Monthly Archives: August 2026

Space – Sermon on Luke 10:23-37 for the Thirteenth Sunday after Trinity

Luke 10:23-37

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Two people can use the exact same words and mean opposite things. For example, if someone says, “I want space,” you need to know who is talking. A person stuck in a crowd might yell, “I want space!” They want others to clear out so they can be alone and breathe. A newlywed looking to buy a house might tell the realtor the same thing, “I want space!” She means room for kids, and for large family Christmas gatherings. The first person wants space from others. The second wants space for others.

The lawyer in this text wants space in all the wrong ways. He wants space from the Law’s accusations. And to stay free of those accusations, he wants space between himself and his neighbor.

Luke tells us why the lawyer asks what he asks. That is unusual, and it’s important. A lot of people come to Jesus because they are desperate. This man is not. He stands up to test Jesus, to trip and discredit Him. “Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?” (Lk. 10:25). Part of that is right. Eternal life is an inheritance that belongs to the children of the eternal God. The problem is the first half, “What shall I do?” You do not do anything to inherit. An inheritance is given.

The lawyer wrongly thinks the Law is a ladder. He imagines that if he can climb high enough on that ladder, he can reach God. But eternal life doesn’t come that way (Gal. 3:18, 21). The Law is good. It tells you how God made creation to work. It shows you that you need mercy. What it cannot do is get a sinner to heaven. That only comes by promise to those who believe (Gal. 3:22). 

So Jesus answers a Law question with the Law. “What is written in the Law? How do you read it?” (Lk. 10:26). The lawyer does well with his response. He stitches Deuteronomy 6 and Leviticus 19 together, the same way Jesus does (Mt. 22:37-40). Love God with everything you are, and love your neighbor as yourself (Dt. 6:5; Lev. 19:18). And Jesus confirms his answer, “Correct! Do this, and you will live”(Lk. 10:28).

The problem isn’t the answer. The problem is the man. He can’t do it. So he looks for a smaller law. A kind of law that puts limits on God’s command. A kind of law that leaves enough space so he can set up his ladder and climb.

That’s the lawyer’s second question, which sounds holy but is not. Desiring to justify himself, the lawyer asks, “And who is my neighbor?” (Lk. 10:29). He is not asking for more people to love. He is asking who he can skip. If Jesus would put a limit on the extent of the lawyer’s love, he can stand inside that circle and call himself righteous. He wants space between himself and God’s command to love. But even the context of the passage the lawyer just quoted will not give him that space.

Our Old Testament reading (Lev. 19:9-18) is the home of that verse. There, God does not allow His people to harvest the field all the way to the fence. They had to leave a strip. Do not pick the vineyard clean. The fallen fruit is from their land, but God says it belongs to the poor and the sojourner (Lev. 19:9-10). Then God gives commands about people who are closer. Do not oppress your neighbor. Do not hold a hired man’s wages overnight. Do not hate your brother in your heart. Do not take vengeance or bear a grudge. “You shall love your neighbor as yourself: I am the Lord” (Lev. 19:18). In short, the stranger has a claim on the edge of your field. Your brother has a claim on the inside of your heart. God’s Law demands love for the near neighbor and for the one you would prefer to keep at a distance.

There is an order to that love. God has not dumped every neighbor on you at once. He has put some people closer—the people in your house, in this congregation, the worker whose paycheck sits in your hand. Those are the first neighbors you are called to love. And that is good. A father who lets his own children go hungry so he can feed other children he will never meet is not a better Christian. He is missing the people God has set right in front of him (1 Tim. 5:8; Gal. 6:10).

But that order is not a fence. It does not let you un-neighbor the person God puts in front of you. The lawyer wants a fence. Leviticus doesn’t give him one. Neither does Jesus. That’s why Christ tells the parable.

