On Keeping the Main Thing, the Main Thing

Looking at our president’s business history, I remember telling my wife that we could be a lot richer if I followed his example.  First, stiff all the workers and if they complained, threaten them with massive lawsuits.  Secondly, strip all the assets from our company and pocket the money.  Third, declare bankruptcy to get out of all our financial obligations. Lastly, walk away, laughing all the way to the bank.  The Art of the Deal, right?

Yes, we would have a lot more money.  And in the process, we would have lost our soul.

Life is not about whoever dies with the most toys wins.  That’s not the Main Thing.

Amos similarly warns that greed is not the point of the glorious heritage of Israel.  He excoriates those thieving merchants who jigger the scales to rob the poor, “buying the poor for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings of the wheat.”  And these vulture capitalists can’t wait for the sabbath to be over so they can go at it again the next week.

Nothing is new under the sun.  In the same way, most of our major banking institutions have been caught up in the same greed.  I was personally the victim of the fake accounts Wells Fargo set up for their customers, draining their accounts each month with bogus fees.  And we customers were completely unaware of these phantom accounts.  Millions of these accounts were created out of thin air to bilk us out of our hard-earned money.   These folks didn’t even wait for the sabbath to be over.  And Wells Fargo didn’t have far to go to laugh all the way to the bank.

JP Morgan Chase hid hundreds of thousands of payments from scrutiny that Jeffrey Epstein made to run his international sex trafficking ring.  Transactions which should have been by law reported to the FDIC.  The reason for this provision is to prevent money laundering.  A blind eye was turned at that bank.  Who got paid off?  And how much did they rake in on these suspicious transactions?  And Jeffrey Epstein laughed all the way to his bordello.

Under this administration no charges have been filed.  No surprise here.  No, nothing new under the sun.  Only one person sits in jail to account for an international sex trafficking ring involving hundreds of girls – and in a country club jail at that!  What’s the pay off?  A future get-out-of-jail-free card?

Is the Main Thing a hoard of wealth?  Or might it be a life of integrity lived in solidarity with one’s neighbors?  The Jewish theologian Martin Buber nailed it.  God is Relationship. 

My friend Jim always reminds me when I go off on a tangent with our House of Hope project, “Let’s keep the main thing the main thing.”  Jesus and the prophets, the body of the Torah reminds us again and again of the “Main Thing.”  It is a compassionate life with others that opens the door to eternity.

Now today we come to this perplexing parable in Luke of the “Unjust Steward.”  Hearing rumors in the marketplace that his steward is crooked, the master calls him to serve notice.  The steward knows he’s screwed if he doesn’t take immediate, drastic action. 

After all, the tenancy system of that time and place was screwing most everyone.  Except the landlord.  And even Caesar and his tax collectors had his claws into him.

The steward calls in the master’s creditors.  Tells them to jigger their accounts.  If you owe 50 denarii, here write in the books, 10.  Or maybe 5.  You owe 50 ephahs of wheat, write 7.

In this way, when this steward was out on the streets, maybe some of these former business colleagues will have pity and give him a job, or at least some charity.

Now, get this!  Jesus praises the steward for his shrewdness.  His larcenous savvy has saved his hide.  Even in unjust systems, the children of this age are shrewder than the children of light in dealing with corrupt systems.

What to make of this parable?  One commentary said, tongue in cheek, there are as many interpretations as there are readers.

Perhaps a minor digression, but a juicy story.  One writer in Christian Century has a marvelous recounting of a disastrous attempt to preach this parable to a group of students assembled in the school auditorium of their evangelical high school.[1]

First of all, this speaker, an ego-inflated, puffed-up jock whipped out a football, I guess to substantiate his credentials as a real he-man.  He asked if any out in the audience would volunteer to catch his pass.  One eager student raised his hand and the speaker uncorked a perfect spiral.  Unfortunately, the receiver was not in the same league as the passer.  He bobbled the catch which hit the student behind him in the face who was soon carried off to receive medical attention.

Things went downhill from there.  The speaker, puffing out his chest as he tried to unravel this most difficult parable, bobbed and weaved.  Inanity followed inanity leading to nothing anyone remembered.  Certainly, the narrator of the incident remembered nothing.  Except that it was awful.

Like that hapless receiver, most of us are not in a league to catch the purpose of this parable.  Don’t feel inadequate if you find it terribly mystifying.  With this one it’s easy to go astray.  So, here’s my take.  Hopefully, I can do a bit better than our jock expositor.

If there is anything commendable in this parable, it is that when the chips were down, the steward decided and took action.  Just as those who might hear the Gospel’s call to life abundant and choose action — leave their boats and nets to follow this Living Word through the door to Eternity. 

I came across a marvelous story of a woman, who was caught in one of the upper floors of the World Trade Center on 9/11 and has taken such dramatic, life-enhancing action.[2]

Jocelyn Brooks was on the 40^th floor when the plane hit her building, about an hour after she had arrived for work. The whole building shook and she thought, “This is it.”  Outside the window she saw thick black smoke and debris raining down along with people leaping from windows to avoid being burned alive. 

She thought she was going to die.  Gathering her wits, she left her backpack and cellphone behind as she ran to the staircase.  By now it was overcrowded with people descending and firefighters ascending.

She came upon one woman whose progress was stalled, grasping a handrail. Gasping for air, the woman shouted, “I can’t breathe.  I can’t breathe.”  Brooks said she thumped her on the chest for about a minute and told her to breathe until she calmed down.

When Jocelyn got clear of the building, she had a clear vision on what the Main Thing was going forward.  Amidst the debris and body parts, the smoke and anguished screams.  For her, the Main Thing was clear.  As clear as it was for those fishermen who eagerly left their nets so long ago on that lakeshore.

When she looked around through the carnage, saw the clear blue sky, she realized she had been given a whole new life.  She had two thoughts, she needed to see her two boys grow up to be adults, and she needed to be a nurse.

Surviving seemed like the hand of fate, she said, and she wasn’t going to waste it.

In that clarifying moment, Jocelyn knew what she wanted to do.
“I must become a nurse,” Brooks recalled thinking. “I’m getting a chance, and I am going to do it.”  Every bit as clarifying a moment as that of a steward who heard he was about to be canned.

And she has – and still does at 62 at the Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.  By a bedside she takes the time to hold someone’s hand “because I survived.”  She often trades stories with cancer patients sick as a result of the toxins they inhaled on that fateful day. The Main Thing indeed!

She daily brings a joy to her work.  Her colleagues often remark on the spirit she brings to the entire unit.

“’She just has such a gentle, caring way about her that I’ve never seen in any other nurse,’ said Brooks’s colleague, Rachel Lemmey.

On busy mornings when manynurses are overwhelmed, Lemmey said, Brooks is enthusiastic and gives a pep talk that Lemmey recites back to herself.

‘We’re going to get through the day together,’ Brooks said she tells her colleagues. ‘And it’s going to be a great day.’”[3]

Keep that Main Thing at the heart of your days as Jocelyn does, and you’re going to find that “It’s going to be a great day.”  Every day!  All the way to the Promised Land.  Amen.

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[1] Jon Mathieu, “Wait, What’s the Point of This Parable? Christian Century, September 21, 2025.  The story he tells on the Parable of the Unjust Steward.

[2] Kyle Melnick, “She survived 9/11, then began a life of healing others,” Washington Post, September 11, 2025.

[3] Ibid.

September 21, 2025
Pentecost 15, Proper 20
Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113;
1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13

“On Keeping the Main Thing, the Main Thing”