I want to begin with a word about the sermon title.
The idea for the title comes from Edward Markquart of Grace Lutheran Church in Seattle.
The word, ‘manager’ in our text this morning can also be translated as, ‘steward.’
In the Greek the word for steward is oi-ko-no-mos.
And the Greek word for house is oikos.
Therefore a steward is one who takes care of, or manages, the house.
From a related Greek word, oikonomia, which means household management,
we get our present day English word, economics.
Economics is the management of resources,
the resources of a house, of a group of people, of a country, of a planet.

And so oikonomics refers to the practice of being stewards, good managers,
of what God has entrusted to us, God’s resources.
Perhaps for those of us in Calgary,
this isn’t the best week to speak about the economics of resources.
We know that in the past week a six person panel
reported back to the Government of Alberta on the issue of oil and gas royalties.
I suspect that there would be a wide diversity of opinions
on the conclusions reached by that panel.
The Calgary Herald reported that over four days
the Government’s website containing the study has received over 210,000 hits.
I’m guessing that Ralph Klein is quite happy to be retired these days.

Now the reality is that no matter which way
the government will eventually go with this report,
it will have an effect on you and me.
Whether we think that increasing the royalties on oil and gas would be a good thing,
after all don’t the natural resources of our province belong to the people of the province, or whether you would argue that without the commitment and investment
of the companies willing to do the work, there wouldn’t be any royalties to quarrel over, the fact remains that whatever royalty framework is eventually adopted,
it will dramatically impact the resources available to the government
as we move into the future.

Last Thursday I attended the Chair of Christian Thoughts lectures at the University, where Errol Mendes, a Professor of Law at the University of Ottawa,
spoke about businesses and corporate social responsibility.
He gave an excellent lecture and in that lecture he gave a number of examples
of corporations and their approach to social responsibility.
I will share with you two examples specifically
which speak to a corporate sense stewardship and future vision.
In 1982 seven people died in the Chicago area
after some Tylenol capsules had been laced with cyanide.
Although the USFDA did not require a recall,
the makers of Tylenol, Johnson and Johnson, issued a recall of all Tylenol products, which at the time amounted to over 100 million dollars worth of product.
Tylenol’s share of the market crashed from 35% to 8%,
but within a year, due to Johnson and Johnson’s prompt handling of the incident
and their leadership in developing tamper proof bottles for medications,
Tylenol had recovered its market share and, in fact, within a few years,
Tylenol became the most popular over the counter analgesic in the United States.

A second example involves the scandal
that surrounded the Ford Motor Company and the Pinto automobile.
Earlier models of the Pinto had a design flaw
that could result in the gas tank being pushed forward in a rear end collision,
causing the tank to be ruptured by protruding bolts,
which could lead to deadly fires and explosions.
It would have cost Ford $11 per vehicle to fix the problem.
With 11 million vehicles affected, it would have been a total cost of $121 million.
Ford conducted a cost benefit analysis
and calculated that the cost of settling court cases due to death and injury,
based on a projection of 2100 accidents,
180 burn deaths and 180 serious burn injuries,
assuming settlement amounts of $200,000 per death,
$67,000 per serious injury and $700 per burned out car,
would amount to a total of $49.53 million.
Given this information, Ford decided against a redesign of the Pinto.
Ford’s idea of stewardship may have been based on what they thought
was best for the company, but it proved to be very myopic in vision.
Ford may have saved money, but it also gained a reputation
for manufacturing a car which came to be known as, “the barbeque that seats four”
and Forbes Magazine named the Pinto as one of the worst cars of all time.
Ford and Johnson and Johnson made different stewardship choices
which not only affected their immediate situation, but significantly impacted their futures.
The makers of Tylenol were willing to take a hit in order to invest in future goodwill whereas Ford chose to protect their present situation to the detriment of their future image.

So what does this have to do with our text this morning?
The parable of the Shrewd Manager from Luke
is one of the hardest parables of Jesus to understand.
Over the years it has caused everything from confusion to outright hostility.
The problem is that in this parable
Jesus seems to approve of the actions of a dishonest steward.
The story goes like this.
A rich man’s manager was told that he would be fired
for misuse of his master’s resources.
Faced with the prospect of losing his job,
knowing that he didn’t have the strength to do physical labour and being too proud to beg, the manager decided to buy himself a future.
He called those who were in debt to his master
and he told them to write down the amount they owed.
By doing this, the manager was hoping that when he was fired,
others would welcome him into their homes.
He was investing in his future, although it was with his master’s money.
He was a crook.
He was cooking the books.
Even the title of the parable calls the manager shrewd.
Shrewd is not an adjective that is often coveted by people today.
Wise, intelligent, yes, but shrewd is right up there with crafty, cunning, sneaky, wily.

The master in the parable, however, thinks this is great.
When he found out what his manager had done, he commended him.
Instead of throwing him into jail,
instead of having him tortured until he could pay back what he owed,
he commended him for knowing how to take care of himself.
Jesus wraps up the parable by saying that,
“The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation
than are the children of light.
Make friends using dishonest wealth,
so that when it is gone, they may invite you into the eternal homes.”

