September 21-2025

“True Riches”

The parable you heard read this morning is perhaps the most bizarre and hotly debated utterance said to have emanated from the mouth of Jesus.  It’s been called the “parable of the dishonest steward.”  You weren’t imagining it; you heard it right.  Jesus described a guy – a financial manager for a wealthy individual – who realized he was about to be sacked, so he engaged in a little graft on the side with his employer’s finances to make some friends and try to set himself up for the lean times ahead.  And this scoundrel was commended by his employer, and by Jesus, who went on to say to his disciples: “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.”  Wouldn’t you like to have been able to go up to Jesus at that moment, tap him on the shoulder, and say, “What?”  Well, I guess I kind of did that, at least in my own mind.  And I got a surprising and potentially life changing answer.

I think I have to start at the beginning – at least the beginning for me around this issue of wealth and the gospel.  It was my very first pastorate (in fact I was still in seminary, and working at a church part-time).  A doctor in that congregation spoke to me after a sermon in which I talked about my usual bill of fare: Jesus’ affinity for the poor, and money as the root of all evil, etc., etc.  He said something that shocked me, but got me thinking, and I guess I’ve never quite stopped thinking about it.  He said, “I think I have a gospel responsibility to make as much money as I possibly can.”  After I picked my jaw up off the floor, he continued: “Because the more money and the more resources I have, the more I have to do good with, and to help those who are less advantaged.”  I’ve been scratching my head over that ever since.  It’s pretty hard logic to argue against.

In fact, when I look at Bill and Melinda Gates, and all they have done and continue to do with their tens of billions of dollars to save lives, improve living conditions, advance educational opportunities, and bring hope to hopeless people around this globe, as well as all they’ve done to encourage others among the uber-wealthy to do the same, I find myself saying, “God bless you both.”

Now, I don’t know exactly how every dollar was acquired that Bill Gates made at Microsoft and through other investments, or how Warren Buffet who has contributed billions himself to the foundation has come by every dollar of his fortune.  There is no reason whatsoever to assume any dishonesty from either of them.  On the other hand, for anyone to make that kind of money in this kind of world, they have to be at least pretty savvy about working the system to their advantage.

Which brings us ‘round full circle to Jesus.  When I tapped him on the shoulder in my mind he seemed to confirm my thinking.  He turned and said to me, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”  Not surprising, really, because that’s exactly what he said to his disciples.  But he went on to say, both to them and to me: “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.”  At which point in my mind I tapped him on the shoulder again and said, “What?”  Doesn’t it sound to you like he’s arguing both sides of the debate?

That’s when it came to me.  The central question is: what is money?  Is it slave or master?  On that question hangs a moral truth that destroys and redeems individuals and nations.  To “serve wealth,” in Jesus’ words, is to make it your master.  It is to acquire for the sake of acquisition, to hoard for the purpose of self-gratification, comfort, and power.  It is to be addicted to the accumulation of wealth and to the efforts that go into possessing it.  If, on the other hand, wealth is your slave, it is simply a powerful tool used to accomplish other purposes.  In the hands of a person of generous heart, great wealth can be a source of great blessing.

So, Jesus makes the cryptic statement, “If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?”  I think he’s saying that, by whatever means one acquires a fortune, if it becomes your master instead of your slave, how can you expect to have your priorities straightened out?  If you can’t let go of your money in order to use it for just and worthy ends, then how can you expect to recognize and seize those things in life that truly matter – what he calls “true riches?”

So what are “true riches?”  He doesn’t spell it out in so many words, but it’s in there, written between the lines.  First of all, Jesus shocks his listeners, and he shocks us with a story about a dishonest manager.  But when you think about it, that was Jesus’s style.  He spent his time with the tax collectors and sinners.  He had dinner with those he himself reviled.  He spoke to disreputable women and walked among lepers.  Why wouldn’t he talk about a rogue in loving terms?  After all, you and I are rogues too.  I think true riches have to do with recognizing who we are and to whom we are related in the family of faith.  I think of Mother Teresa as being one of the richest women who ever walked on this earth.

