A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity
A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity
St. Luke 16:1-9
by William Klock
The Pharisees and the legal experts were grumbling. They’d come to meet with Jesus, but as Luke tells us, the tax-collectors and the sinners were coming close to Jesus and listening to him. The Pharisees didn’t associate with people like that and neither should Jesus, if he really was the Messiah. You can practically hear their teeth grinding as that one Pharisee spits out with disdain and disgust, “This fellow welcomes sinners! He even eats with them!” If the kingdom of God was ever going to come, it certainly wasn’t going to come that way!
But Jesus, oh so patiently, sat down in response and told them a series of three stories. We know them well. He started with a story about a shepherd hunting high and low for a lost sheep. And then he told a second story about a poor old widow hunting high and low for a precious lost coin. And he told—you could see the joy on his face as he said it—he told how the shepherd rejoiced when he found his lost sheep and how the widow rejoiced when she found her lost coin. And he looked at the Pharisees with that look that only Jesus could give and asked, “Wouldn’t you rejoice, too, if that were you? The heavenly court rejoices like that when a sinner repents? Why can’t you?” And then the third story, the one about the presumptuous ne’er-do-well son who demanded an early inheritance from his father, then went off to live like a reprobate in a foreign, pagan land and only wised up when he squandered his last penny. The lost son went home to his father, who rejoiced, just like the shepherd and the widow. What was lost had been found. But the boy’s older brother refused to join in the celebration. He got angry and raged at his father: “This son of yours squandered your livelihood with his whores, and now you’ve killed the fattened calf for him!” Like the Pharisees, he sat out in the darkness grumbling over repentant sinners. They were the longsuffering faithful ones. When the Messiah comes, he was supposed to throw a party for them!
That third story, the Parable of the Prodigal Son, is supposed to be our Gospel today, but it wasn’t always. Back in the late 1920s the men who revised the Prayer Book—in the US and in Scotland—they changed it. Before that—and still in Prayer Books in other countries—the Gospel for today is the bit of Luke that comes next, right after the story of the prodigal son. It was that way for well over a thousand years. In part they changed the Gospel for today because of the rise of theological liberalism. They had a watered down doctrine of the inspiration of the Bible and they came to think that some parts of the Bible weren’t appropriate for public reading in the church. But, I think, their main reason is that the traditional Gospel for today is really, really difficult. Not necessarily difficult in the sense of being especially demanding on those of us who hear it (although it may be), but just plain difficult to understand. What did Jesus mean? It’s not easy to say. And so, when the Prayer Book was being revised, the folks in charge of the lectionary took the opportunity to take out a hard passage and to slip in an easy and familiar one. And I’ve always preached on that easy and familiar story of the prodigal son, but today—maybe despite my better judgement—I’d like to look at that other Gospel, the one Christians were reading on this day going back maybe as far as fifteen-hundred years.
Like I said, Jesus was telling those stories to the grumbling Pharisees in the fifteenth chapter of Luke, but then we turn the page to the sixteenth chapter and Luke said that “Jesus also said to his disciples…” As Luke tells the story, there’s no break. Maybe we can grant that the Pharisees, offended by Jesus’ parables, are walking away and it’s now just the disciples. There’s a connection, somehow, between these two scenes. Jesus was talking to the Pharisees and now he turns to his disciples and he also says:
Once there was a rich man [a tycoon] who had a steward, and charges were laid against him that he was squandering his property. So he called him in and said to him, “What’s all this I hear bout you? Present an account of your stewardship, because you cannot be my manager any longer.”
He’s fired—and for cause.
So he [the now former manager] said to himself, “What am I going to do? My master is taking my stewardship from me! I can’t do manual labour and I’m ashamed to beg… Ha! I know what I’ll do—so that people will welcome me into their houses after I’m fired from being steward.”
So he called his master’s debtors to him, one by one. “How much,” he asked the first, “do you owe my master?”
“A hundred measure of olive oil,” he replied
“Take your bill,” he said, “sit down quickly, and make it fifty.”
