Please note the first few minutes of this sermon were not recorded – so please read this quick summary after you have actually read Luke 16:1-15. It sounds like Jesus is supporting corruption and praising a scoundrel. This has confused commentators throughout the ages. So to make sense of the text they have kicked it into the next life. The corrupt managing is equal to a sinful life. Getting fired is equal to death – so before you die (get fired) make good and the Master will show mercy and let you into the eternal home. So it basically becomes a “how to get into heaven” – understood as the happy place in the sky. This all too typical type of interpretation results from (as everything does) the particular lens one is looking through. We see what we see because of what we have been taught to see or want to see or both. So if we have been taught that Christianity is all about Jesus coming to get us into the happy place in the sky then we will be inclined to look for that meaning everywhere – and do whatever we need to do to find that meaning in every text. And seeking we will find! BUT looking at this text through this narrow individualised get-into-the-happy-place in the sky lens is blind to so much. It is blind to Jesus’ context of the Militarised Industrial Complex of the Roman Empire. It is blind to the main focus of Jesus’ teaching (good news for the poor – which is not a house when you die but a house before you die) and this individualised get into the happy place in the sky is also blind to the context or layout of Luke’s Gospel. When we take Jesus’ context, teaching and Luke’s layout into consideration we will have a totally different lens through which to re-look at the story of Luke 16:1-15 …now pick up the recording …