Waking Up From our Mammalian Trance

September 23, 2007
17th Sunday after Pentecost

Text: Luke 16:1-13

Preacher: The Rev. Dr. Lawrence L. Hand

“OH! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone. SCROOGE!! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching covetous OLD SINNER! Hard and sharp as a flint from which no steel had ever struck out a generous fire; secret, self-contained and solitary as an oyster!” Marvelous words from the pen of the legendary Charles Dickens in his timeless classic “A Christmas Carol.” What Dickens reveals in this story more eloquently then anyone before or after him is the truth that there is something poisonous and lethal in a person’s life if they are PREOCCUPIED with “SQUEEZING, WRENCHING, SCRAPING AND CLUTCHING”. I can never forget the vivid image of the hooded black-caped spirit of the future leading Scrooge to the abandoned cemetery and pointing its bony finger to the pauper’s gravestone bearing his name revealing that a tragic future lay ahead of his miserly life where he would die alone and forgotten; remembered only as a covetous old sinner who had forfeited all that was good in life for the sake of material possessions and financial gain! By worldly standards Scrooge was an enormously wealthy man but by Divine Standards he was rock bottom poor!

Scrooge is alive and well in today’s culture as well. Some of you might have seen the latest comical Comcast commercial where a middle age couple is in the great room of their house the husband is sitting on the couch across from his aging father who is trying to get his attention by snapping his fingers in front of his son’s face and he can’t get him to pay attention. The daughter-in-law says to the father-in-Law, “Dad, Don’t waste your time your son is TELEVISIPHONERNETTING! I was sooo appalled at the way this husband was totally and absolutely distracted by all that technology and ignoring his own father and all the other relationships in his life…NOTHING SHORT OF ABSOLUTELY AMAZING!! (Cell Phone Rings) Would you excuse me a moment…Yeah what’s up? (To congregation…) It’s Pastor Todd! (Back to phone) Hold on let me go Bluetooth so I can preach and talk at the same time!! Yeah I just downloaded that Bach Music Video…got it on the IPOD it right now! What’s that? Oh yeah hold on let me check (flip up the laptop screen) …Yeah I got your email yesterday about the newsletter announcement and the sermon schedule…I’ll get the dates and info to you as soon as I can!!! Don’t worry its good as done…loosen that clerical collar a little bit would yah!! (To Congregation) Wow some people just have no patience!! Ok now where were we…(Push Bluetooth) Hold on Incoming!!! O My God!! I mean really it’s God! She said “Get back to the Sermon!!”

The modern day Scrooge is alive and well in our cultural day and age and alive and well in some form in all of us!! Whether it is depicted in the Dicken’s nightmare or the modern world of TELEVISIPHONERNETTING, we live in a world that is mired in MAMMON!!A world that has always in some form or another been Mired in Mammon! Deeply, profoundly distracted away from God!

In our Gospel lesson from Luke 16 Jesus tells the story of the “Shrewd Manager”. There are a lot of themes and sub-themes that you could draw from this story but basically all of the players are mired in Mammon! It is easy to simply take the side of the Rich owner who hired a manager who was skimming off the top but what is easy to overlook is that everyone in the story is breaking the law. All the leading characters are an unjust. There’s an unjust rich land owner, an unjust steward and a group of unjust debtors. The land owner was a Jew, and for that reason, he was not supposed to lend out money. Therefore, he hid behind an agent, a steward, in order to break the laws of his religious faith. The steward was grafting so much of the money for himself or mismanaging it so miserably that the land owner was suffering a business loss. The debtors were so anxious to get out of their debts at a reduced rate that they gladly entered into a conspiracy to pay less. All of the characters in this drama had become distracted from the way of God!! …TELEVISIPHONERNETTING… All of the characters are trying to save there BEHINDS!!

At the end of the story, everyone was happy and enthusiastic but in reality wrongdoing had prevailed and God was not honored throughout. In many circles this would be seen as a success story. The end would have justified the means. The land owner was happy because he had recouped some of his money. He was so pleased that he did an "about face" concerning his steward. He ends up complimenting the dishonest steward although a few days earlier he was ready to dismiss this employee and ruin the steward’s life in the business community. The steward was happy because he had saved his reputation in the business community, and he was going to have some friends and the security of a roof over his head. The debtors were happy because their debt was satisfied with only a partial payment. It reads like a success story, and sometimes we are tempted to call these people good and their deeds noble. Not so with Jesus who points out their divided loyalties and their divided faith which was a feeble attempt to burn the candle at both ends! Jesus finishes the parable with these famous words, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.

You cannot serve both God and MAMMON!” Many times Mammon is defined as money or financial wealth. But the term is broader than that. It’s no surprise that mammon has the same root word as Mammal! Mammon refers to our Mammalian instinct to horde, stockpile and survive at any cost. Mammon refers to any form of “earthly treasure” that distracts a person away from God; anything that gets in the way of our relationship with God and each other! All the Scrooge-like clutching, grabbing squeezing, wrenching…all the televisiphonernetting…all the riches and worldly gains that become a FALSE GOD. Anything that distracts us away from a meaningful Christ like way of life! Anything that separates us from God!! Anything that might lead us like Scrooge to be “MIRED IN MAMMON” and forfeit all that is good and meaningful in life for the sake of material possession and earthly security.

One morning in 1888, Alfred Nobel, one of the world's leading industrialists, opened a French newspaper and was shocked to see his own obituary. It was a mistake, of course. It was really Alfred's brother who had died. In the article that someone else had written about him, Alfred Nobel had an opportunity to read about how other people saw him. The obituary simply called him "The Dynamite King." He had made a fortune in manufacturing and selling explosives many of which had in many cases been used as tools of war and death. He could not bear the thought of his legacy being associated with a weapon of destruction. So Alfred Nobel decided to change his reputation by using his wealth in a unique and different way. He immediately arranged his entire estate to establish the Nobel Prize, to be given each year to the person or persons who do the most for the cause of world peace. In the past century, it has long been forgotten that the name Nobel once meant "The Dynamite King." Today his legacy and his very name is synonymous with promoting world peace and promoting and challenging anyone to develop new ways through science and invention to promote and further life as God intends!

What will your legacy to the world be? Will you live a life that serves God or will it be one that is MIRED IN MAMMON like Scrooge. Will your obituary and mine describe us as a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone. A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching covetous OLD SINNER! Will you be distracted away from the ways of God…mired in our modern cultures slavery to TELEVISIPHONERNETTING!!?? TRYING TO BURN THE CANDLE AT BOTH ENDS? There is no short cut or way around the truth of the parable of the dishonest steward. “NO ONE CAN SERVE TWO MASTERS. YOU CANNOT SERVE GOD AND MAMMON! Jesus is snapping his fingers in our face, like the aging father in the Comcast commercial. Jesus is trying to wake us up from our MAMMALIAN TRANCE to show us a better way…the way that leads us back to God and a way that leads us back to a meaningful life with each other!