We could spend hours trying to figure out
why Jesus used this particular example to make his point
but the question may be, do we even know what the point is?
I think that the point is this:
Jesus makes clear, in this parable and in many other places in the gospels,
that money, in and of itself, is not a bad thing.
Its when you serve money, its when money becomes,
not the means to an end, but the end itself,
its when money becomes our god, that we get in trouble.
So Jesus goes on to say, “You cannot serve both God and money.”
But clearly, in this parable, and in many other places in scripture,
Jesus is saying that money can be used as a means to an end.
The stewardship of our money, our oikonomics,
has long been a vital issue for Christians.
The vast majority of us cannot really live in this world
without coming to terms with money.
Its not about renouncing money,
but about how we are being called to use our money,
how we are being called to be good stewards of our resources.
Its about Godly oikonomics.

If there is one point that all people agree on in the interpretation of this parable
it is that the manager was commended because he planned for his future.
The method might have been dishonest,
but he used what was at his disposal to invest in his future.
I don’t believe that Jesus was inviting his audience,
and I don’t believe he invites us today,
to become dishonest in our oikonomics.
But he does make the point that we, the children of light,
those who are disciples of Jesus,
we should be at least as astute as the manager in the parable was
when it comes to dealing with each other and planning for our future.
Use the money at your disposal to make friends,
so that when the money is gone, your friends will invite you into the eternal homes. There’s much here that needs commenting on.
First, the NRSV calls it dishonest wealth.
But as I have already said, money, in itself, has no character.
So a better translation is worldly wealth.
Either way, it is a temporary resource.
And the best approach to a temporary resource
is to utilize it in a way that leads to more permanent results.
So we are told by Jesus to use this worldly wealth to make friends for ourselves,
so that when the temporary is gone, we will know something of the eternal.
What this can only mean is that we are to invest our wealth
in doing what is right for people,
for people who will then welcome us into the eternal homes.

How I understand this is that we need to use our worldly capital
to build up heavenly capital.
We need to employ an oikonomics which invests in people.
By helping those who are not always able to help themselves,
we use the worldly wealth to build up heavenly capital.
In knowing how we are to use wealth,
we come to understand what Jesus means when he says
that if you are faithful with little, you will also be faithful with much.
Our approach to our oikonomics
needs to mirror the approach of Johnson and Johnson, rather than Ford.
We need to have a vision which goes beyond the issue of our present survival,
to one which has our future in mind.

Part of the oikonomics of the future is to invest in buildings and programmes.
Every year we set a church budget.
We need to invest in this beautiful building
and in the programmes that our ministry offers.
But that ministry is about people and we are to invest in people in a way
that will allow us to be welcomed into the eternal kingdom.
When I hear these words, I think about another parable of Jesus,
the parable of the sheep and the goats,
Jesus says to the sheep who are gathered on his right,
when you did what was righteous
to any of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did it for me.
And I have to conclude that when Jesus says
make friends who will welcome you into the eternal homes,
he has the people, who he calls the least of his brothers and sisters, in mind.

I don’t know what the Government of Alberta should do
about the royalty rate for oil and gas, but I do know this.
Whatever the rate is, that wealth must be used for the sake of people.
It must be used to make the lives of people better.
Better roads and hospitals, yes,
but more than just infrastructure, think about people.
Did you know that in 1986 a single person on welfare in Alberta received $9881 a year, but in 2005 that went down to $5050, or less than $400 a month?
Did you know that in 1988 there were 22,000 social housing units
built by various levels of governments in Canada,
but by 1994 there were virtually none,
and in 2006 that figure was only around 2000?
Did you know that in 1980 there were no food banks in Canada
and that today there are over 650?
We would do well to invest in people.
We as citizens of Alberta and citizens of Canada,
we as citizens of a city which is in the midst of an election,
we would do well to consider how our wealth is being used to invest in people,
especially those who are least able to look after themselves,
those whom Jesus in his parable of the sheep and the goats
refers to as the hungry, the thirsty, the lonely, the naked, the sick and the oppressed.

Here at Grace, we are trying to practice good stewardship,
planning for our future through programmes like the Open House,
but really our oikonomics need to be about investing in people.
And so even the Open House is all about inviting people to be part of this family of God. Its about inviting people to share in how we invest in the needs of our community.
Being good stewards of God’s resources, practicing Godly oikonomics,
that’s why we house our guests from Inn From the Cold
and that’s why we cook the meals for the Mustard Seed.
That’s why we have partnered with the Lost Boys and Girls of Sudan,
so that they would know a different life than the one they knew growing up.
That’s why we invest in the people in the refugee transition house
and those seeking to get off the streets
through the Grace House ministry with Servants Anonymous.
And the neat part is that when we invest in others, we also get to change ourselves.
That’s why we go to Mexico, to build hope for others,
but also to build faith for ourselves.
That’s why we’re going to Malawi,
to learn about how the church is at work in mission over there,
so that we can move the mission of the church forward over here.

My friends, God has given us great resources here in this community called Grace.
And he has invited us to be his stewards of these resources.
Our oikonomics must reflect the directives of Jesus,
to use what is at our disposal for the sake of our futures.
Friends, with the many resources we know in our lives,
may we invest in people and in the doing
find that we are also investing in our eternal futures.

Prayer: God, you call us to a longer view, to see life, not just as today, but as part of an eternal existence. We get so caught up in the present that we often forget that this life is not all that there is. Extend our vision so that we may have perspective in living. In our stewardship, help us to make choices that are intentional and purposeful, investing in people and in their needs, so that we may prove to be trustworthy with your true riches. Through Jesus our Lord we pray, Amen.