September 18, 2022
St. John’s United Church of Christ, Union, Illinois
Luke 16:1-13[1]
Let’s face it, there are a lot of unsavory
people in the Bible that seem to be loved by God. Cain, who murdered his
brother, is protected by God (Genesis 4:15). Jacob cheated his brother Esau out
of his inheritance (Genesis 25:31-34), and yet he was later renamed Israel
(Genesis 32:28). David, the King, made sure Bathsheba’s husband, Uriah, was
killed in battle (2 Samuel 11:15), yet we know David as the ideal king. There
are many stories of dishonest people who God loves anyway. Perhaps we get stuck
on some of these stories because we don’t think they’re about us.
I think of myself as a good person. When I
think about that story in Matthew 25 about the separating of the sheep and the
goats, I’m putting myself in the category of sheep every time. I have a mental
list, and you might too, where I categorize good people and bad people.
Hitler-bad, Mother Teresa-good. Jefferson Davis-bad, Abraham Lincoln-good.
There are different degrees of badness and goodness, but always, I am on the
good list. Except, I shouldn’t be.
I am not always a good person. I have done
and said things that were hurtful to others. I am trying to do better, but I’m
not perfect. I am both good and evil, as Martin Luther, the protestant
reformer, said, we are at the same time righteous and sinners. I belong on both
lists, and maybe the best I can do is try to lean mostly to one side.
Now this dishonest manager knows he’s been
caught. He’s probably going to be fired. He’s likely been skimming from the
rich man’s profits, adding a little on top of the bills he’s been writing. The
manager is not going to turn to digging or begging for a living, but maybe he
can find a clever way out. So, he calls in the debtors one-by-one and reduces
their bill. Pretty slick. He makes some friends so that when he gets fired,
he’ll have somewhere to go. Smart guy. We kind of admire him. He’s bucking the
system, and if we look at it, it’s an immoral system to begin with.
The laws that are recorded in Exodus,
Leviticus, Deuteronomy – they all renounce charging interest, especially to
fellow Jews. But there are ways around the laws, right? We won’t call it interest.
I’ll loan you fifty jugs of olive oil, but in the contract, I’ll say you owe me
seventy. The boss gets back what is owed, maybe a little more, and I get my
cut. It’s the price of doing business. Everyone is doing it, so it can’t be
that bad. That’s how the system works.
We expect the parable to have some reversal,
some way of setting the system right. We expect a lesson in morality. Then the
master commends the dishonest manager, and wait, what just happened? The master
knows the manager is a crook, but that’s fine, he’s a shrewd crook. And in that
society, just as in ours, good business sometimes means getting away with it.
Increasing shareholder value is the primary goal, after all; we’re in this to
make money, right?
The thing is, the way in which this
dishonest yet shrewd manager handled the situation resulted in a positive
outcome. For what might be the first time, the manager put people ahead of
profit. His motives may be self-serving, but he makes some friends. The manager
turns out to be faithful to what really matters, relationships. In this moment,
the manager has been faithful with the dishonest wealth, and begins to build a
portfolio of true riches.
Profits are the name of the game in our
world today. Corporations downsize to increase profits at the expense of
sending workers off to unemployment. Cheaper labor is found overseas. CEO’s who
make the stocks go up are celebrated, even when the workers strike for better
pay. In this parable, however, we get a glimpse of someone in the middle of the
dishonest system make a turn for the better. Even though the crook gets
praised, we see that what he’s done is good. People have been helped,
relationships have been strengthened, and friends have won out over profits.
We aren’t always good. Sometimes we find
ourselves on the bad side of the list. But when we put people first over
profits, when we lean toward the good, we are faithful to the idea of a better
way, a better world. Every little bit of good counts, and even dishonest people
have a part to play in the story told by God.
Amen.
[1] The
scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard
Version Bible, copyright © 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of
the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
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