“To another he said, “And how much do you owe?”
“A hundred measure of wheat,” he replied
“Take your bill,” he said, “and make it eighty.”
And the master praised the dishonest steward because he had acted wisely. The children of this world, you see, are wiser than the children of light when it comes to dealing with their own generation.
So I tell you this: use unrighteous wealth to make friends for yourselves. Then when it gives out, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings.
So what’s going on and what’s Jesus getting at. The first part of that isn’t has hard as the second. This man had a very desirable job. Some men were known to sell themselves into slavery to be this kind of manger for a rich estate. Think of Joseph in Egypt managing all of Potiphar’s affairs. It was prestigious and the pay was very good, but it also obviously required a high level of trust. The manager managed while the rich man was off in the world enjoying his profits. But in this case something went wrong. When Jesus talks about this man squandering the business, he uses the same word he used to describe the prodigal son squandering his inheritance. While the cats away, the mouse gets to playing and suddenly the cheques going out to the rich man are getting smaller. So the rich man comes home to fire his manager and to find someone who will keep the profits rolling in consistently.
But since they didn’t keep records the way we do, the rich man demands his manager—as his last duty—provide him with an accounting of the business that he can give to whomever he hires as his new manager. But when the manager leaves the meeting, he’s not thinking about his accounting. He’s desperately thinking how he can maintain the good life he’s become accustomed to. He’s not going to go out and dig ditches and he’s too proud to beg. But then that account. He gets a brilliant idea.
He starts calling in the rich man’s debtors. In each of them comes with the receipt for his loan. The first man owes a hundred measures of oil. The second one owes a hundred measures of wheat. These are not small sums. This is sort of the First Century equivalent of a military contract for feeding the army. And he says to the first man, “Cross out one hundred and make it fifty. To the second he says, “Cross out one hundred and make it eighty.” You can imagine how happy the debtors were when they left those meetings. They had a new best friend, which was exactly what the manager was going for.
But what’s he doing? Because to us, at face value, it looks like he’s taking advantage of his master not knowing the business and now he’s ripping him off to ingratiate himself with these other men. He was dishonest in his earlier management, but for what he does here, he gets praise from both the rich man and Jesus—and that doesn’t make sense if he’s just compounding his dishonestly and driving the business further into a hole. This is why preachers avoid this parable and Prayer Book revisers drop it from the lectionary.
If, however, we dig up the cultural and historical background to a text like this, it clears a lot up.[1] When we do that we find that even though the torah forbade charging interest, it was still a common practise. They had ways to keep it off the books. Maybe the manager would call it his “commission” or they’d pad the receipt. You couldn’t loan someone 10 denarii and write them a receipt for 10 denarii that also demanded an additional denarii each month or a penalty for late payment. That was against the law. But what you could do is loan someone 10 denarii and write them a receipt for 20. They only borrowed ten. You knew and they knew that the other 10 denarii were interest, but since the receipt simply indicated a debt of 20 denarii there was nothing anyone could do about it.
So we figure out that on top of squandering the rich man’s profits, the manager has also been charging interest or a “commission”. That’s what he writing off when he tells these men to write down their receipts. Over and over he does this with each of his master’s debtors. Imagine how happy they are to have their debts cut so dramatically.
When he left the meeting with his master he was out of work and knew that no one would hire him. Word would get around about his dishonesty. But now he’s countered that. He isn’t really being honest—he’s still motivated by self-preservation—but others might think that he’s turned over a new leaf and that he’s going to start doing business honestly. Ultimately his goal is to ingratiate himself into their hospitality. In verse 4 he thinks to himself that if he does this, these people will “receive” him into their houses. In Greek he uses this same word when he tells each of his master’s debtors to “take”—literally to “receive”—their bills. He’s expecting some quid pro quo, some tit for tat. As they receive their reduced bills, with any luck he’ll receive their gratitude and hospitality.
And, as we read, in verse 8, the rich man, when he hears about all this, he commends him.
