We’re continuing our series “Enough: Discovering Joy Through Simplicity and Generosity” today by examining another parable of Jesus about the use of money and possessions. Last week we dug into the parable of the rich fool in Luke 12. This week, we’re looking at one of the most difficult parables of Jesus- the parable of the Dishonest Manager.
This is one of those parables of Jesus that’s a real head-scratcher—so much so that most preachers and interpreters avoid it. It’s that ambiguous quality, however, that makes parables so effective as a teaching tool. Jesus uses these stories to surprise the listeners and invite them into new ways of thinking. Instead of offering a series of bullet points, Jesus instead tells stories that somehow pull people into them. The point of the parable isn’t just one thing, but it’s multiple things often viewed from multiple perspectives. The black and white categories that we tend to think in are suspended by Jesus in these parables, where the supposed villain often becomes the hero and the outcomes are unexpected. We’re simply invited to find ourselves within the parable.
Jesus is talking to his disciples, turning to them right after he tells the more famous parable of the Prodigal Son in Luke 15. That one was told in response to the grumbling of the scribes and Pharisees, who saw Jesus’ eating with sinners as being scandalous. The point of that parable (well, one of the points of that parable) is that God welcomes the wayward prodigal home. Remember how that one starts—the younger son asks for his inheritance and then goes and squanders it on fast cars and fast women (or the first century equivalent). Today’s parable begins with some squandering as well, which ought to tip us off that Jesus isn’t big on squandering (the word in the Greek literally means to “scatter”). Both parables teach us, among other things, that scattering our money around like drunken sailors isn’t a good thing.
Take a look with me at Luke 16. We’re going to go through this story a little at a time. The set-up: A “rich” property owner, probably an absentee landlord, has a manager, a steward, whose job it is to manage the owner’s estates and collect the rent from the tenants who worked the land. Somehow, the owner gets word that the manager has been playing fast and loose with his property (scattering it about in some way), and the manager gets summoned to a “come to Jesus” meeting. The owner calls for an audit of the books, an accounting of all that the manager has done, “because,” says the owner, “you cannot be my manager any longer.” He’s not fired yet, but he’s going to be, especially when the cooked books are served up.
The manager then has this internal dialogue (a lot like the rich fool did in last week’s parable). “What will I do? I’m not strong enough to dig as a laborer, and I’m too proud to beg.” And then, like the rich fool, he comes to a decision that seems self-serving. “I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people (meaning the renters) may welcome me into their homes.” This would be the first century equivalent of unemployment insurance—setting up a golden parachute, if you will.
So he goes out to the unwitting tenants (they don’t know his head is on the chopping block) and he cuts their rent, which was paid in produce. The tenant who runs the olive press gets a fifty percent cut in his rent, while the wheat farmer gets a twenty percent reduction. This is a brilliant, if a little shady, plan. Think about it—the manager, acting for the owner, cuts the rent of the tenants, which almost never happens, even today. As he does so, I imagine he says to the tenants, “I talked to the owner and he agreed that it would be a great idea to reduce the rent for you.” The tenants praise the owner for his generosity, and praise the manager for it being his idea. When the manager gets fired, he’ll then be able to go back the tenants and say, “Remember what I did for you?” and, according to the laws of patronage in the first century, they would have to take him in. That is, if the owner fires him in the first place. Doing so would make him look bad in the eyes of the tenants. It’s a clever, foolproof plan.
The owner even sees it that way. Look at verse 8: “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” We don’t know if he still canned him, or if he got a promotion. The parable just kind of ends there, open-ended. A shady character wins. What are we supposed to do with that?
