HowConfusing
Luke 16: 1 – 13
Makemie Presbyterian Church
September 19, 2010
16Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager & charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2So he summoned him & 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, & 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 & love the other, or be devoted to the one & despise the other. You cannot serve God & wealth.”
This ends the reading.
I love the parables of Jesus. Among them we find some of the favorite stories of our faith. The parable of the lost sheep, which we studied last week. The parable of the prodigal son. The parable of the Good Samaritan. But today, we’re taking a look at what I consider one of the most difficult, the most confusing, the most puzzling parable. This parable is hard to understand. It’s the parable of the Shrewd Manager.
Some of Jesus’ parables are for the crowds, but this one he tells to the disciples only, perhaps because it is more difficult, or perhaps because he feels they are struggling with specific concerns. He tells them that there is a rich man who has a manager or steward of the rich man’s property, a fairly typical arrangement in Jesus’ day. Someone reports to the rich man that the manager has been squandering his property. We’re not told exactly what that means, but probably, the manager was using the rich man’s property, money & possessions for himself & his own benefit. So the rich man calls the manager in to give an account. The manager is worried – he realizes that if he has to present the accounts, the rich master will figure out that the manager has been mismanaging. So the manager acts shrewdly to protect himself. He calls in each of the debtors to the rich man & slashes their bills, sometimes by fifty percent, so that he will ingratiate himself to them & find favor with them – maybe he’ll be able to secure a new position after he is fired by the rich master. The law of Moses from the Old Testament, Mosaic law wouldn’t allow a lender to collect interest & so it seems this rich man got around the law by charging for more than was actually given. Essentially, the steward cancels the interest on everyone’s bills.
Now, we expect the manager to be fired for his actions, for his sneaky behind-the-scenes maneuvering. But instead, his master commends him – because he has acted shrewdly, a word that means astute or sharp in practical matters. And most surprising of all: what Jesus tells us we should learn from this story. “The children of this age are more shrewd than are the children of light . . . Make friends for yourself of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Jesus holds the shrewd manager up as a model for us to follow. Does he want us to behave like this? Are we meant to be sneaky like this? Will God reward us for this kind of behavior?
Parables are not always easy for us to understand & interpret with our contemporary ears. We try to solve parables like a puzzle & figure out what each thing means, what each piece represents. But parables are not always “this equals that.” They’re not meant to be picked apart that way. Instead, they’re meant to be read as a whole & gleaned for what they tell us about the kingdom of God. In his parables, Jesus is always telling us what it is like in the kingdom of God – not what it is like in heaven, but what it is like if we live here on earth as if God’s kingdom is already here. That’s what the good news was for Jesus – God’s kingdom being here already. So, what does this parable tell us about what the kingdom of God is like?
Miss Webberly, little of stature & smelling of lavender was one of my childhood Sunday School teachers. I remember what she taught about Matthew, Mark & Luke’s stories; that twenty percent of the gospel stories are about healing, but forty percent of the stories in the gospel are about money, our stuff, our material possessions & what we should do with them. Miss Webberly was also a retired Math teacher.
So what is Jesus saying here? First, he’s telling us that a manager had responsibility over a lot of resources & he misused those resources. They weren’t his, but he used them like they belong to him. Second, we learn that when he was called on the carpet, the manager acted quickly – shrewdly – to make amends, which had the good result of helping others, clearing his own name & pleasing his master.
Still, what does this tell us about how we should live? One of my favorite preachers, the Rev. Lacy Harwell, intoned that this passage is about what kind of long term planning we’re ready for. Lacy says that we all try to be mindful of planning for our future. Indeed, even though I hope to have twenty more years in the ministry before I retire, I’m already contributing to my pension plan & trying to choose what is best for my family’s future. Lacy says most of us will carefully do that – think about retirement, think about our Social Security income, think about our benefits. But he wonders if we’re so interested in truly loonnggg term planning. Are we interested in planning for eternity? Do we take as much care with our resources when it comes to wisely investing in & for our relationship with God? Are we good stewards, good long-term investors, when it comes to discipleship? Jesus says that people seem to act shrewdly when it comes to matters of business, but disciples, children of light, don’t seem to act with the same sharpness when it comes to matters of discipleship. Disciples are managers – all that we have responsibility for is not our own, but are things put into our care by God. And we, like the manager, have been caught in the act – we are squandering what God has given to us. Now what will we do? Can we act shrewdly?