The master praised the dishonest steward because he had acted wisely.
To be clear, Jesus isn’t calling him the “dishonest steward” because he wrote off the interest. That—even if the motive was selfish—that was actually an honest thing to do. He was dishonest in his management—and, knowing how such people are, he’s probably still dishonest—but the point now is that he has acted wisely to preserve himself in a difficult situation.
That’s the parable itself. Knowing the background behind first century management and lending practises helps us sort out the difficulties of the story. But understanding what the manager was up to is only half the reason this parable is so difficult. We still have to ask what Jesus’ point was in telling it. Jesus says to his disciples:
The master praised the dishonest steward because he had acted wisely. The children of this world, you see, are wiser than the children of light when it comes to dealing with their own generation.
So I tell you this: use unrighteous wealth to make friends for yourselves. Then when it gives out, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings.
I can’t help but think that even though Luke presents this as a parable, that it was probably a real story and that Jesus opened it saying something like, “You remember that guy—the guy who managed that huge estate over in Capernaum—the guy who got fired when he lost a whole year’s profit in a shady business scheme and then got fired—remember that guy?” Just maybe the rich man in the story was one of those grumbling Pharisees. I say that, because Jesus’ point is that people really do these kinds of things to save themselves from trouble. They lie and they cheat and then when they get caught and trouble comes, like the dishonest manager, they scramble to fix things to stave off disaster. And Jesus compares these shrewd or prudent “sons of this world” with the “sons of light”. This is where the story becomes difficult again. Who are the “sons of light”? I’ve read some pretty good commentary that argues that the sons of light are Jesus’ followers. Jesus has been preaching that judgement is coming and here he’s saying that they’d better use their worldly goods to find some way to escape it or find a way through it. The problem is that if the sons of light are Jesus’ disciples too many parts of the story don’t add up. It’s a good idea, but it comes from a common way of approaching the gospels that ignores the real historical setting in which Jesus was living and preaching and, instead, spiritualises or tries to universalise his message as if he could be preaching to anyone anywhere.
But Jesus didn’t come to just anyone and he didn’t come at some random time or some random place. Jesus came at a strategic point in history and, more specifically, he came as the culmination and fulfilment of Israel’s story. Israel’s mission was to carry the Lord’s blessing to the nations, but she failed. And so Jesus came, not just as the Messiah—not just as the long-expected king in the line of David. He also came as Daniel’s “Son of Man”—he came as Israel’s representative. He took up her mission and where she had failed, he succeeded. Where the Lord’s letter of redemption and restoration of creation had stalled out in Israel’s post office, Jesus delivered it to the entire world.
So at the core of Jesus’ ministry was the proclamation that in him the kingdom had arrived and that in him God is now king. And for these three years he spent proclaiming that message and travelling throughout Galilee and Judea, what he was really doing was calling Israel—the children of light—to follow him. He was picking up where she had failed, but she could still take part in his mission if she would only cast aside her wrong ideas about God and his plan and follow Jesus as he manifested his lordship to the world, by seeking out the lost and by conquering sin and death as he died on the cross and rose from the grave.
Jesus is preaching to Israel here. He’s giving commentary on her history and calling her to repentance. And that means that the rich man in the story is the Lord. He is rich. He created the cosmos and he created humanity so that he could share his riches of love and grace with us. And when we rebelled and rejected him, he called Abraham to carry his message of grace to the nations. Abraham and then Israel, the nation descended from him, were called to be the Lord’s managers in this world. But just as the manager in the parable squandered his master’s riches, Israel squandered the Lord’s riches of grace. And now judgement is coming. The manager in the story saw judgement coming and had the sense to act decisively and to do something even though it meant giving up his riches. But in contrast, as Israel faced the Lord’s judgement for squandering his riches, most of the people were going about their lives as if they had nothing to worry about. The Sadducees were firm in their denial of any need to change the status quo. Of all the people in Israel, the Pharisees knew that something had to change and that the people had to turn to God. But the solution of the Pharisees was to turn the light they had been given into darkness. Instead of using the law God had given Israel as a means of carrying light into the darkness, the Pharisees kept the light to themselves and condemned everyone left in the dark. Instead of seeking out the lost, they condemned them. The law wasn’t enough; they had to add to it, making it burdensome, not unlike the dishonest manager who had padded his debtor’s bills with heavy interest loads.
