pentecost 17 year C
September 24, 2007
Jeremiah 8: 18-9:1 NRSV text
Amos 8: 4-7 NRSV text
Psalm 79: 1-9 NRSV text
1 Timothy 2: 1-7 NRSV text
Luke 16: 1-13 NRSV text
The parable of the dishonest manager in Luke 16: 1-13 is one of those “Oh no! How on earth am I meant to preach this?” passages! At first reading, it’s peculiar because Jesus appears to be commending dishonest practices. One of the difficulties is that we’re used to interpreting parables with masters and stewards/servants in terms of God and us: God is the master, and the servant is, by application, our role. In other words, we plump instinctively for an allegorical reading of the parable. This is one case where Jesus does not mean the parable to be read in this light. The economy of the master is not the Kingdom ofGod – it is the world. Jesus is using the parable to highlight the fact that we are far more immersed in the ways of the world than in the Kingdom.
The key: Luke 16: 8b
The key verse here is the second half of verse 8: “for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light”. Jesus is not talking here of the sort of Christian naiveté that is unprofessionally at sea in “the real world”. It is not that the children of light are insufficiently savvy at dealing with “their own generation”; it is rather that they are less “shrewd” – well-versed – in the ways of the Kingdom than non-disciples are “shrewd” about the ways of the world. Note that Luke begins the parable with a narrative shift of audience change: Jesus has been arguing with the Pharisees and the scribes since 14:1; that section closes with the Parable of the Lost Son and now Jesus turns again to his disciples. This is a bloc of teaching “on the road to Jerusalem” and its subject is discipleship. Jesus’ point to the disciples, therefore, is that they are lamentably less immersed in the Kingdom (in the Light) than other people are in the ways of the world. The point isn’t to commend sharp practices: it’s to say that the disciples ought to be as “sharp” about the Kingdom as the dishonest manager is about the world of business.
The gospel themes of welcome, home and table fellowship
For what is the dishonest manager being commended in the parable? Look at v4: “I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people will welcome me into their homes”. Remember that the three parables of chapter 15 (the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin and the Lost Son) are told in response to the Pharisees’ and scribes’ accusation against Jesus: “This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them!”
The issue of table fellowship was a hot potato in Jesus’ society. Whom one chose as table companions – particularly as the host – was vitally important on several levels. Religiously, eating together was an expression of fellowship. It was an expression of shared commitment; shared faith; a shared journey under God. Meals are sacramental. (It’s worth noting that this is what makes the betrayal of Jesus by Judas and the abandonment of Jesus by the rest of the disciples so shocking and appalling: they have eaten with Jesus, and yet go on to betray and fail him before the night is out! That is why Paul begins his received story by marking this as “the night on which Jesus was betrayed” – it’s a designation that would cause a sharp intake of breath and horror to his hearers!)
It’s no accident, therefore, that Luke uses the setting of a meal with entirely unsuitable guests (guests of whom Jesus, of course, approves!) as a vehicle for disputes about boundary questions (who is in and who is out). Neither is it accidental that the great eschatological parable of grace – the Parable of the Great Dinner (Luke 14: 15-24) - is about a feast and about who is and is not invited. Being “invited into a home” is a powerful statement about a shared sense of faith and discipleship. But the second reason why the choice of table companions is important is because of the social system of honour and obligation.
There was no such thing as a “free lunch” in Jesus’ time! To be invited to a meal was to be put under obligation to repay the favour. A meal was a public statement of social standing: a host would first of all invite his equals. It was a statement of “this is where I am on the social ladder in the community”. Secondly, the host would invite anyone to whom he owed a favour. The payment of this “duty of obligation” put the host in the same social bracket as someone who had previously been his superior. It was thus a means of personal advancement. And thirdly, the host would invite people who were his social inferiors or who owed him a favour both to increase obligation and indebtedness, and also to emphasise his greater status within the community.
The whole system of seating arrangements at the table – then, as now – was used as a visible picture of the social hierarchy. Meals, then, were a minefield of potential social gaffes and opportunities. To fail to invite the right people was to court disaster; to get the seating arrangements wrong was equally terrifying; at the same time, hosting a meal was an opportunity both to display and advance status. Throwing parties carried a health warning: you needed to know your way around the system!
The parable of the dishonest manager: picking up the themes
The manager is shrewd because he knows that he is about to be dismissed. He uses his position while it lasts to ensure that his master’s debtors are obligated to him by significantly reducing their debts. The point is that he has authority to do so. As the manager, he speaks for the master; as the manager, his decisions and actions are binding upon the master, even after he is sacked! Here is someone who knows how to play the system – a fact that the master recognises and commends him for! Note that the master does not say, “You wretch! I’m going to call in my debtors and tell them you had no authority to write off what they owe me! They’ll pay me every last penny – and you’ll be out on the streets!” The rules don’t allow that. Basically, the master says, “Good move! You know you’re going to be jobless tomorrow, so you’ve made sure that you won’t be destitute!”
