Year C
October 8, 2019
Luke 16:1-13
In the Gospel of Luke, Jesus talks about money often. We don’t get many of those texts in our lectionary. But we get this one today – a bizarre, and frankly confusing, parable, often called the parable of the dishonest manager. Matthew Skinner, a professor at Luther Seminary and commentator on the podcast Sermon Brainwave, says that he loves the parable, precisely because “no one understands it… That’s what makes it fun.” It is one of the most difficult parables to figure out, so it becomes a jigsaw puzzle in order to try to understand what Jesus is trying to tell us. To be clear, I like a good theological or scriptural puzzle. It is why I focused on Biblical studies in both undergrad and seminary. It is why I ask so many questions of texts. I’ve done a lot of that recently while wrestling with texts and in my preaching. I like taking apart texts and putting them back together. For me, that process is indeed fun. But this one, at least for me, is not as “fun.” Interpreting this text is hard. Really hard. Even among scholars there are dozens of theories and no clear answers. So if upon hearing the parable, you’re left scratching your head, know that you aren’t alone. It is a parable that, as a friend of mine has said, is a way of God reminding us to use our brains.
Part of the issue with interpreting this text is that, so often, we like to make parables into allegories. We want to assign different characters in the story to figures from our faith. A character in the story is “supposed” to represent God, another Jesus, and another us. It can work relatively well (and be a good and well-grounded interpretation) for some parables: the parable of the lost coin, for instance, allegorically speaking, the woman could represent God or Jesus and the lost coin could represent us. Last week, we imagined God as the woman who searches through dust bunnies and dress pockets to find what was lost. Great. A wonderful vision. In this text however, it isn’t that simple. Many interpretations, for instance, place Jesus as the dishonest manager; as Jesus is the one who forgives our debts and reconciles us to God (who in this case would be the master). But there are problems. Can you imagine Jesus, the one who went to the cross, saying that he isn’t “strong enough to dig”? And if Grace and reconciliation with God are free, why is the debt reduction only partial – just 20-50%? All of that to say, allegories are not the only (nor always the best) way of interpreting Jesus’ parables.
Jesus parables do however help us to enter in, to imagine the Kingdom of God that has broken into the world in Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection – a kingdom that continues to break into this world. They help us reimagine this world as it is becoming this world that God intended for us. I wonder, if to help us get there, Jesus tells a story that helps us see the breaking in of the Kingdom of God – by saying something about this world as it is. I wonder if this parable points us to one example – an imperfect example – of the liberation that is breaking into the world through Jesus.
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| Louis Le Breton [Public domain] https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Mammon.jpg |
I’m going to start at the end of the passage. We’ll start where it is actually clear, to hopefully clarify
other pieces of the parable. Here’s the punchline. “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” (Luke 6:13, NRSV). The word used in today’s passage isn’t “wealth” it is Mammon. Usually, I’m a fan of the NRSV (which is the bible translation we use in worship). But those of you who know older translations of the Bible may remember this final verse differently, “No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and Mammon” (Luke 16:13). Mammon is wealth or money personified. It is money as an idol, an object of our worship. It is money plus power – the power that money can hold over us.
Martin Luther, in the Large Catechism, has this to say about Mammon: “There are some who think that they have God and everything they need when they have money and property; they trust in them and boast in them so stubbornly and securely that they care for no one else. They, too, have a god — mammon by name, that is, money and property — on which they set their whole heart. This is the most common idol on earth. Those who have money and property feel secure, happy, and fearless, as if they were sitting in the midst of paradise.” Then, there are some, Luther continues, “who have nothing [that] doubt and despair as if they knew of no god at all. We will find very few who are cheerful, who do not fret and complain, if they do not have mammon. This desire for wealth clings and sticks to our nature all the way to the grave.” Mammon, Luther argues, is a god that holds power over us – a false god, but a god nonetheless. Wealth, Mammon, is something we – as human beings – put our trust in – often above putting trust in God. If we have enough money, we have security. Then, the tendency is to hoard that which creates security for ourselves; we like to feel safe. And we can convince ourselves that we do it on our own. We don’t need God. We don’t need others. We buy into the myth that we are “self-made” people. Therefore, we cannot serve God and mammon. Mammon turns us inward. God turns us outward.[1]
This year, as I’m wrestling with this passage, I’m wondering if the dishonest manager falls into the trap of trusting (or hoping in) mammon over other things. The manager is working in an unjust system. While charging interest is technically prohibited by Jewish law, the rich often found ways around that particular law by charging various fees or hidden interest charges. In other words, the rich got rich by cheating those who were beneath them - the poor and the less powerful. While technically their actions were legal, their wealth was built on the backs of those beneath them. They put so much trust or love in money that they care for no one else. They’re self-made people, after all. They rest secure in their wealth. The source of the unfaithfulness of both the manager and his master is their greed, their love of money. They cannot be faithful to God nor to neighbor as long as they put their love and trust in money. Their actions, while legal, cause great harm to those indebted to them. As with so much in our world, legal doesn’t make it right.
