Sermons

The Unjust Manager or the Shrewd Manager?

In the name of the one God, Creator, Redeemer, Sustainer. Amen

There is one person who, when I see his name pop up on my phone, my entire mood sinks. I mean it, I see this name come through on the caller ID and I start thinking of all the places I’d rather be and all the things I’d rather do than talk to him. Things like laundry or giving the dog a bath. (And don’t worry, I’m not talking about anyone in this room.) And as my phone is buzzing, I wonder if I can possibly justify ignoring the call. After all, I’m in transit, or I’m working, or it’s my day off, all good reasons not to answer. But then I think about how hard it will be to make myself call him back, and I suck it up and I answer and say “Hi Mark,” because Mark is my financial advisor. 

And I hate talking to Mark because I never quite feel like I’m doing well enough with my money. It’s the same reason I don’t like looking at my credit card statements. It’s just anxiety-producing. Having any money at all, which is itself a tremendous privilege, also seems like it might somehow be wrong. And a big reason I think I feel that way is because of gospels like this one! Jesus is not helping my anxiety here. 

I wonder if it would be easier to just decide that those messages don’t apply to me and act purely out of my economic self-interest (probably not a good look for a priest). Or, on the other side of the spectrum, maybe I could join a religious order where all things are shared in common. But most of us in this room find ourselves somewhere in the messy middle, trying to have enough that we and our families can have good lives, but not so much that we’re hoarding resources that others really need. 

One of my favorite podcasts for years has been “Death, Sex and Money” hosted by Anna Sale. And the tagline of that podcast is “things we think about a lot and need to talk about more.” I say all this not because I particularly want to air my own monetary anxieties, but because I also agree that this is something we need to talk about more. For as much time as Jesus talks about money and material circumstances, we often try to talk about anything else. Or, as preachers, we sometimes talk about money around the annual pledge campaign, but less the rest of the year. 

Today, we hear what I am going to call the parable of the shrewd manager. You may have heard it called the parable of the unjust manager or the parable of the dishonest manager. Those titles, “unjust” and “dishonest,” shape how we come to the story, and neither of those words is used to describe the person in the text. They’re often written over sections of stories in the Bible. But what if, instead, we approached this story about the “shrewd manager”? 

In the story, we hear that the manager is about to lose his job because he had squandered the owner’s property. We don’t hear more than that, but we can surmise that he has not done a good job. And then once he knows that he’s going to lose his job, he has a great idea! Why not change the bills for what people owe? That way, he’ll have friends when he no longer has a job. And this is where the perception of dishonesty comes into play, because it seems like this may not all be on the up and up. But we aren’t really told what’s going on. One commentary I read suggested that the manager could have been reducing the bills by his own commission, or maybe getting rid of unjust or exploitative charges, now that he needs to make new friends. And when the owner returns, he is honor-bound to live up to these newly forgiven bills that make him seem so generous.

And when the owner returns, he sees that now that the manager is on his way out, suddenly he has ideas! Where was all this shrewdness when he was managing the owner’s property? It’s like when you’re put on a performance improvement plan and suddenly start working a lot harder and smarter. We hear Jesus express his disappointment that the people of God don’t seem to be as savvy as others who are driven by their own interests. How many of us would identify with this? So much of our own energy goes into earning, working, doing, but how much goes into being, into being the people God calls us to be?

In case Jesus thinks we’re not getting it (because that was a pretty confusing parable), he offers clarification at the end of the reading. Here, he contrasts dishonest wealth with true riches and idolatry of money with love of God. “No slave can serve two masters,” he says. “You cannot serve God and wealth.” But the word here translated as wealth, the contrast to God, is not just a word for money; it’s the Greek word mammon. Mammon here is not just the word for wealth, but rather a personification of the worship of wealth, an idol, in contrast with the worship of God. 

And so I’m left to wonder whether all wealth is the dishonest wealth we hear about. And I think my answer is no. Because after all, the manager, our shrewd manager, was able to exemplify his shrewdness through financial means.  But we must note that he was acting by forgiving debts rather than tallying them. However, I believe that Jesus is telling us that all wealth is seductive, that it can easily lure us away from the path, and that we must remain constantly vigilant not to be taken in by its glamour and glitz. Our best investments are those that come from generosity and relationships. Our best venture yields spiritual fruits. Our best financing comes from care for each other.  

Because wealth is not the true riches. Those can only come from God.