“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“ ‘Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied. “The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.’ 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. 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 servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”
14 The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus. 15 He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of men, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued among men is detestable in God’s sight.””
Imagine that you are at a nice restaurant and suddenly there is a scuffle at the table next to you. Limbs are flailing. It looks like one man is wrestling another; he’s breaking ribs. What’s going on? The Heimlich maneuver is going on. He’s trying to save his friend’s life by dislodging what’s stuck. What would ordinarily be out of order is the wise way forward.
Imagine that you are at a job site and see one man smacking another with a broom. He smacks so hard he pushes him over. What’s going on? He’s saving his friend who was being electrocuted by pushing him loose from the current with a non-conductive object—a wooden broom. What would ordinarily be out of order is the wise way forward.
Breaking ribs isn’t usually welcomed. Hitting someone with a broom isn’t usually a sign of love. That behavior is usually out to of order ordinarily but it’s not always ordinary times. We live in extraordinary times. We saw that this morning in regard to singleness. We see it tonight in regard to money and the stewardship of our entire lives. We are, like that man in the restaurant and at the job site, to live un-ordinarily because these are extraordinary times; that’s the claim of this sermon: live un-ordinarily because these are extraordinary times.
We see this in three points. First, Jesus’ parable. Second, Jesus’ reflections. Third, the Pharisees’ response. First, in verses 1-8, we see Jesus’ parable. Second, in verse 9-13, we see Jesus’ reflections on the parable. Third in verses 14-15, the Pharisees’ response.
We see something quite extra-ordinary in our first point: Jesus’ parable. This is a difficult parable. Klyne Snodgrass has done perhaps a deeper dive into the parables than any other modern scholar and considers this to be “notoriously difficult.” Given the bewildering number of interpretations, it’s wise to be careful and cautious. The way forward with confusion is not boldness but humility, and yet we must say something about this parable because Jesus spoke it and expected us followers to use it in our lives; so let’s begin.
This parable, like so many we’ve studied, begins with a rich man. Like many rich men in that culture, this one had a manager who handled his assets. This rich man’s manager was accused of wasting the rich man’s possessions—perhaps negligence, perhaps embezzlement.
This manager is also well to do. Everyone in this parable is well off—the rich man, the manager, the rich man’s business associates dealing with large quantities of goods. That was an alien economic experience to most of Jesus’ listeners who were poor—like the first scrolling words of the first Star Wars, “A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...” This is a galaxy that’s financially far, far away from Peter or John or Mary Magdalene. As we’ve seen, though, Jesus often tells us stories that seem quite alien to keep our pride from getting in the way. Tell me a story about a pastor and I’m looking for a left hook. Tell me about a chicken who thinks the sky is falling and I might be able to see something of myself.
The rich man fires the guilty manger and there’s no question the manager is guilty. The guilty manager now ponders how he can preserve some shred of honor; “What shall I do now?” he asks himself. “My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg.” He decides to go with the same shadiness that got him into this problem in the first place; ‘“I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.” So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?” “Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,” he replied. The manager told him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred. 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.”
We are dealing with large sums here. The sort of differences he’s making to those invoices would take years or decades for most of us to pay off. This manager was cooking the books in a big way before and he’s cooking them again.
He does so to set himself up for the future. “The [manager] needs to devise a solution that will leave him with the possibility of finding work from sympathetic business associates,” as Bock explains. The manager has already lost the rich man’s trust. He’s currying good favor with the rich man’s associates in hopes of opening doors for future employment and assistance. The rich man will likely notice the difference when those debts come due, but he will then have his own choice—cause conflict with his business associates who think this reduction is just an act of generosity or let the matter go and seem generous. The manager is betting he will choose the later.
The manager’s actions are clearly unethical. Some try to explain this away arguing that the manager was removing exorbitant interest to bring debts back into line, but that wouldn’t match the reductions and there is nothing in Jesus’ telling of the parable that leads us in that direction.
Rather than trying to rationalize this manager’s actions, we need to accept that they are unethical and yet Jesus sees something admirable in them. That’s a difficult tension for us to hold. You can see how difficult it is by looking at the history of fanciful rationalizations on the foibles and foolishness and sin of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. We want life to be much blacker and whiter than what God is willing to work with. Jesus sees something in this manager with which he can work.
The manager is defrauding his employer to open future employment opportunities, and yet verse 8 tells us, “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” We expect Jesus to criticize the manager. It’s his praise for this manager that manager that confuses us so. This doesn’t mean the master was happy with the loss of money. It doesn’t mean he put this manager back in charge of his estate. It means that he respected the play. It’s a like the way honest, hardworking people view a clever criminal. We say, “if he just put half of that creativity into making an honest living, he’s be rich.” That’s the ingenuity and creativity the master respects not the crime itself.
When we fail to see that, we not only miss the point of the parable, we miss a great deal of the point of life. “Are you indignant [at this parable]?” asks Jeremias. “Apply the lesson to yourselves. You are in the same position as that manager who saw disaster, his life in ruins; but the crisis that threatens you—in fact you are already involved in it—is incomparably more terrible.” The manager’s crises was that he was about to be financially bankrupt because of how he dealt with this estate which belonged to his master. Your crisis is that you are morally bankrupt as to how you’ve dealt with the estate of your existence which belongs to God. You cook the books of your own morality and reckoning is coming as surely for you as for that manager. What will you do? That’s the question this parable asks you.
Jesus is surprising us into thinking about ourselves. We are so busy puzzling over the manager’s actions that we don’t see that he’s shrewder than we are. He are focusing on the scuffle at the table and fail to see the Heimlich, the broom but miss the electricity; that’s verse 8, “For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.”
