THE MASTER'S TOOLS (Amos 8 • Luke 16)

"Homeless Jesus" by sculptor Timothy Schmalz

This sermon was first preached at Gethsemane Lutheran Church in Hopkins, MN, on September 21, 2025. The full livestream of the service may be viewed here.  The sermon alone is below.
Scripture texts:  Amos 8:4-7 • Luke 16:1-13

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“The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.” For those who’ve never heard those words before, they were written by Feminist Poet, Author, and civil rights activist Audre Lorde in her 1979 essay of the same title. In it she writes at length about the systems and structures of power under which all managers and marginalized people are held captive and turned into each other’s enemies, by the masters of wealth, class, and politics. She rightly recognizes that, “The master’s tools may allow us to temporarily beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” 

And friends, her words still ring true. In view of our culture’s dominant economic, social, and political systems, social transformation can feel impossible to those who recognize that it relies upon a kind of reversal these systems are not designed to create or even tolerate. Which means that so long as we, whether by ignorance or intention, remain participants in the current order, which may appear at times to favor us while oppressing others, or vice versa, none of us will ever really be free. 

Put another way: As it has always been throughout history, including when Jesus lived and taught and died, so it remains: Our world and its institutions are built to work more like casinos than cathedrals of liberty. Some individuals will always be allowed to get lucky and win big, if only to keep everyone else hopeful enough to spend more, but the House will always win. And none of its tools or games -- even in the best and most skilled or sly hands -- will ever be able to take the house down. 

Before you ask what any of this has to do with us, let me tell you it has everything to do with Jesus’s parable in Luke 16. Because what we see happening in today’s text is precisely what Audre Lorde wrote about: 

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