What was he thinking? That could be, I believe, a common reaction
by preachers who are given the dubious gift of preaching on this Gospel
passage. You have to think, “Why in
heaven’s name did Jesus teach this parable to his disciples and what was the
lesson he was trying to teach them”?
Then you have to wonder why it was included in Luke’s Gospel. The only thing positive I could think of
initially is that it is only in the Gospel of Luke and not the other three.
The next thing that came to my mind after
reading it this week was, “Perhaps someone did not get the story right. After all is was written down at least forty
years after Jesus was crucified and raised from the tomb and ascended into
heaven. Perhaps the story got mangled
along the way.
It reminded me of that
wonderful scene from Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, where someone listening
to Jesus deliver the Sermon of the Mount asked the person beside him, ‘what did
he say, was it blessed are the cheese makers’.
That doesn’t sound right. Why
should the cheese makers be blessed? But
I guess that’s what he said.”
This Gospel passages raises more
questions than it seems to provide answers.
But let’s try and unpack it and understand what Jesus is telling us. I will summarize the parable briefly for our
consideration. A rich man calls his
steward—in effect his manager of his property—to tell him he is being dismissed
for “wasting his goods”. The steward
decides that as he cannot make a go of it by either manual labour or begging he
will collude with his master’s customers to discount their bills. In that way the customers will be in his debt
and will owe him and by implication enable him to succeed in life after he has
been dismissed.
All well and good; this seems to be the
usual moral lesson. The lesson should be
that dishonesty doesn’t pay and that dishonest steward will be cast into the
outer darkness with the other children of darkness. However, now comes the twist; the rich master
praises the steward for his prudence. It
is a distorted echo of the Parable of the Talents where the first two servants
who make prudent use of their talents are told, “Well done, good and faithful
servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter
into the joy of your master”.
If that is not enough of a surprize Jesus
then seems to confirm this assessment and tells us, “Make to yourselves friends
by means of mammon of unrighteousness; and when it fails you, they will receive
you into everlasting habitation”. So
much for blessed are the poor in spirit or otherwise for theirs is the kingdom
of heaven.
I have done more research into
commentaries on this passage than I usually do.
I need all the help I can get to try and understand this puzzling
parable.
I must thank Lorna in finding a
commentary on-line which shed some light on this puzzle. The commentary notes that it is important to
put it into the cultural context which I agree is always a good idea. The author notes that parable as reflecting
the Palestinian laws and customs of agency and usury. The steward would have
acted as the agent for his master and was legally empowered to act in his name.
But custom permitted him to make a profit for himself, which may not have been
precisely authorized by the master. By discounting the bills the manager has,
therefore, merely foregone his own profits on the transactions and has not
cheated the master out of what was owed him.
In this case his subsequent conduct is hardly dishonest, since he is
renouncing what in fact was usury.
That may explain the master’s positive
response on discovering the steward’s action.
However, in my view, it doesn’t ring true in excusing the steward’s
behaviour. It seems apparent in the way
the events unfold, that the steward was gaining from this at the expense of his
master; otherwise why would he have done it rather than taking what he was owed
him in cash which would have been more beneficial to him in his present
circumstances. Both positions can be
argued but I don’t believe it sheds much light on Jesus’ message.
Another perspective the author of the
commentary brings is helpful. He notes
that the parable is placed in Luke’s Gospel between the Parable of the Prodigal
Son and the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. There are two messages here that are
relevant. First the rich man in today’s
parable commends the steward for his prudence.
The prodigal son was not prudent with his inheritance and wasted it on
wine, women and song. As noted in the
commentary the story of the Dishonest Manager admonishes Christians about the
prudent use of riches and the danger of slavish servitude to them. The verse
immediately following our Gospel today which is often included in the Parable,
notes that, “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 story of Dives and Lazarus as it is
often called, shows what happens to the rich man who has no pity on the poor
man Lazarus who sits by his gate every day.
He ends up in eternal damnation beyond help. This reflects Luke’s position on what has
been called the preferential option for the poor. Luke particularly emphasizes Jesus’s association
with those on the outside of acceptable society.
From this perhaps we can conclude in the
words of the commentary that, “the dishonest manager can become the model for
Christians, who are expected to grasp the dramatic situation of the kingdom and
the crisis that it brings into the lives of men. It is a situation which calls
for a prudent use of one's material wealth. In this there is a connection
between this parable and those of the Prodigal Son, the Talents, and Dives and
Lazarus”.
To this I would add that Jesus was not, I
believe, talking only of money or mammon.
He was speaking about the use of our talents in the non-monetary
sense—the prudent use of what gifts God has given us to follow the will of God
and to work for God’s Kingdom. We cannot
serve two masters; we cannot make mammon our master and serve God. We can use the gifts that God has given us,
monetary gifts and non-monetary talents to serve God. Amen.
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