The Taming of the Shrewd
Luke 16:1-13
I assume the meaning of this parable is perfectly self-evident and therefore I don’t need to attempt to explain it, so we can move straight to the responsive hymn, which is number 708 in the purple hymnal….
What’s that? Oh, you don’t find the meaning to be straightforward? Huh! That’s surprising. Well, I suppose in that case you’d like me to interpret the parable for you. Alright, then. Here goes.
I don’t know! I don’t know what’s going on with this parable. I don’t know what Jesus is trying to tell us. I don’t know what the lesson is. And I don’t think that anyone else does either. I read a dozen different commentaries that came to a dozen different conclusions. The one thing they had in common was that they all basically said you might want to choose the Old Testament lectionary reading today and avoid this parable altogether.
Alright, they didn’t actually say that, but they did all make clear that making sense of the parable of the Shrewd Manager or the Dishonest Manager or the Unjust Steward is akin to cracking the code of the Enigma machine, the device used by the Germans during World War II to encrypt secret messages. Or for Seinfeld fans, it’s like when Elaine finagles her way into the offices of The New Yorker magazine just to get someone there to explain to her the meaning of one of their more obscure cartoons. “One doesn’t dissect gossamer.”
I even went back and reread the sermon I preached on this passage 12 years ago, just the fourth sermon I had ever preached as an ordained pastor (What was I thinking?). While I made a valiant attempt at making sense of the parable, the sermon was not one I would ever preach again. So, let me try this one more time.
A good place to start would be to locate us in the Gospel. Jesus and the disciples are on the road to Jerusalem. Jesus has been walking and talking, preaching and teaching. Of late, he’s been telling quite a few parables. In the previous chapter he told three related parables, all of which featured the theme of something precious being lost and the unbridled celebration that erupted once it was found. Those were the parables of the Lost Coin and the Lost Sheep, both of which we read last week, and the Lost Son, or as more commonly known, the Prodigal Son.
After telling those three parables, the very next thing Jesus does is tell this parable. The passage begins, “Then Jesus said to the disciples….” However, the disciples aren’t the only audience for this parable. Just as they were there to hear the “lost” parables, the scribes and the Pharisees are still there monitoring Jesus to see if he says anything controversial that they might use against him. They would like nothing more than to see Jesus cancelled for his inappropriate healing on the Sabbath and his disregard of the rules that they cherish, even above showing mercy.
And let’s remember that when the scribes and Pharisees are not being outraged about Jesus’ not following the letter of the law, they’re dismissive of his teachings because he draws to himself an unsavory crowd—sinners and sick people, blind men and beggars, unscrupulous tax collectors and women deemed untouchable.
And that, I think, is the reason why Jesus tells this parable of a manager who is dishonest, or shrewd, or unjust. Jesus wants to say that grace is not respectable. Grace is not proper. Grace is not a reward earned by the righteous but a gift given to sinners.
Let’s now look at the parable. A rich man has a manager who tends to his business affairs. Word comes to the rich man that this manager is “squandering” his property. The word for “squandering” is the same word that Jesus uses to describe what the prodigal son does with his inheritance, which suggests not that the manager has invested his master’s money poorly, but that he has helped himself to what is not rightly his.
The master summons the manager into his office and demands to see the books. He wants to examine all the receipts. The manager thinks to himself, “What am I going to do? I’m not cut out for any other kind of work. I’m too weak for physical labor and too proud to beg.”
Then the spark of inspiration ignites an idea. He will ingratiate himself to his master’s debtors by forgiving a portion of their debts. Then when he is inevitably let go from his position, perhaps one of them will take him in.
“How much do you owe?” he asks one debtor. “One hundred jugs of oil? Cut it in half. Make if fifty and be on your way.”
“And how much do you owe? One hundred containers of wheat? That’s too high! Make it eighty!”
Now, logic, reason, and common sense all dictate that when the master learns of the machinations of his manager, he will naturally be incensed. But listen again to verse 8: “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.”
Come again? You mean to tell me that the master isn’t upset that his manager has essentially given away his money? Not only is he not upset, but he even commends the manager for his shrewdness! What in the world is happening here?
