17th Sunday after Pentecost [Pr. 20] September 23, 2007 “Series C”
Grace be unto you and peace, from God our Father and from our Lord, Jesus Christ. Amen.
Let us pray: Dear Heavenly Father, you sent your Son, Jesus the Christ, into our world to reveal your word and grace to us. But sometimes we, like his first disciples, fail to grasp the significance of what he taught us. Through the power of your Holy Spirit, help us to acknowledge our limited understanding of Christ’s word for us, and enable us to cling to your redeeming grace, poured out for us through our Lord’s death and resurrection for our salvation. This we ask in Christ’s holy name. Amen.
In all honesty, I spent hours pouring through various commentaries on our Gospel lesson for this morning. Of course, this is not unusual, since I have made a concerted effort over the past few years to improve the quality of my sermons. However, the more I read, the more convinced I became that I just didn’t understand the meaning of this parable of the Unjust Steward! In fact, the more I read, the more convinced I became that the commentators didn’t understand this parable either.
About the only thing that the various New Testament scholars agree on, is the fact that even Luke himself had trouble understanding this parable. For in the verses that follow the parable itself, Luke presents us with two or three different interpretations of its meaning. Perhaps this is one of those situations where something was lost between the time Jesus spoke this parable, and the time that Luke decided to put the oral accounts of Jesus’ teachings on paper.
Think about this text. The parable itself is contained in the first seven and a half verses. Here Jesus tells us that there was a rich man who was no doubt an absentee landlord. So he hired a steward or manager to take care of his property, which, most likely, was used to raise wheat and olive trees. One day, however, someone came to the landowner and snitched on the steward, suggesting that he had either been lazy in his management of the estate, or had been embezzling funds.
So the rich man calls in his steward, and says, “Word has gotten to me that you have been cheating me. I want an audit of the books, and if these accusations are correct, you’re fired. I’ll not have someone cheat me out of my just return on my investment.”
Now, at this point in the story, we find out a couple of things about the steward. First of all, he was guilty, since he knows that his position will be taken away from him. And secondly, we can assume that he was either up in years, close to retirement, or a proud physical weakling. For he says to himself, “What will I do, now that I’m going to be fired. I’m not strong enough to do common labor, and I’m ashamed to beg.”
So the steward shows us his deceitfulness. In order to endear himself to those who owed the landowner substantial debts, he calls the debtors in, and enters into conspiracy with them to defraud the landowner out of even more of his estate. Now, the steward must have been inept as a manager, for he has to ask each of them how much they actually owed. But he was shrewd, because he didn’t reduce the debtor’s bills himself – he has them make the changes. Nevertheless, he has endeared himself to the debtors, in the hope that after he is fired, they will take care of him in his unemployment.
And then comes the kicker! The landowner, after he discovers what the steward has done, after he discovers that he has been defrauded again, commends the dishonest steward, because he acted shrewdly!
Now I’m sorry, but for those of you who would like to take this parable at face value and use it as an example of how Jesus teaches us we ought to be conducting ourselves in the business world, need to read the rest of the New Testament. We’ve seen enough of such dealings, and have lost enough of our investment funds to such scandals as the Enron situation, to realize that to act in such a manner is downright criminal and immoral in the secular world, and certainly not a spiritual value to aspire to.
Nor is Luke’s comment that follows this teaching of Jesus, when he says, “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Clearly Luke did not understand this parable either, for this statement is totally inconsistent with the rest of his Gospel and his Book of Acts, giving the impression that we can purchase God’s eternal and redeeming grace by means of dishonest money.
This is an extremely puzzling text to ponder. Of course, some of those commentaries that I read tried to soften the message by offering some thoughts that would seem to reverse the impact of the story. For example, some of the commentaries suggested that the landowner may have been himself unjust. In order to make this point, they point out that it is against the Mosaic Law for Jewish people to charge high interest, or in some cases, any interest on debts owed.
Thus, they suggest that even if the steward had been embezzling funds or mismanaging the landowner’s property, if the owner had been charging usury interest rates, he resolved his dilemma justly. He simply had the debtors adjust their bills by removing any interest owed the landowner. By so doing, he showed repentance for his actions, and on behalf of the owner, who, when the owner discovered what the steward had done, it placed him in a situation where he could not help but praise the steward for his actions.
Of course, this makes the parable sound a lot better than the way we read it in our lesson. However, it assumes a lot of facts not in evidence, and if usury was the motivation for the parable, why was it not mentioned in the parable itself? Although such an interpretation makes the story sound better, I can’t imagine Jesus leaving this detail out of his parable.
Other commentaries that I read indicated that they believed the true message of the parable really had nothing to do with money, be it honest or dishonest. And since one of those commentaries was written by one of my professors at seminary, I obviously tend to favor his judgement. Let me paraphrase Dr. Granskou’s comments.
First of all, because of its location in Luke’s Gospel, which occurs several chapters after Christ’s Transfiguration, Jesus is well on his road to the end of his ministry and the cross. If this parable was taught to the disciples during this time, the time for the disciples to truly commit themselves and embrace Jesus in total trust and faith was at hand.
As a result, Dr. Granskou suggests that the meaning of the parable may be suggesting quick and resolute action in the face of judgment, which was very close at hand. Since the landowner commended the dishonest steward for his prudence or shrewdness, it points to the quickness of the steward’s actions, and asks the disciples if they are ready to act with prudence, and trust their future to him. After all, the steward had little time to act decisively to secure his future.
Dr. Granskou then concludes, and I quote, “Beyond this there is darkness about this parable. It is also possible that the real ending of the story is missing, and we can only guess at what followed. This parable leaves the reader and preacher with a basic problem which he or she alone must solve; and that is, whether there is enough clarity here to teach anything on the basis of the text as we have it.” End quote.
Well, there is one thing that I would like to say, and that is that after reading all the various commentaries that I had access to, and spending hours thinking about this text, I don’t truly understand it. It certainly is not a parable that advocates deceit or fraud, whether that be by usury or laziness or embezzlement. And if it is parable that encourages us to be prudent, and place our future into God’s gift of grace in Christ’s death and resurrection, that works for me. After all, that is consistent with the rest of the New Testament, and the good news of the Gospel.
Perhaps there are some things we are just not meant to understand, until we can ask our crucified and risen Lord when we join him in paradise. But until that time, may God’s Spirit give us the grace to place our trust in Christ, and live as his redeemed disciples.
Amen.
