Luke 16. 1-13 The Shrewd Manager Apparently St Augustine said of the parable of the shrewd manager, I can t believe this story came from the lips of our Lord. 1600 years later and we still don t like this story! A friend of mine once preached a sermon series on peculiar stories in the Bible. It wouldn t surprise me if this parable was in the series. Really, how many stories in the Bible have the bad guy as the hero, let alone commend him for his wrong-doing? Over the years, there have been many attempts to soften the hard edges of this parable, to explain away aspects that rub us the wrong way. In the passage we read, there are at least four interpretations of the meaning of Jesus parable. This story is problematic. There are three parts to the reading: the parable itself; Jesus comments on the parable; and assorted sayings that focus on trustworthiness; possessions and money. I d like to leave the collected sayings for another day and focus on the parable and Jesus comments on the parable. Jesus tells his disciples a very disturbing story. A rich man heard that his manager was stealing from the company. So he calls him in and says, Show me the books! And the manager responds, The books? Sure. Master, just allow me a few... notations. I m too proud to beg and too lazy to do any honest labour, he says to himself. So the swindle begins. The manager calls in some of his master s customers. How much do you owe my master? Nine hundred? Let me cut that in half. How do you like them numbers? To another: A thousand! Well look at this. It appears that, thanks to my efforts, you owe only eight hundred! Huge sums are written off so that, when the master sacks this crook, he can go to these debtors and say, Hey! Remember me? The guy that helped you cheat my former boss? I ve lost my job. I scratched your back. Now you scratch mine. The next day the boss calls him in and says, Okay, show me the books! The manager presents the ledger. You can see where he s scratched through, erased, rewritten, and thoroughly cooked the books. It s outrageous. And the master says, Wow! You are one shrewd operator! Well done! This is a terrible story! The hero is dishonest. It s a parable and our understanding of how to interpret parables has changed over the years. In the early church, they were read as allegories, each character in the story representing 1
someone in real life. The Sower is a good example of this. Later scholars said that we should treat the parables as if they each have one single point, one message. Recent parable interpretation has stressed, on the other hand, that parables are narratives, and as with any story there are layers of meaning. Parables are capable of saying a number of things at once. Another characteristic of parables is that they always contain a twist, something that shocks. You don t quietly nod in agreement when you hear a parable. At one point or another, you have to sit up and say, What?! I can t believe it! Who could believe that a shepherd would leave 99 sheep to track down one lost sheep? Really, would you risk losing your whole flock for the sake of just one sheep? It doesn t make sense. When that twist in the story happens, it forces us to see familiar things in a different way or to see things we had never grasped before. Jesus tells us a disturbing story that percolates in our minds and our hearts. It is perhaps easier to understand the parable of the shrewd manager when we read it in its context. The story immediately before this one is the parable of the prodigal son. It s somewhat of a surprise to realize just how many parallels there are between these two stories. To remind you, in the parable of the prodigal son, the younger son asks his father for his share of the inheritance. This is treating his dad as if he had already died. He takes off and squanders his money on wine, women and song. Finally he is so broke, he gets a job feeding pigs. Imagine that, a Jew feeding pigs. He decides to go home and on the way, he rehearses what he s going to say to his father, I m sorry Dad, I don t deserve anything. Please let me work on the farm. But as this prodigal son approaches the family farm, his father sees him from a distance and he runs to embrace him. Just picture that for a moment: the patriarch of the family running down the driveway. No dignity. No respect. Nothing but joy. He throws a party for his son, once lost now found, once dead now alive. The story doesn t end there of course. The elder brother skulks around outside. He wants nothing to do with his brother and nothing to do with the party. I have worked for you all my life, he complains, and you have never thrown a party for me. Both the prodigal son and the shrewd manager fall from grace. They are people in positions of authority who prove untrustworthy. The boy squanders his inheritance. The manager squanders his master s possessions (It is actually the very same word). Both are received back without any punishment. The father embraces his son; the master commends the manager. 2
