Who's Dishonest Now? Sermon, 20th Sunday of Ordinary Time

Luke 16:1-13

So, what do we make of this strange parable? Even the most learned scholars have struggled to interpret Jesus's meaning, and some have just thrown up their hands. Take Jesus's statement, "And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly." Even John Calvin could say of this passage only that, " it is obvious that if we were to find a meaning in every minute circumstance, we would act absurdly." So, are we to just dismiss one of Jesus's sayings and move on?

As strange as this parable of the unrighteous, or dishonest manager sounds to us today; hopefully you will see that Jesus' Good News is not some pie in the sky far above our everyday struggle to do the right thing amid those who look out for themselves and no other. Jesus knows that we live in a broken world, surrounded by those who would cheat us in the blink of an eye if they thought they could get away with it. He understands the compromises we make every day when it come to the managing and sharing of our scarce resources. Jesus does not condemn us for doing the best we can. He only asks that we not choose our friends solely on the basis of what they can do for us.

The story he tells today is one with which His disciples could easily identify. And so can we. "There was a rich man who had an overseer." An overseer was charged with managing the property for a possibly absent landlord. He would rent parcels of the land to sharecroppers, then take a percentage of the value of their crops as a commission. With the rich man absent, the overseer had a great deal of power. But he didn't have security, because the land wasn't his. Managers in this position were caught between rich landlords who wanted more profits for themselves, and laborers who wanted more wages for themselves.

"And charges were brought to him that this overseer was squandering his property." Hmm, who brought the charges: laborers who thought he was claiming too much of his commission? Tenets who thought the overseer was overcharging their rent? And does Jesus say that the charges are true? Maybe the overseer had gotten greedy with his commissions. Or maybe the workers got greedy for more of their fair share. So said the rich man, "What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your work, for you cannot be my overseer any longer." Whatever the truth or falsity of the charges, the rich man chooses to accept them.

And now our hero has a big problem. "I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg." He's not a laborer, he's a numbers guy. "But I know what to do so that, when I am dismissed as overseer, people may welcome me into their homes." Living in a world ruled by the law of, I scratch your back-you scratch mine, the overseer knows how to obligate others to himself.

"Then he [the manager] asked another, 'How much do you owe?' He replied, 'A hundred measures of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill and make it eighty.'" And the rich man, who left the managerial details to his manager, may sense that the bills are off, but he can't prove it. And besides, does he want to shake down the laborers whose favor he curried by firing the overseer? What else could he do but "commend the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly"?

"For the children of this age are more shrewd in their generation than are the children of light," Jesus said. We children of light must live among the dishonest that hide their true intentions. We bask in the early morning light today. Tomorrow we will get up and go back to meet those who try to be more shrewd than we are. How shrewd will we have to be to protect ourselves? The overseer may not have been dishonest at the beginning. But in order for he and his family to survive, he had to become "dishonest." But how virtuous was the rich man for just accepting the charges against the manager at face value? And how honest were the sharecroppers who defamed the overseer?

Jesus doesn't take sides in the story he tells. He doesn't try to tell us who is honest or dishonest. Maybe that's because He wants all of us to acknowledge our own dishonesty. Most important, Jesus doesn't want his disciples to get hung up on who is to blame. "Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth," Jesus teaches his disciples, "so that when you fail they may welcome you into an eternal home." Who are those friends? Surely it's not the dishonest who welcome us into the eternal homes. Is it those whose backs we scratched? Or will it be those to whom we give without any expectation of a Return On Investment? Who are your "friends" to whom you are called to give without the expectation of receiving anything in return?

At the end of this physical life, cliché though it is, it bears repeating here that you can't take it with you. We will all die poor. So, who will welcome you when you are poor?