A man is traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho. He falls among robbers who strip him, beat him, and leave him half-dead in the ditch (Lk. 10:30). A priest sees him and swerves to the other side. A Levite does the same. God puts a needy man at the feet of these holy men, but they make space. A few feet was all the justification they needed to avoid helping him that afternoon. Then a Samaritan stops. He binds up the man’s wounds, pours on oil and wine, sets the man on his own animal, brings him to an inn, and opens a limitless tab. He promises the innkeeper, “Whatever more you spend, I will repay you when I come back” (Lk. 10:35).

Jesus will not answer the lawyer on the lawyer’s terms. He does not give the lawyer a list of who counts as a neighbor and who doesn’t. He asks which of the three became a neighbor to the man who fell among the robbers. That question shines a spotlight on the lawyer’s desire to create space from the Law’s demand to love.

Notice that the lawyer refuses to answer in the simplest way by saying, “The Samaritan.” He won’t admit that the Samaritan did the right thing. He won’t even say Samaritan and mercy in the same sentence. Instead, he says, “The one who showed him mercy” (Lk. 10:37). He will name the deed but not the man. He still wants space from the neighbor Jesus just set in front of him.

Dear saints, whenever you hear this parable, consider which character represents you. You are not first the hero Samaritan or even the priest or Levite. You are the man in the ditch. The Law can walk past you and refuse to help you, and the Law would still be just and correct to do that. The Law is good, but it can only tell you what love looks like. The Law cannot put you on its animal.

Jesus does. He is the Good Samaritan. He was despised and rejected (Is. 53:3) like a Samaritan. But He is the One who stops. He comes all the way down from heaven, all the way over to the ditch where you lie—the ditch that the Law cannot get you out of. He puts Himself in the road with you. He binds what you cannot bind. He pays what you cannot count. He does not want space from sinners. Instead, He makes space for you in His kingdom. The Church is the inn. His Word and Sacraments are the medicine of oil and wine. He pays your bill. You are not here because you guessed the neighbor-question correctly. You are here because Jesus would not pass by you on the other side.

So, when Jesus says, “You go, and do likewise” (Lk. 10:37), He isn’t giving you another ladder to climb. Apart from Him it would be. In Him, it is the shape of a life that has already been paid for. Love the people God has placed closest to you. And when the road gives you a neighbor you did not choose, do not step to the other side. Do not make space from him. God has given you space for him.

Yes, it’ll cost you to love that neighbor. But know that because Jesus has rescued you from the ditch, whatever that love costs you is already covered by Christ’s account. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:7). Amen.

Wholly Opened – Sermon on Mark 7:31-37 for the Twelfth Sunday after Trinity

Mark 7:31-37

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

No one expects infants to be able to speak from the moment they are born. They cry and fuss and make noises. After a while they start to babble and eventually are able to say “Mama” or “Dada.” For most, it takes more than a year before they are able to say words, and months more before they can put those words together into a sentence. Even then, most people outside the family can’t understand a toddler and need parents to translate. Learning to speak is a long, slow process. That’s not what happens to this man.

Jesus is far from His normal stomping grounds and is in Gentile territory. He has just healed the Canaanite woman’s daughter near Tyre and Sidon and is returning to Galilee, but He takes an odd route. Instead of traveling straight south, He turns east and goes through the region of the Decapolis. That would be like traveling from here to Fargo by way of Bemidji. It appears that Jesus goes out of His way to be at this precise place at this precise time. Even though He’s far from where He spent most of His life, the people there know that Jesus can heal. So, they bring this man who was deaf and mute to Him.

Jesus takes the man away from the crowd and does this little liturgy. He stuffs His fingers into the man’s ears, spits, touches his tongue, looks up to heaven, sighs (lit. ‘groans’), and says one word, “Ephphatha,”which means “Be opened.” Jesus isn’t just acting like a magician with some sleight of hand. His power is displayed through His one-word command to deaf ears. He’s the One who spoke creation into existence (Jn. 1:3). This miracle shows us that the Creator has come down into His creation to undo the Fall. And this comes at a cost to Him.

