Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
(Luke 16:1-13)
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This parable has been described as the most confusing, the most puzzling and the most baffling parable that Jesus ever spoke – which might explain why my first reaction to it after starting to reflect on it earlier this week was: “Say what?” I mean - seriously – did I hear that right? I need to go over those words again: “... his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” Say what? The dishonest manager got commended? It just doesn't sound very Jesus-like. We're not supposed to be commending dishonest managers. As I was reading what various commentators had said about this parable I came across a phrase I had never heard before: “homiletical dread.” It means that most preachers dread the thought of having to preach about this parable. And I understand. I mean, I'm as aware as anyone that the Bible is full of unsavoury characters: rascals, rogues and scalliwags aplenty you might say. And that's being kind. But they usually aren't the heroes of the story, and they're generally not held out as examples to be followed. They're supposed to be the anti-heroes; the ones who allow the stars of the show, so to speak, to shine bright. But then we come to Luke 16, and this story that's often called (appropriately) “The Parable Of The Dishonest Manager.” It's the story of the manager of an estate who's so bad at what he does that eventually, when he's called to account by his master, he literally has to cook the books and he decides to change the bottom lines on all the debts that are owed to the master. He drops some debts by 20%, others by 50%. (I wish this guy was the holder of my mortgage!) His theory apparently was that the debtors of his master would be so happy to get a discount that they would gladly welcome him into their homes and feed him and care for him after he got fired for his incompetency and his dishonesty. If you ask me, that's pretty wacky reasoning. It's no wonder that Jesus once said that the purpose of speaking in parables was so that some wouldn't be able to understand. With this one, he may have had me in mind!
I can't imagine that Jesus was really intending to commend the manager's dishonesty. But I will concede that Jesus often used stories about scoundrels to make a point about what God's like and what we should be like: think of the judge who would only give a poor widow her due because she kept pestering him, or the person who wouldn't budge from his bed to help welcome a stranger until his door was beaten on repeatedly, or the fellow who found a treasure in someone's field and then went out and bought the field at a low price without saying anything about the treasure. Each of those examples uses a person of questionable character to tell us something about God – but none of them tell us that God is unjust, or that God gets annoyed with us because we ask for too much, or that God encourages us to cheat on business deals. Instead, in those examples, Jesus is saying in a humourous and interesting way, that if a reluctant judge can still give justice or a grumpy person can get up in the middle of the night to help, then how much more will God help us? Or Jesus is saying that if a man will go so far as cheating on a business deal just to obtain a treasure he found in someone else's field, then how much more effort should we put into serving God? We might call today's parable “The Parable Of The Dishonest Manager,” but I'm not sure that it's really about the manager's honesty or dishonesty; the issue is whether “the children of the light” (that's us) are really shrewd, clever, committed and wise when it comes to our faith. Do we really use what we've been given by God to the best advantage? Are we as anxious to secure our relationship with God as the dishonest manager was to ensure his future in the world? Are we willing to change the bottom line, so that faith isn't a matter of a simple balance sheet where everything adds up perfectly, but rather that faith becomes a recognition that God gives us more than we can ever give back, and so we can allow God's blessings to us to overflow to others? Maybe that's the key to understanding this.
The passage ends with Jesus' famous warning that you cannot serve both God and wealth, or God and money. Too many faithful people try to do that, which is likely one reason that so many people don't like being reminded of the fact that the church has financial needs – that just reminds us of our torn loyalties. And what happens too often is that we Christians – who speak of life as God intended it, who talk about the depth and breadth and power of God's love and of how we need to share that love – end up settling for the most mediocre things within our buildings, within our ministry and within our mission. We settle for the least we can do rather than dreaming about the more we could do. We regard our “wealth” as our own rather than as a trust from God and instead of using that wealth to make friends – by finding ways to reach out and engage those around us – we concern ourselves more with how to keep it and protect it rather than being generous with it and using it to serve God. Individual Christian do it; congregations do it. “We can’t just give ourselves away for the sake of – well – them. We’d be taking a chance; we’d be making a sacrifice. That wouldn’t be fair to us.”
Well - Robb McCoy (the pastor of Two Rivers United Methodist Church in Rock Island, Illinois) wrote that “The Kingdom of God has little to do with fairness. It has little to do with keeping proper ledgers and making sure that everyone gets what is their due. The Kingdom of God is about relationships. It is about reconciliation. It is about forgiving our debts, as we forgive our debtors. It is not an easy story to hear. It is sometimes an even harder story to live. It doesn’t make good economic sense. Jesus had a funny way of not making sense.” Maybe what McCoy wrote explains why my initial reaction to this parable was “Say what?” At least at first glance, it doesn't make sense – and we expect Jesus to make sense! But, then again, God's grace doesn't make sense either. It wipes the slate clean and cancels our debts. It's God pouring out everything for us and asking for virtually nothing, except that God asks us to pour out blessings on others. Say what? That makes no sense. But it's true. We’re to take the grace that God has entrusted us with and literally give it away for the sake of those who need it.
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