This story from Luke’s Gospel - of the rich man and the beggar called Lazarus (no, not the one whom Jesus raised from the dead, but the one who sat outside the gate of the rich man), - can discomfort us, as it has done for every generation since Jesus told it.
It’s a warning about the dire danger of how wealth can affect the human personality.
 
Affluence can desensitise us to the rights and needs of other people.
I would suggest that 9 times out of 10, really rich people hardly even notice the poor, and, if they do, it’s probably with a sense of irritation.
 
When the love of money gets a hold on us, other human beings cease to matter.
Most shareholders of big companies don’t know, nor do they want to know, how much human misery occurs just so the company can pay them a handsome dividend every 6 to 12 months.
 
How often have you heard about a CEO of a company, who has lost billions of shareholders’ funds, getting a substantial pay rise? 
Or of politicians voting to increase their wages and entitlements whilst at the same time making cuts in payments to those who can least afford it?
All because they want to fix the budget deficit.
 
Where money and possessions are treated like a god, people don’t seem to matter.
The affluent very quickly become desensitised to the suffering of others.
And then, when they finally wake up to themselves, it’s a case of “Well, I’ll be damned.”
 
In the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, Jesus is trying to get under our defences and confront us with the disregard we sometimes have for those less fortunate than ourselves.
In it, he uses some of the common imagery of Paradise and Hades - which was current at that time.
He takes that well known imagery and uses it to paint a frightening picture of the significance of our disregard for the needy.
You’ll notice from the story, that during his lifetime, the rich man didn’t do anything to harm the sore-covered beggar squatting by his front gate.
He didn’t lay a finger on him, nor order him to be moved on.
 
Whilst he didn’t overtly hurt the beggar - the community had already done that most effectively - he ignored him.
I suppose the rich man was just following the expected social morals of a wealthy man in that time.
This kept others who were lower down the socio-economic scale, ‘in their place’, so to speak.
He was content with things the way they were, as it suited him very well.
 
Day by day, little by little, the rich man’s comfortable lifestyle had been digging a trench between himself and the have-nots of this world.
A trench that widened and deepened into a great gulf - a chasm in the eternal, moral order of things - which nothing was likely to be able to cross in life - and certainly not in death.
Think about that gulf.
Obviously, Jesus wants us to think very hard about it when he says: “Between you and us a great chasm has been fixed, so that those who might want to pass from here to you cannot do so, and no one can cross from there to us.”
 
Jesus is using a picture of the coming afterlife, to address the present moment.
In effect he is saying: This selfishness is a damnable way to live and it’s damnable right now, not just in the future.
It’s actually self-damnation, as we dig the gulf ourselves and we don’t need any judge or jury to convict us.
We damn ourselves by our attitudes and choices.
We damn ourselves by the things we don’t do - just as much as by the things we do.
The parable is about self-damnation.
 
You’ll notice that the focus of the parable is on the rich man, not on the poor man.
On the rich man and, later, on his affluent brothers, who continue to live in a way that damns them. 
Who are these brothers and sisters?
And their children, and their children’s children?
Are they among us today?
 
You may want to say: “Hey! Wait a moment. We’re not rich. That indictment might apply to people like Rupert Murdoch, Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and James Packer, but surely it can’t have anything to do with us.”
 
Not so fast, O ye of the quick side-step!
We may not be rich compared to the top 10% of people in Australia.
But why, when we talk about being poor or rich, do we compare ourselves only with those above us in wealth?
Why not compare ourselves with those below us?
Most of us have a roof over our heads and food on the table at every mealtime, unlike many who are sleeping rough in the streets of Sydney, in third world countries and in refugee camps.
 
So don’t allow yourself to wriggle out from under the heavy message of this parable.
Even though it hurts, even though it raises anxiety, even though we may not find any easy answers, please let this parable confront you. 
I’d far prefer that we live with uneasiness and painful self-examination, than settle down into that cushioned abyss-zone of insensitivity - which is the world of the damned.
 
Did you notice, I wonder, what tough hides the rich have, according to the parable?
When the rich man, trapped in Hades, wants someone to warn his 5 brothers, he looks for a messenger, a lackey, to carry a message to his comfortable brethren.
He asks Abraham to send Lazarus back from the dead to warn them. 
Did you get the subtlety?
Even in hell, the rich man sees the poor as the servant of the rich.
Even from paradise, they’re expected to be at the beck and call of the rich people.
“No way”, says Abraham. “They already have the teaching of Moses and the prophets; that should be enough”

However, rich men are not accustomed to being refused, so the rich man argues: “But if a person came back from the dead, they’d surely repent.”
“Don’t fool yourself,” says Abraham. “Even if someone came back from the dead, they still wouldn’t repent.”
 
