Sermon: Make Friends
Text: Luke 16:1-13
Introduction before the scripture reading:
Today’s reading, from the Gospel of Luke chapter 16, verses 1 to 13 is one of the most challenging of Jesus’s parables. Traditionally, this story is called “The Parable of the Unjust Steward” or, in the version Jennifer is going to present today, “The Parable of the Dishonest Manager.”
To understand today’s reading, I read several commentaries. The commentators wrote, “Any commentator will tell you that this is a difficult text." "This parable of the Dishonest Steward is one of the strangest of the strange. Commentators are all over the map in their opinions of what we should make of it.”
There are other Bible readings today that could inspire a sermon, but I decided not to skip Jesus’s original, brilliantly crafted, tricky and confusing parable because the message is very relevant to Immanuel and each of us, today. We live within and with capitalism; it is one of the primary determinants of how we live our values day-to-day and form our attitudes towards the acquisition and use of money. Reflecting on this vivid parable of The Dishonest Manager means following Jesus into questions of how we practice neighbourly love in economic relationships, in the midst of unjust structures.
While I studied this parable and Luke’s message, I adjusted my goal for today’s sermon. Rather than adding my personal reflection on them, I will try to present to you the story and Luke’s message as they are, as much as I could understand them, so that we, as a community of faith, Immanuel, can see ourselves and our context in the biblical perspective on wealth.
For this, we just have to face the perplexing story head-on.
The presentation of the scripture passage
Sermon: Make Friends
Today’s story sounds quite contemporary. Here’s the story in a nutshell, and then we will go a little deeper with some questions to raise. A dishonest manager is about to lose his job, because he has misspent his employer’s assets. The first verse, “Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was wasting his goods (“squandering his property”). Verse 2. “So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.”
Because he doesn’t want to do manual labour or receive charity, he goes around to all the people who owe his employer money and reduces their debts. He does this so that they will be hospitable to him after he loses his job. Verses 5 to 7, “So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’” Jesus’ original version of the parable ends here in verse 7. The rest of today’s reading is what Luke, the author and the evangelist of the Gospel of Luke added to Jesus’ original parable.
To our surprise, the employer, the rich man, commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. Why is he commended? And, why does Luke include this story in his Gospel? Verse 8, “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”
Helpful hint: the rich man and the dishonest manager do not represent God or Jesus. They represent “the children of this age” who are more shrewd than the “children of light”. We, the followers of Jesus, are called to be the children of light in the world, yet, as one commentator said, Christians often have a reputation for being “naive”. I still remember a Korean short novel by a highly loved poet lovingly describing church people going out of the building and chatting in the sunny Sunday morning, “pigeons” or doves of the church, happy and smiling. But Jesus, in today’s reading, says, “be shrewd.” Is there something that the children of light can learn from the “children of this age”? What does Jesus mean when he says ‘Shrewd’, and what lesson are we supposed to take from his words?
Before answering this question, let’s check how this dishonest manager was shrewd. Being dishonest and being shrewd are two different things in this story. This manager is called “dishonest” just because in the first verse we hear that he was accused of and charged with squandering the rich man/the master’s property and wasting his goods. The manager was dishonest with his employer, and it is most likely that the peasants/debtors charged him for his lack of integrity.
Charging interest on loans was forbidden in the Bible because it exploited the vulnerable poor. We pray in the Lord’s Prayer, “Forgive us our debts.” Seeing that the dishonest manager reduces poor people’s debts by 20 % - 50 %, reducing their debts to what was probably the original amount borrowed, without hidden interest charges, indicates that he had been collecting the debts unjustly, hiding the inflated fees from the master’s knowledge, and diverting the interest to his own account. He’s not only dishonest but fraudulent, truly one of the children of “this age”, not the light, Like Zacchaeus, the tax collector. After Zacchaeus met Jesus on the sycamore tree, he restored what he had “defrauded” four-fold, and himself was restored to community and “saved.” In Jesus’ day, wealthy landlords created “ways to charge interest under other guises.” The hidden interest rates appear to have been about 25 percent for money and 50 percent for goods. The manipulative steward was probably extracting his own cut of the profits, on top of the 50 % layer for the landlord, and the additional payment for Rome. He keeps two sets of books, it seems.
