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The following message is delivered by Reverend Dr. Bruce Wheeler Thielman. Today's sermon is entitled, "Business is Business." Let us continue in worship by giving, reading God's Word our special attention. It is recorded in the Gospel of Luke, the 16th chapter.

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I begin the reading at the verse numbered one. Jesus is speaking. He also said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a steward, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his goods.

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And he called him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.' And the steward said to himself, 'What shall I do, since my master is taking the stewardship away from me?

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I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do, so that people may receive me into their houses when I am put out of this stewardship.' So summoning his master's debtors one by one, he said to the first, 'How much do you

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owe my master?' He said, 'A hundred measures of oil.' And he said to him, 'Take your bill and sit down quickly and write fifty.' Then he said to another, 'And how much do you owe?'

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He said, 'I owe a hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill and write eighty.' The master commended the dishonest steward for his shrewdness, for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.

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And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon, so that when it fails, they may receive you into the eternal habitations.' And may God bless to us and to our understanding this reading from his word. Pray with me.

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In the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, amen. It is now quite official, quite indisputably so, Presbyterians constitute the wealthiest Christian denomination that has ever existed. Now there are larger denominations which have greater riches.

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But if you take the wealth of Presbyterians and divide it among Presbyterians, you will discover that on a per capita basis, there has never been a people in the whole history of Christianity, two thousand years, that have had the wealth that Presbyterians do. We are an industrious people, a frugal people, an aggressive people, a people who are deeply

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committed to the Protestant work ethic. Max Weber, the great social historian, has said that this is largely true of us because of our tradition. At the same time in which Calvin, our principal theological mentor, was doing his major writing,

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capitalism was on the rise in Europe. And capitalism very much influenced Calvin so that as Calvin wrote, some capitalistic notions were woven into the fabric of his teachings, things about hard work and thrift and sobriety.

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If there has ever been a people in the history of the church who know that business is business, it's the Presbyterians. Some years ago I was teaching a graduate level course at Bethel Theological Seminary in St. Paul, Minnesota.

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And during the course I used a phrase which came to me quite spontaneously, but which I have never seen fit to reject. I referred to the fact that Jesus often used hand grenade teaching. We all know, of course, that Jesus taught more with pictures than he did with arguments.

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We are familiar with his parables. But we do not so often notice that many times these parables or pictures are quite remarkable, very unusual, positively explosive in their nature. Jesus says, "You want to pray privately?

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Then go lock yourself in a closet." Jesus says, "You want to know how I'm going to return? I'm going to return like a thief sneaking through an open window at midnight." Jesus says, "If you want to know how it is that you must pray to God for the things that

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you need, then I would suggest to you that God is a crooked and lazy judge, and you are going to have to beat on his door all night long if you expect any justice from him." Now these are remarkable statements. But it's just this kind of remarkable statement that Jesus makes in the parable which is before

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us this morning. He is presenting us with one of his hand grenade teachings, something which he tosses into the midst of the crowd and waits for it to explode so that its spiritual shrapnel enters the minds and the hearts of all those who will hear.

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The story is about an owner who goes on a journey and leaves his manager in charge. He hears that the manager is cheating and so he returns, catches him in the act. He says to him, "I know that you've been cheating me and therefore I want you to understand that you will be finished here tomorrow.

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Get your affairs in order." And this manager begins to think to himself, "What am I going to do? I am too weak to dig and I am too proud to beg. How shall I deal with this situation?"

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And in his thinking he develops an idea. He goes to a man who owes the owner of the business 100 barrels of oil and he says, "Sit down and write out a check for 50 and I will mark your account as paid in full." Then he goes to another man that he knows owes his owner of the business 50 bushels

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of wheat and he says, "Write out a check for 40 and I will account your payment to be accounted in full." In other words, he's trying to build up a new circle of friends. He's trying to gain influence amongst these people because he figures he'll be out of

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a job tomorrow and any good favors that he can do might stand him in good stead 24 hours later. But in the process of this crooked activity, the owner of the business comes again and catches him in the midst of the cheating.

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And Jesus says to the crowd who have gathered about to hear him, "Now what do you think the owner of the business said to this manager?" And of course they all have their minds made up. They're quite sure that this young rabbi from Nazareth is about to preach a sermon

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on the general text, "Thou shalt not steal or thou shalt not covet." He's going to really nail this crooked manager and he's going to make the picture very vivid and entertaining and so they all listen with anticipation. But much to their amazement, Jesus tosses them a theological hand grenade.

