Luke 16:1-14
September 21
David A. Davis
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“There was a rich man…” In the Gospel of Luke, when Jesus begins a parable, “There was a rich man…” one should quickly assume its going to be a tough one, Throughout Luke’s telling of the story of Jesus, the rich are challenged, condemned, indicted, and turned away. From the earliest verses, the song that comes from Mary’s lips when she was “with child”, that song about the Messiah: “He has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty.”
In the familiar blessings offered by Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount, you remember Matthew’s words, “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.” But in Luke, Jesus removes the spiritual comfort zone. “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.” Luke pairs that blessing with “Woe to you who are rich, for you have received your consolation.”
It is Luke who tells of the poor widow dropping two copper coins in the offering box, putting in “all the living that she had”. Plenty of others were putting their gifts into the alms box. But Jesus proclaims, “Truly I tell you, this poor widow has put in more than all of them.” Luke joins Matthew and Mark in telling the story of the rich young ruler who asks what he needs to do to inherit eternal life. “Only one thing you lack,” comes the response from Jesus, who praised the man’s piety. “Sell all that you own and distribute the money to the poor.” You know that the man turned away in despair. Matthew and Mark record that it was because the man had many possessions. Luke simply reports that he was very rich.
Jesus’ teaching about money, wealth, and possessions is clearer in the Gospel of Luke than in any of the other gospels. So when a parable that only appears in Luke begins with “There was a rich man….”, one should quickly assume it’s going to be a tough one. As you heard, as you read, the parable isn’t actually about a rich man at all. It is about the “dishonest manager”, referred to in older translations as “the unjust steward.” The character in the parable that Eugene Peterson labels in this paraphrase, “The Message”, is the crooked manager.
The crooked manager was charged with mishandling the rich man’s business affairs. “Turn in your accounts and your paperwork. I’m done with you.” The manager had one of those conversations we all have with ourselves. “I can’t dig. I am too ashamed to beg.” The light bulb goes off in his head and he comes up with a plan that he hopes if it won’t save his job, it will score him some points out in the community. In order to collect as much as he could quickly, in order to try to recoup something of the business loss incurred by the owner, in order to try to make some amends with the customers he had strong-armed for years, the manager went door to door, inviting people to pay up a reduced rate. He likely took off his commission and the extra he was trying scam week after week. “If you owe a hundred jugs of oil? Make it fifty. A hundred containers of wheat. Make it eighty. And so and so and such and such.
“And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” And the reader of Luke’s gospel throws up their hands at this point, wondering whether. to be more frustrated with Jesus or Luke. Fifteen chapters in and coming to the clear conclusion that the consistent word for the rich in the Gospel of Luke is one of warning and judgment. And this no good, loan-sharking, price fixing, money-loving, middle-level crooked bill collector receives a word of praise from the boss who just fired him! When Jesus begins a parable with “there was a rich man….”, one should quickly assume its going to be a tough one.
One scholarly approach to the parables is to ponder where the parable proper ends and the commentary of Jesus begins. Here in the case of the dishonest manager, some scholars argue that Jesus’ commentary, Jesus’ midrash (to use the ancient Hebrew term), begins at “And I tell you”. It is as if Jesus knows the disciples (and you and me) don’t get it. So he keeps going, maybe preaching a bit louder. It doesn’t get any easier, really. But by the time Jesus gets to “You cannot serve God and wealth”, you cannot serve God and mammon; Jesus does offer clarity. The reaction of the religious “lovers of money” is to scoff at Jesus and make fun of him.
In his recently published book, entitled Deadheads and Christians: They Will Know them By Their Love, Nassau Church’s own Tom Coogan describes a Grateful Dead concert as an existential experience. He argues that every Deadhead can describe a particular concert experience that was life-changing. They can tell the details, the set list, the names of fellow concert goers because of “how deeply they were affected.” Far less an experience of the head and far more an experience of the heart and soul.
