richly and daily provides me with all that I need to support this body and life. He defends me against all danger and guards and protects me from all evil. All this He does only out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. For all this it is my duty to thank and praise, serve and obey Him. This is most certainly true. (SC, First Article)
And again, when we pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," we confess that daily bread includes all the things God gives us: body, food, drink, clothing, shoes, house, home, land, animals, money, goods, a devout husband or wife, devout children, devout workers, devout and faithful rulers, good government, good weather, peace, health, self-control, good reputation, good friends, faithful neighbors, and the like (SC, Fourth Petition).
All of it comes from God. When Jesus speaks of unrighteous wealth or unrighteous mammon and being faithful in what is another man’s, our Lord is speaking of these First Article gifts and those things for which we pray when we say, "Give us this day our daily bread" (Luke 16:11; Matthew 6:11). It belongs to another.
That’s what He means when He says, "If you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own?" (Luke 16:12). In this life, everything you’re stewarding belongs to another Man. It belongs to the Lord Jesus. It does not belong to you.
And how are you going to use it? Nothing really belongs to you or any other creature. All is given from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shadow of turning (James 1:17). This means that we have nothing to lose when we use unrighteous mammon to love and serve our neighbor according to our stations in life.
We have nothing to lose and everything to gain. It is like we are given a billion dollars to invest however we want, no strings attached. We lose nothing because it wasn’t ours in the first place. We are free to risk it and see what happens. So that’s the first part: it doesn’t really belong to us. It’s given by God and belongs to Him.
The second thing is that these possessions of this life are passing, that they will pass away, that the end of the ages has come upon us, that our time is short, and that all these things are going to melt away before the new heavens and the new earth come about (2 Peter 3:10–13). The sons of this age know that the time is short and so they make use of what advantage they have before the time is gone. We Christians know that the Lord is coming back like a thief in the night (1 Thessalonians 5:2).
We know He is coming soon and that all of this creation will be consumed in fire and will no longer exist, and that God will create a new heavens and a new earth, and that He will raise us up in glorified bodies with no remnants of sin. Hopefully you all know that. We know this, but how often do we steward the time, the talent, the treasure we have been given like we really believe that? Like we really believe that this is all passing away, so we might as well use all that we have now for what endures in eternity.
How often do we act like we really believe that? And don’t we also forget this urgency and allow ourselves to be lulled into the illusion that we have plenty of time. Plenty of time to repent. Plenty of time to get our act together. Plenty of time to start getting better about attending Divine Service and other times to hear God’s Word and learn more about Christ. Plenty of time to pay off our debt or save up for that trip we want to go on, and then when we finally get around to it, we will use our possessions to love and serve our neighbor and store up treasures in heaven.
We’ve got plenty of time to take care of these prerequisite steps, and then we’ll start doing the faithful things. But first we need to take care of these personal goals. Cast these lies away from you. You do not have time to tell yourself that you still have time. Hear our Lord who says, "I must work the works of Him who sent Me while it is day; the night is coming when no one can work" (John 9:4).
And remember that Paul tells us—he told them 2,000 years ago when he wrote 1 Corinthians—that "the end of the ages has come" (1 Corinthians 10:11). You do not know when Jesus is coming back. I hope He comes back right now, but you don’t know. You do not know. You do not have plenty of time. If you as a Christian have heard the Law of God and it’s reached your ears and into your heart, and you know that you are being unfaithful with what the Lord has given you, you do not have time. Right then and there you need to repent and cling to Christ and His forgiving blood.
You don’t have time once you hear from the Word of the Lord that you have been unfaithful, that you have wasted, that you’ve spent it on your pleasures. So learn that lesson too from these shrewd sons of this age—that our time is short, that there is urgency. And then learn this: the Lord commends the shrewdness of this dishonest manager. And then at the end of this Gospel reading, He commends faithful stewardship. Faithful stewardship is not about being dishonest, but it is about knowing the score, and knowing really who these possessions belong to and what He wants you to do with them.
Remember that all you have in this life is really owned by God—the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—that God has freely given you all things, and He commends faithful stewardship. He first commends in the Scriptures the faithful stewardship of His Son, the one who said as He prepared to ascend the cross for our salvation: "The Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many" (Mark 10:45). Our Lord Jesus, the perfect steward, though He was rich, Scripture tells us, yet for your sakes He became poor, that you through His poverty might become rich (2 Corinthians 8:9).
It is because our Lord took on human flesh, lived out a perfect stewardship in that flesh, in the things of this life in our place, suffered and died in our place, and rose from the dead. It is because Christ has done these things according to the Father’s will, as a perfectly faithful steward, that we are given all that we are and have, only for His sake.
That’s why the Small Catechism, even in the First Article, when it’s just talking about created things, says that all of this He does, God does, out of fatherly, divine goodness and mercy, without any merit or worthiness in me. He has that goodness and mercy toward us for the sake of His Son Jesus, even when He puts food on your plate, or gives you some free time, or puts a roof over your head.
It’s for the sake of Jesus. Our future is secure in the blood of Jesus Christ, our Savior. He has made us alive with Christ, seated us at His right hand with Christ, and now causes us to walk in good works, good and faithful stewardship out of what He has given us. And even these good works were prepared beforehand for us (Ephesians 2:4–10).
