Scripture: Isaiah 58: 5-12; Luke 16: 1-13
The "Parable of the Dishonest Manager" is a difficult one. According to many
scholars, the passage is divided into two sections. The first section is the original
parable that Luke received from oral traditions. The second section includes three
interpretations or morals to the story from Luke's editorial hand. The original parable
ends at verse 8a. The three morals begin at 8b.
(1) 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. (2) 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.' (3) 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. (4) I have decided what to do so
that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.' (5) So,
summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, 'How much do you owe my
master?' (6) He answered, 'A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill,
sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' (7) 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.' (8a) And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted
shrewdly; (8b) for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own
generation than are the children of light. (9) 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. (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. (11) If then you have
not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? (12)
And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is
your own? (13) 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)
We good church people are easily offended. I suppose it's because we are so good. Along
comes the parable of the crooked steward that has shocked good church people for
centuries. Jesus tells a seemingly unfathomable story about a manager who is an
out-and-out con artist and whose boss praises him for his con-artistry. Even the Luke is
embarrassed by the parable. He adds three morals to the story to try to explain it so that
respectable church people, like us, can get something out of it.
When so much evil surrounds us and we try to stem the tide by going to church; when we
bring our children to church to give them an inoculation of morals to withstand evil and
do good and then we hear a story where God seems to favor crooks, we are shocked. What
could Jesus possibly have had in mind? Is he off his rocker?
Let's begin by acknowledging that the Bible is an embarrassment. Story after story is
told of God favoring crooks.
In Genesis, God protects Cain who murdered his brother, Abel. No lethal injection for
him.
Then there's Jacob. He cons his brother Esau out of his father's fortune. But so
favored is he in God's sight that God names a whole nation after him.
Then there's the great King David. Bill Clinton was only following precedent. Back then
Monica's name was Bathsheba. David's sexual exploits with Bathsheba make Pat Robertson
blush. On top of his adultery, David kills her husband, Uriah. Then the Bible turns around
and says that God loved King David especially.
We're good church people but let's admit it: the Bible is a collection of stories about
liars, cheats, adulterers, murderers, con artists and sleaze balls. It's downright
embarrassing.
Of course, maybe the Bible is embarrassing only to those who think of themselves as
righteous. Ever since we began to think that the world could be divided up into two camps:
the good and the bad, most of us have decided to list ourselves among the good. The bad
are people like Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein. Of course, there are shades of gray.
There are the evil bads and the pretty bads and somewhat bads. But always the bads are
separate from the goods, which is where we put ourselves on the list.
But its not so simple as that. Ever since Brother John Calvin preached in Geneva nearly
five centuries ago, we Presbyterians have believed that we have in ourselves both good and
evil. No individual is pure. No church is pure. No nation is pure. We are morally
ambiguous at best.
Which brings us to these days since the atrocities in New York and the Pentagon. Yes,
such evil needs to be contained, just like we lock up sociopaths who rape, murder and
torture. We throw way the key, so must we attempt to contain the sociopaths who crashed
civilian planes into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. But we, all of us, are morally
ambiguous at best. This is a very Presbyterian conviction a biblical conviction. Maybe we
aren't so pure after all - good church people though we are. No wonder the Bible can be so
embarrassing. It has us worried.
Well, the crook in the parable is not horribly bad but he is pretty bad. But he's also
kind of clever and we like clever. He's cooked the books and the auditor is coming. The
master is on to his case and he's fired. He asks, "What am I going to do? There's
mouths to feed. Mrs. Crook is out shopping and who will pay the bills?" He looks down
at his smooth Presbyterian hands and says, "I can't dig ditches." He looks down
at his smooth Presbyterian pride and says, "I'm not going to beg." So what's a
Presbyterian to do? He's got his smarts. Faster than you can say "Slick Willie"
the manager calls in all the people who owe the boss money. One by one they come in and he
asks, "What do you owe?"
"A hundred jugs of olive oil?"
"Here take this bill, quick, and write down 50 jugs. Next."
"How much do you owe the big guy?"
"A hundred bushels of wheat."
"A hundred? I didn't hear that. Write down 80."
One by one he gives slips and slides and slashes and cuts those bills down until he has
a whole circle of friends slapping him on the back, showing him their grandkids pictures
and inviting him over to dinner. He needs those friends. He's fired and he needs to eat.
He's saved his own neck. But there's more going on here. In his desperation, he notices
their desperation and saves their necks, too. Sure, what he did was wrong, but we wink and
say, "What a clever guy."
Of course, we can excuse his behavior: there's the kids and the wife and the mortgage.
There's the whole economic system in which he had to do business that was hardly moral.
