Louisiana Windmills

Proper 20C

Luke 16:1-13

September 22, 2019

St. Mark’s, Boligee

When I was 10 years old – I robbed a store.  It was a gift shop on a school field trip my 4^th grade class took to Dutch Gardens in Louisiana.   I don’t remember a thing about where we went or what I saw that day.  But in that gift shop was a little wooden windmill about 6 inches high and I wanted it.  My best friend had just bought one.  I didn’t have enough money, so I looked all around, stuck it in my pocket, and walked out of the store.  I have no idea if anyone saw me.  No one came running after me.  I didn’t dare take it out of my pocket on the school bus in case someone might somehow know that it was stolen.  When I got home, I hid that little wooden windmill in the back of my closet.  I lay awake that night convinced that at any moment the Dutch Gardens police would come knocking on our door ready to take me to jail.  The next day, I put the windmill back in my pocket - went deep into the woods behind our house and buried it.  I covered up the hole with a big rock I found.  I bet I could go back to those same woods today and find that rock and the hole.  It was several years before I think I finally figured that Dutch Gardens, the police, and probably the FBI had finally stopped looking for that windmill and ME who stole it.

I think about that crime every time we come to this parable in the Gospel of Luke.  My 10-year-old conscience kept bugging me because I had heard many times in Church that stealing is a sin – and God is sad when we sin – and so would my mother be if she knew.  Thou shalt now steal was right there in the 10 Commandments along with Thou shalt not covet and Thou shalt not bear false witness.  I was pretty sure I had broken all 3 commandments that day.  What was next?  Murder – worshipping other gods??? 

But if stealing is a sin then how could Jesus defend a dishonest manager?  He was caught by his boss stealing from his master’s customers.  He was overcharging for olive oil and wheat and heaven knows what else.  And then when he is caught, he tries to make friends with these same customers by slashing their bills in what looks rather clearly to me like extortion or fraud or both.  My mother always told me that 2 wrongs don’t make a right – but Jesus makes it sound not only OK but actually a good thing to do.  This is a strange parable.

And we do need to remember that this IS a parable – and so it is a story that takes what happens in everyday life and gives it a heavenly meaning.  Parables are about God and this one is no different.  Jesus is not saying go out and steal something.  The people who were listening to Jesus that day were living in a world where following the rules was the most important thing you did.  Torah and the 613 commandments including the 10 from Moses on Mount Sinai were to be followed in everything you did in life.  Good Jews didn’t charge interest – so merchants would get around the rule – the commandment – by jacking up the prices.  It was ok for temple priests to have people who didn’t pay the temple tax arrested and beaten, but heaven forbid if you cooked food for a hungry stranger on the Sabbath or healed a man blind since birth.  In my seminary ethics class, this was called Deontological Ethics.  If you follow the rules you will always be right – no matter what actually happens. 

But Jesus comes saying that in the Kingdom of Heaven it’s not about the results or what you did – it’s all about LOVE.  Love God and love your neighbor as yourself.    If you see a hungry woman – feed her. Feed her not because it is the right thing to do OR because perhaps someday we will end hunger in our community – feed her because we love her.  Jesus was telling the people that when you act out of love - then you are spreading God’s love and the Kingdom of Heaven will come near.  If you have done something wrong – then go and make peace with your neighbor – love them and ask for their forgiveness just as God has forgiven us.  And we forgive because we love our neighbor just as God loves us and forgives us when we repent – when we turn back to God.  And God always loves us and always forgives us even we steal a 6-inch wooden windmill from the gift shop at Dutch Gardens.

Some years later at Christmas – when I was a teenager – and working at the local grocery store – I told the windmill story to our pastor.  I asked him what I should do.  It would have been easy to forget about it and do nothing.  Instead he told me to write a note to the manager and mail $5.  That should more than cover the cost of what I stole.  He also suggested that I adopt a child on the Christmas Angel Tree who needed someone to care.  There was an Angel with the name David written on it.  That David was 9 years old.  I spent a whole day and most of my paycheck shopping.  I shopped all the sales and that paycheck went a long way.  Most of the presents were things that 9-year-old David needed like clothes and school supplies.  And there was 1 present I couldn’t pass up – it was a book about Holland and windmills.  I hope he liked it.  AMEN.