Clever Sharing Of The Good News

Friday of the 31st Week in Course 2024

Parables from Jesus struck the listeners as stories that might help them understand God’s kingdom. Often the real challenge is to look at the story as a whole, and ask what general lesson Jesus is trying to help us learn.

The parable we just heard is one of those. It’s a simple story. The store owner had a general manager we’ll call “Graft.” This was the era before the use of double-entry bookkeeping, so he kept one set of books for the owner to see, and the other where he kept his own records, showing what price he actually charged the customer. Lots of time, before the general use of currency, the customer would pay for goods purchased by signing a note specifying what amount of his crops would satisfy the claim, once he harvested his fields. The general manager would deduct his markup and give the balance to the owner, cancel the promissory note and mark “paid” on the owner’s ledger and customer’s note.

But this manager was, in the words of the Gospel, accused of scattering his goods. The Greek has the ominous phrase diablethe diaskorpizon. You can see in the phrase the root of the word “diablo,” or in English, devil. Satan is effective in only two actions: lying and scattering. Remember that Jesus and the saints are distinguished from evildoers by being truthful and bringing diverse people together. So the manager was evil. He was being given the equivalent of two weeks’ notice by the owner. He was also lazy and dishonest, and signed off on the reduction of the customers’ promissory notes. Ordinarily the owner wouldn’t even see those notes, because he was only interested in his own bottom line–payment of what was owed written in his ledger. The customer would walk away with the note stamped “paid” by the manager. All the manager was doing for these customers was taking off his merdida, which he would never get to collect anyway. The customer walks away feeling good about the manager, and the manager has a shot at a later job with the customer. (Just as long as the new boss didn’t call for a reference.)

The manager then got a commendation from the owner. Why? Because he was able to provide for his future without doing any more damage to the owner. Everyone walked away thinking he had won. But none of them were giving good example for Christ’s listeners.

Jesus is looking at His disciples and is not telling this story because He wants them to imitate the dishonest manager. He just wants us to be clever as we spread the Gospel.

St. Paul’s words to the Ephesians goes well with the parable. He has shared with them the story of Jesus, using what to all of them must have been a well-known hymn about the emptying of the Son of God of His glory, and His going all the way down to crucifixion and death, to win salvation for us all. Paul is himself in chains for spreading the Gospel, and he is encouraging the church at Ephesus to imitate both him and Christ. The contrast with false Christians and libidinous Gentiles cannot be starker. They value only the pleasure, glory and power they can get on earth. We, by contrast, only value the cross of Christ and His grace, which is the path to the true joy and glory of our true kingdom, heaven, where Jesus and His saints rule forever and ever, Amen.