Pentecost 17, Proper 20
Luke 16:1-13
September 19, 2010
Last Sunday I headed to Shadowlands with nine high schoolers from the youth group to play Lasertag. I put on the heavy pack, picked up my phaser and joined the group in the dark warehouse. I started lurking around corners and up into the walkways overhead, seeking someone to aim at. Sometimes I’d feel the vibration that meant I’d been hit. But every once in a while, I got to be the aggressor instead. And I have to say, it was pretty exhilarating, even if almost everyone I shot was either a parishioner or a little kid at a birthday party. “Good shot” my screen would announce.
At the end, we came out into the lobby to wait for our scores. (I came in 18th the first round, but then developed a shrewd and defensive strategy for the second round and came in 8th place.) As I came out of the dark room and re-entered reality, the oddness of our activity hit me. Here we were, a church group, pretending to shoot each other. And, as if reading my mind, just then one of the teens said, “What exactly does this have to do with church?” “Uh….”
The truth was, we just wanted to start the year with an activity that the group enjoys and had been asking to do. But there was, undeniably, a bit of a disconnect between what we were doing and what we aim to be about.
The same seems to be true for our Gospel story this morning. This parable is known as the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, although in our translation this morning they use the word manager instead of steward. We’re presented with a manager who is accused of squandering his rich employer’s property and then once he’s caught he starts reducing the debts people owe his master in order to make friends for himself. And at the end, oddly, he is commended by his master and held up as a role model by Jesus.
And then, to make matters worse, the reading continues with all these strange little one-liner conclusions that don’t seem to have much to do with the story at all and maybe even seem contradictory:
“The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much and if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?”
And then the famous kicker, “You cannot serve both God and wealth…”
At first glance, it’s like the writer of Luke sat down at his desk with his big pile of Jesus sayings and added one after another to the parable just to make sure he got them in somewhere. Or maybe he was just as baffled as I am by Jesus’ parable and so was trying to make some sense of it by connecting it with something more defensible. One commentator suggested that these three little conclusions should be understood not as being part of the parable but as three different ways in which the early Church moralized the parable.
And that helps some, but I’m still not sure what to make of the parable itself. Still not sure what to make of the uncomfortable disconnect between that manager’s tricky and self-serving actions and what we are meant to do and be as Christians.
As your preacher this morning, I’d like to point out that this parable is acknowledged by most commentators as being the most difficult to understand of all of Jesus’ parables. There is disagreement about almost every piece of it. When the master accuses his manager of squandering his property, what does he mean? And is this accusation true or untrue? When the manager forgives a portion of the amount owed by his master’s debtors, is he acting righteously (perhaps reducing the price by cutting his own commission) or is he committing fraud? Is it Jesus or the master in the story who commends the dishonest manager? And if the manager is really dishonest, why is he being commended by anyone?
The traditional understanding of the parable has been that it is a lesson about financial stewardship. That just as this dishonest manager acted shrewdly with the material possessions in his control to prepare for his future after he was fired, we should be equally shrewd in the use of our material possessions in light of the coming of the kingdom. And that may very well be the right and best explanation. And I’m all for lessons about how we should use whatever wealth we have for good -- it’s all God’s anyway and we can all use constant reminders of that. But I’m not so wild about extending the selfish calculus involved in this story to our quest for the Kingdom of God. The idea that our motivation for doing good is to curry favor with God rather than being a natural (if difficult) by-product of loving God and neighbor.
And so I was fascinated to discover in my research that there is an alternate way of translating the phrase “dishonest steward” that raises all kinds of new and interesting possibilities for this story. Literally, the phrase can mean “the steward of unrighteousness.” From this story, we can’t tell if the manager was squandering his master’s property or if he was being falsely accused. But either way, what if he is being commended not for being dishonest and tricky and self-serving, but for meeting head-on the unrighteousness in his life and working to redeem it?