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He says, "The owner of the business says to the manager, 'Hey, you're pretty clever. That's a smooth con job you're operating. You're turning my friends into your friends. I commend you for your zeal and for your courage and for your forethought.'"

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And I can imagine some of the people in the crowd standing up ready to object to this when Jesus says, "Wait a moment. I never commended the morality of what this manager did. He is a thief and nothing more than a thief and I have not said anything to the contrary.

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I am simply pointing out that he was a man who had the courage to face the facts, energy enough to deal with those facts as they were, and who was willing to plan ahead for his future." Now if you translate what Jesus said to those people that day into our meeting here this

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morning, it comes out something like this. You Presbyterians are the most industrious, the most earnest, and the most thrifty Christians that have ever lived. You have exceeded all other Christians in what you have accumulated in terms of the

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goods of the world. But now here come the hand grenades. "Have you done all this," he says, "for that lifespan of yours, plus or minus 70 years? Have you expended all this effort, all this fervency, all this perspicacity for what is

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going to come before death? Have you given any thought to what's going to come after death? The children of the darkness, the children of this world, plan for this world because this world is all they will know.

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But you are to be the children of the light, Presbyterians. And as children of the light, that means you must be about the king's business. You are to be working diligently for him. You are to be thinking ahead for him.

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You are to be planning for him. Your business," Jesus is saying, "is a matter of effort, facing the facts, and careful planning." How do you stand with regard to these things in terms of eternity? For what shall it profit a person if he or she gains everything the earth has to offer,

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and then has to leave it all behind? That's quite a hand grenade. I'd like to draw three thoughts out of it for our thinking this morning. The first one is very obvious.

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We Presbyterians understand that business is business, so we know that success demands hard effort. Just so this crooked manager, when he gets his pink slip letting him know that he's going to be fired the next day, immediately says, "What shall I do?"

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And the word "do" is an active word. What should I do to deal with this situation? He doesn't just sit back and lament, "What shall I do?" And what Jesus is saying to us is, "You Presbyterians have done wonderfully in dealing with the

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here, but what are you doing about the hereafter?" I had a terrible experience last Sunday night. I was driving home from our camp, and I was a few miles out of Ligonier. It was dark, and I hit something in my car.

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I stopped, and I got out, and I walked around, and here I'd hit a pig. Not a great big boar or a great big sow, and not a little piglet either. I just call it a pig. Well, I looked all around.

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No barns, no houses, no farms, no lights, no signs of civilization at all. I drove up the road a little ways, down the road a little ways, trying to find some sign of life, could find no one. So finally I dragged the pig off to the side of the road and got in the car and came home.

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Seven o'clock Monday morning, there was a knock at my door. I answered the door, and there were two Pennsylvania State policemen standing there. One looked at me, and he said, "Did you hit that pig?" And I'm standing there with shaving cream all over my face, and I said to him, "Yes,

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I did. And how in the world did you know about it?" And he said, "The pig squealed." Well, that's a poor excuse of a joke designed to get into something that's very serious.

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I want to do a little squealing this morning. I want to squeal on the fact that there are some Presbyterians who are risking their very health in order to prepare for their life here. They will disregard the counsel of their doctors.

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They will disregard the teachings of common sense and spend themselves utterly for what is taken in living life here today, now. I know some Presbyterians, and you do too, who are risking their families in pursuit of the things that are required for the living of life here, always carrying bulging briefcases,

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first one at the office in the morning, last one to leave at night. And if you ask them, they will say that they are doing this for their family's sake. But the fact of the matter is that in the very times of their absence, their family is dying.

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They just haven't noticed it yet. I want to squeal on some Presbyterians who risk their faith in the pursuit of the things of the world. They're too much involved in business to come to worship.

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They're too much involved in the affairs of their business to come to a church school class or to invest themselves in some act of Christian service and stewardship. They're ready to do anything that their boss requires, but they find it very easy to ignore the Savior.

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Now, this is a very serious matter, because what we're talking about here is nothing less than the difference between heaven and hell. You see, heaven is life rising out of death. It's the phoenix coming to life again out of the ashes.

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But death is the constrictor, which tightens more and more until it begins to devour itself. Heaven, the ancients tell us, is ecstasis, the word from which we get our word ecstasy. It means to leap out of yourself. Hell is instasis, to leap only into yourself.

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Heaven is aspiration, but hell is greed. Heaven is love, but hell is lust. Heaven is centrifugal, but hell is centripetal. Many of you are familiar with the Faust story of long ago.

