Texts: Jeremiah 8:19-9:3; Luke 16:1-15
I’ve gotten into the habit of judging people by what they will not do––it’s indicative of the opposite of the “faithful in little, faithful in much” approach to life. For instance, I’ve noticed how often people will not let a driver come into a lane on a busy road near a stoplight. Look at Route 35, for instance, you know the area over by Laurel Road, where the exit from the Barnes & Noble shopping area––ooh! Listen to that way of describing the whatever shopping center it is. Well, say the light is red and you want to come onto 35 and the lanes are crowded. How long do you have to wait? Five cars? Ten cars? More than five minutes? Now, how difficult is it to let someone into the lane? I’ll argue that those who are not faithful in little are also not faithful in much. We’ve all been caught in that situation: either the car waiting to get in or the car that won’t let the other one in. We could have not even seen it––or it could have been a bad hair day.
So, just what are the little things we are supposed to be faithful in? We’re coming down the home stretch in Luke’s Gospel and somehow, I think, if we haven’t gotten the message yet, I’m not sure whether we will get it. The United States is ostensibly the most Christian nation on earth; a higher percentage of our population goes to church than in any other country that is histor-ically Christian. If you are skeptical, just look at the numbers who actually attend church in England or Germany or even Italy, for that matter. However, only 40 percent of Americans can name more than four of the Ten Commandments; 12 percent think that Joan of Arc was Noah’s wife; and more than half cannot tell you what the Beatitudes are, not to mention who stated them.
The radical right has taken this parable and the statement of Jesus and turned it into a sermon on obtaining wealth. But, let’s look at the obverse: whoever is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. It’s what we call in law the slippery slope argument. It permits a government to come up with the term aggressive interrogation techniques instead of being honest about what is continuing to actually happen: torture.
We think of torture as something that happened in the past. Torture has moved a long way from pulling out fingernails––something our School of the Americas taught Guatemalan and Salvadoran army forces to do very effectively. In Guantanamo it meant forcing a per-son to stand without moving for eight to ten to twelve hours which causes swelling in the lower legs, the drain of blood from the brain downward, and will cause excru-ciating pain. The North Koreans showed that total isola-tion in the dark or in bright lights without any change will disorient a person so badly that there is a total lack of awareness of time, space, even logical thought. Look at what happened to Jose Padilla after three years of total isolation without access to natural light––he was so destroyed that he was unable to answer even the most elemental questions.
But we need not go to such extreme examples. Each one of us has had to face our own slippery slope of descent into faithlessness. Each of us has committed some small action, from the seemingly ridiculous ex-ample of not letting a car into the lane onto 35, to more serious examples of lack of care for the other person. I think that is what Jesus is talking about here––how easy it is to brush aside something because it doesn’t seem to matter, but in the end that it does.
The past several weeks have certainly presented us with question regarding the same slippery slope. Since the beginning of 2017, the term “climate change” has all but been erased from government websites and their reports have disappeared. It just does not exist anymore.
The attempts to dismiss Greta Thunberg and her warnings are much like the attempts of the dishonest manager/steward to save his own skin. The really troub-ling part of this discussion seems to be a statement by Jesus that we need to behave like the forces and per-sons we abhor.
The text has Jesus saying that the “children of this age are more shrewd than are the children of light.” In other words, Jesus seems to say that dishonest people seem to get away with more than honest ones. The sen-tence that follows, telling us to make friends by means of dishonest wealth doesn’t seem to fit because the par-able closes with the oft-repeated statement that one cannot serve both God and mammon.
The Hebrew word mamon comes from a root word meaning “surety” or “trust.” The word “amen” actually comes from the same root. As some scholars note, “We know what this verse says; determining what it means requires effort.”
Is dishonesty or greed a natural trait connected to money? Money is used for many good things in this world; in fact, many good things cannot be accomp-lished without it. We could not build hospitals or mus-eums without money; we could not heal the sick in our society or rescue abused animals without money.
Then Luke’s Jesus changes course and couples the themes of fidelity and true wealth. First, Jesus notes that whoever is faithful with little will be faithful with much. Turning the statement on its head, he notes that who-ever is dishonest in little will be dishonest in much. This is the slippery with both money and public policy whether it is torture or climate change.
Is there no balm in Gilead? What kind of physician do we need to provide the healing either nationally or personally? What kind of insight is necessary to heal our sin-sick souls, as the old song goes? How do we go through the process of discernment as we make these decisions about our personal behavior and our national policies?
First, do no harm. It’s the old statement from the Hippocratic oath, but one that applies across the board. First, do no harm. There are several kinds of harm. There is the physical harm to others, of course, but there is also the spiritual harm we do to ourselves, con-sequences of our actions or inaction. It’s always easier to figure out the consequences of actions rather than of inaction. Inaction always seems more innocuous and its results are more difficult to measure.
Next, consider the consequences. By this, I mean, think about the results that the action or inaction has on our souls. Remember souls? How is it that we feel when we don’t let that person into the lane? Upset with our-selves? Justified because each of us has been the person trying to get onto 35 and someone else has not let us in? What are a few seconds? We’re not the local ambu-lance. As an aside, I am often stunned at how many drivers don’t even pull over for an ambulance flashing light. Are we so important?
Then, consider the alternative. Not as easy as it at first seems. Letting someone into the lane is easy, but there are many times when our decisions are far more difficult. We are told, for instance, that if we don’t en-gage in so-called aggressive interrogation techniques, that we’ll all fall victim to terror. Well, that’s extreme, to be sure, but every day we are asked to give up some small portion of liberty to be “safe,” whether it’s having conversations monitored without warrant or an immigra-tion sweep through a local neighborhood where people are targeted because of their ethnicity.
Just this past week, a group of Latinos in New York said “Enough!” to such tactics by ICE––Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Looking for an alleged overstay, ICE broke into a house in the middle of the night, grab-bed young children, ages six and seven, and threatened to deport them––these children are born here, mind you, if they didn’t provide so-called information about the targets of their search. And that case is not an isolated example.
In spite of pronouncements by our state officials, local police still target Latinos and other ethnic groups all the time. Enough! They’ve said and they have filed a lawsuit against ICE to stop this abusive behavior. We may shrug this off because we do not seem to be dir-ectly affected. But we are. These kinds of tactics are part of the slippery slope.
We should remember Martin Niemoller’s statement made when asked what happened in Germany. First, they came for the Communists, and I didn’t speak up because I was not a Communist; then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew; then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak up because I was not a trade unionist; then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak up because I was a Protestant; and then they came for me and there was no one left to speak up. Sounds a bit dramatic, but the germ of truth is there.
I think it’s all related. It’s the shortcut mentality that we have fallen into. It’s the bottom-line result oriented approach to life that seems to have taken over our thinking. What is the balm? What kind of healing do we need to help us think through these issues and to help us discern the best way to address them in our lives?
I wish there were an easy formula. That’s why the slopes are slippery––there are no easy formulae, just the difficult process of analysis, situation by situation. We have to prayerfully consider each situation as it occurs and hope we have made the right decision. Some are easier than others, like letting the car in. Others are more difficult.
Let us come to God in prayer: Eternal Guardian of our lives, may we live your call to righteousness. In the name of our Guide, Jesus. Amen.