Bad for Business Is Good for Sinners

Fifth Sunday in Lent

March 17, 2013

Bad for Business Is Good for Sinners

Luke 20:9-19

In the name of Jesus. Amen.

The person without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God but considers them foolishness, and cannot understand them because they are discerned only through the Spirit. (1 Corinthians 2:14)

Honestly, what was he thinking? A man buys a new farm. Then he hires a bunch of strangers to run it and then he goes away on a long trip. This owner wasn't much a businessman.

He sounds more like the guy known for his famous home dinner parties and gets lots of compliments on his homemade pasta and is told repeatedly that he should open a restaurant. He finally decides to go for it and buys a restaurant and within 3 months, runs out of money and goes out of business. Why? Because he ran the place with his heart, instead of his head, and ended up way over his head.

This owner in this story clearly wasn't running his business with his head. He was all heart. After that first slave was bushwhacked by the renters, he should have destroyed them immediately. But instead he's a soft touch—he sends another servant to get his share. This guy and a third are both beat up by the renters.

And here's where it gets surreal. The owner decides to send his son—presumably without protection—to collect the rent. He thinks that they might respect him, even though all the evidence says that his son is going to be attacked, if not worse. But he is sent. Why? Because he's thinking with his heart, not his head.

This story is clearly about God the Father in heaven and His holy Son Jesus. He is the only God in the universe whose love seems bad for business—all heart, no head.

The Devil offers us gods who are truly using their heads—or so it would seem. Money is a fantastic god, very dependable if you can get. The renters of that field certainly thought so. Get as much as you can and keep it for as long as you can. But when you take a step back, you can see how pointless their money schemes were. In the end they were destroyed.

Now they should have been destroyed in the beginning! Instead our dear Father in heaven keeps on giving the renters chance after chance to come to their senses and turn away from their self-centered love of money. Jesus preached this parable directly against the Jewish scribes (who were a combination between lawyers and theologians) and priests. And here's the thing. Jesus wasn't charging them with greed, but with smugness against other and pride in their own goodness. It's sensible way to conduct your life, but it's deadly. And the same head-strong pride lives in us.

We run our lives with our heads. This means that we do what's in our own self-interest. We forgive people who won't be likely hurt us more than once. We love anyone who seems to share our way of looking at the world. We actively hate those who mock us and put us down. These are all very sensible policies. It's just good business to love those who love us back. It's bad for business to forgive anyone who has hurt you deeply and repeatedly.

So what was our Father thinking? Why this way? Why His Son, unprotected and all alone? Because His plan of salvation comes from His heart of infinite love. To our way of thinking His way is foolish and bad for business. Real gods demand sacrifice and blood from us. Real gods are sensible. Real gods also get you killed.

But not our divine Savior. He gets Himself killed. Jesus sheds His own blood to save us. He is the only God in the universe who has done this for us. He is the only God who gives from the heart, instead of the gods in our lives who calculate with their heads. He is only God who has given Himself into the hands of those who are His enemies, the whole human race. He is the only God who has become sin and become one of us, so that His sacrifice of His innocent life at the hands of His enemies would result in the salvation of so many former enemies and make them His beloved friends.

We are those renters, who rebel against our seemingly foolish Father and attack His Son. But in this foolish plan that makes no sense is our greatest victory, is our full forgiveness, is our hope and our future, all for the sake of Christ alone for us.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:

“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise;

the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.” (1 Corinthians 1:18-19)

In the name of the Father

and of the + Son and

of the Holy Spirit. Amen.