On Shrewd Management; a sermon for the eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost

Luke 16.1-13

Jesus also said to the disciples, “A certain rich man heard that his household manager was wasting his estate. ² He called the manager in and said to him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give me a report of your administration because you can no longer serve as my manager.’

³ “The household manager said to himself, What will I do now that my master is firing me as his manager? I’m not strong enough to dig and too proud to beg. ⁴ I know what I’ll do so that, when I am removed from my management position, people will welcome me into their houses.

⁵ “One by one, the manager sent for each person who owed his master money. He said to the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶ He said, ‘Nine hundred gallons of olive oil.’ l The manager said to him, ‘Take your contract, sit down quickly, and write four hundred fifty gallons.’ ⁷ Then the manager said to another, ‘How much do you owe?’ He said, ‘One thousand bushels of wheat.’ m He said, ‘Take your contract and write eight hundred.’

⁸ “The master commended the dishonest manager because he acted cleverly. People who belong to this world are more clever in dealing with their peers than are people who belong to the light. ⁹ I tell you, use worldly wealth to make friends for yourselves so that when it’s gone, you will be welcomed into the eternal homes.

¹⁰ “ Whoever is faithful with little is also faithful with much, and the one who is dishonest with little is also dishonest with much. ¹¹ If you haven’t been faithful with worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? ¹² If you haven’t been faithful with someone else’s property, who will give you your own? ¹³ No household servant can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be loyal to the one and have contempt for the other. You cannot serve God and wealth. ”

Let the words of my mouth
    and the meditations of my heart
    be pleasing to you,
    Lord, my rock and my redeemer.

Nine out of ten theologians agree: This is the most difficult of all parables to deal with.

Set aside the last four verses: proverbs that seek to make sense of what come before, probable redactions, later additions that may or may not be the words of Jesus, but most likely were not spoken by Jesus when he uttered this parable.

I am, of course, uttering the idea that the Bible is written by different authors at different times. I know that it’s an unpopular idea here. That’s fine. Plenty of ideas are unpopular. Plenty of ideas seem to threaten faith, but in the end, the only thing that threatens faith is the inability to stand up to questions.

But that’s beside the point.

The point I’m making is that this is a really difficult parable. Plenty of people smarter and more well-versed than I have lost sleep trying to make sense of it, because it is so contradictory to good sense, and so contradictory to what Jesus tells the disciples in so many other situations.

What is this about?

Jesus is talking to the disciples. In a few verses, he’ll be talking to the Pharisees again, just as he has been previously. Maybe they’re around. Maybe they’re not. But now he’s talking to the disciples, people with whom he most readily shares words of grace and hope and peace, and also, increasingly, words of foreboding and warning.

He tells this strange, strange story.

A rich man hears a rumor, a story about the man who manages his estate, or at least his household, which might be more minor than the estate itself, or he might be responsible for the rich man’s everything. We don’t know.

There’s a lot about this story we just don’t know. That’s why so much of it makes so little sense.

This manager is doing something, or is rumored to be doing something, or to have done something, to waste the rich man’s estate.

So the rich man fires him.

No, actually, there’s a little more grace here. The rich man gives him another chance, a chance to prove himself. He asks the manager to give a report, to be accountable for his management, to give evidence whether he is or is not, as rumored, “wasting his estate”.

Now, because there are so many holes in the story, we don’t know what prompts the manager to react the way he does. He thinks he’s getting fired. Is it because he’s actually guilty, or is it because the rich man’s reputation is so fierce and unforgiving that the manager already knows that his is a hopeless cause?

Again, we don’t know.

But he does this thing. This really weird thing.

He shorts the debt of every person who owes his master money. Maybe he’s just writing off interest, or maybe he’s writing off his own cut, or maybe he really is cutting off some of the original debt. We don’t know. We also don’t know why he writes off different percentages of different debts.

Although we do know that these are massive debts. These are debts that would themselves pay for pretty big land portions. This is big money he’s writing off.

The point, he says, is that once his master finally fires him, which he would surely do after this last piece of mismanagement, this bit of cunning will get him in good with the debtors. For a little while, at least, after he loses his everything, he gets a few couches to crash on.

But no. The master says, man, that’s pretty shrewd. Way to go, dude.

End of story.

Boom.

You can read whatever you like out of the last few verses, which make several of their own completely separate points about what, exactly, the point of the parable actually is. Or maybe they just stand on their own.

We don’t know.

Again.

See what a mess this parable is? How I don’t want to have to deal with it? Give me Sodom and Gomorrah, for Pete’s sake; this thing is crazy!

This isn’t the way Jesus talks.

So what’s going on?

There’s cunning. There’s shrewdness. There’s dishonesty.

But do you know what else there is?

There’s forgiveness. There’s generosity. There’s this weird writeoff of debt. In fact, if the subtext of forgiveness is as present in the master’s reaction as it seems, there are two separate writeoffs of debt:

the several opportunities that the manager takes to write off debts that don’t seem to be his own,

and the one opportunity that the manager seems to take to forgive the manager’s debt.

<pause>

Do y’all remember this bit?

If you forgive anyone’s sins, they are forgiven; if you don’t forgive them, they aren’t forgiven.

That seems a pretty important thing to manage. That’s a pretty massive thing to be responsible for.

Forgiveness.

Look how our Master showers it on us. Look how extravagant, how wasteful. Look how eagerly our Master writes off our debts.

And God tells us to forgive, too. And it is God who gives us the model of forgiveness.

Forgiveness that is practically endless. Forgiveness that is unstoppable. Forgiveness that is urgent. Forgiveness that is complete. Forgiveness that forgives everything. Forgiveness that forgives everyone.

Shrewd forgiveness, maybe. Clever, maybe. But extravagant. Generous.

Crazy generous.

And it’s a crazy responsibility to have. But, after all:

If you haven’t been faithful with someone else’s property, who will give you your own?

Are we being called to exercise mercy and forgiveness faithfully because it is specifically not ours to give?

Isn’t it time to prove, not necessarily that we are worthy, but that we are willing to hear the call to act like the one who calls us, to forgive and reconcile and welcome as willingly and extravagantly as Jesus? Isn’t it time?

If you think maybe, just maybe, it is, then hear Christ calling you today to manage what God has given you; the only gift that truly matters: forgiveness.

In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.