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Text: Luke 16:1-13 W 18th
Sunday after Pentecost The Creative Accounting of the Kingdom In the name
of him who loved us and gave himself for us, dear friends in Christ: This morning’s Gospel lesson, what’s usually
referred to as the Parable of the Shrewd Steward, is surely among the most
difficult to understand of the teachings of our Lord Jesus. It’s not that the parable itself is
confusing; the story line is quite simple and clear. The problem is that there’re a lot of
different opinions about what it means.
Is it, as many believe, about how we are to handle our money and worldly
possessions in a God-pleasing way? That
certainly seems to be what the people who chose the cover for the bulletin
jacket think. Or are we, perhaps, to understand
that the money and commodities mentioned in the story are meant to represent
something else – as things often do when Jesus tells a parable? We ask the guidance and illumination of the
Holy Spirit as we dig a little deeper to solve the mystery of the meaning of
this much-debated parable of Jesus. We begin by reviewing the basic facts of the story. We’ve got a wealthy landowner who has assigned the management of his properties to a certain steward. It’s his job to contract with tenant farmers who use his master’s land to raise field crops or tend his orchards. Then, after the harvest, the steward is to collect the predetermined rents in the form of whatever it was the soil was used to produce. Now, it happens that this steward has not been doing a very good job of accounting. He’s been accused of “squandering” his master’s holdings. Perhaps he’s been overcharging the tenants and skimming profits for himself, or maybe he’s just inattentive about his duties. Whatever the reason, we know that he hasn’t been faithfully attending his responsibilities, and now his master has decided to fire him. And this
leaves the steward in something of a bind.
His now ruined reputation will prevent him from finding a similar job
with another landholder. And after many
years of pushing papers with very little physical activity, no one’s going to
hire him to work the fields or perform manual labor. There are plenty of younger, stronger hands
to do that sort of work. Besides, it’s
doubtful that he could survive on what he could earn that way. He says he would be ashamed to go about
begging – which wouldn’t be proper anyway:
he’s hardly disabled. No, there
are so many cases of people who really can’t work, the blind, lame, and leprous
who genuinely need people’s charity. It
wouldn’t be right for him to ask for handouts. But as he
frets over his future, it suddenly occurs to him what to do. He still has the books for a short time – and
with them full authority to alter the rent contracts. So, he decides to indulge himself in a little
creative accounting. In order to
ingratiate himself to the tenants, he rewrites all the rent contracts, giving
them all a substantial discount. From
what we know about the typical costs of commodities in Jesus’ day, we estimate
that the reductions are all about the same value: worth around five hundred
denarii, which in today’s terms is something on the order of forty or fifty
thousand dollars – which is a substantial amount. And it has to be a lot for a good
reason: he wants the tenants to feel
like they owe him a big favor so that when he gets fired and thrown out, he’ll
be able to live off their gratitude. And up
until this point, the story makes perfect sense. But then the master comes along and discovers
what his bungling and now dishonest steward has been up to. You would expect him to be furious – after
all, he’s just been cheated out of a lot of money. You see, because the steward still had legal
authority to act, the owner can’t change the contracts back to the original
amounts. Nor can he legally go after the
steward: technically, he didn’t break
the law. So the owner suffers the loss. He’s out to the tune of maybe several hundred
thousand dollars. But instead of cursing the steward like you might
expect, the owner commends him for
his cleverness. “That was good thinking! You took
good advantage of your circumstances to look out for yourself.” And that’s
just plain weird. Who congratulates a
thief for the clever way he robs you?
How in the world can this owner be so easy going about his loss? And more importantly, what’s the message for
us? What is Jesus telling us through
this parable? To answer
these questions, we’re going to have to look at the immediate context in which
Jesus teaches this lesson. This is
actually the fourth in a series of related parables that come one right after
another. The first two were last week’s
Gospel lesson. You may remember that the
Pharisees were complaining about Jesus, and how he was welcoming tax collectors
and sinners and eating with them. Jesus
answered their complaint with the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin
– both about how someone was thrilled when they found what they had lost. His message was that he was spending time
with the sinners because it’s lost sinners that he came to find and save. He told the Pharisees that the angels of
heaven rejoice every time someone who is lost comes to repentance – the clear
implication being that they should be rejoicing too that Jesus was bringing
sinners to repentance. What comes
right after those two short parables is the story of the prodigal son. I’m sure you remember that one. It’s about the young man who takes his
inheritance prematurely, squanders it away in wild living, and finally hits
bottom. Then, when he comes to his
senses, he drags himself back home planning to beg his father to allow him to
be one of his slaves. That way, he
figures, at least he won’t starve to death.
But then, to his utter surprise, his father, who has been anxiously waiting
for this day – aching for his son to return – welcomes the boy home with open
arms and restores him to a place of honor in the family. Everyone is happy and begins to celebrate the
return of the lost son; everyone that is, except for his older brother. He’s not happy at all. Instead, he’s angry with his father for his
forgiveness and generosity to his little brother. He thinks it’s not fair. “What
about me? I’ve been so faithful and
obedient all these years! And nobody’s
ever thrown a party for me! And yet this
worthless brother of mine who’s wasted a third of the estate comes crawling
back from the pit of slime he so gladly wallowed in, and we roll out the red
carpet for him. It’s not right!” The father comes out to plead with this older
son to see things from his point of view:
his lost brother has come back.
That’s all that matters. “So what if we lost some money? Your brother was dead to us – now he’s
alive. Can’t you see what a wonderful
thing this is?” The point
of the parable was to show the Pharisees how misplaced their indignation
was. They should have been overjoyed
that Jesus was turning sinners to repentance.
