A Strange Story
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. 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.' 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. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.' So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' He answered, 'A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.'
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.' And 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.
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. "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? 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.”
The parable from Luke is a strange story. The parable comes in the context of the three parables of lost things - sheep, coin, son. These were told to an audience which included sinners, tax collectors, and grumbling Pharisees. Jesus tells the three parables: lost and found sheep, lost and found coin and lost and found son. After telling the three stories of lost and found, Luke records, “Then Jesus said to his disciples…” (16:1). The immediate connection between the prodigal son story and this strange story is the rarely used word, “squanders”. The prodigal son squanders his inheritance. The manager/ steward is accused of squandering the rich man’s money. Now, we know we are getting a story about the use of wealth. We also know that we are set up to get a lesson on how to squander wealth.
In order to understand this story, you need to know how the economy worked in Jesus day. Remember that Judea and Galilee are occupied territories of Rome. Judea is to the south. Galilee is to the north. In Jesus’ day, all powerful and wealthy people of occupied Palestine were centered in the south in Jerusalem. All the farmers and the poor where centered in the northern areas of Galilee. Rome had two occupation goals: exploit all the natural resources of occupied territories for the wealth of Rome; exploit all of the labor of the people in occupied territories for the wealth of Rome. Rome accomplished these two goals through a system of taxes.
The poor held the natural resources and the labor Rome desired. Rome taxed the poor leaving the rich to go without being taxed. The rich folks in the south in Jerusalem would go to the poor in the north and say, “We know you can’t pay your taxes. We will pay your taxes for you. All you have to do is to sign over the deed to your property and give us a percentage of your produce. We will allow you to remain on the land as tenant farmers.” Under this scheme the rich got richer and poor got poorer.
Because the wealthy owners in the south were so hated by the poor in the north they could not go there to collect their percentages. The rich man in the south would hire mid-level managers or stewards to collect the percentage of the resources. Barabara Rossing, Working Preacher, “Rich landlords and rulers were loan-sharks, using exorbitant interest rates to amass more land and to disinherit peasants of their family land, in direct violation of biblical covenantal law. The rich man or "lord" (kyrios, v. 3, 8), along with his steward or debt collector, were both exploiting desperate peasants.”
In this story, the mid-level manager is put on notice because he was not squeezing enough from the farmers. The manager was caught in the middle between the rich and the poor. The manager may have worked years for the rich man yet had no security. He was expendable. And so, he switches sides, he says to himself, I will arrange things to have friends among the poor. Note that he still gets a return for the rich land owner while giving a break to the poor.
Rossing says, “When he reduced the payments, the steward may have been simply forgiving his own cut of the interest. Or he may have been doing what the law of God commands, namely forgiving all the hidden interest in the contracts. As Richard Horsley describes, "To ingratiate himself with the debtors, he had them change the amount they owed on their bills to exactly the amount they borrowed, eliminating the hidden and prohibited interest." If the rich landlord was not a Gentile, but a Jew (the text does not say), he would know the Torah teaching against interest. The rich man, "suddenly recognizing that he needed at least to appear to be observing covenantal laws, commended his steward."
Notice that Jesus drives home the point at the end of the parable by naming the wealth of the rich man “dishonest wealth.” Jesus is telling us about the purpose of money in the Kingdom of God. Money is not the measure of all things. Love of money makes you improperly value others things. Love of money causes you to see the landscape and its people as resources to be exploited for short term profits for the people at the top of the economic pyramid. Everyone and everything is expendable. In the Kingdom of God, everybody and everything matters and has value.
In older translations, the Greek word “Mammon” is kept, where newer translations use “wealth” or “riches.” Mammon is a personification - or even deification - of wealth. Barbara Rossing suggests that “perhaps we need to retain the personified idol named Mammon, as a reminder of how a financial system itself can function as an idol or "religion,"” This idea of naming “Mammon” as the opponent of God reveals the dangerous idolatry that can so easily seep into our relationship with money.
To worship mammon is to give free reign to profiteering. The moral code or ethical standard of mammon is to increase wealth without regard. Jesus teaches that we better learn that money is not the measure of all things. Wealth is not evil - the worship of wealth is. Jesus teaches to use money in the service of relationships not relationships in service of money.
This “draws from the story (use your wealth), but it counters the story (make friends for yourself). Instead of employing your money to create a group that owe you favors, make friends with your money. Friendship involves commonality and equality, not indebtedness. Halvor Moxnes comments, ‘To “make friends” by “unrighteous mammon,” therefore, was the opposite of enslaving people in need. To “make friends” by giving to those in need had a liberating effect. It meant to put people on the same footing.’” (Charles Cousar, Texts for Preaching, Year C, p. 526)
The steward uses dishonest money to secure a home (oikos). To underscore his lesson, Jesus does not promise eternal homes (oikos) in vs 9, rather eternal tents (skenas). “Jesus does not promise to provide what the unjust steward sought, the stable abode of those who have possessions and security. Rather, Jesus promises the unstable abode of the wanderer, the refugee, and the pilgrim, whose mobility requires the dispossession of goods.” - Scott Bader-Saye, Feasting on the Word: Preaching the Revised Common Lectionary - Feasting on the Word – Year C, Volume 4: Season After Pentecost 2 (Propers 17-Reign of Christ)
FromThe Fat Pastor blog: “Perhaps the level of confusion that this parable stirs is evidence of how remarkably important it really is. This one blows our mind, because it seems to go against all of our common understanding of fairness.
And that’s just it. The Kingdom of God has little to do with fairness. It has little to do with keeping proper ledgers and making sure that everyone gets what is their due. The Kingdom of God is about relationships. It is about reconciliation. It is about forgiving our debts, as we forgive our debtors. It is not an easy story to hear. It is sometimes an even harder story to live. It doesn’t make good economic sense. Jesus had a funny way of not making sense.
It doesn’t make sense to plant a weed in a garden. It doesn’t make sense to ruin a whole vat of flour with some leaven. It doesn’t make sense to turn your other cheek, throw a party for people that can’t invite you to theirs, leave behind a flock because one sheep strayed, or throw a party for your good-for-nothing son who finally came back home with his tail between his legs.
It doesn’t make sense that God would come to earth and take on flesh. It doesn’t make sense that God would claim me as his own, or invite me to the Table of Grace. It doesn’t make sense that Jesus would do all he could for a people that responded by nailing him to a cross. It doesn’t make sense that a tomb was empty, or that disciples have been able to experience Christ in the breaking of bread for centuries since he was said to be dead.
How can you use your wealth your position in this world to build the Kingdom of God?
“… It is a challenge to look at what cancelling debt really looks like. It is a challenge to take a close look at how I serve wealth over God. It is a challenge to look at how I spend money, how I save money, and how I treat others. This parable is a strange one, all right. Maybe that’s how God intended it.”
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