Parable of the Shrewd Manager

14th after Trinity—22nd September 2019—Wendover

Gospel Luke 16

The parable of the shrewd manager

¹ Jesus told his disciples: ‘There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. ² So he called him in and asked him, “What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.”

³ ‘The manager said to himself, “What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg – ⁴ I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.”

⁵ ‘So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, “How much do you owe my master?”

⁶ ‘“Three thousand litres of olive oil,” he replied.

‘The manager told him, “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifteen hundred.”

⁷ ‘Then he asked the second, “And how much do you owe?”

‘“Thirty tons of wheat,” he replied.

‘He told him, “Take your bill and make it twenty-four.”

⁸ ‘The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. ⁹ I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.

¹⁰ ‘Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. ¹¹ So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? ¹² And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else’s property, who will give you property of your own?

¹³ ‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.’

Sermon

The parable of the shrewd manager

The parable of the shrewd manager or dishonest steward comes after a similar passage in Luke chapter 15—the parable of the Prodigal Son.

In both parables, a subordinate is accused of squandering resources belonging to his superior— either the prodigal son’s father or the master of a house steward.

The Parables follow one another, but I will leave you to judge whether or not they are linked. They do seem to have several things in common.

Both stories run counter to our ideas of justice and fairness. The prodigal son comes to his senses and returns to face the music. He is rewarded, but his elder brother (who did not waste or squander anything) is left in self-imposed exile from his father's grace and mercy. His story can indeed be called The Parable of the Lost Son.

The Shrewd Manager on the other hand, at first seems to be treated very badly. When called to see his master, the report of his inefficiency is accepted without further enquiry, and the manager is summarily dismissed from his job and his future livelihood.

For the moment, we’ll assume he has been guilty of dishonesty, since that seems to be the implication of the teaching with which Jesus ends his parable. But what happens next is very strange.

After getting the sack, the Shrewd Manager comes up with a plan of action to ingratiate himself with his former master’s debtors. He could not make deals on his master’s behalf if his cash books—the symbols of his agency and his authority to make deals—had been taken away from him on the spot, so we have to assume his dismissal was not quite so summary as it seems.

His plan was to call in his former master’s debtors one by one and come to an accommodation with them, which was highly advantage to the one who owed money and prejudicial to the one who was owed. Debts were halved or heavily reduced in full and final settlement of what was due.

Now you might have thought the master would kick himself for not taking away his former steward’s authority. Far from being angry, the master commends his former steward for being shrewd.

This is where our sense of right and wrong rebels. The next few verses defy any simple explanation. Perhaps we should start at the end—the punch line Jesus is working towards.

¹³ ‘No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.’

This proverb picks up the master’s first words when finds out what the steward has done:

For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.

Luke loves contrasts. Economic restitution is part of the joy of Mary's Magnificat (Luke 1:53) and the gospel proclaimed to tax collectors such as Zacchaeus. When Zacchaeus restores what he had defrauded four-fold, he is justified, as proclaimed by Jesus, “Today salvation has come to this house” (Luke 19:8).

What Jesus is saying is that, in a time of oppression of the poor, fraud, overcharging and violent debt collection, the debts the steward managed were almost certainly exorbitant, and all he had done was charged a fairer sum. In doing so, no one was really wronged, and the jobless steward might get another job from one of those merchants by showing himself honest and fair dealing.

Remember that no Jew was permitted by their law to charge interest, let alone reduce it, and all debts were written off automatically each jubilee year for everyone.

Going back to Jesus’s punchline, the disciples are sometimes called ‘children of light’ and those outside the Kingdom are contrasted as the ‘children of this world’ who love darkness more than light.

If your standards are the same as those practised by this evil world, and you cannot be trusted to behave in a distinctly better way, how can you expect to be trusted with the things of the Kingdom of God?

The steward redressed a number of wrongs by his own changed standards, and the master commended him for it.

No one, God says, can serve me and behave as the world does. Either they will love one and hate the other or hate the one and love the other. You cannot have it both ways.

As if by way of a bookend, Luke then follows up with another Parable that might also be linked: the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Lazarus loved the good things of life, but ignored the poor beggar sitting by his gate. When the rich man dies, he petitions Abraham to reverse his fate—or at least warn the rest of his family to repent. But Abraham replies:

Son remember that in your lifetime you received your good things, while Lazarus received bad things, but now he is comforted here, and you are in agony.

The rich man passing Lazarus on a daily basis received his comeuppance. It was too late for him to repent. But the shrewd manager was commended by his former master for his actions: for that man, it was not too late.

Amen