My brother-in-law has a unique ability, a very special talent. He has the ability to go into a men’s clothing store, size up all the merchandise available, and cane out with the very worst, the most atrocious looking stuff that money can buy. What is worse, he does that when he is shopping for me. I have an unbelievably gross collection of woolly argyle socks, ties with gaudy paintings, and sweaters with assorted geometric designs, all of them given by him to me with great gusto on birthdays or at Christmas.
Now of course you know you are supposed to ooh and ah over this stuff, and I have tried. Many times I have tried. But I suspect that my lack of enthusiasm is beginning to be noticed. In the first place, he has commented once or twice that he never actually sees me wearing the stuff; and in the second place, the last time this happened, I had no sooner opened the box bearing some green and orange creation than he grabbed it away from me and said, "It isn’t right, is it? I’ll take it back, I’ll exchange it. Anyway, it’s the thought that counts."
"It’s the thought that counts". That was going to be my line! Now I may not have a sweater to keep warm this winter, but I know that it’s the thought that counts, right?
I had stopped off in the supermarket the other day to pick up a few things, and I ran into a person whom I recognized as someone who is on our membership roll but who comes to worship very rarely. There is a good reason for that in her case, and so I have her permission to tell this story. As we rummaged around together in the longhorn cheese, she said, "I know I haven’t made it to church lately, and I know we haven’t sent in our offerings, and I realize I failed to return your phone calls … but my thoughts were with you."
To tell the truth, the only reason I feel free to tell this story, with or without permission, is that as soon as she had said that – "My thoughts were with you, I was with you in spirit" – as soon as she had said that, she began to giggle, and then laughed, "I guess that doesn’t make any sense, does it?"
Well, sense or not, a lot of us seem to believe it, don’t we? I didn’t do, but it’s the thought that counts. I don’t have a sweater to warm my bones, but it’s the thought that counts. I don’t have a church member in the pews and on the contribution records, but it’s the thought that counts. Hmm.
This week my son called to inform me that the firm where he works was having a cash flow problem, and that he would not be paid on time. The checks would be more than a week late. However, the partners in the firm had called a staff meeting, and the purpose of the staff meeting was just to let everybody know that they cared. No check, but it’s the thought that counts.
My son’s reaction was, "Nice thoughts won’t pay my bills."
Incidentally, every parent in the room can now guess what came next, can’t you? You are wondering what my response was. "Well, I’ll be thinking about you while your credit rating goes down the tubes"? "Well, you’re all grown up now and you’ll have to get out of this one on your own"? "It’s the thought that counts!" You know better than that. He needed a thought and he needed a check!
Reminds me of the time I was trying to get some money together to buy some furniture for the Baptist Student center I was managing. I wrote my supervisor to see if there was anything in the· budget for a table and some chairs, and by return mail I got an envelope with a handful of S&H Green stamps (remember them?) and a single sheet of paper, on which was written a Scripture reference: Acts 3:6. I looked it up. Acts 3:6 says, "Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have give I thee."
It’s the thought that counts. That’s the way we wriggle out of many a claim. That’s our avenue of escape when we are caught with our obligations unpaid and our debts escalating. It’s the thought that counts. But is it?
Jesus tells one parable which just turns upside down all of our common sense notions about how we deal with our responsibilities. It’s a puzzling parable. It seems at first reading not even to make good sense. But if you stay with it and study it, it will teach you something wonderful about the Kingdom and about how to live responsibly.
Luke 16:1-7
So far it is an intriguing tale. This guy is a real rogue. He has already been caught by his boss, playing with the money. And so he decides to leave the job in a blaze of glory; he cavalierly cancels much of the debt others owe. We just know that he is now going to come in for a verbal thrashing from Jesus because he has been so irresponsible. What a surprise is waiting for us!
Luke 16:8-9 I
How the tables do get turned! The master commends the dishonest manager because he is shrewd; and the Master of all men reminds us that common, garden-variety wisdom is sometimes more savvy than what we church folks have.
"The children of this age" – that is, the folks on the street – "are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light." You church folks need to wake up and be sharp.
