Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen

Today we do not find in the scriptures in the first place how God loves us. The focus is not love and grace, the focus is the work we ought to do as disciples, as co-workers to advance the kingdom of God. We might miss God’s explicit love for us in the scripture today. Instead we might discover why it is we love God, love Jesus and his stories.

It is a lifelong task for Christians to try to figure out what it actually means to be a disciple of Jesus. We will never be finished with it. The questions of how does one live as a disciple, what does one do, and what is the foundation for all this, will continue on - while we trust in God, that he has found us already, - us who search and us who continue to get lost.

The question of being good disciples comes at us today with renewed urgency. The stakes are high. Amos speaks God’s Word, proclaiming the end to the people Israel: “Hear this, you that trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land, saying, “When will the [festival of the] new moon be over so that we may sell grain; and the Sabbath, so that we may offer wheat for sale? ... [We will] practice deceit with false balances..., and [sell to the poor and needy] the sweepings of the wheat.” The Lord has sworn by the pride of Jacob: Surely, I will never forget any of their deeds. (Amos 8: 4 - 7)

Likewise the epistle reading today: it is urging us to pray for kings and all who are in high positions. We do that here –, and yet: we are not leading a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity in this country or in this world.

And then there is the familiar “you cannot serve God and Mammon.” Each time we hear it, it catches us as judgment first, only then as a reminder that “Hear o Israel and hear o Church, the LORD is our God, the LORD alone.”

It is not so however that we failed completely or would be totally in the dark regarding discipleship. Over the years we have learned that the life of a disciple is one faithful and attentive to the frequent and familiar tasks of each day, however small and insignificant they may seem.

Disciple life consists of a series of seemingly small opportunities. Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, end a war, appoint a cabinet, dine with the queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake. More likely the week will present no more than a chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home, register to vote, teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor’s cat. Discipleship is about seemingly small opportunities. Opportunities that empower so that bigger things can happen.

I was not surprised to read about a research on what makes excellent congregations: the conclusion was that the excellent congregations did the little things amazingly well.
Christ the King Church is a congregation that works very hard to do the little, insignificant things well. I am not ashamed to boast here because doing the little, seemingly insignificant things well in all areas like worship, congregational care, administration, music, faith formation, and so on, means that people are in contact with each other, in communication. It means that people in this church take great care in empowering others in their relation to God and neighbor, and the agenda behind it is to ever come closer to the mystery of God and proclaim God’s Word of salvation to all.

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much,” says our gospel lesson today. (Luke 16: 10)

It is a sentence of wisdom shared in the Jewish-Christian tradition and I can attest that we are doing ok on it - even though Amos’ critique is fresh as ever and continues to push us.

But, dear sisters and brothers, all the studious, diligent work on the details of everyday discipleship can get old pretty quickly, boring and eventually self serving, an end in themselves. And the feeling of how amazing it is to do the little things well can be gone pretty quickly, too.

People do not come to church, you do not come to church to learn how to do the little things well. You already come here equipped with all the skills you need. What you really come here for and what keeps us together is our search for the amazingness of God, for the mystery of God who is alive among us, our search and our thirst for that which alone can give meaning to what we do in our daily lives.

The mystery of God who is the Word become flesh has in words never come closer to us than in the stories of his son Jesus. Jesus’ stories were parables, open ended, scandalous at times, challenging, stirring up emotions, questioning us and the status quo. And we love him for that. For who in our lives really still challenges us in the things that matter? Whom do we let us challenge still?

We love Jesus’ parables for they keep us on our toes, they keep us on edge. They got him into trouble with the authorities, and eventually Jesus died, and was raised to become a parable himself, a story that never ends and brings us ever closer to God.

The amazing parable that Jesus tells us today about the dishonest manager takes like all other parables the stuff of daily life and wakes us up.
Of course Jesus wants to get us upset about the manager
who squanders his masters property,
who when told that he is fired,
gathers up in shrewd foresight all of his creative energy (or shall I say criminal energy) and reduces for the final accounting the debtors debts
to gain their favor and sympathy so that he would later at least have their respect and some place to go.
Of course we should get upset here. Our moral juices should start boiling especially against the background of our earlier Amos reading where he lays open the practice of deceit with false balances taking advantage of the poor and needy.

But what does the master do? He praises the manager! He praises the dishonest manager for his shrewd thinking that the rush of adrenalin caused his brain to do, saving his own skin in the end. And there is a part in us that agrees with the master’s praise of the manager’s criminal, amazingly creative energy although our moral sense tells us we ought not.

Jesus really is a genius in story telling, – because without passing any judgment he is saying to us, wait a minute, before you raise your eyebrows, have you never dealt falsely, to your own advantage, have you always fed the hungry, been involved in advancing a quiet and peaceable life for the peoples of this earth? Are you aware that the time comes when you also will have to show your books and do the final accounting?
All this is underlying Jesus’ spare words and he doesn’t even have to mention it. This is why we love Jesus and his stories.

Why does he tell this parable to his disciples? What is his point? To make us feel ashamed? Well, maybe a little bit if indeed we have cause to be ashamed.
But mainly, Jesus tells this story to tell his disciples, Wake up, guys, disciples are people who ought to be shrewd, expecting God’s acting at any time. Disciples are people who should themselves act filled with a creative energy that keeps them on their toes, keeps them on edge, lets them see the things unfulfilled, and lets them find ways to control the damage done in this world to the poor, the needy; an energy that lets them not tire to pray for a peaceable life, now and in eternity.

My prayer this morning is that of gratefulness for Jesus’ scandalous story, for his bold way of energizing us; for discovering again that I love Jesus’ stories because they are such an amazing window to God and God’s will for us. I am also grateful for acts of bold discipleship in the seemingly little ways and in bigger ways that I see in this congregation and pray that they will be acceptable to God who fills heaven and earth with his glory.
Amen.