The ending of the parable comes not out of left field but out of the ballpark! All of the manager’s schemings seem to be setting him up for a much deserved comeuppance. We’re poised to hear the rich man rip into his dishonest manager for squandering even more of his estate, and so when we learn that not only is the rich man not upset but that he even commends the manager, the effect is jarring.
And yet, at the same time, it’s so like Jesus. Earlier in the Gospel of Luke, when the disciples asked him to explain another of his perplexing parables, he said to them, “To you it has been given to know the secrets of the kingdom of God, but to others I speak in parables, so that ‘looking they may not perceive and hearing they may not understand’” (Luke 8:9).
From that perspective, mission accomplished! But I can’t let you leave here today without at least some inkling of what Jesus is getting at. I checked. It’s in my job description. In all seriousness, I think the passage I just quoted, about the purpose of parables being in some sense to confound the listener, is instructive here.
Grace comes into this story through what the world regards as disreputable.
The scribes and Pharisees have already condescended to Jesus because he welcomes tax collectors and sinners and even eats with them. They’ve accused him of being a glutton and a drunkard. They consider him to be lax in keeping the law because he breaks the Sabbath and allows his disciples to do the same. He doesn’t keep with tradition by practicing rituals that have been handed down through the ages, like ceremonial handwashing. From the perspective of the religious establishment, which is what the scribes and Pharisees are, Jesus really is someone of questionable character. He’s not someone you would invite to speak at your church!
With this parable, it’s as if Jesus is saying, “Let me tell you something about questionable character. Let me tell you about the character of God’s grace. It’s not pretty. It’s not respectable. It doesn’t follow manmade rules, regulations, or traditions, or adhere to any expectations. What does God’s grace look like? It looks like a dishonest manager forgiving his master’s debtors.”
Let me remind you again that the previous three parables Jesus told all dealt with something precious that was lost and then found—a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. Here as well, something is lost. On a superficial level the manager is about to lose his position in the home of the rich man. But at a deeper level, he will lose something of his identity. As he says of himself, he’s too weak to dig and too proud to beg. Then what will he do? Who is he really if he can no longer do the one thing that appears to suit him?
What will he do? He will die. He will die, metaphorically, to the man he was. He will die to the man for whom money was the be all and end all. In his place will be born a man who uses money as a tool to bless by giving it away. The manager can do this because he knows that in the eyes of his employer, he is already dead. He doesn’t expect to work for him ever again. He is not scheming to somehow get back into his master’s good graces. He believes that in the eyes of his master, he is as good as dead.
And it is through the manager’s death, as it were, that life comes into this parable. When the rich man’s debtors are summoned to appear, they no doubt believe that their day of reckoning has come. They owe more than they can possibly repay. Then, as they’re waiting for the manager to pronounce judgment, that is, to call in their debt, rather than judgment they receive a word of grace. Their debts, at least a good portion of of them, are forgiven.
Life coming through death, forgiveness of debts—you see what’s happening here, don’t you? This dishonest manager, this unjust steward, is the Christ figure in this parable. He dies so that others might live. He gives so that others might receive. Grace comes into this story through what the world regards as disreputable.
Are you not buying what I’m selling? Then let’s go to verse 14, which is beyond today’s assigned reading. Verse 14 reads, “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this and they ridiculed him.”
The respectable religious leaders, the public keepers of morality laugh at Jesus because to them the very notion that God’s grace could come by way of such an unsavory character is ludicrous. After all, there are rules to this sort of thing! Dishonest managers don’t dispense grace. A good rabbi doesn’t break the sabbath or teach his disciples to do so. The righteous don’t associate with the unrighteous. Messiahs are never crucified.
Robert Capon, the author of a book on all the parables of Jesus, says this about the parable of the Dishonest Manager: “The unique contribution of this parable to our understanding of Jesus is its insistence that grace cannot come to the world through respectability. Respectability regards only life, success, winning; it will have no truck with the grace that works by death and losing—which is the only kind of grace there is.”
The only kind of grace there is for you, for me, for sinners like us.