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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. 2So 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.’ 3Then 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. 4I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7Then 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.’ 8And 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. 9And 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. 10“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. 11If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13No 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.”If you are sitting there puzzled and confused, wondering what in the world Jesus is trying to say with this parable of the dishonest manager or for that matter, what Luke was thinking in his decision to include the parable as a part of his gospel, be at peace and know that you are not alone. Biblical scholars and commentaries, typically helpful should one be stumped or perplexed are all across the board in terms of the purpose and meaning of this text. I think it’s quite possible Luke, knowing the parable to be important wasn’t exactly certain what to do with it himself. I say that because of these sayings of Jesus following the parable which appear to want to function as a means of interpretation and yet, seem a bit disconnected from the parable. The parable’s opening is nothing surprising: There is a rich man who’s manager was found to be squandering his property. Standard parable material. We know nothing about the man other than he’s rich, owns property, and he’s heard rumors his manager has been squandering. Going to the manager he asks first if what he’s been hearing is true and then he asks for a final report. So far, nothing unusual about this situation. It’s reasonable the manager would not be allowed to continue to manage property he is squandering and it’s reasonable he’d be asked for a status update prior to his exit. It’s also reasonable that upon learning he’s being relieved of his duties the manager quickly begins to figure out how he’s going to secure his future. After all, he likely won’t be hired by another rich land owner to manage their property given the reason for his dismissal. As a part of PCPC’s Lectionary call-in podcast Sara Mickelson lifts up something I’d been glossing over in my own reading of the text and that is it doesn’t say the manager is being fired, let go completely from the rich man’s payroll, the rich man says he can no longer serve as his manager. So perhaps, he’s being released from a position of responsibility and would be returned to the fields for the physically taxing job of working the land. Interesting consideration, however whether fired or demoted, the manager does a quick and honest self-evaluation and recognizes he doesn’t have the strength to be a laborer and he is to proud to beg. So, using the last bit of opportunity and power he has, the manager fixes the books before he hands them over relieving the debt the rich man is owed by others in order that they may return the favor by providing for him later. Let’s pause here for a moment. Historically we know it was common business practice to charge exorbitant interest, despite Jewish law prohibiting the charging of interest. Deuteronomy 23:19-20 “You shall not charge interest on loans to another Israelite, interest on money, interest on provisions, interest on anything that is lent.” So some scholars suggest the manager reduced the debt by removing the interest. Others suggest he reduced the amount by what his own profit would have been, forsaking his commission. The truth is we don’t know if the manager was seeking to secure his future by forsaking his own immediate return of a commission, with the added benefit of it also righting a wrong. Or perhaps the manager was taking one last opportunity to pull one over on the man who had great power and wealth than he. The possibilities are endless; the reality is the text is unclear and we are left to seek meaning within the ambiguity. What we do know is the rich man’s response to the manager’s action in this moment.Apparently having heard of the side deal the manager had worked out with the debtors, the rich man does not respond seeking retribution. Given the context of parable this isn’t particularly surprising. Let’s remember, in the unfolding of Luke’s narrative, we’ve just heard the parable of the Prodigal Son also called the Parable of the Merciful Father who, after learning his youngest son had squandered the inheritance he’d been given, rushed out to greet him and threw him a lavish party. Unexpected, unrestrained mercy are the things parables are made from, right? And yet, while we aren’t expecting the rich man to throw the manager into the fiery furnace neither are we expecting him to commend the manager or for the parable to end with Jesus saying to his disciples, “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.” This disrupts our tendency to favor dualistic thinking. We have a propensity for drawing lines in the sand and saying this is right and this wrong as if everything were black and white, leaving no room for gray areas of ambiguity. If we are honest with ourselves, this is what we look to scripture to do for us right? To