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There was a man by the name of Dr. Johannes Faust who lived in Weimar in about the year 1400. He was a charlatan, a magician, a kind of a carnival entertainer. But a lot of legends accumulated around this Dr. Faustus.

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These legends have found their way into dramas and novels and into operas and into poems. The most famous rendition of his story, of course, is that by Goethe. Goethe spent 60 years writing his Faust. It's the story of a man who sells his soul to the devil, who commits himself to doing

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whatever the devil requires in order that he might have the pleasures of life. He signs the check of his life with his own blood to buy things which in the end will be worth nothing. The climax of the story comes, of course, when the devil comes to claim Johannes Faustus.

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And the words read, "There was the sound of piping and hissing and the whining of snakes that came from his room. 'Help! Help!' he cried.

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But as he cried, his voice grew fainter. And from the gorge profound, fiery torrents flowed to the very teeth. The crimson billows dashed the damned one." There is more to tell, but the unheeding will think it all a lie, a shame, a dream.

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Well, you may think of the Faust story in any way you see fit. But the point is that Jesus said, "Business is business," and it is a course of a fool to spend most of what he has for what he cannot possibly keep. Now the second obvious point that comes to us out of this story is, and we as Presbyterians

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knowing that business is business understand this, success requires that you face the facts. As soon as this crooked manager learns that he's going to be fired, he begins to assess his situation. "I'm too old to dig," he says.

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"I'm too proud to beg." And then he begins to put to work the plan that he has developed to protect himself for tomorrow. Now the hand grenade which Christ drops into our laps over this action on the part of the

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manager is this. How long are we going to make the mistake of thinking that the treasures of the earth are more valuable than the treasures of heaven? How long are we going to keep betting our chips on what the world defines as being good

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when we know all the while that we're going to end up with nothing more than a mouthful of dirt? You know if a book is popular for a hundred years, they call it a classic. If it's popular for four or five hundred years, they call it a masterpiece.

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What do you call a book that is popular for two thousand years? A book which has been translated into more than two thousand languages? A book which has crossed oceans and mountain ranges that has been appropriate for all races, for all people of whatever educated or uneducated level?

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What do you call such an utterly unique and unparalleled volume? Well you call it the Bible. And this is what the Bible says. The love of money is the root of all evil.

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What does it profit a man if he gains the whole world and loses his soul? To whom much is given, of that one will much be expected. God loves a cheerful giver. Let not the rich glory in their riches.

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Let him who glories glory in this, that he understands God. Bring ye the whole tithe into the storehouse and see the blessing that I will pour out upon you. Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these other things will be added unto you.

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As ye sow, so shall ye reap. I was thinking of all that this week because Forbes magazine came out with its annual October edition. Now the October issue of Forbes is always devoted to one subject, the richest 400 people

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in the United States. Might interest you to know that the richest man in America today is a man named Klug and he is worth $5.6 billion. The poorest person in the list is one of the struggling DuPont sisters who is worth only

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$260 million. There are two Pittsburghers on the list. One is worth $2.6 billion and the other is worth $505 million. Now they give the stories of each and every one of these people.

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They develop a paragraph, sometimes a number of paragraphs, sometimes even a page on these individuals and their families. And I sat down this last week and I read all 400 stories about these 400 people. Now you would think, wouldn't you, by the standards of the world this has got to be

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a happy group. This is the richest group of people in America. More than one quarter of them have been divorced, some of them a number of times. Many of their families are at war in the courts trying to get more of the family gold for

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themselves. A number are in mental institutions. Some live as recluses, keeping their cash in coffee cans. There are a number of suicides reported here.

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There are a great number of addicts, both to drugs and to alcohol. There's one murderer on the list. And there are a number of people who are in jail and who are directing the expending of their money from behind bars.

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And as I read this, I was thinking of Charles Swindoll, that minister from Southern California who was driving one day and he came up behind a fellow in a red Porsche. A Porsche is a very expensive European automobile and this thing had everything on it you could have, personalized license plate, the whole works.

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And as he pulled up beside this car, around the license plate was a little saying which read, "He who dies with the most toys wins." And that's a damned lie. And the whole history of humanity teaches it.

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I've never told anybody this, but if I wasn't a minister, I'd want to be a mortician. I would. It seems to me I spend most of my life, people coming in, everything all messed up, everything all confused, everything out of order, discords in their families, discords in their own lives.

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And many, many times all of this discord and confusion and disarray, all of this is tied up with money and possessions. And I try to get the things straightened out and most often I fail. That's the reason I'd like to be a mortician because when a mortician straightens somebody

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out they stay straight. We understand that business is business. We face the facts. We know what is obvious.

