“Lessons from Luke: The Unjust Manager”

Luke 16: 1 – 13

Christopher H. Edmonston

Howard Memorial Presbyterian Church, February 20, 2005

When I was a child there was a running joke at my house about TV characters on shows who were billed as being one thing, but who, in fact did nothing of what they were billed as being able to do. For example, on “Murder, She Wrote” the lead was supposedly an author, but she usually never wrote a word. Prolific writers don’t travel around solving mysteries – writers sit in front of computer screens and printed pages hours on end, editing, writing, and rewriting. Another one that I remember was Father Dowling, who was supposedly a Catholic Priest. He also solved mysteries (I think), but as a Priest he never once celebrated a mass or a Eucharist or visited a sick person or preached a homily. Doogie Howser was supposedly the world’s youngest doctor, but he never filled out a chart, never took a temperature, never once poured over medical dictionaries, or wrote a script for penicillin.

Despite being a joke in my family, this was all so detached from reality that it made for really ridiculous TV – like 6 “Friends” who live in the most expensive city in the world with nary a job between them. One of the responses I think to all that bad TV has been reality TV show. So popular has it been that it seems now that nearly every new offering on the ‘tube’ is an offering of reality. Only one wonders how real any of this reality, in reality, really is…?

As you know, Donald Trump the real estate tycoon has a show called “The Apprentice,” in which intelligent adults act and behave like a cross between a spoiled brat and a desperate housewife to woo “THE DONALD” with their business savvy and prowess. At the end of every episode, “THE DONALD,” Lord of all he surveys, selects the contestant who has failed, who has wasted time or squandered capital, and throws them off of his show by saying, “You’re fired.” Immediately they are whisked into a cab and sent flailing and failing into the New York night.

II.

“You’re fired.” Two little words, that despite Donald Trump’s attempt to trademark them, can carry huge amounts of freight and baggage. Many days when I was counseling and praying with the homeless in Charlotte, mothers, having just been fired for showing up late to work would look into my eyes for answers and for resolution to their pressing and brutal problem – they needed money to feed their kids, and they had just been fired. Thus, Trump’s show has little to do with reality. For most Americans the loss of a job is an immediate crisis, an overwhelming problem – a far cry different than a Manhattan cab ride and plane ticket home.

III.

At first glace this is a story today about being fired. A master has a manager who is not performing well, who is squandering property and the master decides for termination. He is going to bring him up to the penthouse, place him before his peers, and fire him. And the manager, most definitely a slave of some sort, knows the trouble that is before him: without his job there is no prospect for food or protection.

As those of you here last week know, these weeks in Lent we are focusing our preaching upon the lessons from Luke as they pertain to wealth and sinfulness, as they pertain to the easy seduction that wealth tempts each and every one of us with. As they address the way that we “trust the benefit more than the Benefactor”[1] and substitute our financial power for the power of God in our lives.

Last week we looked at Luke’s blessings and woes – the fact that where we, 21^st century Americans, see wealth automatically as a blessing, Jesus and the gospel see it as dangerous and potentially destructive. Next week we will look at the harshest text of Luke’s gospel, the place where Luke draws sharp lines between rich and poor; have and have not.

Today we look at this most complicated of parables – this parable of the unjust manager or the shrewd steward. Which one he really is, unjust or just shrewd, really depends upon the opinion of the person hearing the story. For my own part, sometimes I think he is unjust, squandering the amounts due his employer. Other times I think he is shrewd, finding a way through his predicament. Either way, it is the most difficult parable in the New Testament.

IV.

Not surprisingly, this parable is only found in Luke. Luke after all, is our gospel for and of the parable. Most of the parables that students of the Bible know by heart are from Luke – the parable of the good Samaritan; the prodigal son.

But of all of Luke’s parables, this one poses, I think, the greatest challenge to hearers of the gospel. Reading this parable one immediately wants to know, why does the master praise the manager for swindling him? Isn’t the manager breaking the law – basically stealing from the master? Why does Jesus praise his actions so greatly – actions that are at worst robbery and at best self-serving? Are we to praise ‘shrewdness’ as a quality worthy of the kingdom of God?

The parable is so challenging, in fact, that some preachers and scholars have noted that these 13 verses have stolen the spotlight from the surrounding verses – they have demanded an unfair amount of scholarship as Christians have tried to make sense of this story of either illegal or shrewd behavior.[2] Fred Craddock, one of the most gifted preachers and teachers of our time, has written, “Many Christians have been offended by this parable, and on two grounds. First some find it disturbing that Jesus would find anything commendable in someone who has acted dishonestly….The second and related offense in this parable is the use of words like ‘shrewd’ or ‘clever’ to describe people of the kingdom.”[3]

But, despite our reservations, this parable is here. And like most challenging texts of the Bible if we give it is due, and see it as it plays its role in the construction of the larger theology and story of Jesus Christ, then it does bear rewards.

And so we ask, what is it that we are supposed to take from this?

One of the most painful and powerful movies I have ever seen is called Shadowlands. The film centers upon C. S. Lewis, the greatest of all Christian apologists of the 20^th century – he was a defender of orthodoxy, a champion of the faith, an intellectual theorist, and a devout believer. So devout was he that he took sin very seriously – moral righteousness was critically important to him and his practice of faith. For example, he believed that divorce was a terrible sin – even though he was an Anglican, his view on divorce was almost Roman Catholic.

