The Shrewd Steward
Luke 16:1-8a
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The plane slowed and leveled out about a mile above ground. Up ahead, the Viennese castle glowed like a fairy tale palace. When the pilot gave the thumbs-up, Gerald Blanchard jumped into the darkness and descended to the tiled roof. It was early June 1998, and the evening wind was warm. He steered his parachute toward his target and almost overshot the castle, slowing himself just enough on the tiles, arms and legs flailing for a grip and finally saving himself from falling four stories by grabbing a railing at the roof’s edge.
A couple of days earlier, Blanchard had appeared to be just another 20-something on vacation on a VIP sneak peek tour at a highly prized piece of jewelry from a private collection, the Sisi Star, a delicate but dazzling 10-pointed star of diamonds fanned around one monstrous pearl. And there it was, displayed in a cavernous room, in an alarmed case, behind bulletproof glass, on a weight-sensitive pedestal. Five seconds after laying eyes on it, Blanchard knew he would try to take it. Specially crafted for Empress Elisabeth of Austria to be worn in her beautiful hair, it has been 75 years since the public had a glimpse of it. On the tour, Blanchard wasn’t listening to the guide but instead was noting and videotaping the motion sensors in the corner, the type of screws on the case, the large windows nearby, and the security flaws. He found the Sisi mesmerizing and the challenge irresistible. He used a key to loosen the screws when the staff moved on to the next room, unlocked the windows, and determined that the motion sensors would allow him to move — albeit very slowly — inside the castle. He stopped at the souvenir shop and bought a replica of the Sisi Star, noting the armed guards stationed at every entrance and patrolling the halls. But the roof was unguarded.
Just one night after his visit to see the star, Blanchard unhooked his parachute, retrieved a rope from his pack, wrapped it around a marble column, and lowered himself down the side of the building, entering through the window he had unlocked the previous day. He slowly approached the display and removed the already loosened screws, carefully using a butter knife to hold in place the two long rods that would trigger the alarm system. He reached into his pocket and deftly replaced the Sisi with the gift-store fake onto the spring-loaded mechanism the star was sitting on. Within minutes, it was in Blanchard’s pocket and he was rappelling down a back wall to the garden, taking the rope with him as he slipped from the grounds. Thus was born a criminal mastermind who orchestrated high tech crimes never seen before spanning three continents. One prosecutor called him “Cunning, clever, conniving, and creative,” Mitch McCormick, one of the lead investigators, developed a high regard for Blanchard’s abilities saying, “We had never seen anything like it.” Even the sentencing judge said, the banks “should hire him and pay him a million dollars a year.” And right before sentencing, he turned directly to Blanchard. “I think that you have a great future ahead of you, if you wish to pursue an honest style of life.”
First, Jesus commends shrewdness. We live in a world that often appreciates shrewdness and cunning in others. In fact, many movies and novels have clever plot twists where the heroes or heroines do something shrewd to thwart evil – and the audience applauds. Shrewdness is considered a valuable skill. Even so, it seems strange to have a prosecutor, the two lead investigators and the sentencing judge praise a career criminal mastermind and thief. But it seems even more difficult to hear Jesus seemingly do the same thing with a crooked estate manager overseeing the owner’s property and wasting the Owner’s resources. On the surface, Jesus seems to be commending dishonesty and misrepresentation. How could that possibly be?
To understand the true meaning of Jesus’ words and this parable, we need to see the context in which it was told. In Jesus’ day, 90% of the people in Israel were peasants, i.e., indebted tenant farmers, living on the edge of poverty. Almost all the land in Palestine was owned and controlled by elite absentee landowners who heavily taxed the crops as rental for the land. Rents of 25-33% of the grain yield and 50% of the fruit yield were not unusual. If you were a peasant farmer in the First Century, you were but one crop failure or drought away from financial ruin and debtor’s prison. Thus, the tenant farmers paid a fixed portion of the crop to the Estate Owner at harvest. So the crowd around Jesus would have loved this story because it not only meant financial relief but this is the story about “sticking it to the Man!”
Once aware of the Manager’s shenanigans, the Owner promptly fires him so no additional embezzlement might occur. However, his dismissal is still not final because he has not yet been summoned to produce the books as his last official act. Thus, the Manager still has some time to maneuver since the word of his dismissal is not yet public. In such circumstances, it was typical for a multi-day negotiation to commence immediately between the Owner and the Estate Manager with the Manager passionately protesting his innocence and asserting his continued loyalty. Since we have no report of this, it’s likely the Manager knows he has been caught red-handed and is silently admitting his guilt. The Owner is surprisingly merciful toward him because he does not arrest the Manager. In fact, he is not even scolded in the story!
The Manager’s immediate crisis is so bad that he even considers digging ditches as a new career, which is remarkable because no educated man in the Middle East is expected to do manual labor. In a culture where both individual and community honor is highly regarded, the Manager seeks to maintain an acceptable image in the community and for this Manager that means at any cost. So he quickly concocts a plan. The renters are summoned one at a time because he doesn’t want them talking to each other or asking too many questions about the current proceedings. It’s a divide-and-conquer strategy. What they will soon learn is unheard of, having your rent cut in half! But while the renters may have some concerns or suspicions about this, they all readily accept. The old saying, “Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth” applies here. By doing this, the Manager ingratitates himself to the tenant farmers and sets himself up for the future by drawing on the cultural value of reciprocity. In other words, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours, thus ensuring his uncertain future.
