Not a Game of Monopoly (Reflections on Pentecost 16, Year C 2025)

 

“…and the revelry of the loungers shall pass away.” (Amos 6:7b)

When I was a kid I had two great pals—Scott and John. These were the dark, prehistoric olden days before the advent of video games. Our competitive recreation took the form of the board game Monopoly. I recently learned this antique pastime was invented back in 1903 by a lady named Lizzie Magie as a way to teach young people about the dangers of concentrated wealth and the virtues of a just system of taxation. Ms. Magie created the game with two sets of rules. In one version there was no taxation or shared wealth, and in the other was an anti-monopolist system in which all players were rewarded when wealth was created.[i] For most of it’s existence, however, the good folks at Parker Brothers and later Hasbro, the toy companies which now own the rights to the game, have offered only one version. Scott and John and I, like millions of other American kids of our generation, grew up playing Monopoly and learning its lessons of ruthless, rapacious greed.

As I look at American society today, I get a queasy feeling that we’re turning into one giant game of Monopoly. We’re like the rich man and Lazarus whom our Lord describes in the parable the Revised Common Lectionary has chosen for Pentecost 16, Year C (Luke 16:19-31). There’s a great chasm fixed between the haves and the have nots, and it’s growing wider every day. Some folks are passing “GO” at cyclonic speed while the rest of us can’t even find “FREE PARKING.” And don’t get me started on the cost of rent, utilities, and transportation.

Of course, American capitalism has one basic difference from a game of Monopoly: In Monopoly, everyone starts out equal. Not so in real life. Some of us inherit money. Some have better ideas. Some live in more favorable locations and are in the right place at the right time. Some work harder, some are smarter, some are more physically able. And some of us are disabled, historically marginalized, are undereducated, oar have limited opportunities. The American economy never starts out like a game of Monopoly, but, if we don’t course correct, it will surely end like one—with someone having all and all others having nothing.

Our Gospel lesson for Pentecost 16 is a stern warning. Unlike the ambiguous parable of the previous week (Luke 16:1-13), Jesus is being a lot more direct in his messaging. I don’t think he’s trying to tell us that rich people are all going to go to Hell. Wealth in and of itself is not necessarily evil; nevertheless, it is the insatiable desire for accumulation which brings about God’s wrath, and woe to us if we fail to recognize this.

The rich man in the parable knows Lazarus by name. He can’t plead ignorance. He’s known there’s a poor man at his gate, but he doesn’t care at all about this man’s hunger—even though he has the means to assuage it. Is Lazarus even human to him? Even while roasting in the flames of his eternal punishment, this self-absorbed plutocrat still sees Lazarus as an underling. “Send Lazarus to dip the tip of his finger in water and cool my tongue” he says to Abraham. He seems incapable of recognizing Lazarus as a brother. It’s his indifference to Lazarus’ suffering which has brought about his condemnation.

The rich man also has enough to feed Lazarus. Lazarus could feast from the scraps which fall from the rich man’s table. This is excessive consumption. Why would anyone amass more provisions than he needs? Some have classified this appetite for excessive wealth as a form of addiction. It’s almost a pathological need to acquire more and more. If you just can’t seem to get rich enough, you have no appreciation for the resources you already possess. The rich man isn’t condemned merely for a lack of compassion. He is also condemned for an arrogant lack of gratitude.

The proper response to all of this, of course, would be empathy and appreciation. We might not be able to fix the world’s problems on our own, but we need to be aware such problems exist. We are called upon to love our neighbor and reach out in whatever way we feel able to the ones outside the gate. Almsgiving is a spiritual discipline—not just for individuals but for the Church as an institution. If we become obsessed with hoarding for survival, we are missing the point of why the Church should exist at all.

Faith teaches all of us to be aware of the continuous blessings of God. We can always afford to be generous when we consider how God has provided. Faith creates gratitude, and gratitude creates joy, and joy creates a generous spirit.

This parable is a warning. We have Moses and the prophets and even a Savior who did rise from the dead. They’ve told us how we should live and how we should regard the resources entrusted to us. Simply, we are all our brother’s keepers. We are called to keep watchful eyes out for how wealth is viewed and used in our society. In the end, this isn’t a game, and we can’t be passively submissive to the roll of the dice.