And through his parable he’s telling them, “Don’t be like this older son who won’t celebrate when God brings life
to someone who was dead in sin. That’s
what the It’s
immediately following this that Jesus tells the parable of the shrewd
steward. Unlike the other three
parables, which were spoken directly to the Pharisees, this one was directed to
the disciples; but we know if we read farther along, that the Pharisees were
listening too – and that they didn’t like the message. With this background, it becomes a little
easier to understand what the parable is about.
But before we get to that, I have to explain just one more thing. If you remember hearing this story in the old
King James Version, you might remember that what’s been translated here, “worldly wealth” and later, “money” used to be translated (more
accurately) “the Mammon of
unrighteousness”. “Mammon” is an
unusual word – that’s why the modern translations don’t use it. But it’s derived from an Aramaic word that
means, “to trust”. What mammon really
means is, “that which you trust in”. It
doesn’t necessarily mean “money” at all – though most of us do trust in money
to some extent. But it’s important to
know that the “Mammon of unrighteousness” could be anything that people trust in other than
God. And now, I
think we’re ready to put the pieces together.
Jesus himself tells us that the message of the parable is that this
shrewd steward is more clever at using his soon-to-be-lost authority to feather
his nest than are God’s own people. Or
say it another way: the steward is doing
something that those who are in a similar circumstance are not doing – but
should be. The steward knows that his
life, as he knows it, is coming to an end.
He’s about to be called on the carpet because he’s failing to properly
perform his responsibilities; but unlike the people Jesus is talking about,
he’s smart enough to look ahead, take advantage of what he’s still got, and
make sure he’ll have a place to go when he’s removed from his position. With that
in mind, it becomes clear that Jesus is still talking about the Pharisees and
the teachers of the Law. They are the
ones whom people look up to as the custodians, or stewards, of God’s Word.
They interpret the Scriptures and make God’s will known. And they’ve been doing a botch job of
it. They’ve been abusing their authority
to put heavy burdens on people and to make themselves look good. They’ve invented all kinds of rules that a
person should observe if he wants to be “righteous”, and they never bother to
mention God’s grace or his forgiveness.
Though God said, “I desire mercy,
and not sacrifice”, they changed it around and were teaching that the
approach to God was all about sacrifice, and mercy? Forgiveness?
Forget it. So, in a sense,
they’ve been overcharging the tenants and skimming profits for themselves. And now the
true Owner, Jesus, was here telling them that they were about to be
sacked. “You cannot be my managers any longer.
You’ve been bungling the books long enough”. When faced with this same situation, the
shrewd steward used his still remaining authority to forgive the debts of
others, and for it he was praised by his master – but these Pharisees are not
so clever. At some level, they must know
that Jesus is right about the way they’ve been mishandling God’s word. They see from the parables Jesus told that
the Scriptures are about the grace of God reaching out to save the lost. But changing their attitude would mean giving
up what they’ve been trusting in all along:
their own imagined moral perfection – the righteousness they’ve earned
by their hard work. They fear that they
will soon no longer be looked up to as the most righteous people in society ...
why, they would even have to depend on God’s mercy just like these poor sinners
that Jesus is reaching out to. The
thought is unbearable. So rather than do
what they know is the best course of action, that is to use their positions to
extend God’s grace and forgive the debts of others, they stick to their own
untenable position, which is for them a form of the Mammon of unrighteousness: misplaced trust in their own goodness. What Jesus
is saying is that even someone who is not spiritually enlightened knows how to
use forgiveness to his advantage; but very often God’s own people, whose job it
is to practice forgiveness, don’t. The
clear implication is that when the Owner calls them to account for their
management, not only will they be thrown out of their present position, but
they will have no place to go. And now
twenty centuries later, we are the ones entrusted with the management of God’s
Word. We, collectively in the church and
individually as the Children of Light, are the distributors of God’s grace and
forgiveness in the world. The day God
brought you into his kingdom, he called you in, set you down, and said, “How much do you owe?” You pulled out the contract and showed him a
staggering debt. But then he said, “My Son, Jesus, died for your all sins. Take your bill, sit down quickly, write
zero. Good. Now, go out there and do the same for others.” That’s the
charge God has given us. The question
is, “How are we doing?” If we do an
honest assessment, we’ll have to admit that we haven’t been doing a very good
job. Each one of us has been mishandling
the Master’s resources. We’ve been
inattentive to our duties. Sure, we’re
more than happy to take the abundance of God’s grace and forgiveness for
ourselves; but like the Pharisees and teachers of the law, we’ve held others to
standard of behavior that we can’t keep ourselves, and then we have the
audacity to look down on them and treat them as if they were unworthy of God’s
forgiveness. And one day the Owner will
call us to account for our stewardship.
The thrust of the parable is this:
now is the day of grace. Now
is the time to cancel debts. Now it’s urgent that we give up our
grudges and our tendency to look down on others as if they were somehow more
sinful than we are. Now is the time to redouble our efforts to extend God’s forgiveness
in Christ Jesus to all people. We can’t do
it by ourselves. But repenting of our
past mismanagement and relying on Christ, we can. And as we do, we will become increasingly
trustworthy with the charge God has given us.
We will find ourselves using the Gospel we’ve been entrusted with to
make friends for God; friends with whom we be welcomed into the eternal
dwellings. And there we will hear not
just the grudging respect of the master for our creative accounting; but rather
we will receive his full commendation, “Well
done, good and faithful servant. Enter
into the joy of your Lord.” May God
grant it to us for Jesus’ sake. Amen. Soli Deo Gloria! |
