Luke 16:1-13
Many of the parables Jesus told are perplexing, but none more so that today’s reading from Luke. What an unpleasant character this manager sounds! So what would Jesus have to say to us today in this parable?
As always, let’s begin by putting this parable in context. This parable of the dishonest manager acts as a bridge between the stories of the Prodigal Son (15:11-32) and the Rich Man and Lazarus (16:19-31), which we’ll look at next week.
Like the prodigal in the preceding story, our dishonest manager has “squandered” what was entrusted to him (15:13; 16:1). And, like the story that follows, this parable begins with the phrase, “There was a rich man” (16:1).
Over the years I have wrestled with this parable. The last time this reading came around as a Sunday gospel reading, three years ago, I squibbed it and preached on Jeremiah.
Now, each day I pray that the Lord would teach me his ways, and he often does just that through perplexing bible readings, and over time we view the parables from differing angles as the Holy Spirit directs.
I have come to the conclusion that today’s parable is about how we use money, and it’s about forgiveness.
Jesus in Luke, more than any other gospel, says much about money. Jesus himself says after the parable that that we should be trustworthy in handling worldly wealth so that we will find true heavenly riches.
But at the heart of this story is the forgiveness of a debt. The steward forgives debts owed to his master. He forgives things that he had no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, for personal gain and to compensate for past misconduct.
But that’s the decisive action that he undertakes to redeem himself and his master commends him for it.
This is the moral of the story that Luke particularly stresses time and time again – to forgive. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. In Luke’s rendition of the Lord’s Prayer (11:4), Jesus himself specifically equates the forgiveness of sin with the forgiveness of a debt. Forgive us our sins as we forgive everyone who is indebted to us.
We too equate being sinned against with a debt. We say things like “They owe me an apology!” We feel owed, just like we do when we are owed a financial debt.
We, like the manager in today’s gospel, don’t forgive because we are good, but because of the grace of Jesus and we are convicted by this prayer that Jesus taught us to pray.
It matters not our motive – we just forgive, or another way to look at it, we wipe off a moral or emotional debt that someone owes us.
We could forgive because we want to be deeply in touch with a sense of Jesus’ power to forgive and free sinners like us. Or we could forgive because any other reason.
There is no bad reason to forgive. Extending the kind of grace God shows us in every possible arena can only put us more deeply in touch with God’s grace.
The steward deals in what is, by definition, unrighteous currency – money. We are called to traffic in righteous currency. And the currency of God’s kingdom is forgiveness.
Although our dishonest manager does not repent (like the prodigal) or act virtuously (like Lazarus in next week’s reading), he nonetheless does something with the rich man’s wealth that reverses the existing order of things.
And in Luke, reversals of status are at the heart of what happens when Jesus and the kingdom of God appear. T he powerful are brought down and the lowly lifted; the hungry are filled and the rich are sent away empty (e.g. Luke 1:51-53; 6:24; 16:25; 18:25).
And so the manager is commended by his master just as we are commended by our Lord for “making friends for ourselves” by the use of our master’s wealth. Everything we have and own is a gift from our master, too.
He has given us time, talents, skills and opportunities, and, yes, money. He has made us His stewards, and he wants us to be shrewd in how we steward all these gifts to us.
Everywhere we look there are needs to respond to with these gifts given by God. The church and its agencies are crying out for the resources to help but often thwarted by the lack of funds.
Today’s parable teaches us that God wants us to be wisely clever with our resources for his purposes.
He wants us to be clever like the shrewd manager. Like the Good Samaritan, who stopped to help a stranger in need, even at the cost of his time, his safety, and his money, we, too, should respond to opportunities to show love toward our neighbour.
Jesus says in Matthew (10:16), we are to be as shrewd as snakes but as innocent as doves .
By using all that we have been blessed with, these new friends, those in the world both in and out of the church, are forgiven of all that they may owe us.
Relationships are based on reciprocal and egalitarian relationships, so releasing other people’s debts not only enriches them, but also establishes a new kind of equity - a debt rooted in the shared give and take of friendship.
Finally, the concluding verse locks all this together: “no slave can serve two masters ... you cannot serve God and wealth” (16:13). This reiterates this central theme in Luke.
The kingdom of God entails giving up all other commitments, including the commitment to economic security (see e.g. 14:33; 18:18-25). As noted earlier, Luke places great emphasis on how the reign of God reverses the status of the rich and the poor (e.g., 1:51-53; 6:20).
In Acts, the Christian community is one where disciples share “all things in common,” distributing “to all, as any had need” (2:44-45). These texts aren’t metaphors! But intensely practical descriptions in how to live as children of the living God.
Luke is talking about a different way of using wealth. Our wealth belongs to God and is to be used for the purposes of God’s reign among us and not simply for our own interests.
So why is our dishonest manager shrewd? Even though he is still a sinner who is looking out for his own interests (6:32-34), he models behaviour the disciples can emulate. We look for the gold in all things.
Instead of simply being a victim of circumstance, he transforms a bad situation into one that benefits him and others.
By forgiving debts, he creates a new set of relationships based not on the vertical/master-slave relationship between lenders and debtors (rooted in monetary exchange) but on something more like the reciprocal and egalitarian relationships of friends.
What this dishonest manager sets in play shows what happens when the reign of God emerges in the “midst of us” (Luke 17:21). Old relationships between masters and slaves are overturned and new friendships are established.
Indeed, outsiders and those lower down on hierarchies now become the very ones we depend upon to welcome us into the true life of the Kingdom of God. Let me pray …