Sermon for Sunday, July 29, 2007

THE DISHONEST MANAGER

7^th in a series on Tell Me A Story: The Subversive Parables of Jesus

by

Rev. Dr. Harvey C. Martz

Scripture: Luke 16:1-9 from the New Jerusalem Bible

 ¹⁶He also said to his disciples, 'There was a rich man and he had a steward who was denounced to him for being wasteful with his property. ²He called for the man and said, "What is this I hear about you? Draw me up an account of your stewardship because you are not to be my steward any longer." ³Then the steward said to himself, "Now that my master is taking the stewardship from me, what am I to do? Dig? I am not strong enough. Go begging? I should be too ashamed. ⁴Ah, I know what I will do to make sure that when I am dismissed from office there will be some to welcome me into their homes." ⁵'Then he called his master's debtors one by one. To the first he said, "How much do you owe my master?" ⁶"One hundred measures of oil," he said. The steward said, "Here, take your bond; sit down and quickly write fifty." ⁷To another he said, "And you, sir, how much do you owe?" "One hundred measures of wheat," he said. The steward said, "Here, take your bond and write eighty." ⁸'The master praised the dishonest steward for his astuteness. For the children of this world are more astute in dealing with their own kind than are the children of light.'  ⁹'And so I tell you this: use money, tainted as it is, to win you friends, and thus make sure that when it fails you, they will welcome you into eternal dwellings.

The story we heard from Luke’s gospel is probably the most difficult and troubling of all the 35 parables that Jesus tells. It sounds at first so UNLIKE Jesus!

Jesus tells us at the start that the manager is about to be fired for being irresponsible. The man thinks about his future and decides to defraud his boss by changing the amounts owed by creditors or tenant farmers. And when the owner hears of what he has done, he commends the dishonest man for his shrewdness or his astuteness!!

What kind of story is this? We have said all along that the parables have an ingredient of surprise or shock in them, but this one takes the cake!

Let’s move back from it for a moment and talk about ethics—ethics in sports, in business, in government. We are not in a healthy place ethically as we consider this story. We have many bad ethical examples of people breaking rules, breaking laws, doing anything to win.

For example, the MLB commissioner just decided that he would be present at the games where Barry Bonds has a chance to break Hank Aaron’s home rune record. He had not said whether he would or not because of the ongoing controversy about whether Bonds has been able to accomplish his home run record through use of drugs. 

Speaking of course of drugs, we know that the leader in the Tour De France was fired this week by his teammates because illegal drugs were detected in his drug test.

We read a few days ago about the basketball referee who is being accused of betting on games where he could have determined the outcome through his foul calling. We saw the football star Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick being accused of involvement in illegal dog fighting.

We have seen in the past few days accusations from US Senators and the head of the FBI that the attorney general of the US has not been telling the truth in his testimony before congress. You can name many other examples.

There are controversies about right and wrong, ethical controversies all around us, and we could take much more time to name persons whose only ethical rule is to do whatever will win—win at any cost—or whose moral law is whatever benefits them no matter whether it right or wrong, or people who think scruples is Russian money.

In the midst of this ethical stew there are two discussions that we are having as people of faith. One is about the insights and learnings in the new Harry Potter book where the ethic of sacrifice and selflessness is very prominent—a deeply Christian value and ethic, of course (Join us for tomorrow night’s discussion!).

The second discussion is from the parable series the past weeks and from today’s story. The former parables have included a story of risk and selflessness in the story of the Samaritan man who took the risk of stopping and adding a wounded traveler who was an enemy. Part of the risk he took was that in stopping to assist the bloody man, someone could have come along who saw the scene and could accuse the Samaritan of causing the wounds. It would have been a plausible story and the Samaritan acted with risk and with some sacrifice to himself. 

The story for today, however, seems to be a real puzzle from Jesus who exemplified unselfish behavior and acting honestly instead of fraudulently.

Let’s start by looking at what a steward or manager does. In a large household in Jesus’ time, the steward was charged with overseeing the land, the other servants. He had power to hire, to buy and sell for the owner. If there were tenants working the fields, he determined their share of the crop and the amount they would pay.

In the Old Testament there is a very famous story about a steward who did this in Egypt whose name was Joseph. He was a steward for Potiphar who was an assistant to the pharaoh. Potiphar put Joseph in charge of all his household and his property, and Joseph caused Potiphar to prosper. He earned Potiphar’s complete trust and felt quite loyal to his boss—in contrast to the steward in Jesus’ story. But Potiphar’s wife got Joseph into trouble when she tried to seduce him. Joseph was an ethical person and refused her offer to come to bed with her, so she falsely accused him.  He was jailed and in jail he met some other employees of the Pharoah there, interpreted their dreams, and through them got to know the pharaoh and became the pharaoh’s most trusted counselor.

That is just a part of the Joseph story, the longest story in the book of Genesis. The point is that Joseph was a good and faithful steward, and his sense of loyalty and ethical responsibility was very different from the dishonest steward in Jesus’ story.

In the parable, did you hear why the man is being fired? He has squandered his boss’s resources. He has been wasteful, careless, irresponsible, in overseeing what he is entrusted with.

