Stewarding Relationships

Luke 16:1-13

1 Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’

3 “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— 4 I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

5 “So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

6 “‘Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied.

“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred and fifty.’

7 “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’

“‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied.

“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’

8 “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. 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.

10 “Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. 11 So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? 12 And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?

13 “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

Full disclosure, church isn’t the only place I tell “dad jokes.” Church is also not the only place where my dad jokes sometimes fall flat. This past week, I was at the Staunton Y, doing my thing, acting all tough, occasionally flaring my nostrils because we all know that’s intimidating. I was wearing a neon yellow, moisture wicking shirt, because it is one of the few shirts that I have that are long enough to cover my belly when I raise my arms. A friendly gentleman walks past me as I stand among a number of other Y patrons and says, “You sure look bright this morning.”

I replied, “Yep. I’m so bright, my dad calls me sonny.”

Crickets.

I tell that story because sometimes, to use a baseball metaphor, you swing and you miss. Sometimes things fail to make the impression you were going for. Sometimes you just flat-out fail. But what do you do when you strike out? You keep swinging.

So I’m going to keep telling dad jokes, and your going to keep pretending to laugh. But as I sometimes say, when you don’t think my jokes are funny, I believe it is because you just don’t get them. I know “my dad calls me sonny/sunny” is funny stuff. Dude just didn’t get it.

Last week I mentioned that I usually preach from something called the Revised Common Lectionary, a tool designed to help us preach through the Bible in three years, and prevent the pastor from just getting on a soapbox or preaching from her favorite passages. I remind you of this because today’s gospel text is not one that I would choose on my own. In my studies this week, I found more than one commentator who said today’s passage was the most confusing parable to ever come from the mouth of Jesus. For instance, if you look in your Bibles, how is this passage labeled? Some call this the “Parable of the Shrewd Manager.” Others call it the “Parable of the Dishonest Manager.” Shrewd and dishonest seem like very different descriptors to me. Even more confusing is the fact that Jesus calls the manager both shrewd and dishonest. At one point the “master” in the story even commends the “dishonest manager” for his actions.

I just want to remind you all at this point that it is okay to not understand this or any other passage in the Bible. You have my permission to not get it, and I’m giving myself permission to not get it as well. What we cannot do is simply ignore these challenging passages.

What I want to do today is look at a few interpretations. If you are like me, and you like clarity, closure, and everything wrapped up in a nice, neat package, this would be a good week to go help in the nursery. Then, like Luke, the writer of the gospel, I want to end with those concise statements from Jesus, because at least we can make some sense out of those.

Let’s run through the parable quickly first. There is a land owner, a rich man, who is sometimes referred to in this text as the master. It was common in the first century for rich land owners to live far away and employ a manager of some sorts to oversee the daily activities of the property, like growing crops or livestock. In our story for today, we read that the manager has been caught mismanaging the land, and he is about to lose his job. His options for future employment are limited; he doesn’t think he can do physical labor, and he is too proud to beg. And I’m going to guess that his current boss won’t write him a good letter of recommendation for another management position.

The manager has an idea: he will build his relationships with his master’s debtors—people who owe money to the landowner—so that they will show kindness to him in his time of need. He invites one debtor in, finds out that person owes 900 gallons of olive oil. We all know how easy it is to get into olive oil debt, and how hard it is to get out. The manager tells him to cut what he owes by 50%. The debtor is told, Now you only owe 450 gallons. He calls in another debtor. This man owes 1000 bushels of wheat. The manager cuts the debt by 20%, and the debtor now only owes 800 bushels.

This totally makes sense. These men have been forgiven a significant amount of what they owe, and I can see how the manager stands to benefit from these transactions. But how ethical of a move was it? Can you imagine the manager at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac simply forgiving half of my mortgage? Absolutely, I’d be happy about that. But he would probably end up in jail. I’m not sure.

What really doesn’t make sense is found in verse 8, “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.”

Dishonest and shrewd, all in one verse! The master commends the manager, even though the master seems to stand to lose a lot of money here. What’s going on? Let’s consider some possibilities.

Some have made the “some is better than none” argument. The master could be happy because now these debtors will actually pay a portion of what they owe rather than seeing the debt as insurmountable and walking away. The olive oil guy might have tried to skip out on his 900-gallon debt, but he will try to pay up on the 450 gallons. I think that is possible.

Another way to look at this is to say that what the manager was forgiving was his cut of the interest, what we might call his commission. This is a very common explanation of this parable. This line of reasoning suggests that the manager was forgiving what would have come to him, assuming the debtors ever paid up, with the hope that they would remember this little transaction when the manager needed help in the near future. I’ll scratch your back, if you scratch mine. Additionally consider that the manager might not have received his commission after he was fired, so forgiving that portion while he was still employed by the master makes good sense.

The problem with this interpretation is that there is really nothing in the text to support it. And why is one forgiven 50% and the other 20%? Did the olive oil guy have a higher interest rate or a longer term on his loan? Maybe 450 gallons of olive oil is roughly equivalent to 20 bushels of wheat in value. I don’t know. I like the idea that the manager forgave his commission, but there just isn’t enough information to support that.

NT Wright suggests something a little unique. And again, there are some issues, but I think it helps us consider this text from a different perspective.

