Grace, mercy and peace be unto you from God, our Father, and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

It is always tempting for a preacher to follow the path of least resistance. For this morning's sermon, that easier path would have lead us away from our difficult Gospel reading to our straightforward Epistle reading, in which our Lord points us to the Old Testament as a source of learning about our own Christian lives. If we are willing to take the time to study the Old Testament, we will find that Israel's experiences can teach the Christian Church about her own trials and temptations, and we are warned that it is indeed possible to fall away into eternal judgment by diving into idolatry, sexual sin, and grumbling against the Lord. These are sharp warnings for us to heed, but the punchline is that, for God's elect, His chosen ones in the Church, the Lord will never let us be destroyed by temptations, no matter how difficult, but He will always provide a way of escape. That escape is found in our faithful use of Christ's Word and Sacraments in the Church, as well as our regular calling upon the Lord in prayer. He will never forsake those who in repentant faith cling to His grace and mercy in Baptism, Absolution, and the Lord's Supper. And as Jesus promises about prayer, He will quickly give justice to His elect, who cry to Him day and night; He will not delay long over them. So continue to escape Satan's snares by faithfully coming to church, using the Word and Sacraments, and praying. Also, come to Bible Class, where we study many of the Old Testament examples that St. Paul encourages us to look at. That's enough about our straightforward Epistle.

Now we head down the more difficult path of the Gospel reading, but there we discover a parable about the wonderful riches of our heavenly Father's mercy toward us. The parable Jesus tells is about the dishonest manager or steward, who Jesus actually commends to us as an example to follow. This story has scandalized pious Christians for ages, since it seems inappropriate for Jesus to use a dishonest man as an example for us. But on some level, it should not surprise us, since God used the scandalous, evil death of Jesus on the cross as His chosen means of answering for the sin of the world.

While God is not the cause of sin in this world, and He does not desire for us to do evil so that good may come, He certainly makes use of evil in this world to bring about His good purposes, as we see on the cross. And for His elect, the Lord is so merciful and kind to us that He even works through the sin and evil that we have committed to bring about good things for us. That is an expression of His undeserved kindness toward us, part of the mystery of His gracious will, and we bow in humble awe toward Him and simply say, "Thank you, merciful Lord."

Of course, Jesus does not suggest that we follow the dishonest manager's dishonesty, but rather his shrewdness. He shrewdly realized that he was in a hopeless situation, but that his master was a merciful man, known around town for that mercy, and so the manager staked all his hopes on the master acting according to his merciful character.

The first sign that the master is a merciful man is that, after firing the manager, he didn't make the firing effective immediately. Rather, the master gave the manager time to go off and write up an account of his (mis-) management. This is a surprisingly kind thing to do, and from an internal auditor's perspective, a foolish thing to do. I had the dubious privilege of working as a consultant, and of course, consultants are known for going into companies and figuring out whose jobs are "redundant" and can be eliminated. Fortunately I never had to fire anyone, but I was there one day when management did fire a number of people, and then the office building security came up to watch people pack up their offices to make sure they didn't steal anything or destroy valuable computer files. Then security escorted them out of the building and took away their ID badges. That is a merciless way of doing things, but it's done to protect the company from damages, or from someone snapping and hurting others.

In the parable, the master could have had his other servants escort the manager as he went to draw up his accounts, but the master didn't do that. And so, given the opportunity, the dishonest manager decides to commit one more act of dishonesty to soften his landing from getting fired. He goes to the people who owe his master oil or wheat, and reduces their bills. In that culture, a manager was considered an extension of the master, and so the debtors would have assumed that the manager was only communicating the master's will to them. Of course, when you have your debt reduced by fifty or even twenty percent, you take that as a great act of kindness on the part of the lender. If your loan officer called you up and said, "Hey, I'm going to reduce your mortgage from $100,000 to $50,000," wouldn't you be overjoyed and want to celebrate? Wouldn't you consider that the bank had done something very merciful to you?

Of course, and that is how the debtors in the parable would have been. They would have assumed that the master, out of the goodness of his heart, had reduced their debt, and so they would have told everyone they knew about how merciful the master was. But they also would have been very kindly disposed toward the manager, who was the bearer of good news, so they would have welcomed him into their homes to help him out after he was no longer employed.