That is something, I think, we can all relate to and need to hear. We all encounter unrighteousness in our lives in some form or fashion. Sometimes, it may be the natural effect of something we’ve done or not done, but often we also encounter brokenness and injustice that are not our doing. And while we often hear about being stewards of the good things that come our way – through our thankfulness and our generosity – what do we do with the not-so-good things that come our way? Or the downright awful? Maybe this parable is reminding us that we are called to be stewards of all of that, too.
One of my kids had an experience with some bullying at school recently and so we got a book to read called Bullies Never Win. It’s about a little girl who is being continuously picked on by another little girl. The mean girl calls her names and makes her feel bad about herself. Makes fun of her lunchbox until she refuses to bring it to school. Accuses her unfairly of cheating at kickball until she quits playing. Eventually, thank goodness, the little girl learns to stand up for herself and the story ends well. But it made me start thinking about how tricky this all-too-common situation is. You don’t want your child to stop liking what they like, to stop being who they are. You want them to learn to stand up for themselves, and yet you don’t want them to just counter and become one of the mean kids themselves. How can you help them to take this experience and turn it around without letting it own them? How can they use it to increase their empathy for others rather than being hardened by it? In other words, how can they become a steward of this unrighteousness?
The manager’s ability in our parable to take his losing situation and turn it around is a model for all of us. His entire world was the verge of falling apart (whether by his own fault or not) – he was going to lose his job, his reputation be left destitute and alone. But he didn’t become paralyzed or resigned or turn ruthless or start blaming other people. He was shrewd, he was imaginative, and he took risks. And he managed to take his impossible situation and redeem it. He brought relief to over-burdened debtors and he salvaged his own reputation. He became a steward of the unrighteousness in his life.
And we can do the same with all the disconnected pieces of our lives. Whether it’s something small, like using mock-shooting games to form relationships in youth group. Or something bigger, like shifting sorrow into compassion; using a failure to make a connection with someone; turning conflict into understanding; or mobilizing anger into momentum. With God, anything is possible. Amen!
Luke 16:1-13
September 19, 2010
Last Sunday I headed to Shadowlands with nine high schoolers from the youth group to play Lasertag. I put on the heavy pack, picked up my phaser and joined the group in the dark warehouse. I started lurking around corners and up into the walkways overhead, seeking someone to aim at. Sometimes I’d feel the vibration that meant I’d been hit. But every once in a while, I got to be the aggressor instead. And I have to say, it was pretty exhilarating, even if almost everyone I shot was either a parishioner or a little kid at a birthday party. “Good shot” my screen would announce.
At the end, we came out into the lobby to wait for our scores. (I came in 18th the first round, but then developed a shrewd and defensive strategy for the second round and came in 8th place.) As I came out of the dark room and re-entered reality, the oddness of our activity hit me. Here we were, a church group, pretending to shoot each other. And, as if reading my mind, just then one of the teens said, “What exactly does this have to do with church?” “Uh….”
The truth was, we just wanted to start the year with an activity that the group enjoys and had been asking to do. But there was, undeniably, a bit of a disconnect between what we were doing and what we aim to be about.
The same seems to be true for our Gospel story this morning. This parable is known as the Parable of the Dishonest Steward, although in our translation this morning they use the word manager instead of steward. We’re presented with a manager who is accused of squandering his rich employer’s property and then once he’s caught he starts reducing the debts people owe his master in order to make friends for himself. And at the end, oddly, he is commended by his master and held up as a role model by Jesus.
And then, to make matters worse, the reading continues with all these strange little one-liner conclusions that don’t seem to have much to do with the story at all and maybe even seem contradictory:
“The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much and if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?”
And then the famous kicker, “You cannot serve both God and wealth…”
At first glance, it’s like the writer of Luke sat down at his desk with his big pile of Jesus sayings and added one after another to the parable just to make sure he got them in somewhere. Or maybe he was just as baffled as I am by Jesus’ parable and so was trying to make some sense of it by connecting it with something more defensible. One commentator suggested that these three little conclusions should be understood not as being part of the parable but as three different ways in which the early Church moralized the parable.
