Grace and Peace from God our Father and our Lord Jesus Christ. I was here in May on a vacation Sunday to baptize my granddaughter. Pastor Mike offered to let me preach but I said, "No, I'm on vacation but I would love to come back sometime soon." Little did I know how soon it would be. I am grateful that you have invited to preach. I also want to thank you, as a father. You send your children out into the world and you hope that wherever they go they are accepted, and loved in a community of faith. I always thank God that my son Jim came here and I thank you for your care and love for him in this Christian Community. So thank you.

Now, on to the sermon. This has to be one of the oddest parables of Jesus. We have this steward, manager and bookkeeper for a man who owns a substantial farm. However, he has squandered his master's money and so he is canned, fired. The manager realizes he can't do any hard work but he does not want to beg. So he goes out and discounts the debts owed to the master for the purpose of getting others to like him. When his master catches him, he commends the dishonest manager. Jesus tells a story in which the hero is dishonest. Ouch. It reminds me of the story of Miss Lillian. She taught Sunday School to a group of boys down in Texas and she always ended each class by telling them "Now you'all avoid whiskey and drink of any kind." One Sunday the lesson was Jesus turning a large quantity of water into wine. The boys knowing her aversion to strong drink demanded to know what she thought of Jesus action. She said "I knowed he done it but I wished he hadn't." Sometimes when "we have these head scratching parables we knowed he said but perhaps we wished he hadn't."

This parable sits in a context though with a larger set of stories. Some that we have heard recently: The demands of discipleship, be prepared to hate your Father and Mother, be prepared to take on the cross, be prepared to give up all your processions, and last week the parable of the lost sheep and coin, the joy in heaven over the repentant sinner. And the story right in front of this one the prodigal son who interestingly just like this manager squandered money that wasn't really his. In that story the loving father accepts him back. Now we have another squanderer, a manager, a steward who squanders, and yet he turns it around, shrewd business dealing.

I know a little about business dealings. I am only late to being a pastor. Seven years ago, I was a manager of a massive software development project. We were in cooperation with some customers building a giant package of software to manage Health Care Insurance. My company had been in this business for many years but the old systems were not keeping up. Therefore, in partnership with a couple of customers we had begun to write a new system from scratch. I had a great team of people in which I believed in and customers investing time and money. However, writing new software while running in some customer sites is a bit like building an airplane while it is flying. There was one more problem with this adventure. The corporation was focused on just one thing, quarterly earnings. The stock analysts wanted quarterly numbers to go up. That is hard when you are building something that only will pay off in five to seven years out. The employees and customers were depending on a commitment-the long haul. Therefore, I went to the capital committee, sort of the bank of the company to borrow several million dollars to get us through but they wanted a return within the next 18 months. Therefore, I developed the numbers that showed them how we would pay it back. It was just that I exaggerated the payback. I knew it was a five year deal not 18 months, and people were counting on me. We got the money.

Today in this industry, it is the only product they sell; it is worth hundreds of millions to them. The problem was their focus was too short sighted. I did not convince them I just rather stretched the truth. But there relationships with employees and customers who believed in what we were doing. Sometimes those things, they are for the long haul. It is one of the things I learned in business, relationships, they cannot be measured they often are more important than the quarter numbers. It was those relationships I missed when I went to seminary.

That is what the steward learned in this parable. Squandering is a short term gain, a quick rush, it doesn't last. What did he learn that was praise worthy? That we need to be in it for the long haul, that he needed to be building relationships that were based on mercy and forgiveness. Even his master had a new improved relationship with his debtors. We do not know what happened to him. Maybe he got his job back or maybe he went to seminary.

Jesus is telling us we are in it for the long haul. He is not talking 18 months versus five years, he is talking your eternal home. That is what stewardship and discipleship are all about. Being in it for the long haul. That our focus is not on the fleeting things that get squandered, but on things that last. Our relationships build on grace, mercy, and trust. The grace and mercy that we know, through love of Christ Jesus. The prodigal son, the dishonest steward, squandering is a short-term moment. It is relationships of love and grace with each other, in our community and with a God who loves us, these are the long haul. That is why we gather in community. This community of faith.

The letter you just received said you are diverse community of believers who gather around Word and sacrament. The church is a place of relationships and community. We need it. Community is disappearing from our world.

