I have to be honest with you. This is one of those Gospel lessons that a lot of pastors – especially men like me who are still relatively fresh out of the Seminary – really don’t want to preach. This is a difficult text. After all, if you do a quick read-through of it, it sounds like Jesus is congratulating the so-called “dishonest manager.” He’s not really, but that’s sure what it sounds like. And unfortunately, that’s what people hear and remember.
The problem is one of focus. Almost all of us need the services of an eye doctor like Doc Marcin, and when Doc checks your eyes he put that big black contraption in front of your face, you find yourself staring at something – let’s say it’s some black letters on a white background. He’s asking you if the letters are clearer this way or that way, and as he does so, he changes your sight from one lens to another. I’m sure I’m missing all of the technical details here, but you know what I mean. He keeps changing things, turning all kinds of little dials or things making little clicking sounds, and what he’s doing is making sure that your new prescription has exactly the right focus for each of your eyes. Because when things are out of focus, you can’t see the things that you need to see.
And that’s one of the big problems with this text. We’re reading along just fine in Luke chapter 16, and all of a sudden we hear Jesus say that the “master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness,” and bam – just like that our focus shifts to those words and really nothing else. Jesus seems to be commending someone for being a crook. That’s not the Jesus we know – the holy, sinless Son of God – and it just doesn’t sound right. After all, Jesus told the woman who had been accused of adultery to go and sin no more. This dishonest manager has wasted the master’s possessions, and then he goes on to cook the books so that he’ll get on the good side of those people who owe debts to the master, and this time Jesus seems to be giving him a big “attaboy.”
When we focus in on this one little piece of the text, we tend to make another mistake by forgetting that this is a parable. It’s not a story about an actual person. A parable is defined as “a complete, imaginary story that illustrates a Biblical truth.” Matthew, Mark and Luke record a total of 55 different parables taught by Jesus, and for four weeks now our Gospel readings have been pretty much nothing but parables. You learn a great truth from a parable, but you don’t take it literally. Last week Jesus wasn’t talking about an actual man who had lost a sheep or an actual woman who had lost her coin. Today He’s not speaking about an actual master and dishonest manager, and that makes a big difference in how we focus on what Jesus actually wants us to learn from His words.
To make sure we really have the right focus on today’s parable, let’s go back and review the basic situation. A very wealthy man has an employee, a manager who essentially has full responsibility for managing the master’s finances. Someone tells the master that something fishy is going on and the master demands a full audit of his accounts. The manager has something like a panic attack because he knows that he’s been caught, he knows that no one else will hire him to be their manager, he’s too weak to do manual labor and he’s too proud to become a beggar. So he hatches a plan to get on the good side of those people who owe debts to the master. He goes to every single person who owes something to the master – and he rewrites their debts. One man owes the master 100 measures of oil, but he rewrites the contract to say that he only owes 50. Another owes 100 measures of wheat, and he writes a new contract that says he only owes 80. He does this with every single person who owes something to the master.
Back in verse 2 the master told the manager to “turn in the account of your management,” so the manager probably takes these new altered contracts and gives them to his boss. And that brings us to a big difference between the way that finances are handled today and the way they were handled 2,000 years ago. Today we would assume that the master would get the full amount and the manager would be paid a portion or commission as his salary. But back then the master was normally interested only in getting a fixed amount from his debtors, and the manager made his living by keeping the difference between what the master expected and what the debtor actually paid. Now I have to explain at this point that since Jesus doesn’t give us all of the details we might like, this is conjecture based on knowledge of the way things used to work. So let’s go back to the man whose contract was changed from 100 measures of wheat to 80. The master was probably expecting to receive 80 measures – and as long as that’s what he got, he was happy. The manager is losing out on the 20 measures that he would have received and kept as his payment, but that’s OK because he’s made a friend who just might take care of him after he loses his job. It’s a win-win situation for everyone. The manager is still dishonest, but he shrewdly uses wealth and money to get him out of a tough situation and set things up so he never has to resort to begging or manual labor. As we read in verse 8, “the master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.”
And that’s when our brains come to a stop, because we focus so intently on those words that we miss the real point of the parable, the point where Jesus really wants to direct our focus. These verses are often referred to as the “parable of the dishonest manager,” but a better translation for “dishonest” would be “unrighteous.” In the eyes of the world he’s pretty smart – but in God’s eyes, he’s just unrighteous. He is unholy, he is sinful, and he is disloyal to God. Money and the things that they can buy are still the most important thing to him. His money, for all practical purposes, is now and always will be his true God. He never shows one bit of repentance or remorse. He focuses only on the things that can make his earthly life comfortable. But all the money in the world won’t do a thing for him when he’s dead.
Although we were told in verse 1 that Jesus is speaking directly to His disciples, we are also told that the Pharisees were listening to Him, too. Luke describes them as “lovers of money,” because they had made themselves wealthy at the expense of the other people, the common Jewish people. They weren’t priests, but they were perceived to be the everyday religious leaders of the Israelites. They made big shows about their prayers and their piety so that everyone could see just how pious and important they were. But inside, they were corrupt. They were dishonest. They were unrighteous. They were no different than the dishonest manager of the parable. In fact, they were the dishonest manager in Jesus’ parable. They had been given a great responsibility and they had misused it.
In verse 2 we read that the master told the manager to “turn in the account of your management,” and the original Greek we translate as “account” is the word λόγος. It can mean, as it does here, an official record or account. But sometimes it is simply translated as “word” – specifically, as the Word of God. Holy Scripture. And John chapter 1 begins this way: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” Here “word” refers to Jesus – the very same Jesus who in our Gospel lesson is speaking to His disciples and is confronting the unjust, the unrighteous Pharisees.
Many of you will remember the great comedian Jack Benny, who was notorious for being tight with his money. In one of his most famous skits, a robber points a gun at him and demands: “Your money or your life.” For the longest time, Benny says nothing but has this pained look on his face. Finally the robber yells, “Hurry up!” And Benny slowly replies: “Don’t rush me. I’m thinking it over.”
The skit is funny because no one would ever choose money over a human life. But people do choose money over eternal life. It happens all the time.
Our God – our master – has given us riches far beyond anything we could ever earn here on earth. He has given us salvation, forgiveness of sins. And that brings us to what I believe is the real focus of today’s Gospel lesson: the mercy of the master. When the master in the parable found out that his manager was wasting his possessions, he could have fired that manager right on the spot. He could have had him thrown into prison, where he would suffer for his wrongdoings and die.
But he didn’t. He showed mercy. He gave the manager a second chance. We really are no different than the dishonest manager, for as sinners we openly rebel against God and we casually waste the gifts that He so lovingly gives us. We waste our time … our talents … our treasures. But He calls us to repentance. He calls us to faith. He freely forgives us our sins. He freely gives us eternal life.
All for the sake of His precious Son. His precious and holy Son who suffered and died so that we are forgiven even when we waste our Master’s possessions. “God knows your hearts,” Jesus tells the Pharisees in Luke 16 verse 15. He knows our hearts, too. And thanks be to God, we know His heart. We know that He loves us. We know that He protects us. We know that He provides us with everything that we truly need. We know that we are His children. And no matter what may ever happen to us while we are still on this earth, He has prepared a place for us … with Him … in Heaven where we will, as He promises in verse 9, be received “into the eternal dwellings.”
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