First, who can remind me of the maximum interest rate a Hebrew person was to charge another Hebrew person when they loaned them money? Zero point zero percentage was the max. Exodus 22:25 is one of a handful of passages in the Old Testament that command against charging interest on a loan: “If you lend money to one of my people among you who is needy, do not treat it like a business deal; charge no interest.”

There is no law against loaning money. I think you could even argue that it is okay to charge interest in a business deal where someone is looking for some additional funds to purchase a new tractor or oxen, whatever the case might be. But the text is clear: when you loan to someone who needs the money just to live, to put food on the table or a roof over their family’s head, you cannot make money off their misfortune.

The churchy word for abusing a person through interest on a loan is usury. The worldly word for that is a “loan shark,” or a “payday loan.” Payday loans are where you can go and borrow money today, and then pay it back on your next payday. These payday loans sometimes charge around 400%, meaning if you borrowed $100 today, you would be required to give them $400 off the top of you next paycheck. It is an absolutely terrible investment on the borrowers part. But if you need to feed your family, what other option do you have?

I think making money off the poor is wrong today, and according to passages like Exodus 22:25, it was wrong in the biblical days as well. But wait, there is a way around the commandment to not charge interest on a monetary loan: rather than loan money and charge interest on the loan, you loan olive oil and wheat and expect those items to be returned with interest. It is a bit of a loophole to the Old Testament teaching, but still a rather shady one.

NT Wright claims that the manager likely reduced the debt to the original principal of the loan, and “the master couldn’t lay a charge against the steward without owning up to his own shady business practices. Thus, when the master heard about it, he could only admire the man’s clever approach” (Luke for Everyone, 193-4).

I like that interpretation, but I still don’t love it. I also think it is helpful to distance this parable from the three we looked at last Sunday. In the parable of the shrewd manager, which character stands for God, the land owner who charges high interest, or the manager who gets fired? Does one of these represent Jesus? I don’t think so. I believe the land owner represents the Pharisees and the leaders who have been finding loopholes and gray areas to oppress those who are already struggling. The manager is, according to Wright, Israel. They are now faced with a question: do we continue to enforce and enact every little law and detail that the Pharisees have put in place, or do we offer grace and build relationships. Jesus seems to be advocating the second option.

No, I don’t think that this parable is meant to explain how to run a Christian business. This isn’t about how to make a quick buck after you’ve made some bad decisions in the marketplace. The point of this parable comes down to using what you’ve been put in charge of as a steward to build relationships.

This passage ends with a familiar saying, straight from the mouth of Jesus. Verse 13 says, “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money.”

That is the NIV translation of verse 13. And generally, I like the NIV because it is readable. I don’t get caught up on all the “thees” and “thous.” But every now and then I do prefer the King James Version, which can be a bit wooden, but is often more literal. If you know your KJV, you know that verse 13 ends slightly different. King Jimmy leaves the last word untranslated, offering a transliterated version of the original Greek. The King James tells us that we cannot serve both God and mammon.

The King James Version does not translate mammon into money because the word money doesn’t fully capture the essence of the word mammon. Mammon isn’t just the Greek word for money, it was often used as a reference to the pagan god Mammon. You can’t worship two competing deities. You can’t cheer for both UVA and Virginia Tech; the Redskins and the Cowboys. You must choose.

Yes, there is a thing called money, and it is necessary. We use money to buy the things we need, like food and clothes. The problem comes when we begin to serve money, or serve mammon, as an idol.

We often hear that phrase, “money is the root of all evil.” That’s not what the Bible teaches us. The Bible teaches us that the love of money is the root of all evil. Money is necessary, but how we use it is a choice.

This isn’t anything new. Martin Luther gave a warning about mammon over 500 years ago when he wrote, “Many a person thinks he has God and everything he needs when he has money and property, in them he trusts and of them he boasts so stubbornly and securely that he cares for no one. Surely such a man also has a god — mammon by name, that is, money and possessions — on which he fixes his whole heart. It is the most common idol on earth.”

Jesus is clear, we can’t serve both God and mammon. But I think we can be subversive. I think we can do something unexpected. I think we can use mammon to serve God when we use money to serve one another. Like the shrewd manager, we can use money to build relationships.

A few years ago my friend, Phil, moved into a new house. It was an interesting move, because by this stage of his life, Phil’s children had all moved out of his house and started families and careers of their own. You might think that Phil would move to a smaller home, with less upkeep and less rooms to clean. But Phil and his wife, Irene, moved into a large, two-story home with multiple bedrooms and a large dining room.

All of this was very intentional. Phil and Irene were focusing on hospitality. They wanted a large dining room so they could host meals for friends and family. They wanted bedrooms available for overnight guests. They even converted some of their space so guests could have a private bathroom and kitchen space, and they frequently have international students staying with them for an extended period of time. Phil and Irene have such a reputation for hospitality that when significant guests come to Eastern Mennonite University to present lectures, the university often calls Phil and Irene to see if the guests can stay with them.

I’m sure that there were some who were critical of Phil for buying a big house, spending all of that money on his own home while there are so many poor and homeless around the world and in our own neighborhoods. But I think that they did exactly what Jesus is encouraging us to do in this passage. Jesus says in verse 9, “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves.” Phil could have fed several hundred people with the money he spent on a bigger home. But instead he is feeding and housing and caring for and loving hundreds of people by hosting them in his home.

There is an old saying that is just as true today as it was back in Jesus’s day. We are called to love people, and use money. Not the other way around. Because when we love money, we will use people.