The manager, upon finding himself soon without a job, suddenly will be without the *things* that provide for his security – his wages and a roof over his head. So then, he frees some people from a significant portion of their debt in order to have some people on “his side.” He does a good thing for the wrong reasons. You might be thinking, “Good? He is hurting his master; he is chipping into his profits.” But we need to remember the good news that the Gospel of Luke proclaims. Luke frames the work of Jesus as liberation and the work of the Kingdom of God as turning the world upside down (pulling the lowly up and bringing the mighty down). Forgiving of debts is exactly the kind of work that Jesus would call “good” – even if it comes at the expense of the powerful. The manager does this for the wrong reasons: his own security. He’s desperate. On the verge of losing everything, he needs a plan B. So he turns outward to save himself. His love of money (and fear of losing his place, his privilege, his status) keeps him from genuine relationship with the neighbor – both in his job and as he is losing his job. I don’t think that we’re supposed to read this story and come out thinking that the manager is a “good guy.” Yet at the end of the day, while the manager isn’t interested in justice, the poor find *some* liberation through the actions of the manager. They are relieved (of at least some) of their debt.
Here’s where I think we hit on one (of many) possible points in this text: if a dishonest manager can do a good thing for the wrong reasons, how much more can a person of faith do of a good thing for the right reasons? Or even more, if a dishonest manager can do a good thing for the wrong reasons, how much more can our God, the one who is truly faithful, do good things for the right reasons?
We too live in an unjust economic system. Too often we, as a society, put trust in money to the point where we neglect to think about others. The master and the manager aren’t evil people; they’re part of a larger system built on the accumulation of wealth. It is a system that worships Mammon. Today, the richest 1% of the world owns half of the world’s wealth, and they are on target to own 2/3rds of the world’s wealth in the next ten years. Specifically, in the US, the top .1% of American households hold the same amount of wealth as the bottom 90%. 44 million Americans struggle under the weight of student debt under a system in which the cost of college education has risen 200% (even accounting for inflation) since 1980. About 40 million Americans live beneath the poverty line. Our faith calls us to examine not just our lives and our individual actions but to examine the society in which we live. If we’re proclaiming that Jesus is bringing about the Kingdom of God in this world, turning it upside down, we need to look at the world as it is, we need to see the injustice, we need to see what needs to be turned upside down. Our gospel text invites us into looking at the world as it is for what it is. If the Kingdom of God, as the Magnificat states, brings down the powerful and lifts up the lowly, we need to see what, in this world as it is, props up the powerful and holds down the lowly. Money and economics are a big part of that. What drives this world in which we live? Who is it built for? Who is it built on or at the expense of? Who thrives (and why)? Who struggles (and why)?
If a dishonest manager can do a good thing for the wrong reasons, what is the response of a God who is faithful? We have a liberating God that seeks to free people from that which holds them down. God takes our debts – whether financial, moral, or otherwise – and forgives them – not by 20% or 50% but in their entirety. How much more does a faithful God do than a dishonest manager? A God that is strong enough to die on the cross; A God that is willing to do anything – search through dust bunnies, wander the wilderness, even beg – to bring God’s people into relationship with Godself. If a dishonest manager can do a good thing for the wrong reason, what is the response of a person of faith – one who has already received that forgiveness from God – to the injustices of the world as it is? If our God is the God made known in Jesus, not Mammon, how much more can we do? Because our debts are forgiven, we get to free others from their debts. Putting our trust in the faithful God, serving that God, we get to practice forgiveness – moral, financial, and otherwise – and we get to work for the release of others from their debts. Liberation in this world is not just possible, but the call of those who have been entrusted with true riches – the love and grace of God through Christ. And in that, we get to see glimpses of the Kingdom of God in this world here and now.Amen.
[1] Robert
Kolb and Timothy J. Wengert, eds., The Book of Concord: The Confessions of
the Evangelical Lutheran Church, Accordance electronic ed. (Minneapolis:
Fortress Press, 2000), 387.
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