They’re not even created by us. See how generous your Heavenly Father is, that He would give His Son for your forgiveness and everlasting salvation, and that He would give you everything you need, and even pre-packaged good works to perform in order to commend you—to commend you for using things that don’t belong to you and performing good works that He Himself prepared for you, and that He Himself compels and empowers you to perform by the Holy Spirit dwelling in you.
Think about how generous He is in this—that all of it’s given to you, and He wants to commend you when He’s the one who is doing it in you.
It makes me think of how proud at least I am when this happens. I’m sure it’s happened to you maybe a few times. It’s a rare thing, but it does happen when one of my kids freely just shares one of their toys with their younger siblings without complaining or grumbling.
Like, sure. And I’m like, what just happened? Or when I hardly ever do this—when I have a dessert that I’m really looking forward to, when we make some really tasty dessert and there’s only a little bit left, and one of the little kids goes up to one of the older kids and says, “Can I have some?” And it’s all that’s left, and they’re just like, “Sure,” and I’m flabbergasted. And I commend them for this. But think about it—the toys aren’t theirs. I bought them, or their grandparents got them. And that food, that dessert, isn’t theirs.
We bought it and made it for them, and we didn’t have to give it to them at all. But we’re so excited and rejoice when we see them joyfully giving that to someone else without grumbling. That’s our Father in heaven. That’s just a little twinkle of it in us as parents.
That’s what He’s doing. He’s giving you all these things—eternal life, forgiveness of sins, and everything you are and have. And He could just say, “You’re just doing what I want you to do, and this is My stuff anyway, so who cares?” But He doesn’t do that. He wants to commend you, and He wants you to have a host of friends greeting you in the resurrection.
That’s what He wants for you, so be shrewd. You have been given all of these First Article gifts. You have been given your daily bread, and you will continue to be given it, and you are given the beloved Son of our Heavenly Father in and through the means of grace. And by the way, this is the escape when temptation comes upon you, or when you have realized that you’ve been unfaithful in your stewardship.
The way of escape that the Lord always provides for you is His Word and the Lord’s Supper. Always it’s there as a means of escape, so come to it. That’s where the Holy Spirit is going to work in you and dwell in you, and you will never lack any good thing. And the Lord wants you to use all that you are and all that you have to be received into eternal life, into that eternal dwelling, surrounded by friends in that great and glorious abode which Scripture speaks of in this way:
Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them, and they shall be His people. God Himself will be with them and be their God. And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away. (Revelation 21:3–4)
God has given you all that you are and all that you have, even your time, so that you would use them faithfully while you still have time in this life. He has given you these good and perfect gifts to prepare for yourself a great multitude of friends that will greet you in the resurrection as you enter that eternal dwelling with God. Imagine it.
Imagine when you wake up in the resurrection in a glorified body, walking through the gates of the New Jerusalem. Imagine being greeted by all your children and adopted children in the church and grandchildren—whom you, as a faithful steward, spent time with in prayer, instructing in the fear and instruction of the Lord, bringing to Divine Service even when they didn’t want to go, and teaching them the Word of the Lord. Imagine being greeted by them in the resurrection, thanking you sincerely for doing that for them, even when they complained and even when they never thanked you here. Imagine that when you spent patience, blood, sweat, and tears to keep them in the Lord’s Word and faith, and now you’re greeted by them as friends in the resurrection.
Imagine being greeted by all the pastors of the churches you belonged to and the fellow parishioners of those churches that you belonged to—thanking you as friends in the resurrection for the time, treasure, and talent that you spent in the congregation faithfully, to make the lives of your pastors and their families and your fellow parishioners better, so that you would all be built up in the Lord. Imagine seeing that when you wake up in the resurrection. Imagine being greeted by all the family members of all those pastors thanking you for supporting them and caring for them in this life.
And imagine all those family, friends, neighbors, employees, employers, and everyone else that you served in this life according to your stations by the working of the Holy Spirit. Imagine them greeting you in the resurrection as dear friends—some that will shock you, because you never saw it here in this life—being greeted by them as friends because you, heeding the Word of the Lord, let your good works shine before them so that they would give glory to their Father in heaven and have saving faith in the Lord Jesus. Imagine what that will look like and how that will feel.
That is what Jesus is talking about when He says, “Make friends for yourselves by unrighteous mammon, that when it fails, they may receive you into an everlasting home” (Luke 16:9). The time is short. Your future with the Father in heaven is secure in the blood of Jesus through faith worked by the Holy Spirit. And now in that certainty, and as a possessor of all things, our Lord gives you the opportunity to joyfully and recklessly spend what is another Man’s—what is God’s—here in time, so that He can give you what is your own, the true riches in His everlasting kingdom.
And they are not to be enjoyed all by yourself, but to be enjoyed alongside all those friends you made for yourself in this life, only out of pure grace, mercy, and the abounding generosity of God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, eternal God, from whom alone all good gifts do proceed: We publicly admit and confess that from our mother's womb we have come into this vale of misery naked and bare and have brought nothing into this world. Rather, all things that we have are Your gifts. Grant that we may at all times, according to the true manner of faith, give thanks to You for all Your fatherly blessings, which You richly impart to us in body and soul, that we may well distribute these entrusted gifts unto Your divine honor and the benefit of our neighbor, and finally, after this temporal life, that we may partake of the goods and treasures of Your eternal kingdom in joy, through Jesus Christ, Your dear Son, our Redeemer, who lives and reigns with You and the Holy Spirit, one true God, now and forever. Amen.
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