When I was kid growing up we went to the grocery store. We walked; it had four aisles and a meat counter. You carried up the items, and the butcher cut whatever meat you wanted, and he gave out free slices of German bologna to young children, minced not that Lebanon stuff they have around here, good stuff. You saw the neighbors there and you could not get out without a nice conversation. Today, you go to the Giant, pick up your cart in the lot, and go inside where all the aisles are labeled. You do not have to ask where something is. No matter, there is no one to ask. You order your cold cuts on a computer terminal, get what you need, go back and pick them up. Then you check yourself out. "Do have a bonus card? Scan it now, scan your first item, and place it in the bag." The only human intervention you receive is if you mess up. Then they come and yell at you. "Please place the item in the bag." But do it right and you need not interact with any human. We are starving for community.

What lasts? Not those groceries I bought. The relationships. When we commit ourselves to what lasts, the long haul, our focus changes. That was what Christ was talking to us about. We need to hear that now more than ever. When you commit yourself today to this place, on this consecration Sunday to this ministry Miracle, Mystery, and to Mindset of this place, you commit to something very different. Something that lasts into eternity. That is what these parables are all about.

Do not build up big barns to store up more than you need; the rich man who misses seeing Lazarus at his gate; the man who wants to follow Jesus but has many possessions; and Jesus saying "none of you can become my disciple if you do not give up all your possessions." Focus beyond the stuff that is squandered away. God is looking for us. Like the woman in last week's parable searching for a lost coin. God is sweeping out the house with all the lamps lit, to throw a party when God finds us. For we are called to focus on the things that truly matter, the people around you, the lost, the lonely, the poor. Don't believe it. How about an example?

For women diagnosed with moderately serious breast cancer, a large network of supportive friends and relatives cuts the risk of recurrence and death by 60% over seven years, a researcher reports. Breast cancer patients who have just a small core of reliable supporters outside the home - two or less - increase their odds of breast cancer coming back and killing them by 60%, says Karen Weihs of George Washington University Medical Center in Washington, D.C. The size of a woman's circle of friends and extended family affected survival as much as her disease severity when diagnosed, "and that is remarkable." Take a look around you these people right here could save your life with love and care. Their concern their prayers can and will save your life. What are you going to invest in this day? With your time, your skills, your gifts. This community of faith is in it for the long haul. Building the relationships, sharing the good news of Jesus Christ, for changing the world. God is calling us to be faithful. Faithful with what we have, to build here a community of faith that will nurture and grow in this place.

There is some good news and some bad news for you at St. James. Today's lesson "Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; Jesus says in Luke 12 "From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required." You are one of the largest congregations in the synod, certainly in Adams County and you have done much to support the church wide ministries on which we all depend. Thank you for your faithfulness. The rest of us in the county we are watching you. What you do, how you shape mission, how you are in the world, how you are in community with those around you shape the rest of us in our ministries. You are a leading light in the Lutheran community. From everyone to whom much has been given, much will be required.

I began with you on a personal note and I will end the same way. I thanked you for your love and acceptance of my son in your community but now the stakes are raised. For my kids are one thing but in May you took charge of my granddaughter, you took her in as part of your community. I heard you all say it. I want to know which one of you will have extra Cheerios with you sitting behind her on Sunday morning? So that she knows the meaning of a community that shares. Which of you will commit to teach her about the incarnation of God by helping her to build a manger from Popsicle sticks? Which of you will teach her compassion and comfort in community when she falls and crushes that manger on her way to show her mother? Which of you will affirm her as she sings in the choir for the first time, even if she is as tone deaf as her grandfather, and sings "Away in the manger" on one single note? Which of you will bandage her head when in great piety when after putting out the candles as an acolyte she bows before the altar of God and bangs her head on the altar? I have entrusted her to you for the long haul.

If that is what a grandfather expects, how much more does God our Father expects of us this day? To be disciples; to care for everyone around us; to share the good news; to especially care for all the little ones, the weak the vulnerable; to pray for each other; to save each other's lives; to journey together living in the mystery of a hidden God. Rejoicing in the miracles and having a mind that is set on God's abundant grace. Perhaps you thought I was coming to ask you to give more money. The stakes are much higher. Christ is calling you to discipleship, a relationship for the long haul.

Amen.