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[i] See the Wikipedia article on the game here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monopoly_(game)#History

Investing Our Dishonest Wealth (Reflections on Pentecost 15. Year C 2025)

 

"The Worship of Mammon" E. DeMorgan, English 1909

And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. (Luke 16:8b)

Oh, yeah. The Parable of the Dishonest Steward in Luke’s gospel is one of those lessons pastors can’t seem to navigate smoothly. It’s like a driver’s test where we keep running over the orange safety cones because we don’t really know for sure what Jesus (or our evangelist, St. Luke) is trying to tell us. My old seminary professor of New Testament, the late great John H. P. Reumann[i], would remind us that there are different ways to hear each of these stories. There’s the often-cryptic way in which Jesus preached them to his community (which could enlighten some hearers and really piss off others), and there’s the way our gospel writers used the stories Jesus told to speak to their communities decades later.

This is one of those parables people don’t always like. It’s like the Prodigal Son where some folks get upset because the numbskull wasteful son gets a big party while the faithful “good” son gets left out. In the parable the Revised Common Lectionary selected for Pentecost 15 (Luke 16:1-13), a white-collar criminal seems to be the hero. Not only is this guy the hero, but he gets commended for his own sneakiness! This should bunch up the Fruit of the Looms of any American who looks with horror at the increasingly bloated disparity of income in this nation. Not only are the rich getting exponentially richer by the second, but they never seem to face any penalties whenever they choose to screw the rest of us!

So! We have to ask just what exactly is Jesus trying to teach us by telling us this story? Dr. Reumann would remind us that the story probably stopped at verse 8a. It went like this: An estate manager (and there were a lot of these guys in Jesus’ day because rich landowners didn’t have to supervise their estates. They could hire someone else to oversee the tenants and keep the books) is accused of wasting his boss’s money. The boss tells him straight he’s going to get fired and he has to turn over the books. He doesn’t want to become a laborer or a beggar, so he summons all his boss’s debtors and substantially reduces their debts, thereby making himself a hero and someone the debtors would want to do a solid for in return for getting them out of debts they couldn’t possibly live long enough to pay. When the boss finds out about this, he’s impressed. He doesn’t hire the guy back, but he has to take his hat off at how swiftly and cleverly the manager got himself out of a jam.

There are a couple of historical facts which we need to know. First, the manager was probably empowered to make the loans in the first place. He could set the rate of interest. Even though charging interest was technically illegal under Jewish law, he could simply add a commission to the bill so it wouldn’t look like he was shaking down the debtors like a Mafia loan shark. Reumann and other Bible scholars maintain the steward cut out his own commission and didn’t cheat his boss at all by doctoring the original bills. In fact, he probably bought the boss some good will by cutting the debts. Secondly, in the world of the text, the debts were pretty heavy. Reumann estimated that it would take the average working stiff ten years to pay back what these guys owed. For granting such relief the debtors wouldn’t just welcome the manager into their homes—they’d name their kids after him.

The smart guys of the Jesus Seminar[ii] claim the parable ends here at verse 8a. The sneaky guy gets commended, and Jesus leaves it up to the listeners to figure out what the story really means. Luke added all the interpretive stuff in verses 8b to 13 when he wrote his gospel.

If you cut out verses 8b-13, you could just say the manager was in a pickle, knew he had to act quickly, and did so. What does that have to do with us? We know how the times are. They’re just as desperate, confusing, and uncertain for our generation as they were for those who heard Jesus preach centuries ago. We have resources, but how do we use them? How should we use them? Are we squandering the things the Boss has left in our charge? Does the Church really need big, elaborate buildings? A full-time professional clergy? Traditions which modern folks no longer understand? How are we called to reduce the burden of our neighbors? These are questions we should be asking.

Personally, I like to speculate on what effect the manager’s favor to the debtors might’ve had on him as a human being. Obviously, this guy only helped out the debtors so he could get something in return. Still, I wonder if acts of charity—for whatever motivated them—influence those who provide them as much as those who receive them. Would this manager gain a new awareness of the people he’d been overcharging? Would he see them as human beings now that he’s broke and dependent on their charity for him? Would he understand their circumstances and—dare I say it?—become “woke?”

Our evangelist tacks a lot of morals onto this story. You can’t serve God and mammon[iii], and the day will come when all our “dishonest wealth” will be gone. What will we have to say for ourselves then?

Thanks for visiting me again. If you have a take on this parable, let me know in the comments. I’d appreciate hearing from you!

 

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[i] Dr. Reumann, rest his soul, wrote quite a long excurses on this parable in his book Jesus in the Church’s Gospels: Modern Scholarship and the Earliest Sources (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1968). Dr. Reumann passed in 2008, but the book is still in print.

[ii] See Funk, Robert and Hoover, Roy The Five Gospels: Searching for the Authentic Words of Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1993)

[iii] Fun fact: the term “mammon” used in verse 13 (also in Matthew 6:24) in the King James Version is said to come from a semitic word meaning “that in which one fully trusts.” Other sources say it was the name of the Syrian god of wealth.