The manager knows how the social system operates – and makes a move to ensure that he will be on the invitation list to meals for years to come! Although Luke has shifted the focus of audience, there is a continuity and development of the themes of table fellowship, inclusiveness and grace that have been the focus of Jesus’ disputes with the scribes and the Pharisees. What Jesus does in this parable is to contrast the ways of the world with the ways of the Kingdom.
The key to the manager’s shrewdness is to ensure that he is on the invitation list – which brings immediate echoes of parable of the Great Dinner that Jesus told only a chapter ago. The point of that parable is that the master (who is, in this case, God) commands his servants to invite the people who have no chance ever of repaying their debt (the poor, the crippled, the blind and the lame). To be “shrewd” about the Kingdom, therefore, is to recognise that, in God’s economy, it isn’t all about social standing and the ability to repay favours: it’s about recognising and practising the grace that responds in compassion to need. In this sense, the radically inclusive character of Jesus’ table fellowship is a powerful announcement of the radical inclusiveness of God’s grace. Just as the guest list and seating expression was a way of portraying and reinforcing the social system of the day, so Christian table fellowship is meant to express the difference between the social norms and the norms of the Kingdom.
Think for a moment about Paul’s quarrels with the Corinthians over their practice at Communion: his beef with them is that they behave in the same way as anyone else would, maintaining and reinforcing the distinctions between rich and poor, between the so-called “important” people and those on the margins. He urges them to celebrate the sacramental meal in a way that mirrors the new community of the Kingdom. That is what Jesus means by being “shrewd” in the ways of the Kingdom. Jesus, in other words, is saying, “If you knew what I was really on about – if you’d understood what I’ve been trying to do in building up this little messianic band of the new community of the Kingdom – then you’d be living far more closely by the standards of the Kingdom I’ve been proclaiming! You’d realise that the Way of the Cross wasn’t something to be resisted. You’d stop fussing and arguing about status in the Kingdom, because you’d have realised that your welcome by God – your invitation to the Feast – is guaranteed by God’s grace and compassion, not by your achievements or social standing!”
Redistribution of wealth (Luke 16: 10-13)
Again, we find this a puzzling saying at first reading. Why does Jesus seem to think it a good idea that we are “faithful in dishonest wealth”? And why does this appear to be some sort of precondition for “true riches”? Jesus’ reasoning is the same here as earlier. To be “faithful in dishonest wealth” is to be a good steward of wealth (Mammon). Money requires stewardship. If we are to be trusted with other people’s money, we need to be “shrewd” (faithful) in the ways in which money works. Similarly, if we are to be trusted with the riches of the Kingdom, we are to be as “shrewd” in the ways in which money “works” in the priorities of the Kingdom.
The message of the Kingdom is the promise of the transformation of this world into the Kingdom of
People were poor because wealth (the means of production) was concentrated in the hands of the few (the capitalist owners of the means of production). Change the distribution of wealth, he argued (absolutely rightly) and the social arrangements will change. Leave the system as it is, and the best that reformists could hope for was to tinker with bits here and there; the system that created poverty and misery would go unchallenged and there was no real means of wholesale, significant change. Marx was only saying what Jesus says time and time again in the gospels. Luke goes on immediately in v14 to return to the Pharisees, whom he describes as “lovers of money”. Jesus tells the parable of the rich man and Lazarus as a response: Lazarus is poor because the rich man will do nothing to alleviate his suffering. There is a direct connection, therefore, between the riches of Dives and the abject, fatal poverty of Lazarus: in other words, Jesus is saying that this is all about the distribution of wealth! And this is the key: it isn’t that wealth in itself is a problem; the problem is that wealth exercises enormous power over our desires and morals. Most importantly the accumulation of wealth – always at the expense of others - kills compassion and blinds us to their suffering. We have only to look at the phenomenon of global poverty: the failure to “make poverty history” is not because we cannot do it; it is because we will not do it! We (in the rich north and west) will not make the necessary sacrifices in our standard of living. “What is prized by human beings is an abomination in the sight of God”, says Jesus in v15.
What I am trying to say is that Jesus’ statements in vv 10-13 belong to his vision of the radical redistribution of wealth that is one of the primary means of transforming the world. Luke brings this out strongly. In one of his earliest descriptions of the fledgling Christian community in Acts (Volume 2 of his story of Jesus), Luke tells us that “All who believed were of one mind and had all things in common; they would sell their possessions and goods and distribute the proceeds to all, as any had need” (Acts 2:45)!