And so when the master found out about this, he must have grinned and said, "That manager pulled another fast one on me. Very shrewd, very shrewd." And here is what was so shrewd about it: the manager knew that he had put his master in a difficult situation. If his master would go out to the debtors and reverse his debt-reduction, then the master's reputation for mercy would be tarnished. Of course, the master had every right to go out and restore the accounts, but he chose to do what was merciful to preserve his reputation for mercy, even if it cost him some money. And so the master commended the manager, not for his dishonesty, but for shrewdly recognizing that his master was a kind, generous, and merciful man.

The merciful Master in this parable is God. Just read your Old Testament, like St. Paul tells you to do. The examples given in the Old Testament aren't just to warn us against sins, but also to show us what a merciful God we have. Recall that God's revelation of Himself to Moses went like this: "The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin". Jesus described His Father as "kind to the ungrateful and the evil". And throughout the Old Testament, you see God doing good things to sinners, not because of their merit, but simply for the sake of His merciful name. And for God to be merciful to sinners, it costs Him dearly, even as it cost the master in the parable. But for God, the cost was not just twenty or fifty percent of what a couple of people owed Him; for God, the cost was one hundred percent of His only-begotten Son.

God could justly have sent you to hell right away every time you sin, but instead God sent His Son into the flesh to take your entire debt upon Himself and to suffer for all of your sins on the cross. In this way, God's mercy actually swallowed up His justice, by His Son taking the punishment and paying the debt you owed for your sins. He did this all for the sake of His mercy, so that He could make Himself known to you as the merciful Father who pardons your every sin, and does not give you what you deserve (hell), but He gives you what Jesus earned (heaven).

Now in case you are not convinced about what you really deserve, consider what your Master in heaven has given to you in this life, and think about how you have managed it. God has graciously created you and taken you on as a manager of all the gifts he has given you-your talents, your money, your family, your job, and so on. And how have you done with those? Have you always used them to bring Him glory and honor, or have you at times used them for your own sinful pleasures and desires? If you examine your heart and you life, you will find that you are like the dishonest manager. You are accountable for using all of God's gifts to you as He tells you, and He has said to use them for His glory and for the good of your neighbor. Because of your sinful failures, your sinful misuse of God's gifts, you deserve nothing but punishment and hell.

But Your merciful Master does not "fire" you by sending you to hell. Like the master in the parable, God does not want to be known as a Master of law and justice, but a Master of mercy, even though that cost Him the ultimate price of His Son's blood, sweat, and tears for you. He would rather mercifully send all of your sins out of His sight at the cost of the suffering and death of Jesus and be known as merciful, rather than ask you to pay even a penny to make up for your sinful wastefulness.

Dear baptized Christians, you serve a merciful Master who realizes that you are in a hopeless situation on your own, so be shrewd: rely on the Master's mercy. Like the master in the parable, He praises managers who rely on His mercy. The Master does not commend the manager because he is dishonest but because he acted shrewdly. The Lord loves those who rely on His mercy. As Psalm 147 says, "The Lord takes pleasure in those who hope in His mercy."

This parable strikes our American minds as strange. It seems odd that a boss would rather be known as merciful than right; it goes against the grain of our minds, which think most often of fairness and justice. But the people listening to Jesus' parable had a different mindset; this mindset still exists in the Middle East. In 1960 a woman went to an official of the King of Jordan asking for advice on how to free her convicted husband. He advised her to wait outside of the palace until the king's motorcade was about to leave. Then she was to throw herself in front of the king's car and make her plea. "Don't plead his innocence," the official warned. "You know he is guilty and so does the king. To offer excuses will destroy all hope. Throw yourself on the mercy of the king." The woman did. She threw herself before the king's limousine crying loudly, "My husband's crimes are great but the mercy of the king is greater!" Her husband was released.

Like the parable, this story strikes us as odd because we know that if we leapt in front of the president's motorcade, the Secret Service would pump us full of bullets and then posthumously charge us with assault! But just because these stories are hard for us to understand, don't reject the point of the story or of the parable. The answer to the dishonest manager's very real guilt was found not in his excuses, but in the mercy of His master. The Master forgave the manager, and your Master's mercy is where the answer to your guilt lies as well.

God in Christ is a merciful Master who has made you a manager, a steward in His Kingdom. Serve Him shrewdly in the confidence that He loves to be merciful to you sinners. He gives you His own Son, pays for all your sins by Jesus' blood, and would rather save you from hell than spare His own Son from dying on the cross. "O give thanks to the Lord, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever!" In the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.

And the peace of God which passes all understanding will keep your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus unto life everlasting. Amen.