July 28 & 29, 2007

“Saintly Scalawags”

Luke 16:1-13

The story is told about a man in East Liverpool, Ohio, whose oil well caught fire. It was one of those uncontrollable fires and the man offered a $25,000 reward to whoever could put it out. Well, all the fire companies from the surrounding towns came and tried, but the fire was so intense that no one could get near enough to begin to work on it. Then a volunteer fire department from the village of Calcutta arrived on the scene. They had one fire truck, one ladder, three buckets of sand, two buckets of water and one blanket. They came wheeling into the oil field and, to everyone’s amazement, they rolled right up to the blaze, jumped out, climbed their ladder, threw on their buckets of water and sand and their blanket, and put out the fire! Later, the owner congratulated them and, as he handed over the $25,000 check, asked how they were going to spend it. The captain of the little group of volunteers replied, “Well, first we’re going to put new brakes on our truck.”

As I studied this morning’s reading from the Bible, I began to feel like that captain in charge of that little group of volunteer fireman, wanting to put the brakes on this particular Scripture lesson, for wherever you turn in the commentaries for help in interpreting this parable of Jesus, you find that scholars throughout history have been unable to tell us much for certain. No one is exactly sure what Jesus had in mind when he told this story of the dishonest manager who, in order to avoid the consequences of his mismanagement, falsified the accounts of his employer’s debtors so he could protect his own skin. Whether his deals with the debtors recovered only the commission to which he was entitled or whether he further swindled his employer is not clear, but in a surprising turn of events he receives generous praise from the employer for acting shrewdly, prompting one commentator to say, “This is a fraud, but it is a most ingenious fraud. The manager is a scalawag, but a wonderfully clever scalawag.”

Is Jesus really commending such questionable behavior? Is he condoning fraud when it’s clever? Is he holding up the dishonest manager as exemplary, simply because he’s shrewd? I don’t think so! Jesus told parables to dramatize a single truth and never meant them to be allegories in which each detail represents some hidden meaning and stands for something else. I think what Jesus is underscoring for his followers in this particular parable is the urgent response they must make to God’s Kingdom claim and its true riches. They were to make the most of such opportunity, to be as shrewd and creative as the manager in the parable, to be as direct and decisive. But Jesus emphasizes the truth with ironic twist—he wraps it up in a character who gets our immediate attention, a character often described in literary criticism as picaresque, from the Spanish word picaro, meaning rogue or rascal—a scalawag.

The use of such characters originated in Spanish literature and they’ve been used often in both novel and drama to suggest a deeper meaning, to offer comic relief in the plot and to redeem the outcome from despair. Think, for example, of Cervantes’ Don Quixote, of Caliban in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, and certain characters in novels written by Charles Dickens. This manner of characterization has almost become normative in contemporary novels for this scalawag figure turns up everywhere: Joe Christmas in Faulkner’s Light in August; the fugitive priest in Graham Green’s The Power and the Glory; Tom Joad, the outlaw redeemer in Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath; the hero McMurphy in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Such characters never try to hide their shadow side; instead, they use it to expose the darker underside of society’s duplicity and destruction. In so doing they reveal the possibility for human grandeur and the sacred dimension of the secular. It’s little wonder that some of these rascals are called “Christ figures.”

The Bible itself includes many such saintly scalawags, beginning with Adam and Eve, Noah and Lot and continuing with Jacob, Moses, Ruth, David, Hosea and his wife, Gomer. In fact, you could include the whole Hebrew people, who were far from being faithful, righteous or pure in virtue. Everyone from the King to the poorest slave pulled shrewd tricks on each other and tried to pull them on God, too. Nevertheless, God kept choosing them and using them as agents of God’s purpose.

Open the New Testament and the same contradiction is revealed. Watch Jesus, for example, choose twelve unlikely candidates to be his disciples, people big as life with flaws, weaknesses and discrepancies. Among them, volatile James and John, known as the “sons of thunder.” Also, Simon the Zealot, the fiery revolutionary; Matthew, the compromising tax collector; Peter, the blustering small-town fisherman; Thomas, the reluctant skeptic; Judas, the brooding and self-appointed power broker. What a motley crew! Or consider some of the persons upon whom Jesus centered attention as agents of his message: Zacchaeus, who corruptly had gouged tax money from people to become a wealthy man; the woman from the streets who crashed a party to anoint Jesus with oil and whom he commended; the woman taken in adultery and about to be stoned whom he forgave; the publicans and sinners with whom he associated and whom he suggested might have first preference in the Kingdom.

It’s also clear that the profile of the early church included a sizable number of messy mortals and saintly scalawags, prompting the apostle Paul—himself considered by many to be included in this group—to declare:

Consider your own call, brothers and sisters: not many of you were wise by human standards, not many were powerful, and not many were of noble birth. But God chose what is foolish in the world to shame the wise; God chose what is weak in the world to shame the strong; God chose what is low and despised in the world, things that are not, to reduce to nothing things that are, so that no one might boast in the presence of God.

Then Paul added, “Remember how I myself was with you in weakness and in much fear and trembling.”

