At our joint Harvest communion on 22 September 2019, our Gospel reading was Luke 16:1–13 – The parable of the dishonest manager – and Rev Liz Crumlish shared the reflection from which these are extracts.

With this parable today, we are invited, not to gloss over it because it seems difficult, but to engage with it and discover how it might speak into our lives and into the life of the world we inhabit. Never, in any of Jesus’ parables, are we allowed to be bystanders …

This is a parable in which we are implicated as we wrestle with all of our socio-economic, our political and our ethnic divisions. So let’s, just for a moment, consider three of those divisions with which we wrestle today – let’s talk about Brexit, let’s talk about austerity measures, and let’s talk about climate change.

… the truth is that we’re not simply dealing with the economies of today, but with the deficits of the future, the things that, by the way we live and the choices we make, we are denying those who follow us into the future.

So what can we do? We who claim to live by a different rhythm, we who are influenced by a totally different set of economics, the economy of the Kingdom of God. How can we follow Jesus, modelling relationships that are compassionate, that are restorative and that are creative?

… it is by waking up to crisis, like the dishonest manager, that we will find creative ways not to save the church, not even to save ourselves, but to listen and learn from those outside our normal circles … to listen and learn how we might survive the crises that assail us – and not just survive but flourish, making it possible for all of creation to know and to share in the abundance that God promises and longs for us to know …

We are invited, with the God of the harvest, to wake up to the crises all around and to be courageously creative in seeking and in implementing how we might be shrewd managers of all of God’s gifts today. For the glory of God. Amen.

Read the whole of Liz’s sermon at this link …
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