And then the startling advice from the Lord’s lips: "Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes."
This is a peculiar business. What is He really telling us? He seems to be saying something very important about the way we deal with one another and the way, then, we deal with God. What is it?
I
First, our Lord is reminding us that every human being wants something real. Every one of us wants to count definite results. Give me warm thoughts, yes, but give them to me in a package I can handle.
Here is this manager, this steward. He’s in trouble. What he decides to do is to build up capital with other people so that when his job comes to an abrupt end, as it must, he will have some folks who owe him something.
And so, on the very eve of being bounced from his job, he goes out and finds his boss’s customers, all of whom owe something on their bills, and he writes down the bills. You owe for a hundred jugs of olive oil? Fine; let’s call it fifty. How about you? You owe for a hundred containers of wheat? Let’s settle for eighty. Of course those customers were ecstatic; they were overjoyed. They got something real, they got something useful and tangible, even out of a poor manager. They got forgiveness, but it wasn’t just mushy, sickly-gooey cheap piety. They got something real.
And that’s why the master commended the steward. You may be a rotten and dishonest manager. And it’s my money you are giving away. But I have to hand it to you; you do know how to use what you have in hand to make friends. You do know that what people really want is a something definite. You do understand that the one thing stewards can do, honest or dishonest, good or bad – the one thing they can do is to use what they have to offer something real to others. And they can make friends with those resources.
In other words, it’s not just the thought that counts. It’s concrete action. It’s definite, tangible results. And the children of this world know that. Business people know that when they give you discounts and offer you merchandise on sale; people want a definite benefit. Government people know that; they know that the taxpayers will howl if they cannot see evidence of their tax dollars. The taxpayers want services, they want the garbage collected twice a week and they want the potholes fixed. They want to see where the money goes.
Our trouble as church people is that we think we can get off on the cheap. We think that if we just smile and nod and say warm fuzzy things to the world, it will roll over for us and do as we want it to. We suppose that if we just think positive thoughts and project a warm, sunny image, they will come our way and be our friends. But they will not. They will not.
They need to have something definite. They need a concrete, tangible investment. And we, though we be children of light, have not stopped to count on that. We have forgotten that if we are to be convincing to the world, we are going to have to give big bucks and spend major time and do bold things, or they will never notice.
Friends, I have raised with you in recent weeks the question of whether we really want our church to succeed. I’m not sure I’ve heard an answer from you yet. But this I know: if we want our church to succeed, it will not be enough to suppose that it’s the thought that counts. It’s the though expressed in concrete, costly deeds that gets attention and buys respect.
Let me be clear about this. Our church has tried for a good many years just to get by without doing a quality investment. We have said, let’s put just a few dollars into one or two ministries and let it go, that’s enough. Let’s just keep serving a few mental patients in the Wednesday Club, and let’s just keep on loving some seniors through the Friday Fellowship, but as for the rest, well, it’ s the thought that counts.
But in the meanwhile all kinds of other things are happening to people in the Takoma community, and these we are not investing in. Just take the one issue of our real estate holdings. Adolescents need group homes; the handicapped need a place to live; the elderly need more alternatives in housing; and several years ago, we made a moral commitment to provide missionary housing. Yet, I am sorry to say, we have yet to develop one single, solitary house for ministry! Why not? Because we have created a financial dependence on the rents these houses bring in. Understand, I do not blame any committee; I do not blame any church leader. I just blame us, because we have let rent payments carry our church, when it is we who are responsible to carry it.
I am simply saying this morning that this community wants action from us. It’s not just the thought that counts; it’s the action, costly though it may be. I
I’m concerned about our image in this community. Our image is a non-image. As I go here and there and meet people, they cannot even remember seeing our building, and, if they have, they say, well, what do you all do up there? I never heard of you. When we took a small poll several months ago in order to test community perceptions, the business people right over on Georgia Avenue said they knew nothing about us. Who are we and what do we do for anybody?
