a sermon on Luke 16.1-15
by David C. Mauldin
Westminster Presbyterian Church, Mobile, Alabama
A good preacher should be able to preach on any passage in the Bible, explain
its meaning, and show how the gospel shines through it. So, when I was planning
my preaching schedule and the parable of the dishonest manager showed up in the
lectionary, I took up the challenge. Why not? I have always found this passage
puzzling (and based on my research this week, it looks like everyone else does
too!). Plus, I am leading a group through N.T. Wright’s book The Challenge of
Jesus. This sermon should be a good opportunity to take some of the things we
are learning and put them to use in explaining this passage. … Have you ever
done something that seemed like a good idea at the time? Is it too late to
change the scripture reading for today to “love your neighbor”?
This is a puzzling parable for a couple of reasons. The first and most obvious
is: Jesus makes a crook the hero of his story. Then Jesus goes on to tell people
they ought to follow his example. We know Jesus is not advocating fraud, but
what are we supposed to do with this story? Second, apparently the parable of
the dishonest manager has confused Christians from the very beginning. Luke
interprets it by following it up with some things Jesus said about wealth. We
can understand easily enough the lesson Luke wants us to learn. Verse 11 makes
it plain: “If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who
will entrust you with true riches?” I am sure Jesus asked that question, and a
what a deeply probing question it is! I am not entirely sure that was everything
Jesus wanted to say by means of this parable.
It is not my intention to set Luke against Jesus. The way Luke interprets the
parable is consistent with what Jesus meant. I just think there is a bigger
picture, and if we look at it, perhaps the parable will make more sense. Luke
shows us what we can take from the parable, but perhaps we can take a bit more.
What I want to do then is work forward, from the parable as Jesus told it, to
the way scripture presents it to us, to the way it challenges us today.
Let’s begin with a couple of observations. Jesus came announcing the kingdom of
God. The gospels make this abundantly clear. His message was the kingdom. God
was finally keeping all those glorious, old promises. And, it was all happening
in and through Jesus himself. The kingdom of God is not a country far away, up
in heaven or someplace. The kingdom of God is the reign of God over heaven and
earth. The kingdom is when God’s will is done on earth as in heaven. Many
Christians today tend to think of the kingdom of God or the kingdom of heaven
(which is Matthew’s preferred way to talk about it, following the old Jewish
practice of not using the name of God) as a reality where God dwells and where
the Christian goes after death. Jews in the first century—the people Jesus lived
with (and he was one of them)—thought of it in terms of this world, as a
physical kingdom centered in Jerusalem. When Jesus talks about the kingdom, it
is bigger than both these pictures. It is all of earth, all of heaven, in
harmony with and in obedience to God. So Jesus preached about the kingdom.
His parables are about the kingdom. They contain bits of timeless truth, but
these are secondary to the kingdom message. Take the parable of the prodigal
son, for instance. It comes just before the parable of the dishonest manager.
Jesus makes several points, including an important one about God’s love and
forgiveness. But why did he tell the story? Because God’s mercy had taken the
specific form of Jesus’ own ministry. The Father was acting through him to
welcome home prodigal sons and daughters—the tax collectors, prostitutes, and
other sinners who were responding to Jesus’ preaching, repenting, and following
him. The Pharisees and others who were criticizing Jesus are the older brother,
who at the end of the story complains about the Father forgiving the younger
brother. Jesus leaves the ending of the parable dangling in space. Did the older
brother join the party or not? Well, that was for his hearers to decide. Would
they see in him the kingdom of God and join the party … or not?
Our first clue to the meaning of the parable of the dishonest manager then is
this: Jesus preached the kingdom. His parables were about the kingdom. This one
must be too.
Our second clue builds on the first one. Whenever Jesus tells a story about a
king, a landowner, or a father, that figure represents God. The sons, the
servants, the tenants, and the managers represent either Israel or her
leaders—in other words, the people Jesus was telling the story to. Jesus liked
to ambush his critics with stories. In the parable of the wicked tenants, Jesus
drew on Isaiah’s image of Israel as an unfruitful vineyard. In Jesus’ story, God
plants a vineyard and leases it out to tenants, the leaders of Israel. When he
sends agents to collect the rent, they refuse, beat, and kill the messengers.