That manager was sensible about the reckoning that was coming. We are rarely sensible about that. We, unlike that manager, move through life blissfully unaware that reckoning is coming and we, unlike him, tend to have no plan as to how we will survive moving forward. We are given this puzzling manager so we might begin to puzzle over ourselves; we see that in our second point: Jesus’ reflections.
Jesus knows that we might misunderstand this parable so gives us plenty of reflection on it. He doesn’t want to puzzle us so we fail; wants to puzzle us so we consider and here he helps us consider. Luke has already set the table for such consideration. He places this parable right after the parable of the prodigal son—both begin with “a certain man”, both use the word for “squander,” both have the main character give a soliloquy. Jesus has already primed the pump for us to think about ourselves—we are insolvent, what will we do?
After this, Luke puts another parable with parallels—another rich man, the Rich Man and Lazarus. To avoid confusion with this confusing parable, we need to remember that Jesus isn’t saying everything he thinks needs to be said in every parable including this one. We don’t honor Scripture or the Holy Spirit when we try to make every verse say everything we wish it would or think it should say. Jesus isn’t trying to explain everything about faith and works in this parable.
The prodigal son tells us that we are insolvent so we should come home to God. The Rich Man and Lazarus tells us that if we presume on riches now we will be insolvent forever. This parable tells us that we are to realize that we are insolvent and put some hustle into our living.
That’s what the manager does. He uses wealth to gain friends; Jesus reflects on that verse 9 saying, “I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings. We are to hustle with the stuff of this life to make friends with God. We want Him to welcome us once the reckoning has taken place. We are to act as if He is a prospective employer or benefactor and this life is one long interview. That’s, “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.”
The correlation with the manager and rich man obviously isn’t perfect here. The point is, like the manager, we need to act is if we need someone to take us in—someone like the father in the last parable, someone like Abraham in the next parable. We are to recognize that we live extraordinary times with judgment looming and to put some hustle into life.
Are you sensible about the fact that the most massive reckoning in all existence is coming your way? You’d be wise to show yourself attractive to God’s eternal employ then by the way you live now; “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.” That manager’s prospective employers were to see that he was for them. Does God see that you’re for Him—by your use of money? By your use of time? By your use of you? If not, why should He give you anything after the reckoning of the books? “If one cannot care in this life for what God has given [think money, children, work, your own soul], how can one expect anything from God in the life to come?” as Bock asks from this parable; “So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?” as Jesus asks for this parable.
This parable, like so many we’ve seen, is about its stated topic, in this case money, but it is ultimately about you and God. The stated topic reveals where you and God are at. Money reveals how you deal with God. Your spouse or singleness from this morning reveals how you deal with God. Your life is always about you and God… always—that’s what it means for you to live in His world and be made in His image. You are dealing with Him always—these parables are designed to open your eyes to that fact, in this case using money. That’s, “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”
Money reveals your self-interests. Your attitude reveals your self-interests. The promises you are willing to make reveal your self-interests. The promises you are willing to break reveal your self-interests. This manager had self-interests. “Nothing happens without self-interest,” as Snodgrass tells us from this parable. “The question is whether the self-interest is short-sighed and self-centered or true self-interest from an eternal perspective.”
Do you, like this manager, have sensible eternal self-interest? Think of your life as a loan which will come due. This is like the parable of the talents. God is looking for some sort of improvement on investment. He’s looking for you to think for yourself about yourself. He’s given you a life. What are you doing with it? To ask the strange question of this parable, if you took the creativity and industriousness you devote to godliness and devoted that to a life of crime, how successful of a criminal would you be? Would God respect your play? Do you have the sort of hustle that shows you care about the upcoming reckoning? That will reorient the way you live in this fading world and that leads us to our final point: the Pharisees’ response.
Jesus told this parable to his disciples; that’s verse 1, “Jesus told his disciples…” The Pharisees, to whom Jesus did not tell it, overheard; that’s verse 14, “The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.” This matter of audience and response tells you all you need to know. Why did the Pharisees sneer at Jesus’ words on stewarding their lives for eternity? Because they weren’t his disciples. If they were disciples, they’d be verse 1 people; they are verse 14 people. The difference is Jesus’ words to the Pharisees in John 8:37, “you are trying to kill me because my word has no place among you.”
How you respond to Jesus’ words is the litmus test for spirituality. Sneering is eternally unwise. The Pharisees think they are sneering because they have a more highly refined spiritual palate that Jesus. Luke tells us that they are sneering because they love money; “The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this and were sneering at Jesus.” The gospels usually show by way of words and actions; they are rarely this blatant about telling. We’d be wise to pay attention when they blatantly tell and here Luke tells us that the Pharisees sneered at God in the flesh’s words about money and stewarding their lives because they loved money.
They loved life as it was. That’s shocking because the Pharisees set out to do the opposite. They weren’t the movement of the cultural elites—the Sadducees or the Herodians. They were, in their minds, common men seeking to reform the common man so that God would see their reform and save Israel from Rome. The condemnation here is that they were lying to themselves about that. They couldn’t see it because they had grown to love this age they professed to oppose. They had grown quite comfortable in this life and Jesus’ words on acting extra-ordinarily in these extraordinary times threatened that comfort, and so the next parable was coming at them—the Rich Man who couldn’t be bothered to act sensibly in light of the coming reckoning and so ignored Lazarus. That Rich man, like them, loved this age and sneered at acting extra-ordinarily in these extraordinary times before the financial reckoning of us insolvent sinners. He was not welcomed into the eternal dwellings of God. Neither would the Pharisees.
The question is whether you will be. Do you sneer at Jesus’ words about having as much hustle in your spirituality as a criminal does at his crime? Do you have any sense that you are going to need some sort of eternal employ? Are you looking to get in good with God before you are out on the streets eternally? Consider that as if your eternity depended on it… because it does. Amen.