Have you ever squandered resources—been careless in managing, in stewardship? I have and most of us have at one time or another. We have squandered time. We have squandered money. We have been careless with our health.

Probably the area of money is the one we all have made some careless mistakes with—acquiring things we really don’t need, going into debt. Our church will provide a resource for all of us in the next few months to help us be better managers of our resources in a ten week class in management that helps people get out of debt and feel better as stewards of what we have. We will tell you more about that soon. 

The steward is being fired because he has wasted, has mismanaged, has squandered or thrown away what he was supposed to be careful with. The Greek word is an interesting word and Jesus uses the same word in the chapter of Luke right before this story. That chapter is Luke 15 which is one of the most important chapters in the entire Bible. It contains one of the two parables that, if we only had them, we would know what we need to know about how to relate to God and to each other. Luke 15 contains the story of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son.

When the younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance and takes the large amount of money and goes to a far country, what does he do with it? It is the same Greek word—he wastes it, he squanders it. He throws it away. And he winds up hungry and penniless.

The steward for today is being fired for wasting, mismanaging money and property. But he hopes not to wind up poor and penniless. He makes a plan. He knows he cannot dig ditches and he does not want to beg. So he makes a plan. What is it?

He will tell each of the persons who owes his boss money to lower their bill so that they might feel indebted to him or favorable disposed to him when he is out on the street. He commits fraud-or technically he allows them to commit fraud by changing their bill.

Jesus tells this story and, strange to say, he seems to commend the steward for—what? Did you hear? For his shrewdness! It is a word that may have bad connotations for us. It also means his astuteness. His wisdom, his forethought, his planning ahead.

The steward is crafty and wise. He is almost a trickster. Do you know about the image in literature of being a trickster? Do you recall any tricksters, crafty heroes in the Bible? The most famous trickster is the father of the Hebrew people—not Abraham but Abraham’s grandson Jacob. Jacob is named, along with Abraham as the father of Israel. In fact, Jacob is given the very name of Israel after he wrestles all night with God and he gets a new name, Israel, which means one who strives with God.

Jacob is in that wrestling match on his way back to Canaan in flight from his father-in-law who is trying to kill him. He is going back to meet his estranged brother who also, when he last saw Jacob, vowed to kill his twin for stealing his birthright. It is another of the fascinating stories in Genesis, of course. 

Jacob is a sly, crafty, trickster like the dishonest steward in the story. 

Let us be clear again. Jesus is not encouraging us, through this story, to commit fraud. What he is praising is the shrewdness, the prudence, the planning ahead of the steward. Here is a way to say it. The steward saw an impending crisis, he formed a plan, and he acted. I think that is one takeaway for a difficult story.

The life he knew was about to be shattered. He could either do nothing, be a victim, feel sorry for himself, or he could form a plan and act on it. He made the plan and acted.

Two possible insights: Jesus is telling this to people who had, like us, been listening to him teach for a long time. Perhaps they were still just listening, just thinking about all this, but still had not decided to follow him. They were still spectators. They were still on the fence. They had seen him attract other people; they had seen him heal people and set people free from the demons that can plague every one of us. But they had not yet decided to follow him. 

Many folks are like that today—admirers of Jesus but not yet followers. Remember Flip Wilson’s statement about his religion? He said he was a Jehovah’s bystander because he didn’t want to get involved enough to be a witness.

Perhaps Jesus is saying in the story that there is a time of crisis or challenge coming for all of us—a change in life as we know it, and it is time to DECIDE and act wisely and prudently and make a plan so that we are well grounded in God when the crisis arrives.

He was right—if that was his point. There will be a crisis time for each of us, a time of danger and opportunity. What will it be? Job change, illness, loss of a loved one, divorce, How are we preparing for it now? How wise, how prudent, how astute are we in being sure that our faith is not just in ourselves but in the One power bigger than ourselves that sees us through—the shepherd who is with us in all the good times and in the dark times of life?

We were looking at Buddhism last Tuesday in the world religions class and talking about the experiences in the life of the Buddha that caused him to leave a life of wealth and comfort and become a spiritual example. That change came because he traveled around and saw people who were very ill and who were dying and he became aware of the first time of his own mortality.

And we asked the people in the class when they became aware of their own mortality. How has that happened for you? One person said that illness has a way of helping us focus our lives very sharply. When we hear a difficult diagnosis in our life or the life of a loved one, we change our priorities, don’t we? And some things that seemed really important no longer seem important. And we, like the man in the story, begin, if we are wise, to make some different plans.

We face the crisis and decide on a better path.

Jesus tells us in this story—face the crisis, make your plans, be wise and prudent and astute and shrewd about it—be at least as wise as the people of darkness. We do not have all the time in the world. The time of decision is coming. Where do you and I need to put that advice into practice?

And one more question: the story reminds us that you and I are stewards as well. God has put us in charge of some resources—really an amazing amount of resources over the span of our lifetimes. God asks us to be faithful and responsible with that wealth and to use it not just selfishly but to make a difference for others also. How are we doing at that? How will we feel about answering the question asked of us at the end of our lives: Well, what did you do with what I gave you to manage? How well did you use it and share it? We can think about that answer and if we don’t feel good about how we might answer that right this moment, there is always the chance to change and do better! Amen.

Discussion Questions

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