Lloyd J. Ogilvie said, “There is no
parable with as many enticing dead-end possibilities as this one.”[1]
I have never preached on this parable. I may wish I had not after today. You
may wish I had not tried my hand at it. However, maybe we can unpack this
parable, and discover some challenges for us today.
Jesus knows how shrewd human beings
can be. Some people learn how to get ahead in this world. Some people learn how
to turn the things of this world to their advantage.
"Make
friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon" - that is, make
friends for yourselves with your money, or your shrewdness, or your ability to
get along in the world - "so that when it fails they may receive you
into the eternal habitations"...And you see, that is just the point -
that none of the things that we are good at doing, put us right with God or win
for us his abundant and eternal life. We are very shrewd and able people, but
we are not shrewd enough to realize that is not all there is to human life.
This story
is more about heavenly riches than it is about earthly wealth. Its focus is on
preparing for the next world, not getting ahead in this one.
From the
start of the story, we know that the dishonest manager is a card-carrying
member of the scheming, shrewd part of culture
— he is charged with squandering
the property of his rich boss, and is immediately given his two-weeks’ notice.
“You’re fired!” he bellows, sounding like a first-century Donald Trump.
“What will
I do,” the shady steward says to himself, “now that my master is taking the
position away from me?” (v. 3). He knows that he is not strong enough for
manual labor, and he is ashamed to sit in the street with a beggar’s cup.
Therefore,
he comes up with a plan. In order to guarantee that he will have a safe place
to land in the homes of his former clients, he summons the master’s debtors and
gives them some wonderfully deep discounts. To the one who owes 100 jugs of
olive oil, the manager says that the debt is now just 50. To the one who is in
debt for 100 containers of wheat, the manager announces, “You’re in luck — your
bill is now 80!”
This sounds
slippery, does it not? On the surface, it appears to be unethical, and maybe
even criminal. Unfortunately, biblical scholars are unclear about the precise
nature of these transactions, and so they suggest a couple of possibilities.
According
to the first option, the manager is a crook, plain and simple, a man who
dishonestly falsifies the records in order to gain the affection of the
debtors. In this case, he is cheating his master by reducing the size of the
debts, and he is running the risk of being thrown in the slammer for stealing.
The problem
with this interpretation is that it makes the master’s reaction sound rather
odd. The parable tells us that the rich man commends — yes,
commends — the dishonest manager because he has acted
shrewdly, but this is an unlikely response from a rich man who has just lost 50
jugs of olive oil and 20 containers of wheat. While we might not expect the
rich man to press charges, we certainly do not expect him to offer a
commendation.
There is a
second option, one that sees the manager as a shrewd executive, one who is
willing to sacrifice short-term earnings for long-term security. In this
interpretation, the manager simply cuts his own commission out of the amount
that the debtors owe. The 100 jugs of olive oil can be broken down into 50 for
the master, and 50 for the manager, and in the same way, the 100 containers of
wheat can be itemized as 80 for the master and 20 for the manager. When the
manager calls the debtors to settle their accounts, he simply eliminates his
own commission, knowing that he will benefit in the long term from having a
place to stay once he is out of work.
In this
case, he is not a liar. He is simply taking the long view.
This second
interpretation helps us to make sense of the master’s reaction. Here the rich
man commends the manager for acting shrewdly, because he knows that there are
times in which it is beneficial to resist the lure of a quick buck and make a
long-term investment. On top of this, the rich man knows that he hasn’t lost
anything himself — he’ll still get the olive oil and the wheat
that the debtors owe him. What does he care if his former employee takes his
commissions with him or not?
The point
of the parable is this, according to Jesus: “No slave can serve two masters.” Jesus
here is talking about commitment. He is talking about a decision today, to turn
toward the kingdom of God, or to turn away. You cannot maintain a dual focus on
short-term profits and long-term security. You have to pick one or the other,
and give it your undivided attention. As is true in the story of the dishonest
manager, there are times in which we have to sacrifice the commissions of this
world so that we’ll have the eternal comforts of God’s world. Laying out our
choice in a crystal-clear contrast, Jesus concludes today’s passage by saying,
“You cannot serve God and wealth” (v. 13).
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