What Jesus does it with it is to turn it into a teaching about managing our affairs, particularly in a time of crisis. The “crisis” in this case is caused by the manager’s squandering of property. His solution was to plan—to plan to manage the owner’s wealth in a way that would benefit others while benefitting himself. Jesus says that such shrewdness is often demonstrated more by the kinds of sinners he eats with, “the children of this age,” than by the “children of light” (which was a Jewish code word for the righteous, like the Pharisees and Scribes). Verse 14 tells us that the Pharisees were “lovers of money.” Rather than being “shrewd” like the shady servant and managing the master’s property in ways that bring honor to the master, they instead hoard it for themselves, more like the rich fool (Luke 12). They ridicule Jesus because, once again, he has proven that self-awareness is better than self-righteousness. Even a dishonest manager knows better than they do that life is all about pleasing the master!
Jesus’ next line makes sense if it’s put in that context. “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.” A little context here: for Luke, wealth is always a bad thing because it’s a hindrance to a full relationship with God. A better translation of “dishonest” wealth here is “unrighteous” wealth (or, even better, the NIV uses “worldly” wealth). Wealth itself is “unrighteous,” worldly—it only has the power to corrupt those who hold on to it– but wealth used for others has a redemptive quality. Here Jesus is saying, essentially, “don’t make friends with wealth itself, but rather use wealth generously to gain friends who will be eternally thankful for your generosity.” The parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus, which frames the end of this chapter, demonstrates that principle clearly. It’s the rich man that refused to share his wealth that winds up in eternal torment, while the poor Lazarus who sat begging at the rich man’s gate who enjoys eternity with God. Had the rich man befriended Lazarus, things would have been different!
The “crisis,” for Jesus, is the coming of God’s Kingdom, which will reverse all the categories of success as defined by the world. In that kingdom, the last will be first and the first last. The poor will be comforted and the rich sent “empty away” (Luke 1). The parable is a way for Jesus to teach about how wealth should be managed in light of that coming kingdom.
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much,” Jesus goes on to say, “and whoever is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. If, then, you have not been faithful with dishonest wealth (wealth itself), who will entrust you with true riches (the kingdom of God)? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?”
Jesus reveals what this parable has been about all along—it’s about management, about stewardship, of property that belongs to the master, and this isn’t the only parable where Jesus talks about this. The squandering manager has to give an account of his mismanagement and, in response, he comes up with a plan that, somehow, pleases the master. The real question that Jesus seems to be driving at here is this: How are you managing the resources that God has put in your care? Are you squandering it still, or do you have a plan that will benefit the master and others, while securing a future for yourself?
We’re talking about stewardship here in the best sense of the word. A lot of times when we bring up stewardship in church it’s a code word for fundraising—stewardship means you ought to give the church more money. That’s why some people get really nervous around the time of a stewardship campaign. I sometimes encounter people who will say that they don’t go to church because the church is “always asking for money.” Stewardship thus gets cast in a negative light—something we have to grit our teeth and do every year.
But I want to suggest this morning that stewardship is something that we engage in not just for the benefit of the church. It benefits us as well. When we learn to stop squandering wealth, when we learn how to financially plan for the future, when we are generous with our neighbors, it is then that we begin to learn how our financial management is a spiritual discipline. It is then that we learn that our giving to the church isn’t just a “donation,” but rather an expression of gratitude to God and one way that we intentionally manage God’s wealth for God’s kingdom.
Remember last week we said that wealth really isn’t ours to keep? That we can’t take it with us when we die? It’s true. There is no luggage rack on a hearse! We are not the owners of wealth, we are only manager’s of the real owner’s wealth. What will we do with it? How will we manage it?
Take out your wallet for a minute and look inside. You’ve probably got some cash and credit cards in there, right? Our wallets really define us, don’t they? They contain our identity, our means of paying our way through the world.
OK, now do this—pass it to the person sitting in front of you (note: blog readers, try and envision this happening in your church on Sunday morning!). Go ahead. How does it feel to hand over your wallet to a perfect stranger, or even a friend? Now you’re holding on to someone else’s wallet. How does that feel? Do you feel responsible? Do you want to make sure you please that person who gave it to you, that you manage their resources wisely, that you’ll give it back to them safe and sound?
