This week's sermon text is difficult and confusing. Is Jesus commending and even offering as a means of imitation the behavior of the dishonest manager? Is he pointing to the "truth" and reality found in culture and in human behaviors that we sometimes reward those who are dishonest and only look out for themselves? Ig I am totally honest, I am not sure. I have spent years trying to figure out this text and often skip over it when it comes up in the lectionary. This week, I have decided not to.

In the final words of this week's reading, Jesus reminds us that we cannot serve two masters; we cannot be faithful to God and faithful to the culture. We have to choose. While the culture might reward certain behaviors, does this mean God sees justice and mercy and compassion in those behaviors? We can become so influence and overwhelmed by conforming to peers and to culture, are we able to see and experience what really matters, faithfulness to God? "There's More to Life" than what the world tells us is important. This week, we shall wrestle with a difficult text and an even more difficult application to our journey of faith.

Luke 16:1-13
16:1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.

16:2 So he summoned him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.'

16:3 Then the manager said to himself, 'What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.

16:4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.'

16:5 So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'

16:6 He answered, 'A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.'

16:7 Then he asked another, 'And how much do you owe?' He replied, 'A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill and make it eighty.'

16:8 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.

16:9 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.

16:10 "Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.

16:11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?

16:12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?

16:13 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 God and wealth."