Mark wants us to ponder that last part where Jesus looked up into heaven and sighed. ‘Sighed’ is a fine translation so long as we see it as a heavy sigh. The word is normally translated ‘groan’ (Ro. 8:23, 26; 2 Co. 5:2, 4). We should see that Jesus is pained and burdened when He sees what sin and death have done to this man and to all creation. Also, see that these miracles come at a cost to Jesus. They take something out of Him. With this groan, it’s like Jesus is taking the man’s deafness and muteness into His Own body, and it weighs on Him.

And the word Jesus speaks, “Ephphatha,” is interesting. He’s speaking a command to deaf ears, but He doesn’t demand them to open. (Sometimes, I’ll try to open a jar for my wife and command the lid, “Open.” Spoiler alert: lids don’t care about my commands.) That isn’t what Jesus says here. Instead, it’s a passive command, “Be opened.” And they are. (Maybe I should try that next time I come across a stubborn lid.) Immediately, the man’s ears are opened, his tongue is released, and he spoke plainly. The word Mark uses for plainly is orthōs, which is where we get the word ‘orthodox’ and means rightly or correctly.

The remarkable thing is how thoroughly the man is healed. Even though this guy had never spoken, he doesn’t start in the same place as a newborn. He didn’t have to go through the long process of learning words; learning how to manipulate his tongue, lips, and mouth to speak them; and then combining those words into sentences. He spoke as though he had been speaking correctly his entire life. Jesus opened his ears and lips wholly and completely. This is the same kind of power Jesus demonstrates when He rebuked the wind and waves. Jesus simply says, “Peace! Be still!” (Mk. 4:39). The wind didn’t slowly die down. It ceased. The white caps didn’t turn to rolling waves then ripples. The sea turned to glass. The same thing happens here. The results are immediate and complete. He opened this man the same way—wholly. 

This is what Isaiah had promised in our Old Testament reading (Is. 29:17-24), “In that day the deaf shall hear the words of a book, and out of their gloom and darkness the eyes of the blind shall see” (Is. 29:18). The man had been closed in the gloom and darkness of silence, but the word of Jesus reaches him and does its work. The man hears and speaks the way he was created to hear and speak. Our Lord opens his lips, and his mouth declares God’s praise (Ps. 51:15).

God created our ears to hear His Word and our lips to respond in worship. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing through the Word of Christ (Ro. 10:17). With the heart one believes and is justified, and with the mouth one confesses and is saved (Ro. 10:10). Now, this man can do both. He hears the Word and speaks it rightly.

Throughout the Gospels, Jesus often heals immediately. This man. The woman who had been bleeding for twelve years is made well the moment she touches His garment (Mk. 5:25-34). Lazarus (Jn. 11:43-44). The blind, the sick, the lame, and the leprous are all made whole at His word (Mk. 1:34).

We often pray and desire those immediate results. We want the diagnosis reversed now. We want the relationship fixed now. The grief gone now. The wandering soul to repent and be saved now. We pray for all sorts of things and want God to have it done before we finish with our “Amen.”

Sometimes, God will do that. More often, He makes us wait. But in that waiting, He is doing something more. So, what should we do when we have to wait? We remember and retreat to His promises.

God is not slow to deliver on His promises (2 Pet. 3:9). He is not reluctant or limited in giving us what is good. The same Jesus who immediately and wholly opened this man is the One who hears your prayers. If the full restoration is delayed, it is not because He cannot do it. Instead, it is because God knows what He is doing. He is working a better opening than the one we have imagined. He is teaching us to live by every word that comes from His mouth (Dt. 8:3), and not only by the kind of answers we can see and hear right now.

