The Dishonest Manager: Being Faithful in Little Things

Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113

1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 6:1-13

God desires us to be saved but the God who created us without our help will not save us without our help. No, there is a choice we must make to follow Jesus on the way, entering the Jesus movement of loving and serving and then loving and serving even more. We cannot serve both God and mammon. We’re called to choose between storing up treasure in this world or using everything we have in this world to store up treasure in the next.

The parable told by Jesus in today’s Gospel is perhaps the most confusing in any part of the Gospel. It seems to not fit with Luke having Jesus praise the crooked business manager or steward for his deception and wily behavior. Did the God who told us, “Thou shalt not steal,” praising someone for violating it when such violation is in one’s self-interest? What kind of lesson is Jesus trying to teach?

The Steward and His Commission

The first thing we have to do is discover what is happening in the story – what is crux of the parable, the fulcrum of understanding that will grab the audience. We hear in the story about a manager who is about to get released from the service of his master because he was “squandering his property.” During the exit interview, the manager is asked to give “an account of” of his management of the master’s property. Concerned over his future, the manager went to those who owed his employer and reduced their debt. Now, at first glance, this seems eminently dishonest. However, in the ancient world, the manner of business conduct was quite different than in our contemporary times. In such cases as we have in the parable, managers or stewards would make their own living be adding something on to a debt owed, receiving what we might call a commission as payment for their labors. The commission, though, would be added on to what was borrowed rather being taken out of what was owed to the master. For example, if someone owed 100 denarii or 100 barrels of olive oil or 100 ephahs of wheat, they would pay back the 100 to the master and an additional 10 or 20 or 50 to the manager. Basically, the manager would charge what he thought he could get and, like today, the higher the risk the higher the charge because the manager would be responsible if the debt couldn’t be paid.

The manager in the parable was dishonest not because of the relief of debts but because he was squandering his master’s riches on foolish investments or loans and was probably adding an exorbitant commission in order to maximize his own profits. So, when the manager called in those who owed the master (for instance, 100 jugs of olive oil or 100 containers of wheat) and reduced the amount to 50 or 80, the manager was effectively reducing or eliminating his own commission. He wasn’t stealing. No, the manager was faced with a tough decision: Save his own life by making friends with those who could take care of him or try to hold out for commissions if in the event of his firing. The manager chose life and was noted to have acted shrewdly.

The Dishonest Steward and Us

What’s the implication and how can we apply such a confusing parable to our lives? Simply, we are the steward! You see, we each have marvelous gifts through which we have made our “profits” – hands to work and heads to think, families, friends, education, livelihoods, and so many other blessings. And we have profited, making manifold commission. But the gifts that we have were not meant only for ourselves. They were meant not only for the profiting of ourselves; but, rather, they were meant for use in building up the Master’s estate – in building up the kingdom of God. But rather than using them for that purpose, Jesus indicates that his audience – the Pharisees who were listening in on Jesus’ discussion with his disciples – used their commissions to enrich themselves. The Pharisees (as well as the Scribes, the Priests and the Sadducees) were given a great gift in the covenant and the law, a powerful gift in bringing their people into right relationship with God. But they “were lovers of money,” forsaking their duty and desecrating the law. And maybe we’ve been doing the same. Can we apply this to ourselves? Have we been squandering the property of the Master? Like the manager, our time is coming to an end. We will need to make an audit of how we’ve used the gifts, blessings, and the talents that we have been given,

By the end of the parable, there is a striking answer to the question of how we might apply this parable to our own lives – or what we might do about our misuse of the Master’s property as we face our audit. The implication in Jesus’ parable is that we should do as the steward did. We should perhaps use that which we tried to gain selfishly, giving it back. We should give it back, taking care of them (those who were swindled) and, in the meantime, taking care of ourselves so that they may be our supporters, welcoming us into “eternal homes.” It’s a hard lesson, perhaps, but here it is: It seems to me that Jesus is implying that if we can’t to do the right thing simply because it is right or if we don’t want to love others because we were first loved or if our baptisms haven’t created in us a clean heart, then at least we should do it because of our eternal best interest. “Care for the poor,” Philadelphia Archbishop Charles Chaput once famously said, “or go to hell.”

Now, if hell is of our own making, as I believe it is, then hell is a place that we choose to live in. Hell is of our own making when we choose profits over the poor, when we choose dogma over love, and when we choose violence over peace. Like the steward in the parable, we are faced with the choice between trying to keep our profits and trying to save our lives.

Jesus has said it in other ways in the scriptures:

“If your right eye causes you to sin, tear it out and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to be thrown into hell. And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better for you to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matthew 5:29-30).

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God’ (Luke 18:25).

“Whatever you did for the least of my brothers and sisters, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40).

The Children of This Age

“The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” Jesus is telling us to use our heads, to be smart about salvation, to be shrewd about building the kingdom. In the final analysis, that’s the bottom of the bottom line. As we hear in the lesson from 1 Timothy, God “desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth” (1 Timothy 2:4). God desires US to be saved but the God who created us without our help will not save us without our help. No, there is a choice we must make to follow Jesus on the way, entering the Jesus movement of loving and serving and then loving and serving even more. We cannot serve both God and mammon. We’re called to choose between storing up treasure in this world or using everything we have in this world to store up treasure in the next. Just as the steward in the parable couldn’t try to keep all his commissions and win the favor of those who owed him, we cannot serve both God and mammon..

This parable, as most parables, should shake us up a bit – bring us out of our complacency. We tend to think that by coming to Sunday Mass, maybe praying a little each day, and living lives that don’t’ directly contravene the commandment, that everything must be fine. Amos, however, has a startling reminder for us that the Jesus movement demands going beyond weekly worship and minimum obligations. Amos was addressing a people who knew the law and were diligent about keeping their moral obligations. They kept the Sabbath. They paid their tithes. They said their prayers. But after they had done all of these things, they trampled on the needy and cheated the poor. They fixed their scales and “practiced deceit with false balances.” They took advantage of those unable to pay their debts, “buying the poor for silver” and forcing them into indentured servitude simply because they needed sandals. Amos’ condemns these outrageous practices of those who make a show of their religious fervor but are deeply dishonest in their dealings with people: “The Lord has sworn … Never will I forget a thing they have done!” Indeed, whatever we do to the least of our brothers and sisters, we do to him.

Being Faithful in Little Things

So, the time for our accounting will come or maybe it’s already come. The Lord calls us urgently and always to be ready to render our account by living lives consistent with self-giving love rather than self-centered selfishness. If we’re faithful in these small things, we will be faithful in big things. One of the “little things” Jesus describes is money or mammon. Jesus calls it “dishonest wealth,” not because it was gained in an illicit way. No, it is dishonest because it isn’t true wealth – at least not for eternity. It is dishonest, not in its gain, but in its promise – for mammon cannot save.

Today we ask the Lord whom we approach at the Altar today – whom we are about to receive in the bread and wine become his Body and Blood – to help us in imitating his own way of life which led him in loving service all the way to Calvary. We imitate so that when the time for our accounting, Jesus might praise us in our eternal homes for acting shrewdly!