In the latter third of his life, he met an American woman named Joy Gresham. So powerful was his love for her, that he would one day title his autobiography, Surprised by Joy -- a reference to both the Christian faith that found him and the woman he loved. The movie, Shadowlands, is the story of their love and of her untimely death from cancer. Now, needless to say, the film is a real tear jerker. When Colleen and I watch it she sobs and sobs and sobs, and then she picks me up off the floor from my puddle of tears!

The great crisis for Lewis came when he realized that his love for Joy Gresham demanded that he marry her – and this love came into conflict with his moral beliefs on divorce. Joy Gresham had been married in the United States, and he struggled mightily with the meaning of her divorce – morally and personally. Lewis eventually married her and completed one of the greatest, most improbable, and beautiful love stories of the past century. And it is beautiful not in the sense that they were particularly beautiful people, but because he had to give up something to be with her – to sacrifice some piece of his understanding of the righteousness of God to share in his love for God by joining his life with hers. He had to do, in other words, the best he could do given the situation he was in. She was dying; they were in love; their time was short; and the crisis was upon them. Some action had to be taken.

VI.

Under a different circumstance (like the difference between a hurricane and a tornado, I should think) the steward is in the same boat. In one light he is solely saving his own neck. In another (and I believe this is the light in which Jesus sees him) he simply does the best with what little he has. Knowing he is going to be on the street, he secures whatever loyalty he can by making alliances with those who only weeks before would have seen him as an enemy – a debt collector for the landlord (one wonders here about forgiving debts as we forgive debtors?).

Is he wrong? Maybe? Is he shrewd; is his quick thinking; is it a creative way out of an impossible predicament? Yes.

VII.

Jesus for his part, I believe sees us as close relatives to this shrewd steward, this unjust manager. In a theme that can be traced all the way back to chapter 12 of Luke, Jesus sees his God and Father in heaven, creator of all that is seen and unseen, as the Master of all. Jesus keeps telling us in Luke’s gospel that none of us is the master of anything, and each of us at best is a steward of that which God, the master of masters, has seen fit to give us responsibility over. We are allowed by God to care for our portion of creation – a master who at any moment might ask to see the books; a master who is, I am afraid to say, disappointed often in our care of the kingdom and save his gracious love might just ask for the account to be paid in full. In other words, most of us easily identify with the master in the parable; all the while we are in fact the steward(s) in the parable. This makes us beg the question: how are we doing with the lives, the power, or the wealth that God has entrusted to us? What grade would we receive?:

A “U” for uniformed?; or maybe unjust?

An “I” for indifferent?;

An “S” for shrewd?;

The steward is rewarded; he get his “S” for shrewd which like the “S” for satisfactory is a passing grade; not quite earning the “E” for excellent he is celebrated by the master because he has done the best he could with what he had. He has invested in the future instead of in the past.[4] He is more concerned with service to whomever his new master will be than he is with the wealth of the boss who is about to liquidate his employ and offer his position to another.

VIII.

One final note before putting this parable to rest ought to be made: in Luke, it is always best to be sure that we understand to whom Jesus is speaking in each and every encounter.[5] The speech here is private; it is for the disciples. And as such, I think it is a lesson and a warning for the church – be careful how we manage God’s kingdom; for we manage it as His pleasure. Will God trust us – servants and stewards in the name of the grace of Jesus Christ – with the charge of his church and his kingdom?

Jesus’ parable serves as a warning that if we dare to seek that trust or manage this kind of an estate we ought to pay attention to the little things, to doing what we can do instead of either resting on our laurels or worrying about that which we will never achieve. As one thinker has described this lesson:

The life of a disciple is one of faithful attention to the frequent and familiar tasks of each day, however small and insignificant they may seem. The one faithful in today’s nickels and dimes is the one to be trusted with the big account, but it is easy to be indifferent toward small obligations while quite sincerely believing oneself fully trustworthy in major matters….Most of us this week will not christen a ship, write a book, end a war, appoint a cabinet, dine with the queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake. More likely the week will present no more than a chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home…teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor’s cat.[6]

This is true indeed and these words are well measured. Especially when we place them alongside the words of Jesus, “Whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in very much.”

IX.

So then, mismanaging the estate, squandering the property is kin to our denial of the tasks of discipleship. Do we call ourselves disciples, and then practice too few of the basic tasks of that calling? If we do, then we are more like the doctor who never sees patients, or the priest who never visits the sick, or the writer who never writes than we realize. The shrewd steward, the unjust manager, whoever he was, is fired because he was a manager that didn’t manage.

Most probably he clung to the trappings of his office and luxuries that came with it. Most probably he wasn’t paying the debts of the master in a timely manner or seeing that fields were cleared in their due course. He was more taken with maintaining the material wealth that came with his title than with seeing that will of master was done.

How are our fields? How is our management? Who are we serving – God or wealth?

May God grant us eyes to see, ears to hear, and a commitment as disciples to take care of our parcel of the kingdom – and to take care of it not for the sake of profit, but for the sake of faithfulness. Amen.

[1] Cf. “Moveable Feast” paper by Bob Dunham, from Tiede, David “Luke 6: 17 –26” Interpretation XL January 1986, page 67.

[2] Johnson, Luke, Luke (Sacra Pagina) page 246.

[5] Johnson, Luke, Luke (Sacra Pagina) page 246 – 248 – although Johnson emphasizes audience and speech throughout his commentary, he first raised my awareness to the audience in this text.