Sermon: Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Luke 16:1-13, September 18, 2022

Sermon: Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost, Luke 16:1-13, September 18, 2022 

Faith Lutheran Church, Pastor Jonathan Linman

You’ve just heard one of Jesus’ many parables – and one of the most difficult to make sense of. Jesus, of course, taught using parables all the time. And parables by their nature defy easy, straightforward interpretations, and they can have many meanings. 

The parable of the dishonest manager presents its own unique challenges for interpretation. But I love a good challenge! In fact, the more confounding the text, the more fun I have with seeking its gospel meaning – that’s something else you need to know about me!

Here again is the essence of the story: the dishonest manager learns that he is going to be fired for squandering the rich man’s property. In order to protect himself, he pretty much arbitrarily lowers the debt of those who owed things to his boss so that the debtors might help the dishonest manager once he was unemployed.

But here’s the thing: rather than condemning the dishonest manager for this further squandering of property, the rich man commends him! Listen again to what it says in Luke: “And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” And Jesus, according to Luke, goes on with this elaboration: “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.” (Luke 16:8-9)

What on earth and in heaven’s name is Jesus saying here!?! This might make our heads spin. On first blush, Jesus seems to be condoning the worst excesses of corrupt business practices and conmen. Surely that’s not where Jesus wants to leave us. 

So, how do we begin to make sense of this parable? Let’s start with a Lutheran angle on things. For Lutherans, a primary function of the holy scriptures is to point to Jesus Christ, to reveal who Jesus was and who Jesus is to us as savior of the world. 

Thus, the parables recorded in the gospels should reveal things about Jesus. For Lutherans, parables are not so much about moral instruction for us. Rather parables, like all of the scriptures, serve as vehicles to point to Christ. So, where might we see Jesus in the parable of the dishonest manager? 

Let me ask you this: Who has the authority to write off our spiritual debts? Who is all about forgiving that which we may owe God? The answer is simple and straightforward: Christ Jesus!

Indeed, those who owed the rich man had huge debts to him. A hundred jugs of olive oil and a hundred containers of wheat, this was a lot of stuff back in the ancient times.

By extension, we sinful mortals owe quite a lot to God in our failure to live up to the demands of God’s expectations in the divine law. Like the dishonest manager, we tend to squander what has been entrusted to us by God. That’s the weight of the law on us, the weight of judgment. There’s no way that we can pay such debt on our own.  

But Christ Jesus, present to us through his very Spirit working in the proclamation of the word, through his teaching in parables, through the sacraments of baptism and Holy Communion, in the forgiveness of our sin after our confession, in the mutual conversation and consolation among believers when we share with each other words of gracious forgiveness, through these means Christ Jesus comes into our lives to lavishly write off our debt in seemingly wanton and recklessly generous ways. 

Thus, from a Lutheran angle on things when we’re forever looking for Christ in the scriptural narratives, Jesus Christ is the shrewdly acting, dishonest manager – dishonest from a worldly perspective where in the logic of humanity we should get what’s coming to us. If you owe the debt you should pay the debt in full. If not, you should be punished. From this worldly perspective, Christ might be viewed as being dishonest, unfair from the point of view of human logic. But from the vantage point of God’s logic of grace, Christ acts shrewdly, prudently, wisely, sensibly, intelligently when he writes off our debts.

Moreover, Jesus makes friends for himself by means of dishonest wealth. Think about it: He ate and consorted with tax collectors and other sinners, after all! Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were some of the most dishonest, corrupt people that you could find.

And then think also of this: the whole sacred scheme of our salvation, which focuses on Jesus’ death on the cross, was made possible by his immersion in the corruption of the Roman empire, an enormously wealthy behemoth. Only the Roman empire had the authority to crucify. The empire’s power and dishonest wealth ultimately opened the door that made for our salvation. God turned that corrupt worldly power on its head, subverting it in the service of the humble power of the cross and vindicated in the resurrection’s power of life over violence and death. Wow! Subverting Rome’s corrupt power and doing so to reconciling humanity to himself: that’s making friends via dishonest wealth. What a friend we have in Jesus!