So, when you have to wait, you can groan with Jesus at the fallen state of creation. But you do not groan without hope (Ro. 8:23-24). Christ has given you the Holy Spirit to open your ears to the Gospel. Let His promises drown out the noise of the rest of this broken world. Your tongue has been loosed. Use it to confess that He has defeated death by His death and resurrection and that He now reigns.

Even as you live through things that are not as God intended them to be, you know that Christ’s return is coming. Jesus Himself will descend from heaven with another word—a cry of command (1 Th. 4:16). That cry will be another “Ephphatha.” The graves will open. Ears that have been closed by death will hear. Tongues that have decayed will speak correctly. The meek shall obtain fresh joy, and the poor shall exult in the Holy One of Israel (Is. 29:19). He will make all things new (Rev. 21:5). Until that day, you wait. But you wait with Christ’s Word in your ears and the confession of His Gospel on your tongue.

Dear saints, your Savior has done all things well, He does all things well, and He will do all things well. He knows what He is doing. The One who spoke “Ephphatha” to this man will speak again over all creation. And in that day, nothing will remain closed. It will all be wholly opened. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:7). Amen.

Popeye Gospel – Sermon on 1 Corinthians 15:1-10 for the Eleventh Sunday after Trinity

1 Corinthians 15:1-10

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

Sin makes everyone prideful. It’s true that some people are more prideful than others. Some wear their pride as prominently as a ten-gallon hat on top of their heads; some keep it better hidden. But pride isn’t a special weakness of only a few. Pride is the default setting of the sinful nature of every one of us.

In our Old Testament reading (Gen. 4:1-15), we saw Cain’s pride. God had established the sacrifice that covered nakedness and shame with the slaughtering of an animal (Gen. 3:21). Abel followed that pattern by offering the firstborn of his flocks. But Abel’s brother, Cain, proudly thought his offering of crops was good enough. When God didn’t accept Cain’s offering, his face fell. Rather than examining his heart and actions, Cain didn’t let go of his pride. Since Abel was offering acceptable sacrifices, Cain murdered him. Cain would rather destroy what was better than repent of his unacceptable sacrifices.

In the Gospel reading (Lk. 18:9-14), the Pharisee does same thing. Instead of comparing himself and his actions to other Pharisees, he picks the worst of the worst—extortioners, unjust, adulterers, and tax collectors. Instead of looking into the clear mirror of God’s Law, he compares himself to scoundrels and fornicators, which couldn’t give him a clear picture of himself. Even though his resume of works was extraordinary according to human standards, it doesn’t impress God. That was why the tax collector went home justified. He simply pleaded for mercy. Pride keeps score, and faith begs for mercy.

Pride always boasts. It boasts of what it has accomplished, what it has avoided, and what it is by its own strength. Some of you will remember the old cartoon Popeye the Sailor Man. Besides eating spinach and having ridiculously large forearms, Popeye is known for his quote, “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam.” Sinful pride does the same. It says, “I am what I am, so look at me, my accomplishments, and my achievements.” That kind of prideful boasting exalts the self while excluding God, and it is deadly. But there is another kind of boasting.

Paul uses almost the same words as Popeye, but in a stark contrast from the spinach-eating sailor, Paul doesn’t let those words stand alone. He puts more weight on what he says before. “By the grace of God I am what I am” (1 Co. 15:10). Paul knew what he had been. Before Jesus appeared to him, he was the church’s primary and fiercest enemy.

Paul had been trained by one of the most prominent teachers and a member of the Sanhedrin (Act. 5:34-39; 22:3). He had lived a life that was blameless under the law (Php. 3:6). He consented to Stephen’s death (Act. 8:1) and was ravaging the church all over the world (Act. 9:1; 26:11). Then, Christ stopped him on the road to Damascus. “Saul, Saul, why are you persecuting Me” (Act. 9:4). Christ brought the self-righteous Saul to the dust. The Gospel opened his eyes (Act. 9:17-19). And he became the apostle to the Gentiles (Act. 9:15; 22:21).

