Parable of the Dishonest Manager - Luke 16: 1-13

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. So 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.’ Then 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. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then 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.’ And 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. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes."

“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 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."

Commentary

What I have to say today, is at best a guess. This is a very difficult reading for us to understand. I am comfortable saying that because I consulted half a dozen different interpretations to see if I could better understand it. They all agreed that it was a difficult text, but they did not agree on how to interpret it. So, I am on my own with this.

The final conclusion, “You cannot serve God and wealth”, is pretty well known and understood. If we decided to just leave it at that, we would be safe enough. But I am going to back up to look at the entire last paragraph. I think this is at least a safe approach, since it is in keeping with the way Jesus told parables. First he told a story, and then, if we are lucky, he told us what it meant. If we can't follow how he got from the one to the other, I am comfortable chalking that up to the differences that have arisen over 2200 years of social change. We still have his own words to tell us what he thought he meant.

Jesus starts with the statement, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” For me, this statement is worth paying close attention to. I like to think of myself as both honest and faithful. And I think generally I am. But I am relying on that word, “generally”, to save me. I can think of more than one occasion in which I have NOT done the right thing. Either out of fear, or greed, or just plain spitefulness, I have been dishonest. And when that happens, I am quick to say to myself, well nobody will notice. It's just a little thing. It doesn't really matter. But it does, doesn't it. It matters to God, who sees everything, and is judging from the standpoint of “whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.” We like to think that doesn't apply to us. We like to think that we can do what is right when it matters. The problem is, we are seldom tested in the situations that really matter. We can tell ourselves that we can resist temptation. But do we really know that? The temptations are everywhere.

Let's think for a minute about where God is coming from on all this. What is God thinking that faithfulness and dishonesty mean? To answer that question, we have to start with a bigger question? Who does it all belong to anyway? God. Whatever we have, we have been given by God. So being faithful applies not only to how we treat the possessions of others, but how we treat our own. Our own, isn't really ours is it? It has been given to us by God to be used in a manner that is faithful to HIM? Not faithful to our own desires, but faithful to GOD. I am truly getting uncomfortable now.

But the third sentence, I think, is a real bomb. “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” In interpreting this statement, I suggest that “what belongs to another” is our material possessions. They belong to God, not to us. So then what is “our own”? I suggest that is our rightful place in the kingdom of God. I suspect that what Jesus is telling us in this lesson is that having a place in the kingdom is a priceless gift. As such it is not a gift that God bestows lightly. God is waiting to see what we will do with the gifts we have on loan from him. God wants to know that we can be trusted to be “faithful in a very little” before entrusting to us what “is our own”.

I don't like this interpretation. But it feels right. I have to confess, that as much as I might proclaim it, I don't really know in my heart that I am already in the kingdom of God. Something is missing. And perhaps what is missing is that I am still holding back on God in terms of faithful stewardship of the gifts I already have. Perhaps we are being told that we will not really know the kingdom of God until we have been faithful with what we have been given.

At least that is what I am thinking.