So, um, this is a weird one. In both Bible conversation groups on Wednesday, we read the text aloud, as is our custom, and then stared at each other for a few moments. What is Jesus trying to teach us in this parable? Verse thirteen seems to be a nice, simple summary statement, “you cannot serve God and wealth.” OK, good, that makes sense. Jesus was always telling the rich to give away all their possessions. But how do we get to verse thirteen from the parable?
“Jesus said to his disciples, there was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought against him that this man was squandering his property.” Not unsurprisingly, the rich man fired the mismanaging manager. The parable then enters into the internal monologue of the manager. And the manager is like, I know what I’m going to do. I’m going to call in all my master’s debtors and cut their debt, so that when I’m unemployed, they will welcome me into their homes. Which, commentators have tried all kinds of work arounds to make this seem like the logical and ethical choice, maybe he was taking off the interest imposed on the debt against Jewish law, maybe he was cutting his own commission. But, one, all these work around require knowledge of the incident the parable doesn’t give us. And two, no matter how you slice it, solving the problem of squandering the master’s property by cutting the debts owed just doesn’t make any sense. Then to make the whole thing even weirder, “his master commended this dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.” Wait, so the guy squanders his master’s wealth, fixes the problem by cheating the master further, and the master commends him for is actions? Yep, Jesus says, and in fact, “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” Does this not sound to anyone else like, “use money to make friends and influence people,” or the exact opposite of everything else Jesus has taught in the Gospels up to this point? What are we to do with this text?
So at the morning Bible chat I was totally stumped. And we ended up having this really great conversation about money, and how we manage money, and it was honest, and interesting, and I still wasn’t sure what I was going to do with this text as a sermon. Right after that, with our conversation still percolating in my mind, I came across an article by Pastor Leah Schrade that broke the whole thing wide open for me. So, apologies to the morning group that I didn’t read it sooner.
Pastor Schrade translates the word “shrewd” as “prudent.” So, in her summary, “what we are seeing here is a man who had squandered what had been entrusted to him, but in a moment of crisis redeems himself by following the most prudent course of action. Does it make up for the sins of his past? No. But he has at least salvaged what was left and made the best of a bad situation.” In Pastor Schrade’s interpretation, the master’s praise of the manager was because the manager had shown resourcefulness in a crisis. The master will not get all of his investments back, but he will get some, and some is better than none. “Now his boss can say: See what happened here? See what you’re capable of?”
Once I read the text with that perspective, suddenly the whole thing opened up for me. And with this perspective in my mind, I started to think about wealth. Because this parable is absolutely about wealth. Wealth was one of Jesus’ favorite topics. Jesus talked about wealth more than he talked about prayer, or faith. In fact, the only thing Jesus talked about more than wealth was the kingdom of God. Jesus had a lot to say to his followers about how they were to use money. So I started to work backwards through the sayings at the end, to see if I could make sense of it. “You cannot serve God and wealth” seemed like it had to be the key to the whole thing, because one, it sounded the most like other things Jesus said, but two, Greek rhetorical style always puts the most important point either first or last. The word translated “wealth” is in Greek mammon. And mammon is wealth personified. This is different from the property in the parable. Property is a thing, but wealth, mammon, is a character. I think part of the reason the master might have commended the manager was because he treated property like the tool that it was. By giving it away he used the property, rather than letting the property use him.
The parable said the master commended the dishonest manager, “for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their generation than are the children of the light.” “Children of the light” is a term used in the New Testament to refer to the followers of Jesus. Jesus’ observations about his followers in his time, still rings with some truth for his followers today. Because, we don’t really like to talk about money in the church. I mean, we talk about it in loose terms. And actually, at Trinity we do a better job of it than many, partially because our budget’s always pretty tight, so it’s important that we are all aware of how we’re doing as a congregation financially. But we don’t have many opportunities to talk personally about our own financial situations. Once a year, we have our stewardship season, and a couple of people stand up and tell you why they support the church financially, and we turn in our pledges, and no one but Doug and God ever know what you pledge. That always felt very normal to me, good even. Pledges should be between us and God, and for practical reasons, the financial secretary.