Eventually he sends his own son—and you know who that is! But they kill him too.
“What do you think the landowner will do to those miserable tenants?” Jesus
asks. It is a parable of judgment. He told it on Monday of Holy Week. The
religious leaders who were challenging him got the point.
I think the parable of the dishonest manager is a similar kind of parable. And
if it is, it solves the difficulty about the hero of the story being a crook.
The rich man who had hired the dishonest manager represents God. The dishonest
manager represents Jesus’ opponents, the guardians of Israel’s traditions who
(a) were wrong about what being the people of God is all about, and (b) who saw
Jesus but did not recognize the kingdom of God. Israel was not the light to the
nations she was supposed to be, in large part because those entrusted with her
leadership were poor managers. The Sadducees, who ran the Temple and had the
power because they collaborated with Herod and the Romans were all about their
own power, position, prestige, and privilege. The Pharisees made the wrong
things important—ceremonial rituals trumped mercy and compassion in their book.
And they were bent on violent revolution. They thought being the people of God
meant God loved them more than the rest of the world and would exalt them over
the other nations. They did not perceive that God chose Israel in order to fix
what was wrong with the whole creation.
So, God is the rich man. The religious authorities are the manager who began
with incompetence and then resorted to outright corruption. The parable makes
sense as a parable of judgment. Jesus is saying, “You are the manager, and the
manager is about to get fired.”
But what then of the rest of the story? As Jesus tells it, the manager acted
shrewdly. He called in his master’s debtors and rewrote their contracts. The
large size of the contracts tips us off that this was a commercial enterprise.
This was not one neighbor borrowing from another. Instead it was a business
practice common in first century Palestine. If you owned a lot of land, you
might not farm it yourself. You might lease it out to tenants. They would farm
the land, and agreed to pay you a set amount of the produce. Anything above that
they kept for themselves. You can see the appeal of this arrangement. The rich
man in the story has leased out some of his land. He has contracts with the
tenants. But his dishonest manager, about to be sacked for mishandling his
affairs, hits on a scheme to save himself from poverty. He calls in all the
debtors, tears up the old contracts, and writes new ones for far less then the
original amounts.
If the manager represents Jesus’ opponents, he insults them in verse 8 when the
rich man commends the manager for his shrewdness. “For the children of this age
are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of
light,” Jesus says. In other words, “You guys are not children of light.” If you
think that’s overly harsh coming from Jesus, keep in mind that he also called
this bunch “whitewashed tombs”—beautiful on the outside but full of filth—and a
“brood of vipers.” Jesus was very compassionate with those who were broken and
hurting, but he could be quite forceful with those who thought they were too
good to need God’s mercy.
I think verse 9, the last verse in the parable, drips with irony. Jesus says,
“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth [a
better translation would be “filthy lucre”] so that when it is gone, they may
welcome you into eternal homes.” As you hear those words, bear in mind that
Jesus has just told to parable of the prodigal son. At least it comes right
before this one in Luke’s gospel. Who then do we know who took his filthy lucre
and squandered it? The prodigal son. The same word squandered is used of both
him and the dishonest manager! He spent his money on wild living. And where were
his friends when he needed them? Did they welcome him into everlasting homes?
Did they take care of him when his cash gave out? No! He had to slop hogs and
didn’t earn enough to live on doing that!
If this is a parable of judgment, could Jesus be saying, “You have a choice:
God’s way or no way at all”? Could he be saying, “Your time is short. God is
about to appoint a new manager. (Wonder who that could be!) You had better make
alternate arrangements, because, hey … that would work, right?”
This reading of the parable appeals to me. It makes sense, and it removes some
of the difficulties. It is not, however, without problems. The main one is, so
what does it mean for us? Think on this a while and you will understand why Luke
presented it as he did. I think we find two messages in this parable, both
faithful to Jesus and to scripture, and both God’s Word to us today.