So, what’s my point? It’s this: the hand of God has been laid on some very unlikely persons to realize God’s will. God has called rascals and scalawags to be agents of God’s Kingdom purposes. Saints don’t always have innocent faces, clean fingernails, blissful smiles and shining halos, except in religious paintings. Most saints are those who bear the scars of battle, who have calloused and dirty hands, who may use colorful language and if they have a halo at all, it’s badly tarnished or bent out of shape. This because human beings being human are always imperfect. You and I both live east of Eden. However, this doesn’t prevent God from wrapping up God’s intention and love in imperfect persons. Where did we ever get the idea that religion produces perfect people and that God waits for such perfection before touching us with life-changing love? While we ourselves may seek the perfect spouse, raise the perfect child, find the perfect friend, and join the perfect church with the perfect pastor made up of perfect Christians, we’re in for a bitter disappointment. There’s in all of us a shadow side; we have our unique flaws, loose connections, missing parts, deficiencies and inconsistencies, duplicities and stumblings. So did Nathaniel, John, Mark, Mary Magdalene, Timothy, Constantine, Augustine, Francis of Assisi, Martin Luther, Joan of Arc, Livingston, Schweitzer and Mother Teresa and, yes, even John Wesley, but consider all that God did with them and through them. Overcome with the miracle of it in himself, Luther declared, “God carves the rotten wood and rides the lame horse.”

Which means that we might not want some of God’s chosen ones as a dinner guest, as a traveling companion or as our next-door neighbor. Some of them had rotten tempers; some were unwashed, unlearned and uncouth; some were eccentric loners with weird lifestyles; some were wealthy and others were dirt poor and unschooled in social graces; some avoided the limelight and others basked in it; some were ruthless and others were gentle. Some were difficult to get along with and others were warm and gracious, but despite their weaknesses and oddities, God’s will was realized and redeemed others through them many, many times.

When Dwight L. Moody, the famous American evangelist of a previous generation, took his revival crusade to England, many English clergymen attacked his methods and style. Among them was the well-known preacher in England at that time, Dr. R.W. Dale. However, Dr. Dale decided to attend a Moody rally to see for himself. He not only attended one such service; he attended nightly for a week. At the conclusion of the rallies, Dr. Dale sought out Moody and said to him, “Mr. Moody, I must say that I believe your work is truly of God, and I’ll tell you why. It’s because I can see no possible connection between you as a person and the incredible results of your work, so it must be of God!”

Well, isn’t that where you and I come in? God doesn’t wait until we have all our problems solved, until we have our act together, until we’ve straightened up and are holy and pure before God calls us in Christ. God comes to us where we are and when we least expect it. Many of you who have responded to the call to be Stephen Ministers know this to be true. Suddenly something happens in us and through us, or we’re confronted by a crisis that makes us vulnerable and demands the most from us for the sake of someone else.

Moreover, we find ourselves doing for others what we ourselves need, being for others what we’ve not yet become, and giving to others what we’ve not yet completely received ourselves. God asks us to share lessons of life and love that we’re still learning. We who don’t understand ourselves are asked to encourage self-understanding in others. We’re to encourage others on their spiritual journey while struggling on our own. We who need healing are asked to heal. We who are quarrelsome are asked by Christ to make peace. We who have dark corners in our souls still unredeemed are sent out to bear light. We who need to hear the Word of God ourselves are commissioned to speak it to others. We who need peace of soul are sent to give it to others. Despite our loose ends and missing parts, our grumpiness and our sin, our meager faith and self-centeredness, God reaches others through us. What we don’t have within ourselves to do or say, we find ourselves doing and saying—and we cannot account for it—except for God’s amazing grace and incredible trust in and love for us—God’s people.

Therefore, Jesus was right! God uses saintly scalawags—unlikely candidates and uncooperative subjects—who, by God’s grace, become Christ’s body, through whom and in whom God reaches other lives, redeems the darkness, restores relationships, upholds human dignity and justice, enlarges love and opens the Kingdom.

I’m not sure if I’ve told this story before, but if I have, you’ve probably forgotten it. So, I’ll tell it again. Peter Cartwright was one of American Methodism’s early circuit riders. In the days of his traveling ministry in backwoods Kentucky, there was a tavern kept by a notorious bully. This man’s loud and repeated boast was, “No preacher gets past here!” Cartwright was riding circuit in that particular area; he had heard of the boast, but kept right on riding. News of the preacher’s coming was carried back to the tavern keeper, who came out as he saw Cartwright approaching. The tavern owner ordered the preacher to turn back or he would turn him back. Peter Cartwright never liked to be ordered around by anyone, not even in his later years by all the bishops of the Methodist Church. He got off his horse, and the fight was under way. Cartwright soon had the tavern keeper on the ground and while thrashing him sang lustily, “All hail the power of Jesus’ name.” He made the tavern owner promise to stop interfering with preachers, but it took three stanzas of the hymn before the man agreed.

It gives me hope that God can use me in spite of my shortcomings, my inadequacies, my checkered past, my presumptuous ways and my sin. I mean, thank God that the San Diego Police Department and the State of California removed my juvenile delinquency record, that San Diego State University allowed me a time of academic probation, and that my loving wife doesn’t mind all my body tattoos. Just kidding—about the tattoos, that is. I’m grateful that God uses saintly scalawags to be Christs to others. I’m glad that Jesus told the parable of the dishonest manager because God isn’t finished with any of us yet! Amen.