When the Owner sees the accounting records and recognizes what the Estate Manager has just done, he quickly realizes he has only two options. He knows the village is already celebrating his being the most generous Estate Owner in the village’s history and praising him as a very noble man with a giving nature. If he goes back to the renters and explains what the fired Estate Manager has done and makes the cut in rental debt null and void, the village’s joy turns to anger and the Owner loses honor in their eyes. Or he can keep silent, accept the praise and let this clever ex- Estate Manager ride his newfound popularity.
Now the most difficult part of parable is that Jesus appears to be commending dishonesty and misrepresentation. According to Kenneth Bailey, one of the OT definitions of “wisdom” is a knack for self-preservation and the Manager certainly is showing that. Because the Owner was indeed a generous and merciful person, he chose to pay (absorb) the full financial consequences (price) for his ex-Manager’s actions. In this parable, Jesus does not praise the Manager for his integrity; rather he gets criticized as “unrighteous.” It helps to remember that Jesus tells this parable in Luke’s Gospel immediately after the parable of “The Prodigal Son.” There are obvious parallels between the two stories: each has a noble master who demonstrates extraordinary mercy and grace to a wayward underling. Both feature a son/steward who wastes the master’s resources. In each, a son/steward reaches a crisis moment of truth. Both the son and the steward throw themselves on the mercy of the father and the master.
Part of the challenge in understanding this parable is who you believe is the focus of this story. In both the parable of “The Prodigal Son” and “the Shrewd Steward,” we Westerners focus on the son and the Manager, respectively. But Middle Easterners, including Jesus, would focus on the one who provides. In the Prodigal Son, it is the Father through his response to the wayward son’s return and in the parable of the Shrewd Steward, it is the Estate Owner and his response to the actions of the Shrewd Manager. In the Prodigal Son, the wayward son finally “came to his senses, (and) he said, ‘How many of my father’s hired servants have food to spare, and here I am starving to death! I will set out and go back to my father and say to him: Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son; make me like one of your hired servants.’” While the Estate Manager made no assumption of grace, that is exactly what he received.
Now this is why Jesus praised the dishonest Estate Manager. First is the ingenuity and shrewdness by which he acted. “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.” Jesus is saying that if God’s people would use the same determination, effort and ingenuity that the world uses in to gain their ends and if they would put that to the work of the Kingdom, the Church would be a very different place and the world would be a very different place too. Think what we would accomplish if we truly put that type of effort into the work of the Kingdom. I think that raises a question: how much time, effort and ingenuity do you put into the work of the Kingdom and the things of God in your life?
But the second reason Jesus praises the Manager is that his crisis was solved by the mercy of the Owner. He accepted the grace offered to him. He didn’t earn it, enlist it or even secure it but he did receive it and he knew it was his only source of salvation. Matthew Barnett tells the story of Jim Bakker who started the 700 Club which Pat Robertson later took over. He was also the founder of the Trinity Broadcasting Network, a cable television network and Heritage Park USA. At the peak of the ministry’s popularity, his ministry was receiving $1,000,000 a day. He fell from grace when he had an affair and then financial fraud was discovered. He was sentenced to 45 years in prison but ended up serving only five years when his sentence was overturned. Prison was hard on Jim Bakker. The guards called him names, leaving him feeling worthless and thinking he had no future. It left him a broken man. When he was released, he didn’t know what he would do but he did know one thing: he would never ever preach again. But then Jim was invited to Matthew’s Ministry in Los Angeles called the Dream Center. At their Thursday night worship service, Jim was called up on stage, still very much a hopeless man, devastated by the demeaning years in prison and his widespread rejection by the church. He was encouraged to speak. He resisted. But that night an annointing came upon Jim and he preached for the first time in years. He told them about life in prison and how God got him out of prison. Then he looked out at the crowd and asked, “Have any of you seen prison?” Three quarters of the crowd stood up and Jim said, “O my, I’m home. These are my people.” When you’re an inmate, it becomes like a fraternity and you just bond. As Jim preached, the crowd kept standing up and giving ovations and shouting amens. He had never felt so loved and appreciated. On a tour of the Dream Center the next day, people kept coming up to Jim to hug him and tell him how much they loved him. Jim asked to stay another night to participate in one of the many ministries of the Dream Center and then another night and another and another. Jim ended up staying several months leading Bible study groups, speaking to people about recovery and engaging in street ministry. And Matthew Barnett writes, “The love Jim felt from the assembled people that night was a critical step in receiving the healing God wanted for him” and God’s mercy and grace.
And if that is the case for the shrewd Manager and even for Jim Bakker, how much more will God mercifully help you in your (sin) crisis when you avail yourself of (throw yourself upon) His mercy. The steward is praised for his self-preservation and for his wisdom in knowing where his salvation lay, not for his dishonesty. He recognizes the hopelessness of his situation. And the same is true of us. That as we stand before God and these elements of love and grace, we realize the sin in our lives and that the only salvation for us is through God’s mercy and grace. And it is just waiting for us to avail ourselves of it.
Steven Cole tells the true story (J. C. Ryle, Foundations of Faith [Bridge Publishing],) of a mother whose daughter ran away and fell into a life of sin. For a long time, no one even knew where she was. But eventually that daughter returned, mourned over her sin, and trusted in Christ to forgive her and save her. Someone asked the mother what she had done to bring her daughter back. She said, “I prayed for her night and day.” But that was not all. She also said, “I never went to bed at night without leaving my front door unlocked. I thought that if my daughter came back some night when I was in bed, she should never be able to say that she found the door locked. She should never be able to say that she came to her mother’s home, but couldn’t get in.” And so it happened. One night the daughter came back, tried the door, and found it open. At once, she came in to stay, to go out and sin no more. And then he writes, “That unlocked door is a beautiful illustration of God’s grace toward sinners. God’s door is always unlocked whenever you are willing to come home.” Amen and Amen.