Read your Bible, Exodus, Leviticus, Deuteronomy: they all announce God's law, you can't
charge interest on loans, particularly to fellow Jews. To do so was considered usury. The
word usury has practically slipped away from our vocabulary. Unfair charging of interest.
But there's always a way around God's law, right? If you as a master wanted to loan out
a thousand shekels, then you merely wrote down that the guy owed you wheat worth fifteen
hundred shekels. Then you wrote down a little more so that the manager could get his cut.
Make it out for 1,800. The letter of the law had been fulfilled. No usury here. The
righteous could continue to stand on their Bible, but the whole system was devious,
manipulative and corrupt. The rich could get richer and the poor more desperate. God bless
us.
Just think of our own credit cards. "3% low interest APR," the mailer shouts.
APR? Above the prime rate - and suddenly you're paying 15 or 16 percent which sure sounds
like usury to me. The bank laughs - all the way to the bank. And we don't blink an eye.
Everybody's doing it. I guess that's just the way it is. One way or another. It's the
system.
Look out! The parable ends in a bizarre way. The boss, when he discovers that the
manager has cooked the books, praises him! He praises him for his shrewdness. He's shrewd.
He's a crook.
The boss knows he is a crook and he praises him anyway. Why the heck is Jesus playing
with our minds? Is the moral of the story go out into the world in peace and be a shrewd
crook? If so, we can't believe it. The purpose of the Christian life is to follow Jesus by
giving our lives in love as he did. Even following him to the cross. Something's wrong
here.
David Buttrick tells the story of a mock trial conducted by a group of retired jurists:
a judge, a prosecuting attorney, a defense attorney, and an executioner. In their
retirement, they are looking for entertainment. One day, they ensnare an unsuspecting
traveler to join them for the mock trial. Through a series of deft questions, they ensnare
him and get him to admit the criminal deeds, the inward shameful motives, the dirty little
secrets that he had managed to hide from everybody his whole life. He's busted. Then the
jurists while delivering the guilty verdict, break into a party. They embrace him, toast
the sinner and throw a banquet in his honor.
So it is in the parable. The manager is a crook and at the same time he is celebrated.
A sinner who is celebrated! Maybe what's happening here is that the boss is a stand-in for
the extravagant mercy of God.
But why praise the crook? He's shrewd, sure. But did you notice? For the first time in
his life he suspended the profit motive and put his neighbors ahead of cash. In his
desperation he turned to human beings instead of the almighty buck.
Maybe this parable is a special message for us Americans in this time as we prepare for
war. In our deepest pathology, not our goodness, but in our pathology we believe that
money and power will bring us everything including our salvation. I fear that as we
prepare for war, we will not prepare for peace. I fear that as we seek to contain evil, we
will ignore our own participation in it. I fear that as we extol our virtues, we will not
confess our greed and conspicuous consumption, sins that desecrate God's good earth and
put in question whether life itself can be sustained for future generations. The poor are
getting poorer. All too often we as a nation turn a blind eye toward profound want at our
own peril and the desecration of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
I fear that in our righteous anger toward the horrific violence in New York we will not
see the desperation of peoples who are abjectly poor or maltreated or silenced because the
new global economic and military order has left them behind. I fear that we will not see
our neighbor in Palestinian refugee camps or the barrios of Tijuana or the slums of our
own alabaster cities horribly dimmed by human tears. In our blindness, I fear that we will
give ever greater opportunities to permit other sociopaths like Osama bin Laden to
manipulate desperate minds to kill again, like a pimp who preys on young girls and
respectable businessmen hand over the cash. Maybe we are not so clean and pure and
virtuous.
Just because our nation has been horribly grieved, we cannot go on a moral holiday. Our
first responsibility was, is and always will be not to the gods of cash and power, but to
our neighbor. Neighbors whose flesh is as mortal as ours, whose eyes hold deep inner
agonies as do we, whose bellies ache, whose lives are as morally ambiguous as ours. Your
first responsibility is to your neighbors, your neighbors on earth who are hungry and
hurting, frequently homeless, refugees by the millions in Palestine and Afghanistan, in
Central America and Africa. God knows. God knows they are more important than American
prosperity and our treasured way of life. This is the Gospel.
The parable of the unjust steward still troubles us doesn't it? We get all caught up in
the parable and before you know it were admiring a slick crook in a crooked world. The
main man praises the con-artist and it doesn't seem right. Then we begin to see what he's
done. He's gone and served his neighbors. Well, here we are after we've given blood and
prayed, wondering what to do.
Maybe as we prepare for war we should prepare for peace by recommitting ourselves to
our neighbor by feeding the hungry, hearing the voices of those long silenced, erasing
every form of bigotry against peoples and nations and religions. Maybe that's the risk we
need to take. Maybe we can be shrewdly compassionate con-artists for justice and peace.
The Gospel assures us that if we do, we will be rich. Amen.
