Proper 20 - 2025

Sermon for Proper 20, Year C
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
The Rev. Andrew McLarty

There’s no way around it: today’s Gospel lesson is one of the stranger parables Jesus tells.

It begins with a shrewd, vaguely corrupt manager who’s about to be fired. In desperation, he starts cutting deals with his master’s clients, reducing their debts so that when he’s out of a job, he’ll have some friends who owe him favors. And then the kicker: Jesus seems to commend him for this?

We want to say, “Really, Jesus? This is the example here? This backroom dealer?” Wouldn’t it be easier if Jesus had just told another story about a widow giving her mite, or last week’s shepherd finding his lost sheep?

But before we get too confused, we need to remember where we are in Luke’s Gospel.

We are still with Jesus from last week, responding to the Pharisees who chide him for conversing and eating with the wrong sort—tax collectors and sinners.

In response, Jesus tells three stories of lost and found: a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. Each of them ends with joy—joy so extravagant that it spills out into a party. Heaven itself throws a banquet when one sinner repents, when one lost child is brought home.

That’s the lesson still echoing in the air when we arrive here in chapter 16. That vision of joy—of God’s kingdom breaking out in delight—that’s the backdrop for today’s parable.

So what exactly is Jesus commending in this shrewd manager? Not his dishonesty. Not his underhanded methods. What Jesus lifts up is his foresight. He gave thought to the future, and he acted decisively in the present. He used the resources available to him—even money, even questionable means—to prepare for a life beyond the crisis that was coming.

And Jesus says: If only the children of light were so shrewd about the kingdom of God.

That’s the challenge. We, the church, have been given a vision of God’s future—the kingdom where every seat at the banquet is filled, where joy overflows, where no one is left outside. Do we let that vision shape how we live today? Does the picture of God’s party push us to throw open the doors of our lives, our homes, even our churches, so that others might taste that joy now?

Here’s the rub: we tend to wrinkle our noses at certain kinds of people, the same way the Pharisees did. We’d rather not sit at the table with those whose lives seem messy or suspect. And so we find ourselves edging back toward the Pharisees—choosing respectability over radical welcome.

But Jesus refuses to play that game. He sees sinners as treasures waiting to be found, as future sources of joy for God’s kingdom. He sees them as guests at the banquet—and he wants us to see them that way, too.

Maybe that’s why he chose such a scandalous anti-hero for today’s parable. Because it shakes us up. It makes us uncomfortable. It forces us to notice how quickly we want to separate ourselves from “those people.” But God’s party is not just for the clean and respectable. It’s for the lost who have been found, the broken who have been healed, the sinners who have been forgiven. In other words—it’s for all of us.

And so the question remains: Are we letting God’s future joy shape our present actions? Are we using what resources we have—our time, our surplus, our attention—to build relationships, to welcome outsiders, to point others toward the banquet of heaven?

So, let’s us look to each other so we can speak to the rest. Let us strengthen each other, so we can bear people up. And let us give thought to the future, so we may act decisively in the present.

Amen.