Now, in today’s story, the dishonest manager wants peace. He wants to save himself from the bad situation that he has created. He would be removed from his present position soon. Therefore, he finds a solution: He calls all debtors who owe to his master. He does not cut the profits for his own wealth; he forgives the debt that he would otherwise originally charge for his master (25 % - 50 %). Then, the exact amount of what the peasants borrowed will be added to the master’s account/storage without extra, hidden interest (without exploitation). As a result, the master commends his manager… not because the manager faked compassion. But because he was shrewd. But because of his shrewd act to save his life, which is, in verse 9, “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into their eternal homes.” Now everyone is happy. The master gets back what he has lended; The peasants are relieved to pay; The community revives. The manager saves his position.
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| Great Catch of Fish, John August Swanson |
What’s shrewd here? Calculating to insure one’s own self-interest is preserved. The dishonest manager has always been shrewd. At first, to his own master by being dishonest, then in order to get out of a bad situation. (He doesn’t want to live his life digging or begging after losing his job. He must be restored and accepted to the community.) He’s always been shrewd. He represents the shrewd children of “this age”, not the children of the light. Now, the shock point of this story, this parable, the first audience of Jesus’s day had to hear is that the manager’s act to save himself from the bad situation, acting shrewdly, is what the children of light must emulate. The bad guy demonstrated a good example! What is that? Make friends! Make friends by means of dishonest wealth. Koreans have the saying, “No job is nobler or meaner than others.” That means, we work hard, and the money we earn from honest, hard work is all equal and must be respected. But the reality is, especially in our era of neo-liberal, global, transnational economics rooted in the soil of capitalism, the rich become richer and the poor become poorer. Money makes the rules, in the unleveled playing field. We see the accumulation of dishonest wealth. Dishonest, not because the people who acquire the wealth cheat the rules (some do) but because the nature of capital itself is to replicate its wealth, double and triple it, and by its nature, it works to exploit or manipulate the poor. Wealth is dishonest in its nature, regardless of whether the individual who has it has a good character and intentions, because this society is shrewd, capitalism is shrewd, the world where we live our lives is shrewd. The biblical perspective on wealth is that it can’t be honest.
The shrewd manager decides to continue to protect his own best interest, and that is, in this case, acceptance, belonging, and community. He nullifies all debts that have been heavily charged upon the poor people’s breaking backs and he lifts them up. To make friends! He is a Zacchaeus. His heart is still shrewd and his heart has not been changed an inch from his dishonest nature, but his act (making friends) is what the followers of Jesus should emulate, and that is summed up at the end of today’s reading: “You cannot serve both God and wealth (mammon).” That’s the bottom line, and the last line of our text. We can be shrewd, making friends by means of dishonest wealth, only when we are dispossessed by our possessions. (For this dishonest manager, possession is no longer the goal at least for now, but community, belonging, the neighbourly acceptance.) We have to have the spirit of liberty and freedom from obsession with wealth. We are not asked the question “Do you have wealth?” but “How will you use the wealth you have?” and “How do you seek the ways to find true riches?” (which can only be found in that place “Where no thief can draw near and no moth destroys” and in lasting friendships.) Our self-interest lies in finding the true riches. Our Gospel does not tell us to become the victim of merciless capitalism, the victim of the unjust stewards and managers of the world. Instead, Jesus tells us to be shrewd to act out neighbourly and Godly love. Be shrewd with money; be shrewd by means of unjust wealth, the rich man’s wealth, to reverse the existing order of things. In Luke, reversals of status are at the heart of what happens when Jesus and the Kingdom of God appear. The proud are scattered; the powerful are brought down, and the lowly lifted.
All in all, today’s Gospel teaches us two lessons. First, a practical one: Following Jesus, how will you practice neighbourly love in economic relationships, in the midst of unjust structures: forgiving debts and giving people new hope? The second lesson is even more important, the spiritual one. The bottom line for the children of light: the last verse. “No slave can serve two masters. You cannot serve God and wealth.” Just to be shrewd, forgiving debts and giving people new hope, we have to be free from Mammon’s power that the world worships.
And, … As Bob Dylan sings, we just “gotta serve somebody”. Amen.
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