The Great Contradiction (Reflections on the Feast of the Holy Cross 2025)

 
Sunday, September 14 is the Feast of the Holy Cross. On this particular Sunday we at Faith Lutheran of Philadelphia will welcome a baby girl (child of one of my former Confirmands) into the church family through the sacrament of Holy Baptism. We’re also going to give Church blessing to a couple previously married in a civil ceremony. I’m trying to keep these two events in mind as I share my reflections on this centuries-old feast day.

“And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.  “Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.” (John 3:14-17)

The Feast of the Holy Cross is one of those wacky little commemorates we only celebrate every once in a while, when September 14 happens to fall on a Sunday. It’s not one of your major Christian holidays, and I’d be willing to bet nine out of ten Christians in the US couldn’t tell you when it’s celebrated or why. Fortunately, you have your Old Religious Guy to enlighten you on this bit of ecclesiastic arcanum.

The Feast of the Holy Cross commemorates the dedication of a basilica built in Jerusalem by the Roman emperor Constantine in 335 CE. The story goes that Constantine’s mom, Helena, wanted to plant a church on the site where Jesus was crucified. When the builders dug around to lay the foundation—or so the story goes—they unearthed the cross on which the Lord died (or at least a few pieces of it. If you figure the wood would’ve been over 300 years old by that time and not in the best of shape!). Supposedly some marauding Persians stole this relic a few hundred years later.

It's natural (don’t you think?) to look with a certain amount of skepticism at this “cross discovery” story. It might also be a good idea to look with a somewhat more critical eye at the story of how the pagan Constantine became a Christian (He supposedly saw a vison of a cross in the heavens before a battle which allowed him to be victorious) and recognize that we have some good news and some bad news here.

The good news is that the Roman emperor not only made Christianity a legal religion but also popularized it and later made it the official religion of the empire. Pretty good news when you consider the empire which executed Jesus eventually came to love and embrace him. The bad news is that Christians went from being a persecuted minority to being a powerful majority who could gleefully go and persecute others. You know: launch crusades against Isalm, burn heretics at the stake, take land from indigenous peoples, declare pogroms against Jews—you get the idea. It was all under the shadow of the victorious cross.

Today we make crosses out of gold and wear them as jewelry. Rappers sport enormous jewel-encrusted crosses. Government officials proudly wear cross necklaces or cross lapel pins which are sometime overlayed by the American flag. We’ve seen the cross used a symbol of wealth and some Americans want to see it as a symbol of triumph.

I think they’re missing the point. The cross was never a symbol of triumph. It was a symbol of shame.

Peter Abelard, the 12^th century French scholastic theologian and philosopher, believed in seeing the cross in all it’s ugliness. Think about it: executing a human being by impaling his body on a piece of wood and leaving him to drown in his own bodily fluids is as sick and depraved a thing to do as one could possibly imagine. Just think of what it would mean to be crucified. To imagine this kind of death should fill us all with horror. But this is the death Jesus willingly accepted. He chose to enter into all of our pain, hatred, abandonment, and shame. Looking to the cross must remind us of both our ability to inflict harm—weather by crucifying the natural world, our thoughtless words and deed, or our indifference to the suffering of others—and the vastness of God’s willingness to forgive and accept us.

When little Ryleigh is baptized, I will christen her with oil and tell her she’s marked with the cross of Christ forever. I hope this sign of the cross will be the sign which guides the rest of her life. She’s an adorable little baby now but just wait until she’s a teenager! I’ll bet every parent feels the contradiction of desperately loving someone who makes you totally nuts. That’s the contradiction of the cross—the sign of our wanton disobedience and God’s unconditional love.

All who worship with us on Holy Cross Day will start by coming to the baptismal font with little Ryleigh to make our confession and hear the words of absolution. In baptism we embrace both aspects of the cross: our sin and God’s love. I would remind Pete and Angie as they renew their wedding vows today that a marriage—if it is to survive—must also contain the aspects of confession and absolution, contrition and forgiveness.

The cross is not a spear or a battle axe used to defeat enemies or impose our will on others. It’s a strong piece of driftwood in the ocean of this chaotic world which we grab for dear life. It’s how we survive the waves of confusion and doubt swirling around us. It’s how we truly know ourselves and come to know how God knows us. It’s our vessel for compassion for ourselves and for everyone else.

Cling to the cross, my friend, and come see me again, won’t you?

