15th Sunday after Pentecost
Text: Luke 16:1-13
The Rev. Dr. Sandy Selby
Luke 16:1-13
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. 2So 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.’ 3Then 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. 4I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7Then 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.’ 8And 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. 9And 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. 10“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. 11If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13No 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.”
When I spoke with Pastor Jean last week about her vacation time with family this weekend, I observed that she always seems to check to see what Scripture passages are in the lectionary before she schedules her time off. Sure enough, when I looked at a couple of commentaries on today’s gospel passage from Luke, one of them said, “None of the parables of Jesus has baffled interpreters quite like the story of the dishonest [manager].” Another said, “It is no exaggeration to say that the parable’s meaning has stumped even the best and most creative interpreters of scripture.”
Thanks, a lot, Pastor Jean! It’s true that today’s passage, which is generally known as “the parable of the dishonest manager,” is a complicated and at times confusing story, with Jesus seeming to contradict himself at times. But the point of the parable is clear: it’s about how we use our possessions. We can use them positively, to God’s glory; or our possessions can become idols that we worship.
And here, it’s a good thing Luke has told this story in a way that’s difficult to figure out. Because that’s part of the point of this parable. Decisions about how we use our money and our possessions are not always straightforward, as very often we are faced with competing interests and ambiguous choices. Sometimes, we feel caught between a rock and a hard place. That’s where the dishonest manager found himself.
Let’s look at the story in its context. In the previous chapter of Luke, Jesus tells the story of a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son, and the rejoicing that follows when that lost sheep, coin, and son are found! Then, speaking to his disciples, Jesus tells about a rich man who learns that the manager he employs to manage his property has been squandering his property. The Greek word for “squander” is the same word that Luke used in the story just prior to this one about the prodigal son who squandered his inheritance on wild living.
The rich man confronted the manager, told him he was fired, and asked for an accounting of his management. The manager asked himself “What should I do?” because he wasn’t capable of doing physical labor to support himself, and he didn’t want to beg. He would be unemployed in a society that had no safety net! So he went to two of the people who owed the rich man money, and cut one guy’s bill by 50%, and the other’s by 20%.
In a society that worked by rules of reciprocity, the manager knew that those two debtors would owe him something in return, because he had reduced their debts. They would find a way to take care of him.
Continuing the story, Jesus says to the disciples, “8And 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. 9And 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.”
What? Jesus is commending a manager who was dishonest? He says we should make friends by means of dishonest wealth, by dirty money, because we will have a heavenly reward? That doesn’t make sense!!
Let’s step back and look at the big picture. The manager uses his position to cancel part of their debt, thus relieving the burden that was placed upon them by the economic system of that time in which the rich oppressed the poor by charging high prices and exorbitant interest rates. So, doing this act of debt relief was an act of mercy. Doing this was also in the manager’s self-interest, because in reducing their debt he could gain them as friends who would take care of him. As one commentator says,
Once released from his managerial position, the steward will be relying upon their hospitality. The “middle manager” has come to realize that his wealth is in the members of the community rather than in his money.
So, Jesus isn’t praising the manager’s business practices and the morality of what he has done; he is praising the shrewdness with which he has responded to this crisis. He is commending the manager for his insight into the connection between resources and relationships. By what he has done, he has helped others build their own resources, while also building a relationship with them that will help satisfy his own needs.
Jesus says that worldly people, people like the dishonest manager who, by the nature of their work, engage with the reality of the economic system day in and day out, get it! They have gamed the oppressive system, and in the process helped others, and themselves! But the ones Jesus calls “children of light,” while they may be good-hearted folks, aren’t stepping up to challenge the system that oppresses people. They’re standing on the sidelines.
But wait: there’s more! Jesus goes on to say, 10“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. 11If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?”
Makes your head spin! Here’s what commentator Christine Pohl says: “According to Jesus, the small details matter. They set the pattern and structure within which we learn to handle the more substantial and eternal concerns.”
The point is this: possessions can be used positively, to lift up the Kingdom of God, or they can become idolatrous, our wealth used to support only our self-interest, without caring for the needs of others. Jesus says, 13No 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.” As strange as this parable sounds to our ears, by lifting up the shrewdness with which the dishonest manager dealt with the crisis brought on by his own business practices, Jesus is acknowledging that in deciding how to use our possessions and money, things are not always easy, or straightforward. They can be complicated! But we can still honor God, and serve others, in the decisions we make, especially if we are building positive relationships through the use of our resources.
That’s true in our personal lives, and it’s true in the workplace. We pastors don’t tend to talk much about the workplace from the pulpit, and that’s unfortunate, because that’s where people who are working spend about half of their waking hours. There are often competing values, and competing interests, in the workplace. If you work for a public company, one owned by the shareholders, those shareholders have a vested financial interest in the decisions management makes. But in making its decisions, management also must consider the stakeholders—employees, customers, members of the community, and the environment—that are affected by the company, its products and services. Most companies, not-for-profits, and churches, for that matter, have a vision, mission statement, and values to govern decision-making, but the vision, mission, and values may just look great on paper until they are tested by the sometimes competing demands of the marketplace, the community, and the shareholders.
What Jesus said is true! Our values are tested on the front lines of everyday life, at work, and at home, by the complicated decisions we need to make about our possessions, and our money, balancing many competing interests. I saw that firsthand in my years at BFGoodrich, as the company made some very difficult decisions to restructure and downsize, and deal with environmental issues, in the 1980s and 1990s, with people’s livelihoods, if not the survival of the company, at stake. Jesus tells us, in today’s gospel, that when faced with such challenges, we need to be shrewd, and we need to be faithful.
These questions of competing demands and priorities around the use of our money and possessions affect all of us in our personal lives. Pastor David Lose writes about this in a reflection titled, “Money, Relationships, and Jesus’ Most Confusing Parable.” [No kidding!] He says, “It’s not just the use of wealth [that Luke is concerned with, here]; it’s more like Luke is concerned with our relationship to wealth and how that affects our relationships with others.” In his reflection on this passage, Pastor Lose raises these questions:
• “Whatever we may think of the manager, might we recognize that there are better and worse ways to use money, and using money to establish relationships is better than hoarding it? More to the point, might we use this parable as a chance just to talk about money and, more than that, about our relationship to and use of our wealth?
• What is our responsibility to those with less? How might we use the money we have to build relationships?
• What might our congregation look like if it became a place where we could help each other think more clearly about our economic lives in light of our faith, and how do we help each other use money well without ultimately serving it?”
Said another way, how do we use our money and possessions positively, serving our own needs, while also serving others, to the glory of God? These are important and complicated questions about relationships and resources, but we don’t face them alone. We have the opportunity, here at Faith Lutheran Church, to wrestle, in community, with these difficult questions that we all face in daily life.
Amen.
[1] David Lose, “Money, Relationships, and Jesus’ Most Confusing Parable,” www.workingpreacher.org, 9/15/13.