Paul never forgot that moment. From that day forward he refused to stand before God saying, “I thank You that I am not like other men,” and instead said, “Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the foremost” (1 Tim. 1:15). The same man who once trusted his own righteousness now trusted only in the righteousness that is given by God to those who have faith in Christ (Ro. 3:21-22). 

When Paul boasts, he doesn’t do it from a place of pride. He will not take credit. “By the grace of God I am what I am.” If God had dealt with Paul according to justice, damnation would have been his due. It was grace—and grace alone—that made Saul into a Paul.

Dear saints, you and I all stand in the same place. By nature, you are not better than Cain, the Pharisee, or Saul the persecutor. You were not less of a sinner. We are all “by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind” (Eph. 2:3). The only reason any of us became Christians is that God has done the work. His Law cast us down and humbled us. Then, the Holy Spirit enlightened us with the Gospel, brought us to faith, forgave us, and adopted us as His own. What you are today, you are by the grace of God alone.

To confess that you are a Christian is already a boast of God’s pure grace. It is to be called out of darkness into light, out of damnation into salvation—all for the sake of Christ. By the grace of God, you are what you are. As a part of the body of Christ, you have work to do.

Here, Paul says that he has worked harder than any of the other apostles, but it wasn’t to his own credit. It was the grace of God that worked through him. This is a Christian boast. The work Paul did was real, and the glory belonged to God.

That’s why Paul says, “His grace toward me was not in vain.” Grace does not leave a person unchanged or idle. It produces real labor and real results. Paul actually did work harder than the rest. He traveled farther, suffered more, planted more congregations, and endured more hardship than the others (2 Co. 6:4-10). Yet every moment it was the grace of God at work in and through him. The same is true for you.

God has called you to serve Him in His kingdom. In your family and household; in your workplace; in this congregation; with your neighbors; in your city, your state, and country—in those ordinary places God’s grace does remarkable things through you. The grace that is saving you (1 Co. 15:2) is active and powerful.

There is a ‘bad’ kind of humility that sounds pious, but it actually lessens the work of God. It says, “I’m just a nobody who isn’t significant. My vocations don’t really matter. God isn’t using me for anything special.” Hogwash. That might sound humble, but it denies the power of God’s grace that already made you who you are. It’s an anti-spinach that weakens what God is doing and will do through you. It treats the living Christ who lives in you as if He were weak or uninterested in using ordinary believers for His kingdom. That false humility minimized God’s grace and actually harms faith. Imagine if Paul had said, “What I’ve done for the kingdom doesn’t matter because I used to persecute the Church of Christ.” That would grossly dishonor the work God did through him. And it would deter him from continuing to do the work God gave him to do. Don’t let the devil lull you into that kind of complacency!

You don’t have to outwork Paul and plant churches on every corner. But you are a Christian. That is already a high enough calling. The grace that has made you God’s child is not in vain. It works through your hands, words, and presence. It moves you to be generous, forgiving, and bold in your witness. In the quiet places of your everyday life, God advances His kingdom in ways that will only be fully seen on the Last Day. God has made you to be His salt and light (Mt. 5:13-16). He has placed you on a lampstand so that you give light to those around you. And He makes your light shine.

Sure, confess that you have not done enough—no Christian ever has. Plead for the grace that makes you willing and able to walk in the good works God has already prepared for you (Eph. 2:10). Whatever is done through you—even the smallest act of faithfulness—is not of yourself. It is the grace of God that is with you.

That is the kind of boasting that belongs in a Christian’s mouth. “By the grace of God I am what I am, and His grace toward me was not in vain.”

That grace comes to you now as Jesus comes to feed you with His Body and Blood. He still forgives yesterday’s sins and the sins of this morning. He is your righteousness. He has made you what you are, and He is the One who will keep working through you until the day He brings His work to completion. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:7). Amen.

