What will be your inheritance? How will it come to you? Who will give it to you?
Are you currently responsible for something that doesn’t belong to you? Or put differently, do you currently have something within your control that does not belong to you?
In the gospel reading, Jesus tells a curious story about a dishonest man and then proceeds to challenge his disciples about their identity and what they hope to inherit. This follows in the context of last week’s gospel about a lost sheep, a lost coin and two sons who were each lost in different ways because they misunderstood their father’s heart. Therefore, they completely misunderstood the real value of their inheritance. In fact, they missed the true inheritance completely.
Today, a dishonest and possibly a lazy steward, discovers that his source of wealth will be cutoff. His values change in an instant. So he turns to the worldly value “If I scratch your back, you scratch mine” in order to find security. Are we supposed to feel pity for him? Perhaps he is in the story to represent us and God is the master.
So Jesus begins to interpret the story for us and apply it to us. “If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours?” Apparently, we have control over things that do not belong to us, such as our stuff, our health, our business, land, money, human society, even God’s green earth. When Jesus says “Who will give you what is yours?”, He revels that there is something which belongs to us but is currently not under our control. It is under the control of another who may give it to us. But it is not automatically given, nor may we demand it. This thing sounds a lot like an inheritance. So let us ask again What will be my inheritance? Who will give it to me?
Scripture has a word for the place we try to find our worldly security. Jesus uses it in His explanation. The word is mammon. Mammon isn’t bad stuff; Jesus just tells us it’s a lousy place to invest the life we have been given. Mammon is utterly unreliable and always temporary.
Do you remember your history well enough to recall the hyperinflation in Germany following WWI? The money that everyone worked so hard for and saved was burned for warmth because it had become so worthless. A family’s life savings might not even buy them one loaf of bread. The value of mammon is unreliable.
How about the revolutions in the last century in Russia, China, Libya, Columbia, Burma – or earlier revolutions like France and the United States? People may have built their security on a particular ruler, party or system and then one day it all goes wrong for them. This type of mammon is fickle.
How many of us have become so attached to our good health that when it fails us, we struggle to find meaning in our day? We become so trapped in our capacity and desire to be independent and self sufficient that once we must rely on others for our basic needs, we think we are a burden to others. The mammon of power for self sufficiency is so very temporary. It cannot be where we find our identity, our meaning, our sense of worth.
Jesus, in fact, tells us that we cannot serve both God and mammon. Apparently, there are no exceptions. As hard as we might try, we cannot find our identity, our meaning, our happiness, or our inheritance anywhere within all the mammon seems to provide. In fact, Jesus tells us that if we get all tangled up in trying to make mammon work for us, we will be unable to serve God. This is not just because we are distracted, but because a heart focused on mammon is far from the God who gave us our hearts.
Now this may seem like very difficult teaching. But it is not complicated; it’s quite simple. See, none of the mammon ever belonged to us anyway. It has always belonged to God. We have never been entitled to it. It has only been entrusted to us to do His bidding. Mammon is never truly under our authority, it is too unreliable and fickle. But, under God’s authority our stuff, our health, our business, land, money, even human society. In fact, this whole Garden that God has given to us finds its proper place.
In the parable of the two sons, each thought he was entitled to his father’s inheritance for different reasons. (The second son thought all his work had earned him the inheritance.) But they thought inheritance meant mammon. In fact, the inheritance was their identity as sons, sons with a full share, not in the father’s mammon, but in His generous and forgiving love.
Jesus is the Son who knows His identity. He knows His inheritance and lives it out. That’s just another way of saying that everything Jesus does comes from the Father. Our inheritance is to forgive as Jesus does, to be merciful as Jesus is, to care for the sick, the neglected, the child, the stranger, the prisoner, the widow and the orphan. We do not do these things to earn an inheritance as the older son in the parable believed. We live it out because the Father’s love for us makes us His sons and daughters.
What will be your inheritance? How will it come to you? Who will give it to you?
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