A little background will be helpful before I read our morning’s lesson. A steward or manager (the terms were used interchangeably) was given total freedom to negotiate contracts for his master as well as to collect debts. It was assumed, if not “sanctioned” that the manager would add personal profit for his own benefit to whatever amount he was collecting for his employer.
Luke 16:1-8
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. 2So 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.’ 3Then 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. 4I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7Then 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.’ 8And 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.
It is probably fitting that we end this summer series on perplexing, problematic parables with one that Biblical scholars consider the most confusing of all Jesus’ parables! As one author writes: “This story of the unjust steward has created confusion, controversy and embarrassment in its interpretation. How could the master praise the manager for his dishonest behavior?” 1
Perhaps it is of some comfort to know that this parable is addressed only to Jesus’ disciples, meaning that it was directed at those whom Jesus held to the highest expectations of understanding and behavior. The story was meant to be a hard truth, something not easily fathomed or followed. Yet, for people of faith who seek to be Jesus’ disciples, the story doesn’t let us off the hook as much as it gives us permission to struggle with meaning, and perhaps not even like any of the interpretations! And as Garvey MacLean so wisely reminded us when he preached earlier in the series, ultimately we each need to answer for ourselves what the parable says to us. The preacher or Bible study leader can only suggest possible considerations, and this morning I will offer three.
The first way to look at this parable requires us to hear it with the mindset the disciples certainly would have had. As Jesus began his tale about a rich man, immediately the disciples would have believed him to be a bad guy, a person who was uncaring, mercenary and concerned only for his own welfare; someone unable to show compassion and one with no redeeming worth. Rich men, in their minds, were always terrible.
The disciples would also assume that the steward or manager, even though he could make a profit for himself with his master’s accounts, was still a person who was at the mercy of the system and always the victim.
Yet when Jesus’ story ends with the rich man praising the manager for behavior the rich man clearly labels as dishonest, the disciples would have been thoroughly perplexed. Jesus was asking them to rethink their assumptions and prejudices about who people were, and how they acted. Could Jesus mean that the kingdom of God was for the vulnerable, for masters and servants or employees who don’t get even and don’t need to? 2 In other words, does the kingdom of God include people who don’t act the way we believe they should, people who mess with our stereotypes?
A second way to consider this parable is that when Jesus labeled the manager dishonest, he was doing so decidedly ‘tongue in cheek’. Jesus was praising him for his Robin Hood-like way of dismantling an unjust economic system where the rich kept getting richer at the expense of the poor.3 As in other parables, Jesus is describing the realm of God coming about through unorthodox, even corrupt ways.
And the third way to think about the parable deals with the manager acting shrewdly, which is more accurately translated as prudently, with the manager reducing the amounts each person owed. He did so, as he tells us in the parable, “…so that when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.” Could Jesus be praising this man because the steward clearly understood the connections between resources and relationships? Was Jesus inviting the disciples and us to consider the motivations behind the relationships we forge, and how much those relationships are prompted by economics and even by class concerns? It’s an issue similar to the one raised by the second possible interpretation – what are the means you and I employ to accomplish good ends? 4
The assumptions we make about people and the way we stereotype them; the doing good in surprising or sketchy ways, the reasons behind the sharing of ourselves and our money –maybe none of these possible interpretations work for you, yet they each suggest a truth central to all of Jesus’ stories as well as to his entire life – what you and I do matters. It is by our actions that our faith and commitment are revealed. And in that light, I want to lift up the connection between this morning’s lesson and events that happened a half century ago.
As you probably are aware, this Wednesday, August 28, is the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington where Martin Luther King, Jr. preached his now famous ‘I Have a Dream’ speech; a speech that was written quite differently and nowhere near as eloquently, until Mahalia Jackson interrupted King early on in his message, saying, “Tell ‘em about the dream, Martin. At that point, King’s preacher’s sensibility took over, and he spontaneously offered the words most of us now know by heart: “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character… So let freedom ring. Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi, from every mountain side. Let freedom ring…”
But did you know that this wonderful speech begins with words that are less known and which resonate with our parable? “…We’ve come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our Republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American would fall heir. This note was a promise that all men – yes, black men as well as white men would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check that has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.”
“But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we’ve come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now”5
Dear friends, it is my shame and sadness that if Martin Luther King Jr. were alive today, he would chastise us for still not making good on that promissory note – as Americans and as people of faith. And I am convinced that he would first remind us of the urgency of now, and then he would challenge us to ask ourselves, “Where and how might you and I creatively squander what is ours to manage or own or share or give away in order that this debt of injustice and inequity be paid? What are the ways we can make good on that check marked ‘Insufficient funds’?
Across all eternity, Martin Luther King Jr. begs us – to use our imagination and our resolve. What’s to stop us? So may we dream; may we pray; may we risk; may we act!
Amen.
1. Hear Then the Parable B. B. Scott, p. 255
2. Ibid p. 266
3. Feasting on the Word, Year C, Volume 4 Bartlett and Taylor, p. 95
4. Ibid p. 97