A Creative Retirement Plan

PASSAGE FOR THE DAY:
Luke 16 (click the link)


KEY VERSES:
Now the master praised this rascally steward because he had been so careful for his own future. For the children of this world are considerably shrewder in dealing with their contemporaries than the children of light. (Luke 16:9, JB Phillips)


REFLECTIONS:
In the first 9 verses of Luke 16 we will discover an unusual retirement plan.  And we can learn a powerful new Greek word to apply to our lives.  Of all the teachings of Jesus, this story may well be the one most avoided by readers and teachers.  Mathew, Mark and John ignored this story, but not Luke.  Obviously this bizarre story impressed Dr. Luke.  But many preachers and teachers avoid it.  I was tempted to turn down a request to write this devotional.  But then I remembered a lecturer at seminary challenging us by saying: “If you cannot open your Bible to any verse and preach on the text, you are not ready for the ministry.”

Ouch!  So here goes…

The subject is a financial manager who handles the estate of his wealthy employer.  But he finds himself in trouble, having been accused of wasting the owner’s resources.  It doesn’t actually say he was a crook; it merely tells us “it was complained of him.”   Yet when that complaint got to the boss the steward was fired.

The charge against him is that he was, in the literal Greek, “redistributing” his master’s wealth.  The Greek word diaskorpizo literally means “scattering it abroad” (like dispersing seeds).  But I don’t know why he became so fearful for his future.  This guy could have become a politician.  He proves my point by feathering his nest while in office.

There was no such thing as unemployment insurance.  He realizes he has no marketable skills since he has likely served as a property manager all of his adult life.  He has no interest in a “shovel-ready job.”  So he quickly develops a creative “retirement plan.”

News of his termination is not yet out on the street, so he hastily buys the friendship of his boss’s debtors by giving them a break on their liabilities. “I’ll scratch their back, they will then scratch mine!”  This fellow may have been the inspiration for those TV ads claiming that a certain company can settle your debt to the IRS for “pennies on the dollar.”

He has each debtor scratch out the original amounts on the promissory note and write in a lower figure.  Interestingly the story never claims that he actually collected any money for the boss.

Now you are shaking your head and calling this man a rogue.  But, shockingly, his Boss commends him.  Then in the second half of verse 8, Jesus seems to agree when he says: “The children of this world are wiser than the children of light.”

Clearly Jesus was telling His disciples that they needed to take lessons from “the children of this world”… but about what?

That Greek adjective “wiser” is based on the noun fronimohs (pronounced FRON-ee-mose) which can be translated with a number of interesting English words like creativity, boldness, wisdom and shrewdness along with a dozen other similar qualities.  I interpret this as an attempt by Jesus to “grow his disciples up.”  He knows their future lives will require special boldness.  But why did Jesus say that we should (gasp) “Make friends with money.”

Jesus was far more “down to earth” than most folks give Him credit for.  He was a Rabbi but also a realist, an “out-of-the-box” thinker who encourages us to make shrewd use of all resources.  We are to creatively and productively use everything that that has been entrusted to us: material wealth, talents, time, along with our practical and spiritual gifts.  We are to use them for OUR OWN good as well as for the good of OTHERS and for the KINGDOM.  This demands a sense of purpose and of mission.  It requires that we know what God created us to do and then go after it with fronimohs!

Did any of you grow up in Mr. Rogers Neighborhood?  That PBS children’s series aired from 1967 to 2001 and earned for Fred Rogers a Lifetime Achievement Emmy award.  That simple, yet powerful format was Fred’s own idea and it was loaded with fronimohs. The loveable Mr. Rogers would come into the house, replace his coat with a colorful sweater, sit down and replace his outdoor shoes with tennis shoes.  He would talk, sing, teach and play games with millions of kids sitting in front of their 19 inch picture tubes.   He taught them (and their parents) everything from neighborly values to how to arrange a place-setting at the dining table.

This quiet “Jesus figure” was demonstrating “Let the little children come unto me.” Few knew that Fred Rogers was an ordained Presbyterian minister.  He was already successful in media when God told him to go to seminary.  Upon graduation he accepted God’s call to a mass-media ministry to kids.  For a clergyman, this was definitely “out-of-the-box” thinking.

I always got a lump in my throat when Mr. Rogers would look straight into the camera and tell that child at home who was hanging onto his every word “You are special!”  That’s what the Master tells us: “You are special!  I have a life for you.  And I am giving MY life for you to live yours.”

There were those in his Presbyterian denomination who wanted Mr. Rogers’ ordination rescinded because he was not pastoring or promoting the church.  Wrong!  He was pastoring more of the world’s children than any preacher and doing it with fronimohs.

Another example is marathon runner Ryan Hall at this summer’s Olympics.  In a recent interview by Governor Huckabee, he told the world that God is his coach.  He told the TV audience this is what God created him to do.  He said, “When you do what God created YOU to do that is our best form of worship.” Then he added: “The church is as much outside the church as it is inside the church.”

Now that’s fronimohs!  Pray for a lot of it.


POINT OF ACTION:
The focus of Jesus’ story was not on the dishonesty of the steward, but on his cleverness or prudence or shrewdness or wisdom or creativity, depending upon how you translate the Greek word fronimohs.  Many Christians do not think and act creatively or prudently.  Our Savior was suggesting that His followers need “out-of-the-box” thinking.  And not just that we need fronimohs, but that we need MORE fronimohs than the children of this world display.  Why?  As the end of verse 9 is rendered in The Message: “… so you'll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”


PRAYER:
Our Creator and Our Father—We may not have yet laid hold of the full that you have intended to demonstrate in our lives.  Perhaps we have been missing something very important, if not critical to our success. Could it be that you didn’t create each of us to be a carbon copy of every other believer, or a mere manifestation of what some preacher or textbook has described as Christian. Is our image of what it means to be a Jesus follower incomplete or even defective? Could it be that instead of wondering what we are to grow up to be, we should have asked you from the beginning what we were created for? I pray it is not too late to make a course correction, to ask, and, if needed, to start over, i.e. to be “born again again,”  this time with a more complete grasp of who  we were created to be. Amen!

WHO AM I?
I am Dick Pickens, and I am a PRF Elder and sometimes teacher.  As a 1968 graduate of Austin Presbyterian Theological Seminary and recipient of a Master of Divinity Degree, I was ordained in 1971 as an evangelist.  Like Mr. Rogers, I was already in the media (as a radio Program Director, Deejay and broadcast engineer) when called to seminary.  After ordination I served as Director of Austin Teen Challenge helping young people shed bad drugs and turn to the Good News.  In the 70’s we took a coffeehouse ministry (called “The Well”) to the U.T. area to reach those of college age also.  Over the years I have served a number of churches, both Presbyterian and non-denominational.  My primary calling now is teaching the Word which I try to do with fronimohs.