The Untaming of the Shrewd – Sermon on Luke 16:1-13 for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity

Luke 16:1-13

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

We’ll get to the parable, but we’ll start with a little congregational participation. Ready? Pick one hand and hold it in front of you. Point your thumb toward your face and line your other fingers straight behind it like you’re going to do a karate chop. Keep your hand like that and look at me for a moment.

Imagine you’re at the grocery store to buy a snack for yourself. It could be a bag of chips, a box of cookies, or a pint of ice cream, whatever you fancy right now. No self-checkout today. You’ve handed the cashier a $20 bill, and she’s about to hand you your change. Without looking at your hand, move it into position to receive the change. Now, look at your hand. I’m guessing your palm is toward the ceiling, fingers slightly open, ready to close around the change. We’ll call that the ‘receptive’ hand.

Put your hand back in the karate chop position and keep it there again. Imagine you spot a $100 bill on a shelf in the store. No one else is around. Forget about what you would do with it. Just move your hand as if you’re reaching to take it. Look again—that’s the grasping and taking hand.

Everyone knows that hand. It is the hand of a child who snatches a toy and yells, “Mine!” It is the hand that treats everything as something to control rather than receive. That grasping hand is not new. It is as old as the Fall.

God created our hands to be the hands of a steward with open palms. First, receiving from Him; then, offering to Him. God created us in His Own image and gave us dominion over the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the animals, and all the earth. He gave every plant for food (Gen. 1:28-30). That dominion wasn’t permission to beat creation into submission. It was entrusted to us as image-bearers, so that we would reflect the heart of our all-giving Creator.

Not only did God give all of creation to be under our dominion, He also gave us a home. He put Adam and the woman in the Garden of Eden and gave them a clear purpose, “to work it and keep it” (Gen. 2:15). The two Hebrew verbs there are the same words God used when He established the priests who were to ‘serve’ and ‘guard’ the Tabernacle (Num. 3:7-8; 8:26; 18:5-6). In short, Adam wasn’t only created to be a gardener. He was created to be a priestly guardian of the sacred space of Eden. There was only one vocation in Eden, and that was the vocation of steward. God created us to receive everything from His open hand—palms up, receiving every gift of creation from His generosity. That open, receptive hand is the original stewardship hand.

Sadly, the hand rolled over. In Gen. 3, the devil suggested that God was holding out. Out of all creation, God said that one tree was off-limits. The devil lied to the woman and said that things would be better if she would eat the forbidden fruit. Suddenly, that is all her eye could see. The woman sees that the tree is good for food, a delight to the eyes, and desirable to make one wise (Gen 3:6). That desire and covetousness twisted her vision. The hands of the woman and Adam—hands that had been open to receive—those hands turned over to reach, grasp, and take.

That single motion—palm down, fingers closing around what wasn’t theirs—was the tipping point. The stewards presumed to be owners. But God never transferred ownership. Instead, they took and grasped what didn’t belong to them. They became thieves. In a sense, they stole the fruit. But the deeper theft was their attempt to take God’s place. The closing, grasping hand was the first act of original sin. It showed that they no longer trusted God, and whatever does not proceed from faith is sin (Ro. 14:23). That hand turning over and grasping what God hadn’t given was a violation of at least the 1st, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th, 9th, and 10th Commandments.

Now, bring that picture into the parable Jesus tells today.

There is a rich man whose hand was always open, always giving. He entrusted his possessions to a manager. The manager’s hand was supposed to stay palm up so he could receive the master’s wealth, manage it, and return it to the owner. But the manager’s hand has already rolled over. He has been wasting what was never his. Some commentators suggest that this manager was scamming the tenants by collecting more than he was supposed to and keeping the extra for himself.

When the master calls for an accounting of the books, the manager’s closed fist is exposed, and he will be removed from his position. The manager knows himself well enough to admit that he isn’t strong enough to dig, and he’s too proud to beg. So, what does he do? He acts shrewdly and hatches a plan. He probably worked harder that afternoon than he had in years.

