The Sunday sermon was on "The Parable of the Dishonest Manager" which contains the famous observation "You cannot serve God and wealth (Greek: mammon)". On the face of it, Jesus seems to instruct us to "make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth". An unusual explanation considers that the steward was slandered and made friends with his employer by publicly doing the act for which he was falsely accused. For more on this see:
Jesus says "make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth". Really? : cruciformity.
What did your Pastor preach about?
Our own pastor tends to try to talk in the ordinary parlance of young people that haven't read the passage, as if they are thinking on it for the first time ever, and so will tend to say out loud what might be the first thoughts that would momentarily come to mind for a 20 yr old that had never seen the passage before. If I can recall the wording used, it was something like this: What!? Is this a good manager or a bad one?? etc.
Then, I sorta lost track of the sermon, as that sermon wording wasn't speaking to me, and also it's already a familiar old passage which I'd puzzled over some aspects of a few times, years back, but eventually came to an understanding on. So, I starting thinking on the passage again, and lost track of the sermon.
The main message is always to come first (but those side issues can get deep too). The main message seems to be: (ok, I feel I need to use very ordinary plain language): even if a pastor gets fat and lazy, in other words has become a 'dishonest manager' (and would seem to then be on the way to the lake of fire...) -- even then! -- it's still possible for the pastor to scrape by if he will at least still continue to honestly communicate the true message of the gospel, the saving grace, in which our debts we could never pay are forgiven. And that we are to just do the work we are able to do (partial payment), according to the 'talents' (resources and abilities) we are given.
Tell the debtors -- everyone -- it's ok to pay less than they owe (they could never pay what they really owe)....
This passage can help:
5 When Jesus reached the spot, he looked up and said to him, “Zacchaeus, come down immediately. I must stay at your house today.” 6 So he came down at once and welcomed him gladly.
7 All the people saw this and began to mutter, “He has gone to be the guest of a sinner.”
8 But Zacchaeus stood up and said to the Lord, “Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”
9 Jesus said to him, “Today salvation has come to this house, because this man, too, is a son of Abraham. 10 For the Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost.”
Luke 19 NIV
It's good that Zacchaeus makes restitution, as he is able to do, because he indeed has enough money to do so....
....but that would of course
not be enough to save him, just to pay X dollars, as if he'd be saved if he paid X dollars, so long as X > Y, where Y is some amount of money... (as if he'd be saved by paying $8,000 for instance).
No, what matters instead is that he is doing what he can, according to what he has, to do right -- faith in action. And doing so because he believes.
The key thing here is Zacchaeus really believes, and his actions of restitution are merely that faith playing out, evidence of faith. That the faith is real.
Once real faith exists, then we are to follow Christ by doing as He says to us to do. We as it were are paying a (often tiny) fraction of what we owe -- it's like that. The point is the amazing Grace (but then also the right action that follows from real faith: faith in action).
