Text: Luke 16:1-13
Revised Standard Version (RSV)
The Parable of the Dishonest Manager
16 He also said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a steward, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his goods. 2 And he called him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Turn in the account of your stewardship, for you can no longer be steward.’ 3 And the steward said to himself, ‘What shall I do, since my master is taking the stewardship away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do, so that people may receive me into their houses when I am put out of the stewardship.’ 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He said, ‘A hundred measures of oil.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your bill, and sit down quickly and write fifty.’ 7 Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He said, ‘A hundred measures of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, and write eighty.’ 8 The master commended the dishonest steward for his shrewdness; for the sons of this world[a] are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. 9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon,[b] so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations.
10 “He who is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and he who is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon,[c] who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? 13 No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.”[d]
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen
Every small child has done it – tried sneaking cookies or treats and, when caught, has said: “But I was getting them for you!”
Or, as Sir Walter Scott wrote in his 1808 poem, “Marmion”: “Oh what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to deceive.”
We’ve all been taught that “honesty is the best policy.” That’s one of the points on our moral compass, a touchstone of our daily lives. When we deal with others, we expect them to be honest and truthful, and others expect that of us.
Yet in today’s Gospel lesson, we see a dishonest man, that steward, apparently being praised for his dishonesty! It seems pretty strange, doesn’t it?
In fact, on the face of it, this passage is downright baffling, because if we interpret this parable the way parables are usually interpreted, we assume that the landowner who employed this steward is supposedly God himself. Here’s the first problem with the parable, then: It looks like the landowner – God – actually commends this steward for what he does – for, first, stealing from him, his boss, and then for “cooking the books” and decreasing the amounts people owe him to get on the good side of his other debtors.
And somehow that doesn’t seem quite right, does it? That would be a bit like Elliott Ness finally catching up with Al Capone and then just patting him on the back for his shrewdness and ingenuity. In other words, it looks like God is walking down the other side of the street, and that just doesn’t make sense.
So, there must be more behind this story. What is it that Jesus is trying to teach us today?
The first question that struck me this time around was, “what do we really know about this steward?” When Jesus told stories, he did so to make a point, not to indulge in biography. Even so, the lesson does provide a few details.
We know, first of all, that this man is a steward. So, right off the bat, we know that this was not an ordinary person. A steward was the “upper management” of an estate – he supervised all the workers, from the lowest laborer to the most senior foreman. He presided over the household staff, and made sure that everything that the owner and his family needed was available. In short, his job was to relieve his master, insofar as possible, of all concern about the day-to-day running of his properties and other affairs.
Second, we know that he was literate. He had to be to read invoices and pay them, to keep track of hours and pay rates, to prepare inventories of goods. In a day and age where literacy was rare, this put him in a very small percentage of the population.
Third, we know that he was not only literate, but also was skilled in accounting – the Gospel lesson bears this out when we read how he sets out to cheat his master by having the other creditors change their bills.
Fourth, we know that this man was in a position of trust. He had the keys to everything that belonged to his master – every room, every barn, every cupboard, and especially to his master’s cash box. It sometimes took years of faithful service before a man was elevated to the position of steward, years in which he had proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was worthy of such a high level of trust.
Finally, and most importantly, we know that this steward had betrayed that trust. We know that this betrayal cost him everything – his reputation, his livelihood, even his home.
Given that there was so much at stake, what could have driven this man to behave in such an ultimately self-destructive way?
The passage tells us that he was accused of “wasting his master’s goods.” That covers a lot of territory. We will never know for certain, of course, how he was “wasting his master’s goods,” but we can speculate. Maybe he had a sudden personal crisis, one that required a lot of money to cover, but was also too embarrassing for him to ask his master for help. Maybe he had made a huge mistake estimating the returns on investments entrusted to him. Maybe the projected profit on the master’s olive oil or grain was not what he had promised his master it would be, and he’d unsuccessfully “thrown good money after bad” to try to fix the problem. Or maybe he had just plain gone bad, which sometimes happens.
In any case, his show was over. His attempts to paper over the problem and to ingratiate himself to those who owed his master various amounts came to exactly nothing. Soon he was going to be out on the street.
Yet his master – even as he shows him the door – commends his shrewdness! Why?
F.F. Bruce writes, “The master may well have recognised some analogy between the steward’s conduct and the methods by Bwhich his own wealth had been amassed. ‘You see,’ said Jesus, ‘worldly people, with no thoughts beyond this present life, will sometimes behave more sensibly and providently than other-worldly people, the “children of light”. They will use material wealth to prepare for their earthly future[.]’[1]
If we follow this interpretation, of course, we can’t say that the master in this story is God – because God doesn’t use guile and deceit to achieve his ends. That behavior is completely human. It is behavior that does not build up, but destroys.
Every interpretation of this parable focuses on the monetary aspect – Bruce also states that the moral of the parable is found in the last verse: “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon,[b] so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal habitations.” So, yes, Jesus is talking about the use and misuse of material goods.
But I think that the deeper message has to do with what I mentioned a minute or so ago – that this misuse of goods created an even greater problem than just “dollars and cents” and what happened to that master’s ledgers. It caused a total breakdown of trust and utterly destroyed the relationship between the master and the steward, a relationship that, as we’ve speculated, might have gone back many years. I think that placing the focus on mere wealth actually misses the point: That we are called to pursue and live in relationship with each other. At the end of the day, nothing else matters.
It’s been said that “he who dies with the most toys, wins.” I disagree. I say that he who dies with the most toys has lost – because he has, more than likely, sacrificed the one thing God expects of us – to live in relationship with each other – in favor of just collecting things. When the Day of Judgment comes and we stand naked before our Maker, I can guarantee that one question he will not ask us is: “How much did you amass for yourself in your lifetime?” I am equally sure that he will ask us questions like: “Did you feed my sheep? Did you clothe those who were naked? Did you show compassion to those in need?”
David Lose writes in his blog this week: “[W]e are placed on this earth to love and care for each other, not to separate ourselves from each other with wealth, status, or privilege. I’ve heard it said that St. Augustine asserted that God gave us people to love and things to use, and original sin manifests itself in our penchant to confuse those two, loving things and using people.”[2]
As we leave this place today, let’s resolve to do our best to not confuse the two!
In the Name of God, the Holy and Undivided Trinity. Amen.
[1] Bruce, F.F., The Hard Sayings of Jesus, Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 1983, p. 187
[2] Lose, David, “Pentecost 18 C: Wealth and Relationships,” “…in the Meantime,” http://www.davidlose.net/2016/09/pentecost-18-c-wealth-and-relationships/