Furthermore, in pursuing other features of today’s gospel reading, Christ is the only one who is faithful in a very little and also in much. Christ is the one entrusted with true riches. 

Only Christ Jesus is Lord of all, God’s son, whose authority towers over human wealth. We owe allegiance to God in Christ alone, for he has made friends with us so that we can be welcomed into the eternal homes. 

So, there you have it: we see Christ in the dishonest manager who generously, graciously, writes off the debts of humanity in relation to God by his death and resurrection. We see Christ in the whole gospel story that we heard today.

I had said earlier that the parables of Jesus, from a Lutheran theological perspective, are more proclamations of the reign of God come near in Christ than teaching guides for moral living. That said, Jesus’ parables do have ethical implications, especially to guide our lives of thankful response to grace imparted to us by God in Christ.

This is where we can acknowledge that parables have levels of meaning – there’s not just a single interpretation. So, let’s turn now to the ethical implications. 

Today’s reading from the prophet Amos describes the world as it typically has been and often is, that we tend to “trample on the needy, and bring to ruin the poor of the land…. Practicing deceit with false balances, buying the poor for silver and the needy for a pair of sandals, and selling the sweepings [the dregs] of the wheat.” (Amos 8:4-6)

That pretty much describes the kinds of things we hear about in the day’s news….

But what the dishonest manager does in the parable in Luke is to seek to transcend this business as usual and to level out the playing field, to restore some balance in the pursuit of justice. Even though his actions in writing off debt were self-serving, and broke the rules, they had the effect of alleviating the excesses of corruption. 

It may well be that the rich man became rich through ill-gotten gains, especially in charging interest on debt, which was prohibited by Jewish law, but nonetheless was common practice way back when, as it is today. The huge debts the people owed the master were made larger, no doubt, by compounded interest. Moreover, the dishonest manager may well have been able to collect his own commission in seeking repayment of the debt. 

When the dishonest manager arbitrarily wrote off a lot of the debt, he did his part in the struggle against injustice and helped to level the playing field for the benefit of the debtors. 

In short, the parable reveals that Christ and the gospel present to us a different way of ordering our relationship with others, of doing business with others, not for exploitative, greedy gain but for greater equity and fairness. In other words, God’s grace begets our graciousness. God’s generosity in Christ begets our generosity toward others. 

And we do our own versions of making friends by means of dishonest wealth. Examples abound. You all know that real estate in New York City is valuable off most people’s charts. Thus, when Lutheran congregations happened to close there, the Metro NY Synod, where I worked in the bishop’s office, would receive sometimes millions of dollars from the sale of church property. At one of our synod assemblies we voted to devote 100% of the sales of church property to our various mission projects, many of which served the poor and vulnerable and marginalized. That’s a practical example of making friends by dishonest wealth (and let me tell you, there is a lot of corruption in the NYC real estate market…). 

You could name your own examples of how our prosperity, which is in part the result of our inevitable participation in and complicity with systems of injustice and dishonesty, can be used in the service of good, of making friends with those who are otherwise friendless – and all of this in thanksgiving for God’s grace and mercy to us. 

We benefit from systems of injustice all the time, but we get to use our wealth and privilege in the service of God’s justice, proclaiming in deeds of generous giving God’s reign of commonwealth in Christ as our way of saying thanks to God for generous, life-saving grace. 

In this Spirit I am moved to conclude with the awesome words of proclamation recorded by the author of 1 Timothy in today’s second reading: “God our Savior… desires everyone to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one God; there is also one mediator between God and humankind, Christ Jesus, himself human, who gave himself a ransom for all.” (cf. 1 Timothy 2:1-6)

Thanks be to God! Amen. 

Announcements for September 18:

• Rick Papa in the hospital

• Bible Study in the church office conference room on Wednesday at 10:30 and 6:00. Email me for Zoom link.

• Congregational meeting on October 2 to call Veronica Alvarez as half-time pastor to help shepherd our Spanish language ministry. [Elaborate]  

• My installation on October 5 at 6:00.

• My worldly belongings arrived on Friday. Thanks to a crew in part from church, all items are now in my condo. And thanks to another crew from church who helped unpack my kitchen stuff and otherwise helped to get me set up! And even stocked the kitchen with needed items!