He calls in the debtors one by one and reduces what they actually owe without the master’s permission or authorization. The unrighteous manager is still living off the master’s open-handed generosity, still using the master’s resources. He keeps his hand turned over so he can cleverly take more—this time, from the master himself. He is using his boss’s generosity as his own personal safety net. He knows that these debtors will be singing the praises of the rich man. But they will also associate him with their debt being slashed.

Notice that when the rich man figures the whole thing out, he still doesn’t close his hand. Instead, the master commends and praises the manager—not for his theft, but for his shrewdness. The manager knew the giving nature of the rich man and bet everything on it. That’s what Jesus is praising.

Jesus is not holding him up as a moral example. The man is unrighteous. His motivation is purely self-preservation. He’s a thief, but he’s a shrewd thief. Look at the energy this little scoundrel pours into securing a few friends who will toss him bread when he’s finally out of his job. Look at how he plots, stays up late, and reworks the books for his own benefit.

What Jesus praises is the shrewd use of what belongs to another. The manager did it only for his own benefit. Jesus wants us to do it for the benefit of others. In short, Christ wants us to use what God gives and entrusts to us in shrewd ways that reveal the generosity of our heavenly Father. That’s why Jesus says, “The sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light” (Lk. 16:8).

Dear saints, you have infinite treasures. You have the Gospel, the forgiveness of sins, the hope of the resurrection and the life of the world to come. You have all of that because of the open hand of our God who gives and gives and gives. He promises that you don’t have to worry about any of your needs for tomorrow because He will provide (Mt. 6:31-34). But still, we are careful, cautious, and stingy. In our selfishness we have tamed ourselves to be close-fisted. Repent.

That is the rebuke Jesus has for us today. Our closed hands are greedy and lazy. The 7th Commandment forbids both. Greed selfishly grabs. Laziness selfishly refuses to work. The virtue the Holy Spirit is after in us today is generosity. He wants us to open our hands to both freely receive and freely give. Jesus presses the point: “Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings”(Lk. 16:9). Eventually, money will fail. The day is coming when our hands can’t hold anything. So today, use what is already the Lord’s to make eternal friends—people who will stand with you in the Resurrection because the Gospel reached them through the resources you have stewarded.

David recognized this in our Old Testament reading (1 Chr. 29:10-15). When the people freely gave and poured out their gifts so the Temple could be built, David prayed, “All things come from You, and of Your own have we given You” (1 Chron. 29:14). Whenever and whatever we give, we are only returning what the open hand of God first placed in our hands. There is no such thing as ‘my money’ or ‘my stuff’ in the kingdom of heaven. There is only the Lord’s money and the Lord’s stuff temporarily in our care. That fact frees the fist that desires to grasp. That truth untames us and makes us shrewd. Closed hands always end in idolatry by making a (little ‘g’) god of the self and of the stuff we think we can control.

Repent and always know that Christ is the perfect Steward. His hands stayed open. Though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you by His poverty might become rich (2 Co. 8:9). He emptied Himself. He stretched out His hands on the cross and let everything be taken. His blood, His life, His whole Self—He gave it all as pure gift. You are not just a failed steward left to dig yourself out of sin. Instead, you are a redeemed steward who has been washed, forgiven, and claimed. The Holy Spirit is still at work to turn our hands back over, palm up, open again.

Jesus wants us to have the same energy that the unjust steward showed. He wants to untame us so we shrewdly use that same intensity, that same foresight, that same willingness to stay up late and work hard for His kingdom.

You have a mind. Use it to find new ways to love your neighbor. You have a body. Use it to serve others. You have resources that are already His. Use them to make friends who will welcome you into the eternal dwellings.

Dear saints, your Master’s hand is always open. He has already given you everything that matters. You are free. Be shrewd with His gifts, and rejoice in His goodness. Amen.

The peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus (Php. 4:7). Amen.