Luke 16:1-13
The parable of the dishonest manager, as our Gospel lesson from Luke this week is known, is one of the most hotly contested and opaque passages in the New Testament. Since the earliest days of the church, Christian scholars and believers alike have puzzled over this strange story from the mouth of Jesus. At first glance, it is an odd story, in which the main character is explicitly identified as dishonest, unreliable, and shrewd. This is a man whose sole responsibility is to manage the finances and loans of a wealthy master, and is apparently not very good at it. The boss has learned that the manager is squandering his wealth, and resolves to relieve him of his duties. Realizing he has been found out, the manager calls together all of the men who owe his master money, and cooks the books! For each debtor, the manager reduces the recorded debt before the master can come to collect. The manager literally says that he will do this in order to gain favor with the debtors. He’s come up with his own fallout plan, ingratiating himself so that he will have support from the community during his impending unemployment. From a social standpoint, it’s not a bad plan. Jesus has already pointed out throughout his ministry that love, loyalty, and the forgiveness of debts are closely linked in our hearts and in our communities.
Our manager, at this point quite the antihero, is met with his master, finally about to be dismissed for good. The rich master reveals that he has knowledge of the debt-reduction scheme of his manager, and one would think it is all over for our back-room-dealing main character. Not only has the master accused him of squandering property and already fired him, but now the rich man has also caught our hero red-handed altering debt records! If the CFO of a financial powerhouse were to be caught in similar circumstances today, they’d definitely end up in jail and financially liable for some or all of what they lost the company in revenue. But our man receives no jail time, or even a summons to determine the size of his fine. Instead, the rich man, the victim of this manager’s continued dishonesty, compliments him on his shrewdness. The master is impressed by the very man who just bamboozled him!
As our Lord is wont to do, Jesus gives us no clear explanation of this strange story, or how we should take it as instruction for the life of faith. It is not clear who, if anyone, in this story is meant to represent God, or which character we should strive to emulate. No one in the story expresses any strong religious convictions, and Jesus himself draws a distinction between the characters of this story world and the children of light, God’s people. The longer we look at this story, the stranger it seems, and the more Jesus talks about it, the less clear it is whether his own message lines up with the message he presents us with in the shrewd manager.
Some scholars argue that this story can be better understood by talking about the economic stratification of Jesus’s day, that we must understand the debt reduction in the story to be reflective of removing usurious interest or commission fees from the original debt total. Other scholars argue that we must look at the textual problems with the manuscripts of this particular story and assume that it has somehow been corrupted or added inaccurately, rendering the parable incomprehensible and out of context. Still others would say that this is a story about learning valuable lessons from the ways of the world without allowing those lessons to corrupt our values. The manager was careful to use the resources entrusted to his care in a way that served others while gaining security for himself. How much more can we, using the gifts of the spirit entrusted to our care, use our resources for the service of others and the growth of our own faith?
There are hundreds of ways that this passage has been translated, interpreted, understood, and explained. There are entire books and whole scholarly careers riding on one interpretation or another. Over the course of my preaching career, I have read over a hundred pages from at least a dozen authors and editors attempting to address the heart of this parable, and how to preach on it. I’ve talked to other preachers and teachers and very smart Christians about whether Jesus is asking me to be a shrewd manager of this world’s wealth, or if the whole thing was delivered with a smirk on Christ’s face. I’ve listened to sermons on this text, and read articles about creative ways to recast the narrative to make it easier to comprehend in a wide variety of contexts. I’ve spoken with clergy who have opted not to preach on this text today, either because they felt the spirit calling them in the direction of a different passage or theme, or simply because they are totally stumped and needed to move on. I do not hold that against them at all, and honestly, I considered doing the same. I’ve prayed and puzzled and posted on Facebook about this ancient parable, and I have met a handful of incredibly compelling ways to reimagine the text and its meaning. The truth is, I still don’t know what it means.
One of the most incredibly human, and incredibly difficult, phrases in any language is “I don’t know.” I don’t know the answer, I don’t know what that is, I don’t know why. Since the beginning of time, human beings have struggled in a battle against the unknown and our own limits. The forbidden fruit was tempting because we did not want to keep saying “I don’t know.” We wanted the knowledge, even if it meant losing paradise. Jesus’ own disciples grieved him again and again by giving quick and unthoughtful answers rather than an honest “I don’t know, Lord.” In our own day of seemingly limitless knowledge at our fingertips, in our pockets, on our horizons, it is less and less common to admit what we do not know. We do not wrestle with the unknown, instead we see it as a puzzle to solve, a new frontier to explore, a reality to transcend. When faced with difficult questions of right and wrong, we drive ourselves apart, dividing along denominational and political lines rather than admitting the possibility that we may not know the right answer.
In preparing for this week’s sermon, there is nothing I wanted more than to step into this pulpit and hand you a neat, poetic, perfectly packaged solution to the problem of this parable. I dug through the reaches of my memory, my seminary notes, both mine and Ben’s libraries, looking for the right answer. I worried that if I didn’t find it, if I got up here with less than a whole picture, I would be revealed as a fraud, as a poor preacher and a sorry excuse for a priest. I was divided against myself, a servant trying to serve both the Gospel and my idolized perfection. I realized that I was never going to have a perfect answer, only the truth.
The truth is, each of us needs all of us, when we come face to face with strange situations and unclear answers. The scholars that I studied each referenced at least one other person or group as part of their own interpretation of the text. My own instinct was to reach out to other preachers and ask them what they were planning to say about this text this week. Our Bible study each Wednesday night meets for the sole purpose of looking deeply at scripture together, to discuss and ask questions and share our insights and resources. On Sunday mornings, a group gathers together in the Grace parish hall to wrestle with the texts of the week. Without fail, every Tuesday at Baine’s, someone brings me a question about scripture that sticks with me all week. Every week, rain or shine, people congregate in this place, and scripture is read and preached and sung and prayed. That is the way of people who follow Jesus, that is what we do. Our scripture and our lives of faith are full of challenges, puzzles, riddles, and impossible choices. When we meet them, we come together to hear the whole story, we contribute our resources of prayer, study, and experiences, and we talk.
That’s what I’d like to ask of you, this week. I know it’s unusual, and I’m the last person who would want to assign anyone homework. But I am still looking for some more answers, and better questions, and I would love to hear yours. I want to ask you all to take your scripture insert home today, and read it through again. Maybe read it together with your partner and see what it brings to mind. Read it to your children and grandchildren and nieces and nephews, and see what insights they might have. Come together, like we Christians do, and talk about the words of God this week. Maybe you’ll come up with an answer. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe finding the answer isn’t the point.
Mother A Writes 