So in the parable, Jesus is warning Israel. It’s not just that judgement is coming, but to escape judgment, God’s people had to act and they had to act now. They had to repent and they had to repent now. And that meant letting go and potentially giving up all the things they held dear. We’ve seen Jesus pointing this direction throughout his ministry. A new age and a new kingdom were coming in which blood ties with Abraham wouldn’t matter anymore—what will matter is allegiance to Jesus the King. He is Israel himself and true Israelites, true sons and daughters of Abraham, will be those who find their identity in him. They also had to let go of the land, because this new kingdom isn’t about a place—again, it’s about Jesus himself. And they had to let go of the temple. In this new kingdom the Lord’s presence is no longer found in temples of stone, but in hearts of flesh—in the hearts of those who are in Jesus and filled with the Spirit.
Jesus says, “Use unrighteous wealth to make friends for yourselves. Then when it gives out, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings.” These aren’t easy words to translate and it’s hard to say exactly what Jesus meant, but it seems that like the manager in the story, they—and we—need to be ready to give up the things of the kingdom that is passing away in order to be welcomed into the kingdom that is being inaugurated by Jesus. This was Jesus’ word of warning to his disciples, to the Pharisees, and to the people of Israel.
And again, we need to remember the real history that surrounds and weaves its way through the New Testament. Jesus wasn’t warning the Jews of some far off spiritual day of reckoning; he was warning of imminent destruction coming in a very tangible and earthly way—before this generation passes away, he said. Interestingly enough, the Jerusalem Church escaped when the judgement Jesus warned about came to Jerusalem. Josephus in his Jewish War and Eusebius in his History of the Church both tell us that the Christians received a divine warning and fled to Pella, in what it now Jordan. They took the decisive action Jesus talks about in the parable, they left everything behind, and they were spared when the Romans destroyed the city and the temple.
Brothers and sisters, the fulfilment of Jesus’ promise of judgement in the First Century serves as a warning to us that his promise of final judgement will also be fulfilled. And so we now need to ask if we’ve been good and honest stewards of God’s grace. Have we been good and honest stewards of the Good News? Have we lived it? Have we proclaimed it? Or have we kept it to ourselves? Have we become self-righteous and used our kingdom status to condemn the lost rather than to seek them out? Have we added heavy burdens to the Good News? The heart of the Good News is that Jesus is Lord, but like the dishonest manager, are we trying to get our cut too—lining our pockets or feeding our spiritual pride? Or are we preaching the unfettered Good News that Jesus is Lord and that at the cross and at the grave he conquered sin and death.
And to what do we hold too closely? Is our priority in life the wealth that Jesus talks about in the story? Whether rich or poor, we have a powerful tendency to hold on to money and possessions for security. But brothers and sisters, money and possessions are part of the kingdom that is passing away. Even the dishonest manager understood that. All his profit would do him no good when judgement came, and so he let it go that he might find a way to survive in what was for him a new age. The same goes for us. Are we clinging to the things of this fading kingdom—to things that will not last or that will be of no value in the kingdom of God—or are we using them as tools to further God’s kingdom and God’s plans and to ensure that we have a place in his kingdom?
Let us pray: Grant us, Lord, we pray, the spirit always to think and do those things that are right; that we who cannot do anything good without you, may in your strength live according to your will; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, now and for ever. Amen.
[1] See J. Duncan M. Derrett, “Fresh Light on St Luke xvi.1. The Parable of the Unjust Steward,” in New Testament Studies 7 (1960-61), pp. 198-219 and Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “The Story of the Dishonest Manager (Lk 16:1-13),” in Theological Studies 25 (1964), pp. 23-42.