And that helps some, but I’m still not sure what to make of the parable itself. Still not sure what to make of the uncomfortable disconnect between that manager’s tricky and self-serving actions and what we are meant to do and be as Christians.
As your preacher this morning, I’d like to point out that this parable is acknowledged by most commentators as being the most difficult to understand of all of Jesus’ parables. There is disagreement about almost every piece of it. When the master accuses his manager of squandering his property, what does he mean? And is this accusation true or untrue? When the manager forgives a portion of the amount owed by his master’s debtors, is he acting righteously (perhaps reducing the price by cutting his own commission) or is he committing fraud? Is it Jesus or the master in the story who commends the dishonest manager? And if the manager is really dishonest, why is he being commended by anyone?
The traditional understanding of the parable has been that it is a lesson about financial stewardship. That just as this dishonest manager acted shrewdly with the material possessions in his control to prepare for his future after he was fired, we should be equally shrewd in the use of our material possessions in light of the coming of the kingdom. And that may very well be the right and best explanation. And I’m all for lessons about how we should use whatever wealth we have for good -- it’s all God’s anyway and we can all use constant reminders of that. But I’m not so wild about extending the selfish calculus involved in this story to our quest for the Kingdom of God. The idea that our motivation for doing good is to curry favor with God rather than being a natural (if difficult) by-product of loving God and neighbor.
And so I was fascinated to discover in my research that there is an alternate way of translating the phrase “dishonest steward” that raises all kinds of new and interesting possibilities for this story. Literally, the phrase can mean “the steward of unrighteousness.” From this story, we can’t tell if the manager was squandering his master’s property or if he was being falsely accused. But either way, what if he is being commended not for being dishonest and tricky and self-serving, but for meeting head-on the unrighteousness in his life and working to redeem it?
That is something, I think, we can all relate to and need to hear. We all encounter unrighteousness in our lives in some form or fashion. Sometimes, it may be the natural effect of something we’ve done or not done, but often we also encounter brokenness and injustice that are not our doing. And while we often hear about being stewards of the good things that come our way – through our thankfulness and our generosity – what do we do with the not-so-good things that come our way? Or the downright awful? Maybe this parable is reminding us that we are called to be stewards of all of that, too.
One of my kids had an experience with some bullying at school recently and so we got a book to read called Bullies Never Win. It’s about a little girl who is being continuously picked on by another little girl. The mean girl calls her names and makes her feel bad about herself. Makes fun of her lunchbox until she refuses to bring it to school. Accuses her unfairly of cheating at kickball until she quits playing. Eventually, thank goodness, the little girl learns to stand up for herself and the story ends well. But it made me start thinking about how tricky this all-too-common situation is. You don’t want your child to stop liking what they like, to stop being who they are. You want them to learn to stand up for themselves, and yet you don’t want them to just counter and become one of the mean kids themselves. How can you help them to take this experience and turn it around without letting it own them? How can they use it to increase their empathy for others rather than being hardened by it? In other words, how can they become a steward of this unrighteousness?
The manager’s ability in our parable to take his losing situation and turn it around is a model for all of us. His entire world was the verge of falling apart (whether by his own fault or not) – he was going to lose his job, his reputation be left destitute and alone. But he didn’t become paralyzed or resigned or turn ruthless or start blaming other people. He was shrewd, he was imaginative, and he took risks. And he managed to take his impossible situation and redeem it. He brought relief to over-burdened debtors and he salvaged his own reputation. He became a steward of the unrighteousness in his life.
And we can do the same with all the disconnected pieces of our lives. Whether it’s something small, like using mock-shooting games to form relationships in youth group. Or something bigger, like shifting sorrow into compassion; using a failure to make a connection with someone; turning conflict into understanding; or mobilizing anger into momentum. With God, anything is possible. Amen!
You are awesome, Liz. Your old friend, Tom.
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