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Well, here's what is obvious. If you hold a piece of clear glass up to your eye and look through it, you will see everything toward which you look. But if you cover that piece of glass with silver, it will turn into a mirror and you

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will see nothing but yourself. And the moment you can see nothing but yourself, you have stopped doing business with God. And when you stop doing business with God, you have stopped doing the only kind of business that endures.

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The last thing that I noticed in this story is that, and we Presbyterians certainly understand this, we who know that business is business, you've got to plan ahead. There's got to be foresight involved. Christ says of this manager, the manager, of course, develops the plan of going out

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and getting these people to pay half of what they owe, and then he'll give them a receipt as if they paid it all, and thus turn them into his friends. He's planning ahead, you see. And what Jesus commends him for and what Jesus addressed to those people then and addresses

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to us this morning is this, how are we planning ahead when it comes to eternity? You know, it's rather strange when you think about it. We have all kinds of retirement plans and Social Security plans and prepaid burial plans and health plans and life insurance plans.

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What kind of plans have we made for our heavenly home? What kind of plans for the place where we will spend eternity? I know individuals, and you do too, who spend more time planning their vacation each year than they've ever devoted to thinking about their eternal destiny.

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I know people, and you do too, who have made more arrangements with regard to the disposal of their mortal remains than they have with the destiny of their immortal souls. Well, my friends, you can't buy your way into paradise. We all understand that.

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Jesus said there are many things that money can't buy, but he also said there are very few things it cannot have by being given away. Think of it. You enter the kingdom of heaven and have some young druggie come up to you and say, "I was

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led to straightness and from straightness to the Savior because of you and your stewardship." Some big, burly black man from Africa, a Bakuda tribesman, comes up and he grasps you in his vice-like arms and he says, "Jumbo, I came to know Christ by a service of a missionary, and you sent that missionary to this place."

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Some old soul, age no longer evident, of course, walks up and says, "I spent the last years of my life in a Presbyterian home, and it was a place of great peace and joy to me, and I never could have done it without the help of people like you." A little child that came to heaven too early, at least in terms of those who remember the

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child with heartbroken affection back here on earth, and the little child says, "I learned about Jesus because of my Sunday school teacher, and you made my Sunday school possible." The shut-in sitting by her radio or in front of his television set or the individual who wouldn't think of darkening the door of a church, but who will in the privacy of her

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or his own home, listen to the gospel, hears, believes, is saved, and says to you, "I heard this because you made that ministry a reality in my life." The saved, the sanctified, the healed, the educated coming to you and saying, "I am so grateful to share this with you, to welcome you to that for which you've planned ahead."

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Well that's the parable. There was this crooked manager, and Jesus started to talk about him one day, and He talked about him in such a way that He set off a hand grenade that's been echoing for two thousand years.

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He never praised this manager for his immoral practices. He praised him for his prudential efforts, which were to work for [audio cuts out] to face the facts and to plan ahead. Those are basic Presbyterian principles.

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For we know business is business. So how generous are we in the support of the King's business? Have we faced the fact that all the earth's business will someday be left behind? Are we planning ahead, remembering what Jesus said, "Where your treasure is, there will

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your heart be also." Once a king who loved his jester very much gave to his jester a scepter, just a little scepter, not the big scepter like the king carried, but it was heavily jeweled, gold and encrusted with pearls and diamonds and the like.

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And he said to this jester he loved so much, "You are to keep this scepter until the day when you find somebody sillier and more foolish than yourself, and when you do, jester, then you have to give the scepter to him." So for years and years this entertaining jester sat at the king's side and never gave the

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scepter away. And then the day came when the king was dying, and the jester who loved him very much sat beside his bed. And the king said to his friend, the jester, "I am going on a journey to a land where

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I have never been, from whence I shall never return, and I do not know the way, and I have made no plans." And the jester began to weep. And he took the scepter and he put it on the king's pillow, and he said, "I have now

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found a man who is more silly and foolish than myself." But that's the way it is. We see, business is business. Let us pray.

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O God, we've talked about hand grenades. Maybe we should have talked about time bombs. We're hoping and praying, each one of us this day, that the penetrating power, the blasting truth, the astonishing atomic actuality of what our Jesus says might cut deep into us,

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so that we can live our lives, not only for now, but far more importantly, for forever. We pray our prayer in Jesus' name. Amen. [BLANK_AUDIO]