First, we ought to find in this parable the same thing we find in the parables
of the prodigal son and the wicked tenants: the challenge to see in Jesus the
kingdom of God. Jesus challenged his opponents, his disciples, and the crowds to
see the kingdom in him and to follow him. That challenge is not confined to the
days of his ministry in Palestine. It is the continuing challenge of Jesus in
every age, including our own. When you look at Jesus of Nazareth, do you see the
kingdom of God? Do you see in him the fulfillment of all God’s promises? Do you
see in him the very presence of God in human flesh? And … will you join the
party? Will you follow him? That’s the challenge of the parables. You face the
same difficult, life-changing, earth-shaking,
turn-everything-you-thought-you-knew-upside-down decision as those who heard
these parables from Jesus’ lips.
Second, as Luke points out, following Jesus means honoring him in the practical
details of our lives. The use of money, for example, is not irrelevant to our
attitude toward and commitment to Jesus. Luke more than any of the gospel
writers never lets us forget that. Just as the parable of the prodigal son
includes truth about God’s forgiving nature and the importance of us forgiving
others, so the parable of the dishonest manager opens a discussion about the
place of wealth in the life of a Christian.
This is why Luke follows up the parable with some of Jesus’ teaching on the
subject: “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and
whoever is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much.” This reminds
me of the Sermon on the Mount. Recall how over and over again Jesus shows how
obedience to God is a matter of the heart. If your heart is right, your actions
will be also. If it is not, your false piety will not fool God. Here Jesus makes
the point that you are either faithful or not. The amount does not matter. If
you are obedient in the little things, you will be obedient in the big ones. If
you are not faithful in small things, never mind the big ones.
Then the probing question I mentioned earlier: “If then you have not been
faithful with filthy lucre [Jesus’ literal words are “unrighteous mammon”] who
will entrust you with true riches?” By placing this saying where he does, Luke
invites us to read the parable of the dishonest manager again and put ourselves
in his position. In this life we are entrusted with another person’s
wealth—God’s. Everything we have, even our bodies and our lives, belongs
ultimately to God. Our time on this earth is relatively brief. Like the manager
who knows he is about to be fired, we know our time is short. Now, given this
situation, how can we use the things we have at our disposal to do something
that will last when our life is over?
Be careful with this! Do not entertain for a moment the thought that we can buy
or earn a place in God’s kingdom. Luke teaches nothing of the sort! God’s
kingdom and eternal life in it come only by God’s grace through Jesus Christ.
What this passage does teach is that our actions here and now have consequences,
some of them eternal. Scripture teaches that God honors and rewards our
obedience. When we do good, that good lasts into eternity. Everything bad God
will wipe away, but the good he preserves. In Genesis God made humankind to rule
over creation. He intended us to be junior partners in the creative process. God
loves it when we join him in kingdom work acting with mercy, compassion,
justice, and love to do what is right and good. He has put within our power,
even though we have fallen into sin, the chance to do good—the opportunity to
use the temporal things of this world to make an eternal difference. Luke wants
to know … Jesus wants to know … will we be faithful? Will we be wise?
Remember what Jesus said in the Sermon on the Mount about giving to help others.
If you do it to impress people, you have your reward. But, if you do it to
please God or out of love, God will reward you.
I had a bit of a shock this week. You may have heard that for the first time
since 1976 the U.S. dollar reached parity with the Canadian dollar. When I went
to Calgary to meet Rosalyn’s parents back in the year 2000, I bought Canadian
dollars for 66¢. Now it would cost me a whole U.S. dollar. Anyone who bought
Canadian dollars back then could make a hefty profit selling them today, though
of course who can predict these things? The concept is not entirely different
for what I am trying to say about God’s kingdom. You can invest in God’s kingdom
now by honoring God and serving others in his name with all your resources. Take
your time … your money, and use them in ways that glorify God. You will find
they are not gone at all. You will get them back in God’s kingdom. Ironically,
the things we try to hold on to in this life and hoard for ourselves (including
our lives), we lose forever. That’s the strange way God’s economy works.
I hope I did justice to one of the trickier parables in the gospels. The parable
of the dishonest manager challenges us to see in Jesus the kingdom of God. It
also invites reflection on how we use the things of this world. Do we invest
wisely in God’s kingdom? Let us not squander the chance we have been given.
Amen.