Luke
16:1-9
This is one of Jesus’ parables that
has bothered me for a long time. Here’s
a swindler who knows that he’s about to get caught and is well aware that there
is enough evidence out there to convict him.
So what he does is turn up the heat on his crimes. He goes to people who owe money to his boss
and invites them to falsify the account books in their favor before the
dishonest steward is chucked out and their chance passes. That part is bad enough, but when he was
finally audited, Jesus says,
“His master commended the
dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” [Luke 16:8]
The
end of the parable doesn’t end with his punishment, let alone a wholesale purge
of dishonest dealers or reform of corrupt business practices. It ends with Jesus’ recommendation that
people he calls “the children of light” [16:8] learn a lesson from this guy.
“Make friends for
yourself by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome
you into the eternal homes.” [Luke
16:9]
That
doesn’t fit well with my picture of the man who tossed the moneychangers out of
the Temple.
Then, last Thursday morning, I
stopped at Giant before a meeting to pick up a box of day-old donuts. (If you get there early in the morning, they
are just as good as the night before.) I
went to the self-serve checkout and scanned the box, and nothing happened. Over and over, nothing happened. The cashier who stands there keeping an eye
on folks like me came over and she tried, and nothing happened. So she punched some buttons and then the
price came up: $2.49. The sticker said
$3.49 – an instant test of honesty, which I am proud to say I passed. The check-out lady told me that they’ve asked
“them” (whoever that is) to fix their stickers and they don’t bother, so now
she’s just letting it go through.
Nobody’s going to correct anything until it hurts them. Okay, now I’m taking advantage of the broken
system. Or am I helping apply pressure
to fix it? Or both?
The dishonest manager in the
parable, when he discounted the debts, drew people into his own web. He knew the system and worked it. He gained friends and allies who would not be
talking against him because they, too, were benefitting from the system. What would happen, Jesus asks, if the
“children of light” did the same thing, and implicated others in good deeds,
rather than shady ones?
It’s a fictional story, but Victor
Hugo tells at the start of Les Miserables of how Jean Valjean, a man
convicted of stealing a loaf of bread to feed his family, is released from
punishment as a galley slave and turned loose without any help or
resources. He sets out across country,
looking for work as he goes, but nobody will hire him because his papers
identify him as a convicted thief. After
a few days he is given supper and a night’s shelter by the bishop of a small
town, the first person to show him kindness in years. In the middle of the night, he gets up and
steals the silverware and sneaks out.
The police, who have been watching Valjean, stop him and return him with
the stolen goods to the scene of the crime.
The bishop thanks the police for bringing him back, grabs the silver
candlesticks from his mantle, and says, “Here.
You forgot these. I hope it’s
enough to get you home.” When the
confused police had left, as the story goes, the bishop tells the man who had
robbed him,
“‘Do
not forget, never forget, that you have promised to use this money in becoming
an honest man.’
Jean
Valjean, who had no recollection of ever having promised anything, remained
speechless. The Bishop had emphasized
the words when he uttered them. He
resumed with solemnity: --
‘Jean
Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul that I buy from you; I
withdraw it from black thoughts and the spirit of perdition, and I give it to
God.’”[1]
If
only it were always that easy! But God
bless (and God does bless) those who give it a try.
I don’t mean that it’s possible, or
even advisable, to throw money at a situation and assume that it will be used
honestly or well, or that it will make people’s problems go away. It’s one tool in the box, sure, but Jesus’
parable teaches his disciples to do more than that.
Destructive forces are always ready
to drag someone into their circle. Why
shouldn’t those who live by God’s ways be every bit as ready, and every bit as
intentional? The dishonest manager was
commended for his shrewdness. Why should
those who work for the Lord be any less creative?
This parable advises us to learn
from the dishonest manager how to implicate people, but to implicate them in
doing good, to involve them in active deeds of mercy that draw them away from
darkness and into God’s light. Jesus
attitude was that the more people were working for God’s kingdom, the better.
“John
said to him, ‘Teacher, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we
tried to stop him, because he was not following us.’ But Jesus said, ‘Do not stop him; for no one
who does a deed of power in my name will be able soon afterward to speak evil
of me. Whoever is not against us is for
us. For truly I tell you, whoever gives
you a cup of water to drink because you bear the name of Christ will by no
means lose the reward.’” [Mark
9:38-41]
Many years ago, the religious life
groups at Duke started up the world’s first campus chapter of Habitat for
Humanity, which is an explicitly Christian operation. They weren’t going to refuse construction
help or donations from other student groups, but when it came time to hold
organizational meetings or to set out to the job site, they started with
prayer. Those prayers were also led
sometimes by one of the Jewish students; everybody was fine with that, and no
one asked them to work on Saturdays. But
some of the non-religious volunteers said that they didn’t feel comfortable
with prayer being on the agenda, which led to a rich conversation about why
people who were part of the project were there at all. For the organizers, this was a part of their
spiritual life from start to finish, not just when their heads were bowed. They asked those who didn’t want to be part
of the prayer circle simply to wait patiently for them. (There was also an offer to set up a second
group if they wanted, but nobody ever really went for that. It would have been called “Habitat for
Humanists”.) The interesting thing was
that by the end of the semester, no one was sitting out the prayer time.
So, maybe
“the
children of this age are more shrewd in their dealing with their own generation
than are the children of light,” [Luke 16:8]
but
when the children of light do get it together, good things happen.
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