The main difference between the two stories is that the prodigal son tries to repent while the manager expresses no regret whatsoever. I don t know about you but when I read the parable of the shrewd manager, I feel like the elder brother. Sometimes we like stories about people who cheat. I smile when I watch the movie, The Sting. But no one is smiling by the end of this story. That manager cheated his master twice. I listen through all those sordid details and think he s going to get what he deserves but he does not. This past week, the Thursday Bible Study started Philip Yancey s What s so amazing about grace? We defined grace as unmerited favour and that s what both the prodigal son and the shrewd manager receive: unmerited favour. At its most basic level, the parable of the shrewd manager is about grace. Most of us here grew up in the church. We do not remember a time when we did not love the Lord and try to live as God s people. For most of us, the parable of the shrewd manager is offensive. We are the elder brother. But for those of you who can remember a time before you knew Christ, who know the Christian faith to be a rescue from where you were trapped, those for whom the outrageous grace of God is still fresh in your minds, then this story is a powerful word of hope and comfort. God loves sinners. There is absolutely nothing that we can do that God is not willing to forgive. It s a story of grace, God s amazing grace. Jesus words after he tells the parable peel back another layer of meaning. This is what he says, For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. 9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. If we found it hard to hear the master commend the dishonest manager, how much worse to hear Jesus commending him as well? It would be great if we could have been there with Jesus. Maybe his face or his intonation would help us understand what he was saying. What I am sure of, is that Jesus is not encouraging us to cheat our bosses or to be lying or conniving people. 3
When you read the parables there are usually one of two ending. Either you go and do likewise, as in the parable of the Good Samaritan or the parable argues from lesser to greater: if this is so, then how much more The parable of the shrewd manager is one of the from lesser to greater parables. That is to say, if this self-serving and dishonest man is able to act with decision and commitment in order to save his own skin, how much more will the people of the light act with decision and commitment as they live in the kingdom of God. When it comes to the gospel, God calls us to be shrewd, enthusiastic and committed witnesses to God s grace. One of the initiatives of St Andrew s Hall is the Centre for Missional Leadership. Our session is participating in one of their programmes: Missional Experiments for Congregations. They are helping the congregations of our Presbytery discern how we can engage in mission in our local community. This sense of being sent by God to the world is something that for the most part the church has lost. We lost it centuries ago. Once Christianity became a state religion in 325, whole countries became Christian simply by government decision. And if the whole culture is Christian, then there is no need for evangelism, no need for mission, or for orienting ourselves to the world. Missions became something that we did over there, in other countries. Instead of reaching out with the gospel here, churches began to simply maintain the status quo. Those days are gone. Christendom is gone. God s mission field is right outside our door. Church planter and church growth consultant Paul Borden says that all of us, in the new post- Christendom culture that is North America, ought to see ourselves as missionaries in the culture that we thought we owned. We are now sent not out to some overseas culture but rather to our own society that has become one of the most fertile and most challenging mission fields. This means that churches need to recover skills and attitudes that we have lost. Paul Borden contrasts a maintenance congregation with a mission congregation: When faced with the need for change, the maintenance congregation says, If this upsets many of our members, we won t do it. The mission congregation says, If this will help us reach someone outside our congregation, let s take the risk! When contemplating congregational innovation, the maintenance congregation wonders, How will this change affect me and my family? The mission-oriented congregation asks, Will this change be well received by someone outside my family? 4
The maintenance congregation says, The main thing is to be faithful to our past. The mission congregation says, The main thing is to be faithful to God s promised future. The pastor of a maintenance congregation says to a newcomer, Let me introduce you to some of our members you will like. The mission pastor says to prospective and new members, Here s how you can help us be a more faithful congregation and how we can help you be more faithful to your vocation. The maintenance congregation asks, How can we get these people to support our church? The mission congregation asks, What can we do to support these people? This is a big shift in the way we generally think about the church. St Andrew s Hall is helping us to discern what we can do to share the grace of God here and now. We are forming a team to do research, to pray and plan and on Feb 4 we will pitch our plan for mission to the St Andrew s Hall Dragon s Den. Today, perhaps more than ever, we need to recover the shrewdness of that manager. God calls us to look at our world and act with vigor, commitment and enthusiasm to proclaim the good news of Jesus Christ in our time and day. In commending the shrewd manager, Jesus is not condoning stealing. Stealing is wrong! God still calls us to godly living, to honesty and respect for all people, respect for all life. How we live matters. And yet, through this peculiar parable of the shrewd manager, we who know the grace of God, who walk in the light, are called to declare that grace with all the creativity, ingenuity and commitment that we can muster. We must be no less resourceful than that manager. We have hope in God s justice, faith in God s peace and trust in God s grace. We must use all this so that it may be said of us, And the master commended them because they acted so shrewdly. Let us pray, Gracious God, Fill us with passion for you and your gospel. Open our eyes to new ways to share the good news and give us the courage and conviction to trust your leading. In the name of Jesus Christ we pray. Amen. 5