Sermon

Here are some of the comments I read while looking through commentaries for some help with this passage:

     “It is far easier to comment on this text than to preach on it.”

     “A sermon on this text may not have the resolution or clarity common to others.”

     “None of the parables of Jesus has baffled interpreters quite like [this text].”

     “This parable is difficult to read and difficult to preach”

     “The parable of the dishonest steward poses significant theological challenges.”

     “It's no exaggeration to say that the parable's meaning has stumped even the best and most creative           interpreters of Scripture.”

     And lastly, my favorite, “It's probably not meant to be explained.”

So why did you choose it, you ask?  Well, I'm no hero – I am under no illusion of grandiosity or scriptural level of understanding.  Honestly, every time I tried to focus on a different part of the parable, the line that bothered me kept coming back; like those gnats that won't leave you alone, it kept annoying me until I agreed to take it on.  Just as I mentioned last week, when searching for a topic for a sermon, it's the odd thing that always catches my eye and ear and imagination.  It might have caught you by surprise too, so let's look at it together.

The odd line in this case is verse 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.”  “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth.”??  I even hoped that there had been something lost in translation, but even the best translation from the original Greek says, “And I to you say for yourselves make friends by the wealth of unrighteousness.”  

I could, for example, only preach verse 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.”  I could talk about the risks and exhaustion that comes with spiritually multitasking.  We would all be nicely reminded to focus on God, and we could go home.  

But there's that gnat again.  Make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth?

This parable is placed in Luke during the time when Jesus is traveling.  The pharisees often came near to hear him so that they could “catch him” in something blasphemous, or against a law.  The parables described in this place in Luke have to do with money, property, honor or status.  “There was a rich man…” is the beginning of several of Jesus' parables.  The rich man in this parable is a land owner who leaves his own property to a manager to care for.  The rich man has heard that the manager is “squandering” his property – the word “squander” is also used in the parable just preceding this one, about the son who squandered his inheritance.  In this parable we don't know what the manager did that the land owner considered squandering, but we know that the manager gets fired.  With limited options – either hard labor or begging – the manager seeks a solution to his coming unemployment.  He decided to go to two men who owe his manager, and instead of collecting the full amount due, the manager made friends with the men by reducing what they owed by half or some other amount.  By doing this he would make those men beholden to him and thereby put himself in a position to be hired by them later.  Secondly, collecting less that what was due would leave his soon-to-be-former employer in a lurch; and would also leave him trying to explain going forward why he was charging so much before.  It is safe to assume that the men who owed the land owner were being charged huge amounts of interest and what we would call a huge mark up so that the land owner could keep the excess.  By reducing the amount owed, the land owner would have difficulty continuing to charge the extra.  This was a big slap in the face on the way out the door.  

Right about now, in the usual Jesus parables, we would expect to hear from an enraged land owner and maybe Jesus' comment would be something about those who have much should not get more by hurting others.  Hmm.  A rich person participating in a system that brings them great benefit at the cost of others in the same system being kept down.  Where have we heard of something like that?  I could live with a parable like that.

But the expected is not what happens.  The land owner is impressed with his manager's shrewdness.  Not only that, even Jesus appreciates the manager's deeds – “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth.”  I can understand one crook appreciating another crook – the land owner cheating others out of more than their cost, and the manager cheating the land owner out of receiving his expected bounty.  I might, maybe, might be able to convince myself that Jesus was praising the man's shrewdness, not his actions. Praising the man who at least knew how the game was played when it came to power and money.  Like a child who wants their parents to be perfect, I find myself whining, “But that's not what he SAID!”  Jesus was explicit.  Make friends by means of dishonest wealth.

What comes next is Jesus being the Jesus we would expect.  Having drawn his audience in, primarily the pharisees who he knew were listening, he starts to bring together opposites.  Wealth vs. riches.  Little vs. much.  Belongs to one or belongs to another.  These are the same opposites that Mary sang about in the earlier chapters of Luke.  First will be last, high will be brought low, who has much will have little.  Now this is the Jesus we expect to hear from.

Hear again, these three lines: “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?”  Jesus leaves us knowing that whether we are the land owner or the manager or the two friends, what we all want is to be faithful in much, dishonest in a very little, entrusted with true riches, and have what is our own.

I think that Jesus praising the manager's shrewdness is Jesus acknowledging that throughout our lives, throughout the centuries of humanity, we find ourselves in circumstances that confound us. We don't like being confounded.  When we are confounded we make decisions strictly for our survival.  We are confounded by circumstances of outrage, circumstances that frighten and panic us, situations of our own creating even that leave us with less self-respect that we'd like, circumstances whereby the rich stay rich only when the poor stay poor.  When we are living in circumstances that leave us feeling trapped we make the best decisions we can, even if the decision is the lesser of two evils.  And sometimes, we intentionally make the more evil decision – so we can get ahead; so we can come in first; so we don't have to work hard, so the problem just goes away.  

For those who are trapped in a life of hypervigilance, we can see not how having the luxury of time and choices required to make a thoughtful decision leads to making choices that, if we do eventually survive their consequences, we keep secret.  Between the actions themselves along with the consequences and the secret of them, we end up playing the ultimately destructive game of loving one way of life and hating another better way of life.  In this parable specifically, Jesus is talking about the gods of wealth vs. the love of the true God.  We know that this parable can also be applied to other life gods, not just wealth.  Wealth, status, power, looking good in the community or family or workplace by being right, or being heroic, or being more than – the list goes on.  It's important to say that there is nothing wrong with any of these things, on their own.  We should strive to be right, but be okay when we're not; strive to have power – not power over, but power for, power to help, to lift up, to bring joy; should always help if we can.  Yet by making a god out of anything except God is the spiritual multi-tasking I mentioned earlier.  

Living a life based on our values is conceptually sound but practically, difficult.  The world will pull us this way and that, and we will make good and bad decisions.  Jesus' praise for the shrewdness of the manager, and his call to make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth, may be Jesus understanding of our humanness and our fallibility.  This parable is not the whole story – there is nothing here about God's forgiveness, our need for repentance, our recognition of our own shortcomings and acceptance by God anyway.  All that is for another day.  Today, we focus on God.