Good News from a Dishonest Manager

"Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, `What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.' Then the manager said to himself, `What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.' So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, `How much do you owe my master?' He answered, `A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, `Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' Then he asked another, `And how much do you owe?' He replied, `A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, `Take your bill and make it eighty.' 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."

-Luke 16: 1-9

So what are we to make of this parable from last Sunday?  It's certainly a hard one.  It's called the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, and believe it or not, that manager is the one that we are supposed to emulate--like the folks in Jesus' time we are meant to be able to see ourselves in at least one participant in the parable story, and in this case it's the manager.  How is that possible?  Here is a guy who embezzled money and property, got caught, and decided to get these other debtors involved in the situation by reducing their debt.  It seems like a nice thing this guy did, right?  Actually, by involving the debtors he has now brought them into his own conflict with the boss/master in the story.  So, worst case scenario, the manager--having forgiven some of what these debtors owed--would be in a position to exercise a little judicious blackmail if his boss ends up firing him totally.  He could easily go to these other folks and say, "I forgave these debts, so unless you want me to tell the master, you better do what I say!"  Dishonest and shrewd, indeed. 

Is this really the person Jesus wants us to emulate?  Well, yes and no.  No, Jesus is not trying to tell us that we should embezzle from our employers or blackmail folks.  That's not what's happening here.  What he is telling us, however, is that we can learn from the dishonest manager's attitude, his eagerness to get what he wants. 

In verse 8 Jesus says, "the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light."  What he's saying here is that humanity stops at nothing to get what it wants.  We step all over people, we lie, we cheat, we embezzle.  We do anything and everything to get what we believe we deserve.  So what if humanity were as eager and ingenious in our attempts to attain goodness as we are in our attempt to attain money and comfort?  Certainly we would more be in-line with the purposes for which God intended us. And that is what Jesus is getting at.  It's not the manager's actions that we must emulate, but rather his attitude, his eagerness, and his creativity.  If only we could give as much attention to the things which concern our souls as we do the things that concern our earthly appetites, then maybe we would strengthen our faith in incredible ways.  We've all been there.  Over and over again we will expend countless amounts of time and money and effort on our pleasures, our hobbies, and on the things of this temporal world.  Imagine if we spent that much time and effort on our faith, on our church community, on serving the needs of the community outside our church walls.  Our faith would blossom and grow in abundance if we were able to focus as much on it, as we do on all of the other stuff.  In short, Jesus is telling his audience, and telling us, that we can learn from the dishonest manager's attitude.  You see how eager and ingenious he is in his attempt to attain money and comfort?  What if we were that eager with our faith? 

To have that much enthusiasm and appreciation and creativity for our faith would be something of a miracle.  It was then, and it certainly is now.  We are pulled in so many directions, and we prioritize things in such a way that we make clear what is important to us and what is not.  We'll pull out all the stops to feed our appetites for money, for social standing, for the affections of others.  But what about God?  Where does God fall into our priorities?  I wonder what would happen if we took the enthusiasm and the shrewdness of the dishonest manager and applied it to our lives of faith.  I wonder what would happen if we made knowing and loving God in this place as much of a priority as our appetites for the stuff of this world.  I wonder.

Yeah, this parable is a doozy, and God knows there are so layers to it and so many places that a preacher could go with it.  Check in with this blog in three years and you're almost certainly going to see a different post addressing another layer of this parable!  If we look at it at face value it makes very little sense.  But if we see what Jesus is trying to get at, that we should be as eager about God as the manager is about his money, then we see Good News for us.  So let's be as the dishonest manager, stopping at nothing to get what we want, because what we want is to know God and to make God known.  And that is Good News, indeed.