John Calvin, the founder of the Presbyterian church, was, I think, a perfect example of what Lacy talked about – long term planning, being a good steward & manager. John Calvin, very early in his ministry, fixed a budget for himself to live on, setting aside a certain amount to save, an amount to give to the poor & so on. Over the years, his resources expanded. He had income from preaching & teaching. But his budget – the amount he would spend on things for himself & his personal needs – never changed. He used what he needed to meet his expenses & the rest, he gave away. He always said that if he died with any money or possessions to speak of, he should be considered a robber, because those things would not rightly belong to him. How truly remarkable was his position! I wish I followed his example. I find that it is so easy to squander what I have for nothing.
These days, I seem to carry less & less cash with me. Everywhere you go, you can use your debit card for purchases & have money deducted directly from your checking account. It’s so easy to hand over your card, & pay very little attention to what you are actually spending on what. A swipe of the card is all it takes. There’s something about paying with actual currency, with cash, that makes me pay more attention to what I’m spending. But as I use my debit card more frequently, I find that it is easier to squander & spend carelessly. Many of my friends have the same problem. I try to give some advice when asked (you know along the lines of “take my advice, I’m not using it). One friend, Jeffrey, was considering a job with a company I knew he didn’t like, doing a touring job, which I also knew he didn’t particularly like. But he was considering taking the job because the pay was much higher. I warned him against taking the job, because I knew that he couldn’t seem to save his money. If he earned more, it simply meant he spent more & would end the season without anything more to show from his bigger paychecks. It is so easy to squander our resources, isn’t it?
Jesus says that we are good at handling business, but disciples aren’t good at handling what they have been given responsibility over. So, what have we been given responsibility for? Are we squandering what God has given us? Using it for our own benefit? Another famous theologian whose name begins with John, John Wesley wrote in a sermon, “The Use of Money,” that this parable means for us “Gain all you can . . . save all you can . . . and then, give all you can, or, in other words, give all you have to God . . . "Render unto God," not a tenth, not a third, not half, but all that is God's, be it more or less; by employing all on yourself, your household, the household of faith, & all [humankind], in such a manner, that you may give a good account of your stewardship when ye can be no longer stewards. . . Employ whatever God has entrusted you with, in doing good, all possible good, in every possible kind & degree to the household of faith, to all [people]!”
Jesus says that we can’t serve two masters. We can serve our money, that is to say, ourselves & what we want. Or we can serve God. We have to make a choice, because if we try to do both, we’ll find ourselves in trouble when we are called by God to give an account of what we’ve been doing with all the abundance we’ve been given. I wish I could work out all the puzzles of this parable – when all is said and done, I still find it very confusing!
But I think that we can take away some things. First, we need to be a little shrewd, a little smart, about what God has given to us. We have so much. I’m not just talking about things & money & possessions. I’m also talking about our other resources – our gifts, our talents, the things we do well, the people in our lives, the time we have & how we use it – these are all resources we have responsibility for. And they are resources given by God to us – we are the stewards, the managers, of what God has brought into our lives. We may not have a good management record so far. We might have been squandering what God has given us. But now is the time to be shrewd. It isn’t too late for us to start taking better care over what we’ve been given. Second, we can understand that God is endlessly forgiving. What boss would forgive a manager as sneaky & underhanded as the one in the parable? Only God could forgive such behavior & try to turn it into a blessing for us. God knows our hearts, knows that we’re anything but perfect, knows that more often that not, we outright ignore what God has asked us to do. But God loves us anyway & is so eager for a relationship with us. We try. We fail. We do less than we’ve promised for God. We squander the good & precious gifts we’ve been given. But God loves us still & always & is ready to bless us again & again.
Have you been a faithful steward of what God has given you? Faithful with the blessings you have? How have you cared for the money, the time, the talents, the family, the friends, the faith that God has worked in you? Chances are, an honest assessment mind; we find that we haven’t been managing too well – that we’ve been squandering, even, what we’ve been given.
Now is the time to take action – some action, any action, bold action, crazy action. Give a little more. Love a little more. Share a little more. God’s store of grace for us is limitless & God’s desire for relationship with us is overflowing. Why pass up a chance to make things right when we know that God is ready to forgive, ready to help us try again? Be smart! Be shrewd! Be forgiven! Be loved! Amen.