Now you see, listen to Jesus: the children of this age are more shrewd than the children of light. The drug dealers know more than we do. They know enough to get out on the streets and hawk their wares. And the liquor storeowners know enough to advertise in neon lights. And the lottery ticket folks put their messages on TV. We the children of light put out a raggedy newsletter – I can call it that, because I make it up myself – we put out a raggedy newsletter and worry about spending a few dollars for mailing lists and brochures.
No wonder Jesus said, "You better learn … to make friends for yourself." We just cannot get by on the cheap. The world expects something real from us, and until it receives it, it will not pay us any attention. And until we spend what it will take to do that, until you and I give what it will take to do that, well, we are just trying to claim, it’s the thought that counts. But that’s not true. That’ s not true. It’s the costly deed that counts.
II
Now there’s another funny thing about this parable. Something else is odd here. Notice that the dishonest steward did his shrewd, sharp thing with someone else’s money. Not even his own money, but his master’s money. There’s a movie out now called "other people’s money"; its premise is that you can make millions in the stock market, if you are not terribly scrupulous, using not a cent of your own money. You just maneuver other people’s money.
It sounds sleazy, doesn’t it? It smells like Trump and Boesky and Milken and all these other Wall Street joy boys who manipulated the markets. And that’s right. It is dishonest. Jesus calls it dishonest. But don’t forget, he also says, you church folks need to learn something from this. You need to be as shrewd as these characters are. Because the money you have is not your own, and you aren’t going to keep it long. You might as well do something definite with it while you have it. You might as well make friends with it while it’s in your hands, because it won’t be there long.
Did you ever stop to think that the money in your bank account is not your money? That’s right. That money you have stashed away in some certificate of deposit … it’s not your money. It’s God’s money. And just as when you play the stock market and see what you can make happen with other people’s money, so also as you manage your life you are managing God’s money. It’s not really yours. You might as well do something with it while you have it. You might as well make some friends with it. And you might as well be at least as shrewd ’as Wall Street, using other people’s money, as you use God’s money.
The Bible’s perspective is that all of our resources come from God and belong to God. Not only the tithe, ten per cent, which is to be given directly to His work (and most of us haven’t yet faced up to that issue), but ultimately all of it belongs to God. We just manage it for a while.
Jesus, in fact, makes this one of the ultimate issues of life. Make friends for yourself out of this wealth "so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes." What you do with these resources has something to do with the way you are received in eternity! Isn’t that a sobering thought? Jesus says, "When it is gone …" And it will be gone. One old fellow, when reminded that he couldn’t’ t take his· money with him when he made that last journey, responded, "Well, then, I’m just not going." I’m not sure you get that choice.
What· we do with our resources shapes the way our eternity is going to be. It is not just the thought that counts. It is what we do with this stuff while it is in our hands that counts. And it isn’t even ours, in the first place.
You see, I found out one day that I have a debt I cannot pay. It is so insurmountable a debt that I know that if I were to work all my life and moonlight and scrimp and save, I could not pay it.
I found out one day that everything I had built up and saved and kept was devalued, that just like in Brazil where if you have enough today for a loaf of bread, tomorrow it will buy only crumbs – that just like that everything I had so carefully built up was nothing. In fact someone said it was just filthy rags. I found out that unless I got into somebody else’s deep, deep pockets, I would never get out of this debt.
But guess what!? I found somebody willing to pay it for me. Not just 50% or 20%, but all of it. I found Jesus willing to pay it all. I found that He went to a cross to pay a debt I could not pay, and He forgave it all.
"My sin, oh the bliss of this glorious thought, my sin, not in part but the whole, was nailed to the cross and I bear it no more … even so, it is well with my soul."
It is not just that Jesus Christ thought nice thoughts about me. It is that He gave, He gave His very life’s blood for me. It is not just the thought that counts. What counts is doing something definite and concrete, something costly.
And it is not that I have earned anything at all before God. My debt has been canceled, the price has been paid for me, with somebody else’s blood, sweat and tears. What I could not do for myself has been done for me, all with His resources, not mine.
Praise God, He not only thinks of me. He does for me. And so I can do for others, with His bountiful resources. I can give for others, giving His money back to Him. I can spend and be spent, knowing that it is the shrewdest of investments. It will make me welcome in my eternal home.