But while I was home in California I met with a financial planner. He is an old family friend, he actually got his start as my grandfather’s financial planner, so he’s been managing my family’s money since before I was born. And we had a great conversation not just about money, but about values, and how I could manage my money in support of my values. I was open and honest about my hopes and dreams, and also my fears and concerns. I left the conversation feeling more at ease about money than I think I ever have. I had a plan for what my money should do, and how to best use it not just for my own benefit, but to benefit others as well.
This parable got me wondering, why aren’t we having those sorts of conversations in the church. How come the first time I had a conversation like that, where I felt like I truly understood how to use money as a tool to reflect my values, it came from outside the church. “The children of this age are more shrewd… than the children of the light.” I think for me, the reason those conversations never happen in church is because I am so concerned about the power of wealth, of mammon, that I am afraid to talk about it, for fear it will consume me. The irony, of course, is that by not talking about something, we actually give it more power. And so, with the idea that “those who are faithful in a very little are faithful also in much,” I’m going to give you my own little stewardship temple talk, in hopes that it will encourage you to start your own conversations.
I put ten percent of my paycheck into an ELCA-managed retirement account. This happens automatically, before the check even comes to me. It makes the bookkeeping a little more complicated for Bob and Eileen, so I appreciate them for doing that for me. The ELCA account is steady, though not the most aggressive for growth. But it’s important to me that I continue to support the ELCA’s plan, because it feels like a way that I can support the greater ELCA clergy community. I also trust Portico to carefully check their investments against a variety of screens, so I can trust that the money is invested in corporations that support my values.
Once I get my paycheck, I write a check for the same amount that goes to Portico to Trinity. I got paid this week, so the check is in an envelope in my worship folder. After the offering comes up, I put my check in the plate while the worship assistant is getting the communion elements. I do it that way for two reasons. One, because it feels like I am participating in the community more by putting my offering in with yours. But two, for the totally practical reason of at my last call I tried to put my offering in the safe during the week, and I was terrible at remembering. Putting it in on Sunday is the only way I can guarantee I won’t forget and just have the check sitting in my bag for weeks on end. Once those two things are done, the remaining eighty percent I use for my monthly expenses. My budget is built around only having eighty percent of my paycheck, it’s just how I’ve planned for it.
This system works for me because my expenses are low enough, and my income high enough, to make those decisions. It wasn’t true in grad school, when I was trying to stretch a student loan payment through the end of the semester. It may not be true for you right now. Maybe you give and save five percent, or two, or you give five and save ten, or maybe right now you are living paycheck to paycheck, and after expenses there’s nothing left for giving or saving. The point of this parable isn’t to set some level of appropriate financial stewardship. The manager’s rather arbitrary cutting of fifty percent of one person’s debt and eighty of another seems more arbitrary than anything. Rather, I think this parable seeks to remind us that money in and of itself is a tool. And tools are neither good nor bad, they are just tools. It is only when it becomes mammon, a character that controls us of it’s own volition, that it becomes a danger.
We squander all kinds of things. Wealth, as this parable addresses, is certainly a huge one. But so too are relationships, power, opportunities to speak truth, chances to give service. And it is all too easy, once we notice the mistake made, to become paralyzed by failure and unable to move forward. What the mismanaging manager did that set him apart was he did something. He did not let the mistakes of his past paralyze him into being unable to try something new.
So let this parable inspire you to be bold, dear people of God. To give away your wealth to someone who has less. Or share the wealth of your time with a relationship you thought was lost. To work for equal wealth for all God’s children. To call out those who, through systems of inequality, have taken what is not theirs and are not faithful with what belongs to another. It may be a bold move, or a small one. It may even be the wrong one. But the only real squandering is to squander the opportunity to try again. Amen.
Works Cited:
Schrade, Leah. “Salvaging the Squandered.” EcoPreacher. Blog. <http://ecopreacher.blogspot.com/2016/09/salvaging-squandered.html>. Accessed 14 September 2016.
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