William Willimon remembers “Miles Tomlin of Holy Trinity Brompton, in London, [saying] that when he was at theological college he had an old wise tutor who often greeted the seminarians, at the beginning of class, with the question, ‘Good morning, how are the prostitutes?’  He was not making a negative judgment on the morals of the seminarians.  Rather,” says Willimon, “he was reminding them, teaching them, that, as Christians, their concern was to be for the poor, the downtrodden, the needy, the sinful, and yes, the prostitutes.  That was the supreme test for how they were doing as future Christian leaders.  Christianity may be seen as lifetime training in how to care more for the well-being of those outside the circumscribed realm of the faithful (the neighbor) than we do for those of us who presume to be on the inside.”¹  Willimon had it right. “True riches” are found in reaching beyond one’s self to touch the hand of one of “the least of these” and to recognize in that touch an inseparable bond.

Secondly, Jesus says, “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?”  I think he’s suggesting that “true riches” are something that we actually already possess; mostly, we just don’t know it.  I think it has to do with an awakening of the heart, a stirring inside that sees all people and all Being as One.  It is a mindset of peacefulness and joy that can be heightened in the recognition of nature’s beauty, or the compassionate face of a friend.  Jesus was always pointing us in this direction.  He said, “the kingdom of God is within you,” and “consider the lilies,” and “Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will bring worries of its own.”  True riches are the gifts of perspective that allow us to see ourselves and one another through larger eyes and with larger hearts.  And it lives within us; it is already ours.  It is the capacity to feel deeply and love fully.  I think it’s what Tennyson was getting at in his verses written upon the death of Arthur Henry Hallam.  He wrote:

 

That which we dare invoke to bless;

Our dearest faith; our ghastliest doubt;

He, They, One, All; within, without;

The power in darkness whom we guess.

 

I found Him not in world or sun,

Or eagle’s wing, or insect’s eye;

Nor through the questions men may try,

The petty cobwebs we have spun.

 

If e’er when faith had fallen asleep,

I heard a voice “Believe no more”

And heard an ever-breaking shore

That tumbled in the Godless deep;

 

A warmth within the breast would melt

The freezing reason’s colder part,

And like a man in wrath the heart

Stood up and answer’d “I have felt.”²

 

“True riches” are the whole and centered heart’s instinctive answer to the storms and trials of life.

And finally, again, Jesus said, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” “True riches” have to do with being in communion with Divinity.  To be truly rich is to know one’s self as embraced by the arms of eternity.  But that embrace is not necessarily all cozy and warm.  The riches of the Divine Spirit of Holiness in one’s life are often expensive.  You can be led into places and called upon for challenges that can turn your world inside out.  Don Juel, who used to teach New Testament at Princeton Theological Seminary, related a story of once leading some junior high students in a Bible study.  He told the kids that when Jesus was baptized the heavens were ripped open and we could see into heaven.  He said to them, “‘Do you know what that means, kids?  That means we can see God because of the baptism of Jesus, we can actually get to God.’

“The kid on the end, the kid who did not want to be there, squirmed in his seat.  He turned and said, ‘That isn’t what it means.’

“Juel, a little irritated, looked at him and said, ‘Oh, yeah, what does it mean?’

“‘It doesn’t mean that we can get to God,’ the kid said.  ‘It means that God can get to us.  And the world isn’t safe anymore.’”³

That kid got it.  “True riches” involve serving the Lord with one’s life and one’s resources.  And that’s not a prescription for indifference or for safety.

So, forty-six years later, how would I answer the guy in my old church who said he had a gospel responsibility to earn as much money as he could?  I guess I’d say, it all depends on who’s the master and who’s the servant in his relationship with wealth, and on whether he is prepared to take up his “true riches.”

¹ William Willimon in Pulpit Resource, October 23, 2011, “The Whole Gospel – In Two Sentences.”

² Alfred, Lord Tennyson, 1809-1892, from “In Memoriam.”

³ Quoted by Tom Long in Awakened to a Calling: Reflections on the Vocation of Ministry, edited by Ann M. Svennungsen and Melissa Wiginton, Abingdon Press, 2005, pp. 40-41.