It can and has been argued that it is similar to the parables of Jesus. Listening/reading the parables is less an experience of the head and far more an experience of the heart and soul. Parables do something to the listener. An existential experience. It is not about figuring them out, unlocking the moral lesson like a able. It is more about letting the words of Jesus wash over you. Allow the parable to speak into your life in the here and now. Pondering meaning less perhaps, and focusing more on your own response. The experience, the reaction of the religious lovers of money was far more than an intellectual response to Jesus’ words.
Every week I go back to the Excel spreadsheet that the staff has built for me over the years, which lists every sermon I preached from this pulpit, sorted by scripture text. I look at my old sermons on the text I am preaching. Unlike the Luke text a few weeks ago about hating your family for Jesus’ sake, which I have never preached (and more than one of you suggested maybe I should not preach it again!). I have preached this tough parable of the crooked manager many times. More than half a dozen. You won’t be surprised that all of them had a stewardship sort of theme. Money. Giving. The sinful scourge of poverty all around us. As I said, by the end of Jesus’ brief commentary on the parable, his seemingly intended takeaway is pretty clear. “You can’t serve God and mammon.”
In the here and now of my life, as the parable washed over me early each morning in my sermon preparation, my experience of it had little to nothing to do with money. My head is spinning these days just like yours. I have the same knots in my stomach as most of you. The heaviness of heart is very real. The good news of Jesus came to me in my heart and soul this week through the Word. The promise of the Gospel leapt off the scripture’s page with encouragement and inspiration. One does not often say that about a parable that begins with “There was a rich man….”.
Jesus said, “Whoever is faithful in little, is faithful in much.” I went back and reread an op-ed piece that Anne Lamott wrote last month after the horrifying shooting and murder at the Catholic school in Minneapolis. The essay is entitled “What I Told My Sunday School Children About Death”. In a way that only Anne Lamott can write, she didn’t mince words. “There should be one inviolable rule: Children are not shot or starved to death.” Later in the piece, she writes, “It is rough and harsh out there, and it seems, to my worried and paranoid self, worse by the day…We have to show up. We want to stay isolated from the suffering, but maybe the answer is to draw close.” Lamott goes to tell of her rabbi friend who, when she is discouraged and feeling hopeless, makes “matzo ball soup for the sick and lonely and friends; in my Presbyterian tradition,” she continues, “we tend toward casseroles. These offer consolation to the soul. There are always a lot of people who need them, like me.” Jesus said “Whoever is faithful in little, is faithful in much.”
We were having dinner this week at Conte’s Pizza. A family of four came in. The older son was on crutches with a brace on his knee covering pretty much his whole leg. As they came into the restaurant from the Witherspoon Street entrance, they weren’t sure where to go to get a table. I figured it was their first visit. While the injured young man looked 12 to me, he had a Princeton athletics T-shirt. The kind of athletes wear for practice. He was clearly distraught, sometimes holding his head in his hands. The young parents and their little brother are trying to offer comfort. They were all looking very sad. We didn’t speak to them, but in my mind, I picture him as a freshman soccer player at the university who just tore everything in his left knee. I noticed that their server is someone we have come to know over the years. Her son was one of the coaches when our son Ben played soccer for Princeton High School. It is less about what a parable means and more about a parable does to you. On the way out, with the server’s help, we bought dinner for a family whose lives were turned upside down this week, with a young kid whose hopes for this fall seemed crushed. Jesus said, “Whoever is faithful in little, is faithful in much.”
I don’t know if your life in here and now is feeling anything like mine these days, but maybe matzo ball soup, casseroles, and pizza can help. I am guessing that in another season, the parable of the crooked manager will come at me again with Jesus shouting about serving God and serving mammon. But for now, Jesus said, “Whoever is faithful in little, is faithful in much.” And just speaking for me, I experienced these words of Jesus this week as really, really good news. And I offer that for your courage and encouragement. The encouraging good news of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.