Proper 20C 2007, Luke 16:1-13

We hear what we want to hear. Three modern parables and some brief commentary:

First parable: Two men walking down a crowded, busy New York City Street. It was the height of the noontime lunch hour. With the uproar of taxis blaring horns and shouting pedestrians, one could barely hear oneself think.

Suddenly, the one man stopped dead in his tracks and exclaimed, "Did you hear that?"

"Hear what?" said his friend

"The cricket," responded the first man. "What a delightful sound: a cricket in the middle of New York City."

"You're crazy," said the second man. "How could you possibly hear a cricket in all this racket?"

Without saying a word, the first man reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of change. He threw it up in the air and stood back and watched it hit the sidewalk.

It bounced on the sidewalk a few times and came to rest all over the place. Immediately, two or three dozen
people were on their hands and knees looking for the coins.

Smiling, the first man turned to his friend and said, "We hear what we want to hear." (1)

Indeed, what do we hear? And how much is really enough?

Second parable:

There was an elderly lady, a grandmother of advanced age, who spent her last years with her social security check as her only income. Her children and grandchildren had been spectacular successes in life and when she died they did not expect much in the way of a legacy. But what they did get was an example that they never forgot.

When the family gathered for a supper together after her burial, the eldest among them stood up to announce that he had a letter from the grandmother to read. "To all my family," she had written, "I thank the dear God who loves us all that all of you have been so successful and so richly blessed. You have family who love and care for you. There is nothing I can do for you that you can't do for yourselves or that your family won't do for you.

"Therefore I have given everything I have left to the church and to those less fortunate that they too may know God's love at work in the world." (2)

Third parable: A man bought a parrot. He taught that bird to say one word. That word was, "Today." When he got up in the morning and when he came home at night it was beaten into his eardrums: "Today." There was no procrastination around that bird. "Today, today, today," he screamed.

About six months later the man bought another parrot. He taught that bird to say one word. That word was "Tomorrow." He said, "I have been living as if there were no future. Today is all there is, and I've found it isn't so."

The two birds together helped him keep his mind on the realities of life: today and tomorrow. Tomorrow is what we reap from what we sow today. (3)

In this difficult parable of the shrewd steward, Jesus seems to be telling us that for all the temptations inherent in wealth and material possessions it is possible for the Christian to manage them in ways appropriate for the Kingdom of God on earth and in heaven. (4) "Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much."

What do we hear? And there is this: There are two ways in which a Christian may view his money --"How much of my money shall I use for God?" or "How much of God's money shall I use for myself?" (5)

AMEN

1. Stewardship, Parish Publications, September 1994, modified.
2. Ibid, October 1994, modified. .
3. The Sign in the Subway, Carveth Mitchell, CSS Publishing Company, 1-55673-056-X, in eSermons Illustrations for September 23,2007, modified.
4. Fred Craddock, Luke, Interpretation, pp. 190-192,esp. 191.
5. W. Graham Scroggie, eSermons Illustrations files.