"The Dishonest Steward"

For Sunday, September 19th, 2010

(Graphic from ChurchPowerPoint.com, used with permission)

Luke 16:1-13 (NRSV)

Then Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, 'What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.'

Then the manager said to himself, 'What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.'

So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?' He answered, 'A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' Then he asked another, 'And how much do you owe?' He replied, 'A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, 'Take your bill and make it eighty.'

And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. "Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth."

The Dishonest Steward

Jesus makes a profound point in the above teaching. Basically he says that secular persons pursuing their goals in the secular marketplace do so more cleverly, astutely, resourcefully and wisely than do communities of faith, i.e. the children of light. The goal of course for the children of light is God’s Peaceable Kingdom here on earth. Certainly it’s no small task, however Jesus makes clear that we must pursue it more shrewdly and aggressively than we do.

In the above scripture story, the lazy and dishonest manager sees the writing on the wall and what his self-serving ways are about to get him. In great desperation, like a celebrated but out of shape athlete wanting to hold on to his title, the manager resurrects his previous skills and calls upon all his past experience. If there’s to be any hope of keeping his status and the quality of life he’s accustomed to, he must get things back in shape. And if he’s unable to keep his job and status, he will need the support and help of friends, so he cuts favorable deals here and there with the master’s debtors, thereby creating a network of appreciative persons now indebted to him for his generosity. Surprisingly and despite the odds against him, the manager’s shrewdness impresses his master. The master gives him a reprieve and decides to keep the manager in the game – much to the manager’s relief as we might guess.

So if we take the above and apply it to communities of faith (i.e. the children of light), Jesus is pretty much telling the faith communities of his time (and ours) that they need to get their acts together for the Peaceable Kingdom cause. If not, then they will be cast out, passed up, and passed over.

Now in Jesus’ time, the faith communities he frequented and criticized were likely the unreceptive synagogues where his message and healings and teaching about the Peaceable Kingdom were ridiculed or dismissed. In short, Jesus is saying that faith communities (then and now) must become less self-serving or risk being passed over and their operations ultimately closed down. If these groups were however to fully realize and grasp their situation like the dishonest manager, they would see the writing on the wall. They would change their ways. They would become more productive. They would achieve the things God actually wants them to and they would do so more cleverly, astutely, resourcefully and wisely than they have ever done before. For as Jesus puts it, we cannot serve two masters; either we must choose to serve ourselves or choose to serve God.

In light of the above, one commentary states that the wealth and blessings that God has placed in our lives are for the benefit of all and not just our own self-focused desires. With that in mind, the commentary asks us children of light to think on the future we want for ourselves, our families, and our communities. What will it take to achieve it? What holds us back from working toward that goal?

For me, I think communities of faith across all faith traditions could be powerful amazing advocates for the common good envisioned by God’s Peaceable Kingdom. What holds us back is our need to compete with each other and our phenomenal irrational resistance to change. In fact, the problem and battles have become so bad among U.S. Christian churches that scholars now estimate that most of these 300,000 churches will close down and disappear over the next twenty years.  Long and short of it, we children of light have managed to leave a pretty bad taste in the mouths of those we most desperately seek. We are perhaps our own worst enemy in holding back the cause for the Peaceable Kingdom for we try to serve two masters, i.e. our own vanities and our God.

Perhaps however we can see the writing on the wall as did the self-absorbed manager. Perhaps with renewed effort we can resurrect our resourcefulness, shrewdness, and creativity. Perhaps we can rediscover the cause for the common good and once again have the Peaceable Kingdom become our mission rather that opting for a Sunday morning social club gathering. We have much to attend to if the Peaceable Kingdom is ever to be a reality. Communities of faith all around the world could be, as they have been in the past, powerful advocates of God’s Day of Peace for all living souls.

I would not be so bold or arrogant as to suggest that rediscovery of the common good be an American vision, but I think the issues and tasks involved were meaningfully articulated by U.S President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, over 66 years ago in a State of the Union address before the U.S. Congress in June 1944. In that address, Roosevelt called for a second Bill of Rights or what some have come to identify as an Economic Bill of Rights. Introducing those rights, Roosevelt shared the following:

…..political rights proved inadequate to assure us equality in the pursuit of happiness.  We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. "Necessitous men are not free men." People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.  In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all — regardless of station, race, or creed.

Roosevelt then laid out the following vision for an Economic Bill of Rights which detailed the following things:

• The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of  the nation;
• The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
• The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• The right of every family to a decent home;
• The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
• The right to a good education

The above needs massage in terms of gender inclusive language and rephrasing of some things into more contemporary terms, but that aside, Roosevelt's words constitute in many ways a compelling vision for God's Peaceable Kingdom vision. As Roosevelt drew his State of the Union address to a close, he expressed these finals thoughts:

All of these rights spell security. And after this war [World War II] is won we must be prepared to move forward, in the implementation of these rights, to new goals of human happiness and well-being.

There are those in this world who fight tooth and nail to keep the above from ever becoming reality. They do so even while claiming they too are “children of light.” For my part, I doubt that I will ever understand the kind of Peaceable Kingdom vision that resides in such persons. Perhaps they think that one day God will simply wave a magic wand to rid our world of all its ills and until then they’ll simply resign themselves to a strange kind of notion that God destined some people to suffer homelessness, poverty, joblessness, disease, hunger, ignorance, and insults or assaults or losses or disasters wrought by the criminality of others. They will be comfortable with such things until they – like the dishonest manager – become personally affected. When they become affected – as ultimately they will – perhaps then they shall reflect anew on this week’s teaching from Jesus, i.e. that a person cannot serve two masters.
 
If each of us would therefore become the shrewdest and wisest manager we can be over what God has placed into our care, let us serve then the master for whom our best efforts matter most.