Feeling nervous? Well, how about this. I’m going to ask the ushers to come forward right now to receive our morning offering. Let’s see how generous we will be with someone else’s money.
OK, just kidding. But you were wigging out there for a second, weren’t you? I don’t have scientific data to back this up, but my guess is that we’re much more likely to be generous with someone else’s money than we would be with our own. After all, we think, this person would “want it that way,” right? Like the manager in the parable, we know that being generous would put the owner in a good light, and us, too, by extension.
Friends, this is what God essentially does with us. He hands us his resources, all that he owns. We are to manage it. When we manage it well, when we use his resources wisely and generously, we are commended. When we squander them and scatter them about haphazardly, well, someday we’ll be called to account for that, too. One of the catchphrases of our culture: What’s in your wallet? The question, really, is what’s in his wallet and how do I manage it?
You can give back those wallets now, even if their not really yours!
Being a good steward means having a good plan to manage the master’s resources. That takes wisdom, patience, creativity, and, above all, discipline.
Here is a sample plan—six key financial principles that, when followed, can help us better manage the resources with which God has entrusted us. Let’s take a look at those briefly:
SIX KEY FINANCIAL PRINCIPLES
Put God first in your living and giving. (2 Corinthians 9:6-7) – It’s his in the first place. We don’t give God the leftovers but, the “first fruits,” the best part of our selves. When we order our lives around God as our first priority, everything else falls into place. The Israelites were to give God the first 10% of the harvest as a spiritual discipline. When we work toward giving a greater percentage of our income to God, it is a spiritual discipline. We may not be there right now, but we can be working toward tithing as a goal. When we give to God first, we’re honoring him and putting things in their proper perspective.
Prepare a spending plan and track all expenses monthly. (Proverbs 27:23-24). This keeps you from squandering and scattering around money and resources. A monthly budget is a way of accounting for the master’s property. It keeps us from impulse buying and being dazzled by things we can’t afford.
Simplify your lifestyle, live below your means. (Matthew 6:19-33) We live in a culture where people use credit to live above their means. When we downsize our lives and cut out the clutter, we are free from debt and have an opportunity to share more with others. Wear things out before you replace them. Sell or give away stuff you don’t need and use them to benefit the poor. As Ghandi once said, we should “Live simply, so that others may simply live.”
Provide immediately for an emergency fund. (1 Timothy 6:9-12) An emergency fund keeps us from using credit in times of crisis. It’s a backup plan, a hedge against disaster. If you don’t have an emergency fund, plan to start one, even if it’s small, and build it until it has three months worth of income or so.
Pay off all credit card debt and use cash, not credit cards. (Proverbs 22:7) This one’s really important. I once heard it said that carrying a balance on your credit cards is a form of indentured servitude. I saw a video awhile back where a couple was talking about their credit card debt and they realized that they were still paying off the cost of movies they went to in college ten years before, only now those movies were costing them hundreds of dollars in interest! If you can’t pay you credit card bill in full each month, consider cutting up your cards and using cash only. Let God have claim over your finances and not a credit card company!
Practice long-range saving and investing habits. (Luke 14:28) The idea here is not to hoard resources, but to have goals that reflect care for others and for ourselves. Education for children is a goal that will pay dividends not only for them but for all the people they will help in a lifetime. A retirement fund isn’t there just so that we can move to Tahiti and sip drinks with little umbrellas in them—it’s there so that we can provide for ourselves in later years and provide for those left behind when we go. Estate planning makes sure that the money we can’t take with us in used in godly ways.
The bottom line of all of this is summed up by Jesus: “No servant (no steward) can serve two masters; for a steward will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
The way we use money reveals whom we are serving. When we plan its use as stewards managing the master’s resources, we are shrewd and wise. When we fail to plan and scatter it about on things that don’t matter, then money becomes our master.
Whom do you serve?
