Pastor Tom Johnson, September 22, 2013
Jesus says, “The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” Jesus laments the fact that God’s people are less thoughtful in doing good than the world around us in doing bad. To put it another way, Jesus wishes we would put as much mental effort into bringing the light of God’s love into the world as a crooked accountant who steals money from his own clients. Jesus wants us to be just as cunning as a white collar criminal, but instead of for personal gain, for good and for God’s Kingdom. If this doesn’t bother you yet, think about how Jesus calls us to be as shrewd and cunning as a serpent and as innocent and naïve as a dove. What story does a cunning serpent remind us of?
Jesus wants us to be as deliberate, smart, and persuasive as the serpent of old. You’ll remember the Garden of Eden. Adam and Eve were as innocent as doves enjoying the good life without sin, evil, sickness, or death. And then the cunning serpent came and outwitted humanity.
The snake shrewdly used Scripture but added his own little twist to the truth. “In the day that you eat of the fruit, you shall not die. You’ll become like God.” Well, they did not die immediately but death entered the world that day. They did became like God knowing good and evil but they did not evolve into higher beings.
You’ll also remember the cunning and shrewdness of Cain who persuaded his brother Abel to follow him out into the field. Cain’s little lie deceived Abel and it cost Abel his life. And so it goes in human history—the cunning and shrewdness of people who promote evil, greed, and violence.
Do you remember old Pharaoh how he would promise to let the Israelites go from their slavery and then change his mind at the last minute…and how he let them go the last time so that they would be caught between his army and the Red Sea so that he could annihilate them?
Jesus called Herod a fox for his cunning to manipulate and deceive the people of God. And dare I mention other more recent world leaders, dictators, kings, Wall Street executives, those who deal in subprime mortgages, tax fraud, top secret government operations, and other examples of cunning and shrewdness?
The financial manager in our text is working for a rich man, squanders his money, and when he is caught, he is fired. But before word can go out that he is a crooked business manager who has lost his job, he shrewdly tries to improve his reputation. He does this because he is too weak to dig a hole in the ground and has too much pride to beg for money. And so, in order to make more people like him in the business community, he reduces the amount of money owed to his former boss by as much as half in one case. And it works. People enjoy owing a lot less. Who wouldn’t like their debts reduced? And now the boss who fired him will look bad if he tries to collect the money that has been forgiven. And even though Jesus calls him dishonest and his behavior wrong, he commends his cunning intelligence.
Wouldn’t it be nice, Jesus says, if believers would show the same amount of wisdom as stewards of the gifts of God? How much more effective we would be if we were just as thoughtful, deliberate, and winsome for the greater good of humanity and the glory of God! My mind goes to back to the lack of shrewdness in the way the Church treated Galileo. Religious leaders were afraid of a brilliant mind who challenged age-old assumptions about the universe. Rather than intelligently engaging Galileo in conversation, the church placed him under house arrest and would not let him write any more. Or more recently, rather than rising up to the challenge to win people to faith who understand our world through science and empirical truth, instead, we often vilify them or simply ignore the conversation altogether. In the last century, we remember that believers in Jesus have also been outwitted by those who used religion to promote evil such as anti-Semitism and institutional racism. Maybe that is why Jesus chooses difficult words. Perhaps he wants to jolt us and awaken us to the tension we live in as believers: while, on the one hand, we are unconditionally accepted and loved by God, on the other hand, he also wants us to act shrewdly and wisely as his Children of Light. We cannot afford to fall behind the world around us as they discuss important matters. We cannot lose sight of the relevance of the Gospel and the Word of God in an ever-changing world.
God has given us precious gifts. He gave his Son to purchase a place for us in Paradise. He outwitted the devil and the powers of darkness by going to the Cross. He was one step ahead of the Roman soldiers when the angels rolled away the stone from the empty tomb. I love the powerful prayer we pray during holy week when we pray that “the serpent who overcame by the tree of the garden might likewise by the tree of the Cross be overcome.” Is it too much of a thing for him to ask that we be wise and shrewd as stewards of such an empowering message? Should it surprise us that Jesus would want us to intelligently move forward as his Children of Light so that more and more people will come to the knowledge of the truth that there is a God and that God is good, gracious, and loves us with an eternal love? What a privilege it is to be both entrusted and challenged by the wisdom of Christ!
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