Even the resurrection of Jesus hasn’t changed the attitude of those who are self-satisfied.
The affluent can be comfortable in their comfort zone, where calls to repent seem rather peripheral and irrelevant.
They see Jesus as only being for those who are weak or needy.
 
Paul, in his first letter to his disciple, Timothy, warns him (and us) not so much about the dangers of money itself, but of the dangers of developing a love of money, being arrogant and putting all our hopes in wealth, instead of in God.
He’s telling us that just being rich isn’t the problem, it’s how we treat those less fortunate than us, that’s important.
 
So where does this parable of Jesus, that we find in Luke’s gospel, meet us?
Is it a case of “Well I’ll be damned?”

I won’t presume to answer that question on your behalf. 
Nor do I have the desire or intention of berating you, nor condemning anyone.
Believe me; I have enough on my own plate in dealing with my own soul on this matter.
 
Jesus leaves me wondering: Have I become so insensitive that I now feel good and righteous about giving mere scraps to the poor?
It makes me think about the chasm that can surely open up between me and others less fortunate.
We remember the lonely, the sick, the sad and those who are disheartened. The list goes on.
 
It warns me that I’m also capable of damning my own soul - whilst feeling very comfortable in it.
It cross-examines my soul, as to whether I am unrepentant, even though I know that Jesus has risen from the dead.
We must widen our horizon and not just tell strangers to be wary, but also tell those we love to be aware of the chasm that they may be building between themselves and God.
 
And how about you?
How are you feeling right now?
 
If this parable doesn’t throw us all back to grace; where we cling to the mercy of God, and seek renewal, then nothing will.
By grace we can be saved from our own damnation and set free to love others as God intended.
 
That doesn’t mean that we can still be like the rich man during our lifetime and then on Judgement Day, rely on God’s grace and the saving powers of Jesus.

No, we need to examine our attitudes towards those who are less fortunate than we are – and do something about them before we get to stand before Jesus on the day of reckoning and have to say
​“Well, I’ll be damned!”           
 
Pastor Rick

Imagine this story.  
A rich man calls in his business manager to say that there are rumours that he’s been careless with the moneys of the rich man’s estate.

So, the manager thinks to himself, "This doesn’t look good for me - I might get the sack over this.  
But I can't keep up the mortgage payments if I lose my job and I'm not really the type for manual labour. Begging’s out, so I'd better come up with a very good excuse.  If I can keep my job, I'll still have a place to sleep each night." 
 
So, he decides to call in his boss's biggest debtors and says that he will forgive them a portion of what they owe his boss – if they pay up the balance now.
By doing this they will be personally indebted to him (that is, the manager).
When the rich man finds out about how his scheming manager has reduced the bills of his debtors behind his back, he calls in his dishonest manager and says, "Now, I can see that you’ve done some seriously shrewd thinking on this and even though I was about to fire you, I can see that maybe what you’ve done will be good for me in the long run."
 
And as if to amplify the moral of the story from Luke 16, Jesus, says, "And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes."

Hang on a minute, what’s Jesus talking about?  

He seems to be praising dishonesty and cheating in this passage, and we know that clashes completely with our understanding of what God wants from his people.
Did we just hear Jesus say dishonest wealth is great and that honour among thieves is a virtue?
Is that really what this parable means? 
 
As often happens in the gospels, Jesus draws us in with a story and then turns everything upside down – just to make his point even more strongly.
He often told stories about what the Kingdom of Heaven would be like, but here, he’s telling us what the world is like and how we need to be wise and not naïve.
 
We’re expecting the dishonest steward to be in big trouble for writing down the bosses’ debts, but it may well have been that the rich man was actually trying to extort more than what was originally borrowed, and so the manager was just asking the people to pay what they really owed.
 
In biblical times, it wasn’t uncommon for powerful men, who would have held a monopoly on resources, to manipulate their books to make it appear as though their debtors owed more than they actually did. 
In order for a wealthy businessman to pad his pockets for an extra profit here or there, he would need a business manager who was less than scrupulous, too.  
So, the manager may have been knowingly padding the books for his boss, and, of course, with all that padding going on, a less-than-honest steward, of your less-than-honest business owner, might have been inclined to make a nice little padded landing for himself as well.
 
