It’s complicated.
Scholars cannot agree on the meaning of this passage. Every commentary I consulted said: “This is a very difficult text.”
It left me frustrated, unsure of the lesson Jesus was trying to teach. I kept struggling to identify what it is we, as a church, need to take away from this passage.
At the very least, we can identify the original audience. Jesus is talking to his disciples. This probably refers to a larger group than the twelve disciples who followed Jesus most closely, but at least we know Jesus is addressing followers, and not opponents.
Jesus introduces us to two characters: a wealthy master, and the manager, or steward, of his estate. From the start we see the conflict in the story. The manager has been accused of squandering his master’s property, and he is about to be fired. Perhaps a more accurate title would be: ‘A rich householder had a steward’.
Many of us assume the manager/householder is God. When we do that we must find some way to make the householder’s praise or commendation acceptable. After all, there’s something in the human psyche which revolts at seeing so-called ‘badness’ rewarded.
But neither of the characters in this story seem to conform to the standard of behaviour that is generally thought appropriate to the realm or empire of God, do they? Different Bible translations give this story different titles: ‘the shrewd manager’, ‘the dishonest manager’, ‘the crafty steward’, ‘the unjust steward’. This straight away prejudges one of the characters.
We need to know that a manager of an estate could act in every capacity as the owner’s agent. The manager had full authority to buy, sell, and handle the property of his master. His decisions were equal to the master’s decisions, and his character was considered to reflect his master’s character. The manager’s behaviour was an extension of the master’s own behaviour, if the master did not publicly object to it. Whatever the manager did was as if the master had done it himself.
I ask myself, is the master a good guy or a bad guy? He clearly does not want the manager’s squandering to reflect badly on himself, but is this because he is an upstanding businessman who would never squander his resources, or because he wants to keep up appearances, and make himself look better than he really is? We are not told. We are left to ponder.
When faced with the prospect of getting fired, the manager/steward panics. “What shall I do?” he asks himself. He’s too weak for even the lowliest manual labour available, and he’s too proud to beg. At least he is honest with himself, even if he has been dishonest in his job. But he’s shrewd. He is street smart. So it doesn’t take him long to come up with a plan.
Social advancement was everyone’s goal, and it required constant manoeuvring.
The shrewd manager had a good memory. He knew who owed his master the greatest debts, and a couple of quick calls put him back in business.
Now, this is where biblical scholars start to disagree with one another, as they interpret this parable. Some say the manager was clearing the books of overcharges. Overcharging was the most common means of collecting interest on a debt without calling it interest – which would have been breaking the Jewish law. If the master was in on the game, he would not want it known that he had overcharged his customers, so he would willingly go along with the scheme to save face.
Others insist the manager was simply deducting his own cut of the profits that he had added to the debt without his master’s knowledge. With some fancy insider trader’ footwork,
he drastically reduces their debt.
Everyone agrees that it would be easy to make friends among the master’s customers by decreasing the debts they owed. And everyone agrees that a manager who cheats his master in order to make friends with his master’s clients is anything but righteous.
It’s the master’s reaction to the scheme that takes us by surprise. Instead of firing the manager first for squandering his wealth, or later for cutting his profits, the master commends the manager for acting shrewdly. Why on earth would he do this?
Luke gives us no clues, and we must be careful to not read too much between the lines of this story. But there are a couple of possibilities.
Perhaps the master praised the manager because the outcome was a good one, and the manager’s actions corrected the wrong he had done when he mismanaged the master’s business. The manager repents of his wrongdoing, the debtors are happy, the bill is collected, and the master’s conscience is clear.
“But the manager’s master is no saint either,” suggests B B Scott (Scott 2001:123). Because the master has long been profiting from the manager’s shrewdness… with interest rates to boot.
The debtors are still happy, and the bills are paid, but there is no repentance in this picture for either the manager or his boss. Either way, the master praises the manager for his quick thinking and his smart plan to provide for his own future.
Siding with one against the other is not all that helpful.
Perhaps an extreme example of this principle occurs whenever there is war, terror, or disaster which destroys the economic fabric of society. Where you do anything to survive. The people the dishonest manager helps are not wealthy people. They are debtors. The dishonest manager is not depending on their riches but on the relationship of mutual dependence he has built with them.
So what is Luke’s Jesus doing in this story? Perhaps Jesus in his parables is offering a vision of a counter world. Jesus is creating a safe place for all those who were left out, cheated, robed of their land and livelihood. Who have no hope… That is good news if you are on the margins of church, of society, of the commercial, or political systems.
But to be honest, the parable continues to intrigue and mystify. No agreed solution to the riddle has been found totally acceptable. That can be bad news if you want security, a religion with answers, a set of rules, or a reward for regular attendance at worship.
But do we need answers? How we imagine or re-imagine the world is the fundamental question. Life is often an unsolved riddle. This parable left me wondering would I be shrewd in my dealings when I know that the desired outcome would promote the wellbeing and flourishing of humanity and creation, or even one individual will benefit from my shrewdness or manoeuvring. Life is not black or white. And at the end of the day, chances are we will find ourselves standing in the householder’s shoes more than once in our lifetime. Where we have choice and power. Where several outcomes or endings are possible. There is always a risk. It all depends. All we can do is to travel with Jesus and have faith with him that his re-imagined view – his glimpsed alternative – of the world, is OK.
What Jesus is saying here is that the manager knew how to handle the system of worldly wealth to his best advantage. He got it. He knew the ropes. But we, as children of light, do not always know how to live within our “system” of the Kingdom of God. We do not always act like we know the kingdom is already here, already transforming the world, and we are already part of it. We fumble back and forth between two worlds, and can’t really move fluently in either one.
God’s radical love for us demands a radical response. Perhaps this parable is a call to start living a radically different life.
It isn’t easy. It doesn’t make sense. It costs everything.
We are each a representative of Christ, just as surely as that dishonest manager was a representative of his master.
It’s complicated. So is life.
Bibliography:
Scott, B. B. Re-imagine the World. An Introduction to the Parables of Jesus. Santa Rosa. Pole bridge Press, 2001.
Rex A. E. Hunt