A Short but Meaningful Letter (Reflections on Pentecost 13, Year C 2025)

 

A Byzantine icon of Onesimus

So therefore, none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions. (Luke 14:33)

The quote above is a pretty tall order, don’t you think? I mean, just what are you willing to give up so you can be a real disciple of Jesus? Our Roman brothers and sisters, when they take Holy Orders, are expected to renounce the world. As a Lutheran pastor, I’m not sure I’ve really done much renouncing. I did know guys un seminary, however, who quit good paying jobs with lots of benefits and possibilities for career advancement, and took up a call to an uncertain and vastly less lucrative future in the clergy. I only gave up a nerve-shredding career as a middle school substitute teacher and a full-time unemployed actor. Of course, I also gave up alcohol consumption and few other bad habits—that’s no loss when you consider I’m better off without them.

Our lessons for the 13^th Sunday of Pentecost in the Revised Common Lectionary have this theme of making choices. Moses, in the lesson from Deuteronomy[i], tells the children of Israel, just as they’re about to return to the land promised to their ancestor Abraham, they’d better get their act together and seek God’s will. If they don’t, they’re not going to last long. If they choose justice, compassion, and honesty, they may have a shot at creating a strong society. If they choose arrogance, greed, and idolatry they’re probably going to screw themselves. God just doesn’t like ugly. It never works.

In the epistle lesson[ii], St. Paul is making a pitch to his buddy Philemon to do a little emotional sacrificing. The letter is only 25 verses long, but we can figure out the whole story from the few details Paul includes. First, it looks like Paul is in the slammer again. He was often getting himself locked up for preaching the gospel, and we suspect this letter was written while he was in Rome awaiting trial. We also think Philemon ran a house church in Colossae, which is in modern-day Turkey.[iii] Philemon must’ve been a pretty rich guy since he had a home big enough to host a worshiping community and he had at least one slave—Onesimus. From this letter we can deduce that Onesimus has run away from Philemon and found Paul in Rome. I guess that wouldn’t be too hard. All he had to do was ask where the jail was.

Paul tells us that Onesimus, who seems to have become a Christian, is very useful to him. You have to figure if Paul didn’t like the prison food, he could ask Onesimus to run to the Wawa and get him a hoagie or something. Nevertheless, Paul is upset that two Christian brothers—even if one happens to be the slave of the other—aren’t getting along. You’ll note, of course, that Paul has no problem with the concept of slavery. It was what went on in his day, and he couldn’t wrap his brain around the idea that it was dehumanizing. For the sake of the community in Colossae, Paul is asking Onesimus, the fugitive slave, to return to a master who may have treated him like crap. That’s a pretty big ask. He’s also asking Philemon, a guy who needs to show he has control over his household, to forgive the runaway and take him back as a brother and not as a slave. Since the letter also seems to suggest Onesimus might’ve helped himself to some traveling money from Philemon’s purse,[iv] welcoming this guy back isn’t going to be a day at Disneyland for Philemon. In the world of this text, there are pretty strict societal rules, and you can bet old Phi wants to make sure everyone in his household knows who the boss is. Even though Paul promises to pay the slave’s debt, Philemon must think he’s going to look like a real wuss welcoming back a slave who is lazy and a thief. He knows this guy deserves a good thrashing, but he’s supposed to ignore that, give him his freedom, and treat him like a brother. All the while he knows Onesimus has probably been trash-talking about him to Paul. Paul’s request is one big, whopping bowl of fatty, gristly pride Philemon is expected to choke down.

I always chuckle a bit over the Letter to Philemon because I notice Paul is not above a little emotional blackmail. He reminds Phi that he’s the one who brought him to Christ. “I say nothing,” Paul writes in verse 19, “about your owing me even your own self.” Say nothing? He just mentioned it! But Paul goes on to say, “Confident in your obedience, I am writing you knowing that you will do even more than I say.”

Even though Paul sounds like a stereo-type Jewish mother, we still have to give him props for asking these boys to sacrifice their pride for the sake of the community and the Gospel. After all, Paul is very likely about to sacrifice his own life for that very cause.

What’s the value here? For Paul, reconciliation and forgiveness are more important than position. Mercy is more important than justice. Inclusion and embrace are more important than the norms of society. Being a disciple of Jesus means taking up some kind of cross and giving up something you may not want to relinquish.

What sacrifices are you willing to make for the Gospel?

You can let me know in the comments. Thanks again for letting me share my thoughts this week. See you again soon!

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[i] Deuteronomy 30: 15-20.

[ii] Philemon 1-21.

[iii] We think this because Paul mentions Archippus in his letter to the Colossians (Colossians 4:17)

[iv] See verses 17-18.