The key point is that he foresaw what was coming, and he used his position, and the possessions under his stewardship, to build good relationships for the future.
So, I guess we could say that he was actually being a bit more shrewd - than dishonest.
 
This is exactly what the dynamics of this story is all about.
We have a shady guy, working for a dishonest businessman, so when the scheming rich man suspects his business manager might be more of a scoundrel than even he bargained for, he gives the man a chance to prove himself.
The steward sees this as a battle he's not likely to win, so he decides to out-scheme a schemer by pulling out the book of debtors and making some calls.
He rings up the first guy and says, "How much does my boss say you owe him?"
To which the man replies, "A hundred jugs of olive oil." "Well, if he says it's a hundred, it's probably more like fifty, so pay that and consider yourself even with my boss."
He does the same thing with the next debtor.
 
When the wealthy landowner discovers that he has been out-gamed by a gamer - the man he was about to fire - the rich man had to begrudgingly respect the shrewd steward for it. 
After all, his coffers are now full, his accounts receivable are at zero and his customers are happy, because they got a discount and the rich man's clients have now bonded to his manager - the very guy he hired to be shrewd in business, turns out to be even shrewder than he thought.  
At the end of the day, this guy’s worth keeping, the perfect type to run this type of operation, somebody who is both a "dishonest steward" and a "shrewd manager" at the same time.
 
But why does that earn such high praise from Jesus?  
Well, actually, he doesn’t. 
As Jesus points out, none of this earthly wealth matters anyway.  
How much money we have, means nothing to God - it’s how we conduct ourselves around money that’s important.
Jesus says, "No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and wealth."
 
Perhaps the Parable of the Dishonestly Shrewd Manager is really just an entertaining story, with a surprise ending and a great moral – and that shouldn't surprise us, because Jesus was a great storyteller and he could certainly captivate a crowd.

The main thrust of this parable is actually quite clear:  “People of faith, look ahead - be far sighted.“
Do we know where we’re heading, or what lies in front of us?
​If we have any inkling at all, the only smart thing to do is to get ready for whatever lies ahead - and that includes in the spiritual dimension, not just the worldly one.

Be as astute about the practice of your faith, just as the amoral manager was about the dealings he had with others.
In particular, astutely use whatever worldly possessions you have for the glory of God, in the same astute manner as the unscrupulous manager did for himself.
 
Our future is the Kingdom of God and that means serving Christ in all of the manifold activities of life.
It’s about loving our neighbours and even our enemies, living the eternal life, the boundless life, here and now, for that is the destiny to which we’re turned, tuned and committed.
 
As Jesus went on to say, money itself isn’t bad, but make sure that it serves your true purpose and destiny.
Don’t despise money, but use it for the glory of God.
 
Jesus seems to be saying to us: “Open your eyes and see where you are in the world, being aware of what lies ahead. 
Be as frank with yourself and as clear headed as those astute operators in the secular world.”
But we can’t let these thoughts become our master, for God is our only true master and we have to remain true to him and the lives he’s fashioned for us.
 
So we can see that for a lot of our lives, we’re like the unjust stewards from this story.
We’re rightly counted among the unjust, the unrighteous, the unprofitable, and yes, at times the amoral!
We might think that if God really doesn’t commend this kind of behaviour, then there’s not much hope for us.
That is, if we believe that we’re no better than them. 
If the God of Jesus doesn’t see in us something worthy of his affirmation, then we might as well surrender all hope, cease coming to church and forever give up gathering at the Lord’s Table.
 
But, and it’s a wonderful “but” this time, God does think there is something worthwhile in us and we must never give up.
Instead, we must keep showing him that we are trying to follow his ways.
Only then can we come to his table, eat and drink and be thankful.
 
Remember - we can’t serve 2 masters, so make sure that you choose wisely. Use the gifts that God has given you to benefit others, not for your own pleasures.
 
Jesus tells us to be wise with the little things and then we will be trusted with the big things.
We have to act with integrity, as we don’t want to end up like the dishonest manager, only seeking to line our own pockets.
 
I’ll leave it up to you, now, to search you own hearts and see where you can improve your life in this regard - to further the kingdom that God has given us right here in this world.           

Pastor Rick