Here, then, is the contrast Jesus wishes to draw between “being faithful in little” and “faithful in much”; between the two masters (God and Mammon) of the “slave”: he expects Christians to be as attentively “faithful” to Kingdom economics as they have been to the “old ways”. What ought to characterise the Church is the way in which it views and uses money: it is a means of achieving a fundamental shift in the way in which the world works when it is directed in the service of the have-nots, rather than in self-service and self-advancement. Jesus is the one who tells the rich young man to “Go, sell all that you have, give your money to the poor, and come, follow me!” The rich young man goes away sad, “because he had many possessions”. The tax-collector, Zacchaeus, by contrast, responds to the grace of God in Jesus by paying back what he has defrauded people of, with interest, and selling half of what he has in order to give it to the poor! Zacchaeus had understood what Jesus was on about!
Prophetic “shrewdness”: Jeremiah 8:18-19:1/Amos 8: 1-12
Jesus stands firmly within the prophetic tradition of the radical criticism of wealth and religious practices that sustain injustice, poverty, exploitation and oppression. Just as for Jesus the messianic community ought to manifest the radical difference between the world as we have made it and the world as God’s Kingdom, so for the prophets, Israel and Judah are to manifest the radical difference between Yahweh and the other gods in their religion, politics and economics.
The prophetic voice is the voice of disturbance. It is the voice of Yahweh, calling the people to realise that what they take absolutely for granted – “the way things are” – is wrong. It is disordered. “The way things are” is because of sin, rather than because it is Yahweh’s will. It is not the way that Yahweh intends it to be. It is the voice from below – the “voice of the voiceless”. Yahweh makes the invisible people visible because theirs are the groans that Yahweh hears. The presence of poverty and oppression is the occasion for Yahweh’s judgement. Moreover, the easy confidence that the people have in Yahweh’s presence and approval is a sign of their blindness and immersion in wrong-doing. Yahweh is not a tame God; rather, Yahweh is the God who will right wrongs, redistribute wealth, bring down the powerful exploiters, destroy the slave systems of the Pharaohs and bring about peace with justice.
In the passage from Jeremiah, we are confronted with the people’s bewilderment: “The summer is almost past and we are not saved! What has gone wrong? It’s as though the Lord were not in
Note, though, Yahweh’s compassionate response: Yahweh weeps for the people’s blindness. They will not see – because they cannot see the evidence of the disorder that is right in their midst. The plight of the very least is as visible as Lazarus at the gate of Dives, if only they will look down and take notice! Judgement is inevitable – that is the message of Amos. The “end” (a Hebrew pun on “basket of fruit”) is inevitable, though the people do not realise it. Destruction is almost upon Israel. They will be destroyed because of their injustice and greed – a greed that makes them say, “I wish the Sabbath would be over quickly, so that we can get back to sharp business and exploitation! There’s money to be made, and time’s a-wasting!”
Note the connection with the themes from today’s gospel passage, and note, too, how Amos uses the image of a feast that becomes a funeral mourning and a famine. There is an awful, tragic irony to the picture that Amos paints: Yahweh is weeping for a people that are oblivious to God; the people end up hungering and thirsting and weeping for a word from the God whom they have abandoned and who is now cut off from them forever. It is the same tragic irony as those who have missed out on the Great Feast.
A word of optimism: 1 Timothy 2: 1-8
It is easy to be so immersed in the prophetic “hermeneutic of suspicion” that we regard corruption and injustice as somehow inevitable among people who exercise power. I know that I find it requires huge effort and imagination to pray for the government(s) in any terms other than critical and gloomy and angry. It is also difficult, once we have become alive to the destructive ways in which wealth functions, to be anything other than suspicious and pessimistic about the possibilities of people with power and wealth and influence doing anything that contributes to the greater good of humanity and makes the Kingdom more visible rather than less! Righteous indignation, in other words, is always the easy option!
Thankfully, God, it seems, is less pessimistic! Paul, who had every reason to be profoundly distrustful of people in power (whether in the Church, synagogue or Roman Senate), appears to have been free of cynical despair about the possibilities of good government. In his letter to Timothy (as in Romans 13), he demonstrates a different attitude. While he has been enlisted as the authority on human depravity (I am displaying my Reformed heritage here!), he also has a deep conviction that God works through governments for the good of the people; that people in office have huge responsibilities which they try to exercise to the best of their abilities; that good governments is possible and brings about human flourishing; and that they need our prayers.
The “quiet life” to which he refers in v2 is one in which godliness (god-likeness) and dignity (not stuffy religiosity and pomposity, but the dignity that comes with full humanity) can flourish as a universal experience. That is why he is able to move straight on to talk about salvation: part of salvation is the dignity that is only possible for poor and unvalued people through the inversion of the norms and economics of the present. Here, in the letter to Timothy, we find the Church as a picture of the sort of community that is a sign of the Kingdom – a foretaste of the world as God intends and will bring it to become. It is a community of people deeply immersed in the transformative power and norms of the Kingdom. These are children of light – “shrewd” in the ways of the Kingdom.
Amen.
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