Cooking the Books
Luke 16:1-17
[INTRODUCTION]
Have you ever heard the expression Cooking the books? Do you know what that means?
Well, it has nothing to do with cooking or cookbooks, although I suppose that if you stretch the analogy a bit, you might say that it is a bit like Weight Watchers tweaking a recipe for sweet-toothed dieters – like adding black beans to a brownie recipe to make the brownies appear healthy and ease your guilt about eating the entire pan.
Cooking the books is a type of creative accounting where numbers are fudged to make things look better than they are to appease stockholders. You know… drop a few zeros in entries in the expenses column; adding a few to the earnings.
Now, I gotta tell you, I had a very difficult time trying to figure out our text for today. Probably as much or more than an auditor trying to figure out cooked books. Over the past two weeks I wracked my brain over what the meaning of every verse might be. I have looked at the text in different translations; read some commentaries. But that only served to confuse me even more.
Then I figured out that it is not so much the what in this parable that is significant, but the who who heard it. Let me explain…
[TEACHING]
The first thing we read is that Jesus was talking to his disciples. Or was he? Remember that the Pharisees had been following Him, listening, trying to trip him up and discredit him. They had just heard him tell the stories about the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son or the prodigal son. Stories about the love of God and His intent to tirelessly pursue every sinner, not only the Jews, and bring him or her into the fold. The Pharisees had seen his concern and association with tax collectors and sinners and they thought that it was a disgrace.
And now these same Pharisees were eavesdropping on this teaching moment too.
Now who were the Pharisees? What was their responsibility? Well, they were the keepers and interpreters of Gods law. They were the Stewards of the word. Okay. See where this is going?
And Jesus was telling them in an indirect way that they had been mismanaging the law that was entrusted to them. They had taken 10 commandments and turned them into 600 plus burdensome rules and regulations. Some inflation! They were applying the same principles they used in earthly riches, which they loved, according to Jesus, to their stewardship of spiritual riches.
So Jesus begins with this story about how a hypothetical manager gets himself into trouble with his boss. We do not know what he did or did not do, but we do know that he is going to be fired. And so to ensure that he will be able to get another job with one of the business associates of his boss who, by the way, are in debt to his boss, he cooks the books and has each one pay less than what is owed. The debtors now owe the manager a favor, you see.
The Pharisees were shrewd money managers. They loved money. And so Jesus knew that this story would draw their attention. It is insane for a manager to accept less than what is owed! He should be fired! Yeah, the boss is right in firing him! The nerve! What the manager did was against the rules!
But in his story Jesus says that the boss praises the manager for his shrewdness. The boss lost money! How could he praise the manager? The manager was using the wealth of his boss to make friends. Now that HAD to upset the Pharisees even more! No wonder the text said they scoffed at Jesus!
The text seems to talk about money, physical wealth and worldly things. The love of money is the root of all evil. You cannot serve two masters, God and mammon. Okay, we get that.
But more than that, it is talking about personal responsibility of what God has entrusted in the way of spiritual wealth. The Pharisees were entrusted with the law. They were responsible for teaching, interpreting, and carrying out the law. They were supposed to be the conscience of society. They were judge and jury. So, you can imagine that whenever possible they might take a kick-back or two from those wanting to get away with facing consequences of breaking the law. As a result, the Pharisees were wealthy; very wealthy.
That wealth clouded their perspective. Their primary duty was to help the people understand the law, but more than that, to help them see that they could never follow the law 100 percent; that the law and the prophets all pointed to the gospel of the Kingdom of God which John the Baptist preached about. That Kingdom that everyone now was pushing to get into.
That is why the Pharisees had it in for Jesus. Their livelihoods were at stake here, because if people no longer cared to use their money to line the pockets of the Pharisees, then they would use their money and resources to further the Kingdom of Heaven instead.
And what is this last verse about divorce? It does not seem to apply in this context, does it?
Jesus is talking here about the spiritual divorce of the Pharisees. How they divorced God and committed spiritual adultery in order to marry money, basically. And furthermore, anyone who followed the Pharisees, now divorced from God, were also committing Spiritual Adultery. They were following the Pharisees rather than God.
And that is what it boils down to, Brothers and Sisters. Jesus is concerned that the Sons of Light, in this context The Jews but in relation to us today, The Church, not let anything, not money, not wealth, not goods, not even the Law, if it is just for the sake of the Law, to get in the way of an intimate relationship, a marriage if you will, with God. You can cook the books all you want to justify yourself…
…Oh, the Bible says that the church should give to everyone who asks? (Luke 6:30). Well, that does not mean the guy who just will not get a job? After all, God helps those who help themselves, right?
…The Bible says that the church should not judge? (Luke 6:37). Well, that does not mean bringing to light certain practices of certain preachers and certain members. Gossip? We would not hear of it! But sometimes we need to talk about certain things people do in order to…. Better pray for them. Yeah. Pray for them.
…Jesus said that the church ought to spread the Good news. Well, we pay the preacher to do that. That oughta be enough.
…The early church gave us an example of how believers used the spiritual gifts God gave, ALL the gifts, to glorify God and advance the Kingdom. Well, that is all well and good. We show hospitality. We pray for healing. We teach. But speaking in tongues? That is just not done here. Or prophecy? Weird. Getting words of knowledge? Casting out demons? Please! Scary stuff! No, we will pretend that those kinds of things are not in the Bible.
You get my point I am sure. We are still cooking the books!
Why do we limit God like that? We, the Church, are the Sons and Daughters of Light. The Apple of the Eye of Our Heavenly Father. We are. So can we not trust our Daddy? Can we not use the spiritual resources He has given us? There are so many hurting out there… folks who need a touch from God. Yet we hoard the gifts we have been given, picking and choosing what and how much of them we will share. And we Cook the Good Book to justify our practices.
There is a contemporary Christian song that I am reminded of. It is by Casting Crowns. Part of it goes like this:
Does anybody hear her? Can anybody see?
Or does anybody even know shes going down today
Under the shadow of our steeple
With all the lost and lonely people
Searching for the hope thats tucked away in you and me
[CLOSING]
We may or may not be able to tell if the recipe has been tweaked to include black beans in our brownies. But we can know without a doubt that through Jesus Christ our debt of sin is cancelled and our future is secure.
We have been entrusted with spiritual riches that even the most accomplished accountant could not measure. We have it all. The hope of the gospel of Jesus Christ. As shrewd managers we can proclaim to the lost and lonely people the cancellation of their debt of sin through Jesus Christ. We can proclaim that in His accounting, the Books have been Cooked and their debt is 0. And we can use the spiritual gifts entrusted to us to comfort the lost and end their loneliness. AMEN.
