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.’ 8 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. 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.”
Sermon:
This morning’s parable is often considered one of the
most difficult to interpret in all of the synoptic gospels. It’s a strange text
because it starts off with a story about a dishonest scoundrel who uses his wit
to secure his future position following the moment when his rich boss fires
him. In the first half of verse 8, we hear his boss commend him for being so
shrewd and crafty. Many of us have probably seen moments like this – where
someone is praised for being so intelligent, even when their actions are
unethical.
In the
second-half of verse eight we see a transition from the parable itself to the
interpretation that Jesus provides. It’s the moment where Jesus says, “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.”[1]
In the next three verses, Jesus goes
on to talk about faithfulness with what we have at our disposal and our
incapacity to serve two masters. If we try to serve both wealth and God, then
we are only deceiving ourselves. As Jesus states we, “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.”
As some of you know, I have been
taking two seminars this semester. The first is at Temple and it focuses on
contemporary ethics, particularly the question of blame. It’s focusing on how
we can think about blame and what it actually is. Is it a reactive attitude? An
action constituted out of a belief-disposition pairing? Or a moral protest?
The second seminar I am taking this
term is at Villanova and it focuses on the ways affects like media, melodrama,
and emotionally charged events shape our political thinking. The narratives we
build alongside our political arguments are often inseparable from the
arguments themselves. It’s incredibly difficult, if not impossible, for us to
detach ourselves from our emotions when we’re thinking about politics,
religion, or most of the other things at the heart of our human experience. We
are, after all, more than brains sitting in jars digesting the information
that’s fed to us.
But in both classes, the arguments and
issues always flow back to a very central question that’s at the heart of nearly
everything. That question is both simple and complicated. The question is,
“What is at the heart of human nature?” Every idea about the good life or how
we should live flows from that very basic question. So let me ask you, “What
do you think is at the heart of human nature?”
Perhaps it’s my inclination towards
the Reformed view that humanity is fatally flawed and so in need of redemption
that we’re incapable of holiness outside of God’s intervention – a doctrine
that’s sometimes called radical corruption or pervasive depravity.[2]
But I tend to believe that it’s very difficult for us to really be driven by
more than one value system at a time. If we run with the fairly similar outlook
on human nature that the Early Modern English philosopher Thomas Hobbes
provides, then we’re all driven by a fundamental desire for survival which
informs our beliefs and values insofar as they provide a way for us to achieve
what’s in our own best interest, including the passing on of our genes through
children.[3] I
think Jesus is saying something similar in this parable. He’s offering us an
account of two worlds that we often find ourselves torn between. Yet, we with
the help of Christ’s Spirit have the opportunity to participate in the second
more holy endeavor.
These debts that we hear about in this parable were
futures contracts – where debtors sold the creditor their wares at a particular
time and must deliver an agreed quantity at a future time.[4]
It’s a type of transaction that fits in better with the realm of wholesale
merchandizing, rather than the world of leases, tenants, and landowners. Some
of us may have even bought or sold futures at some point in our lives. My
great-grandfather used to buy and sell them. On one occasion, he made a mistake
with the paperwork and ended up having three train cars full of lumber
delivered to his local stockyard. Needless to say, he didn’t make a profit off
of that mistake!
What we have in this parable is a story about romans
who are participating in the international economic system of their day. You
see, merchants were, almost exclusively, roman citizens. This is a story about
the corruption and shrewdness of what we could kind of translate as ‘that
generic world over there.’ Yet, it’s a parable that’s also meant to indict us,
through the example of other people. It’s a story that compares two kinds of social
systems. As verse 8 states, “for the children of this age are
more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of
light.” Jesus is drawing a distinction between the social system of this
era and the social system of the people of light. To his Jewish audience, it
would have been obvious that Jesus was telling a parable that fit into a genre
they called “halakha.”[5] To
my knowledge, we don’t really have a genre in our culture that compares.
It’s a genre in which the narrator draws a distinction
between the worlds of the non-Jewish peoples – whose way of life, from a Jewish
or early Christian perspective, separates them from God – and the kind of
system in which the Jews were supposed to live. Traditionally, this category of
condemnation included three cardinal sin categories – sexual immorality (porneia), greed for money (pleonexia), and idolatry (eidōlolatria).[6]
Luke chapter 16 is a parable on the subject of money.
Jesus praises the cheat, not because he is
unrighteous, but because he – unknowingly – embodies something that can be
applied to Christian communities. To clarify, the dishonest manager models the
use of money in building relationships, or as this translation calls it
“friendships” – both in this life and in the life to come (v. 9). Jesus is
essentially telling us that we can be faithful in dealing with the corrupted
and fallible sphere of halakha – the
greed that can be so evident in the world’s economic systems (v. 11, which can
also be translated as ‘unrighteous mammon’) – if we use it for just ends. That
does not mean that Jesus is giving us a license to cheat or engage in the type
of activity that the manager does here. He is, instead, telling us that we
inevitably participate in the world’s corrupt economic structures. There’s very
little doubt that this passage is a strong critique of this world’s monetary,
trade, and economic systems. However, Jesus is telling us that even though we
have to buy and sell in these corrupt systems, we can still be faithful and
redeem this reality.
If we look at verse 9, the model character of the
cheat consists in the fact that he establishes friendships by forgiving debts.
Unsurprisingly, this fits in well with Luke’s overall concern with the
forgiveness of debts. If we look back on 6:30-38, for example, we can see that
Jesus’ community were supposed to give credit to one another without expecting
repayment. In Luke and Acts together, we find a strong theme accorded to the
obligation Christians have to prevent hunger and extreme poverty for other
members of the community (Acts 2:24-27, 4:32-35, 4:36-37, 5:1-11; Luke
18:28-30).
The people of light that Jesus is talking about here,
are also a people of resurrection – faithful in small things and with
unrighteous mammon (vv. 10-12), which belongs to ‘this world.’ We should avoid
engaging in the type of fraud and corruption that the dishonest manager engages
in, but we should emulate him insofar as he uses money to build friendships.
The interpretation that Jesus provides at the end of this parable has an odd
resemblance to the passage where he states that roman currency belongs to
Caesar.[7] Our
money belongs to this age and this world, it is in the words of Jesus “corrupt
mammon” (v.11). But it is also something that we can redeem and invest wisely.
The dishonest manager is not a hero of righteousness,
but an unwilling illustration – a practical example – of Christian communities
regarding their practice of economic justice. We can use our money to invest in
eternal things, things that truly matter in the long-game. It all boils down to
what we think we can do to redeem the corruption that is within ourselves. Will
you choose to make money, wealth, or material prosperity the value that drives
your life and worldview? Or will you choose to invest your resources in the
things that truly have eternal significance? Jesus is telling us here that we
need to use our resources to invest in people – relationships that have eternal
consequences. The Jesus that Luke describes for us is incredibly concerned with
issues of hunger, homelessness, and despair. So he invites us to use our money
to alleviate not only the situation of our fellow Christians, but also that of
those who may not yet believe. The dishonest manager invested in
future-oriented relationships and so should we.
[1] Emphasis mine.
[2] It’s more commonly referred to as
“Total Depravity.” However, I would prefer to steer clear of that term due to
its loaded connotations. I’m inclined towards its view, but I don’t necessarily
want to be associated with the system that many of its exponents articulate.
[3] See: Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan.
[4] Krauss, Talmudische Archӓologie, 2:370; Ben-David, Talmudische Ökonomie, 1:193-96.
[5] Luise Schottroff, The Parables of Jesus, translated by
Linda M. Maloney (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2006), p. 160.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Luke 20:25.
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