help us determine what is right and what is wrong. This way of thinking is called into question at this point of the parable. Robert Frost put it poetically, “The secret sits in the middle and knows, while others dance round in circles and suppose.” There’s a lot of dancing where this parable is concerned. How do we stay in the middle as Richard Rohr puts it and find a third way, a Gospel Way, which is more healing and far wiser than the usual alternatives of our dualistic thinking? The parable calls into question the times, places, and reasons we are willing to live within the world’s structure disregarding the path faith calls us to walk. For whose benefit, for whose profit are you willing to abide by the world’s rubric? At what point are you able to value and place first God’s standard and God’s ways even when it sets them over and against the world’s? It makes me think of the classic tale of Robin Hood, a knight who steals from the rich in order to give to the poor. Or the more contemporary story of Walter White, the main character of the popular t.v. Series a few years ago Breaking Bad. Walter is a nerdy and meek chemistry teacher, who following his stage-3 lung cancer diagnosis wants to secure his family’s future financial situation; so he begins producing and selling crystal meth. Is there a scenario in which you are willing to break a law, rule, or social norm in order to extend mercy or generosity? Think for a moment....Would you, like Nelson Mandela risk imprisonment for sabotage in order to work towards the end of apartheid? Would you, like Rosa Parks, stand up against unjust laws and systems by breaking state law and sitting down on the bus?Would you, like Aung San Suu Kyi of Myanmar, campaign for democracy in a military-run country knowing you’d be imprisoned by the government?Would you steal a loaf of bread or piece of fruit in order to feed your child should you have no money with which to purchase the food?Would you flee your home to seek refuge in another country through any means necessary in order to escape oppression and violence?What is the scenario in which you are willing to break a law, rule, or social norm in order to extend mercy or generosity?God shows up to extend mercy and generosity in places we least expect to see God. Likely the tenant farmers did not expect the mercy of forgiven debt to be coming from the manager. Likely the manager did not expect mercy from the rich landowner. Luke’s Gospel continually illustrates help coming from the places we least expect - the Jewish traveler left for dead on the side of the road saved by the Samaritan; the rich man, who begs from Lazarus the slave he ignored; and now the manager is looking towards those who depended on him for loans. Why are we continually surprised, shocked, and sometimes even horrified when God’s mercy appears in places we least expect and through whom we cannot imagine. Luke hasn’t varied from this theme. In Mary’s Magnificat the world’s expectations and patterns are up ended as God proclaims the powerful will be brought down from their thrones and the lowly lifted up; the hungry will be filled with good things and the rich sent away empty. In the Beatitudes: “Blessed are you who are poor, for yours is the kingdom of God. Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you will be filled. Blessed are you who weep now, for you will laugh.” Finally, in Jesus’ death on the cross, God continues to show up in the places we least expect God to be.As Christians, there are times we are called to be prudent and shrewd in order to work on behalf of the kingdom of God. Now I’m not suggesting you begin to embezzle money or sell drugs in order to give the money to the church, and yet I do think we are called to consider the areas we are willing to be shrewd and for what purpose. Thomas Merton, in “The Living Bread” wrote in 1956, “The great tragedy of our age is the fact, if one may dare to say it, that there are so many godless Christians — Christians, that is, whose religion is a matter of pure conformism and expediency. Their ‘faith’ is little more than a permanent evasion of reality — a compromise with life. In order to avoid admitting the uncomfortable truth that they no longer have any real need for God or any vital faith in God, they conform to the outward conduct of others like themselves. And these ‘believers’ cling together, offering one another an apparent justification for lives that are essentially the same as the lives of their materialistic neighbors whose horizons are purely those of the world and its transient values.”Remember Jesus said: “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.”“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.”If we’d been able to adhere to the wisdom within Jesus’ words following this parable perhaps we could’ve avoided this great tragedy Merton lifts up. St. Augustine put it more simply than Merton, asserting?that God gave us people to love and things to use, and original sin manifests itself in our penchant to confuse those two, loving things and using people. Perhaps the most surprising thing is God loves us sinners and continues to show up in the most unexpected places to extend mercy as a demonstration of that love.

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