Loading...WHAT? You may be asking yourself right now, “did I just hear what I think I heard? Did Jesus really commend a dishonest manager? Did he really tell us to make friends by means of dishonest wealth?"
I really struggled with this passage. I spent many hours reading and studying and I still don’t understand why Jesus said some of the things in this passage. And I am not alone. Biblical scholars and commentaries do not agree on why Jesus told this story this way.
His words are baffling. They just don’t seem to match what we expect Jesus to say or what he asks us to do. We can say with some certainty, that this is not a “Go and do likewise“ story. It is not suggesting that we should follow the example of this manager.
The story is about a rich man and his manager. Someone tells the rich man that his manager is squandering the rich man’s property. The rich man calls the manager in and tells him that he wants an accounting of his management and then fires him. The manager doesn’t know what he is going to do without this job. He isn’t strong enough to do manual labor and he doesn’t want to have to resort to begging. So he cleverly devises a scheme where he has the debtors change their bills to reflect a significantly reduced amount owed to the rich man. Note that this action does not financially benefit the manager but it does put him in good standing with the debtors who will now be indebted to him for future benefits. They even might be willing to help him find employment.
The rich man finds out about the scheme and sees that he has lost a lot of money and resources but instead of being more angry he commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness.
We don’t why, but it could be that now folks in the community, who only know that debt was forgiven, would probably think that it was the rich man who forgave the debt. Maybe he has gone up in status and is now seen by others as a generous and caring man.
That is the gist of the story. But there are many unknowns and much speculation. Scholars don’t even agree where the parable ends. Some believe that Luke may have added additional verses to help explain the parable that even he didn’t understand.
But even with this confusion and mystery behind Jesus’ words, there are several things we can learn from this passage.
We could talk about judging one another. It could be that the real victim here is the manager. We don’t know who accused the manager of mismanagement. It is possible that he was wrongly accused. Maybe the manager is not a bad guy at all, but is now being judged on what looks like an act of dishonesty. Maybe he forgave the portion of the bill that was his commission. Or maybe that portion was an illegal tax that the rich man had added.
This parable then helps us to see what happens when we make a judgment without having all the information and how that judgment can negatively affect someone’s life. It reminds us that we are to leave the judgments of others to God.
We could talk about Jesus praising the manager for his dishonest scheme and commending his shrewdness. In this parable we learn that we have to think and be wise. We often say we, as Christians, are to be the hands and feet of Christ in the world. Well, from this passage we learn that we need also to be his brain also. We need to be able to think critically and to be decisive. The manager was decisive when he was faced with a potential crisis.
We have all probably experienced times when we have been on a committee or a vestry where many wonderful ideas have been discussed, such as new possibilities for ministry or outreach efforts, but in the end nothing gets done. No plan is laid out and no decision is made. This parable is not about dreaming and wishing. It’s about thinking wisely and taking action.
Or we can talk about forgiveness. Let’s ask the question, what exactly is it that the manager does that is unethical or wrong? He forgives the clients’ debts. Doesn’t that sound like something we say almost every time we worship, “Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.”
The manager forgives the debtors, the rich man forgives the manager and I can even imagine that the community forgives the past greediness of the rich man and now praises his generosity. It’s like a drop of water on a pond. The ripples keep going and going and getting bigger and bigger.
As I was thinking about forgiveness, I was also aware that we are in our stewardship season and Daniel reminded me of a phrase from one of our favorite hymns, “Joyful, Joyful We Adore Thee”. The second verse begins with “Thou art giving and forgiving”. God is giving and God is forgiving.
God has given us everything we need to live, as God wants us to live in God’s Kingdom. One of the “Things” that God has given us is God’s forgiveness. Like God, who gives over and over, God also forgives over and over. There is no end in God’s gifts or God’s forgiveness. They are offered openly, freely and without restraint. This giving and forgiving is love. There is nothing we can ever do that will take God’s love away from us. There is no way we will ever be anything less than God’s beloved children, no matter how many mistakes we make or how many people we hurt.
And what does God ask of us in return? It’s simple — do the same for others as God does for us. He loves us and asks us to love one another.
God gives us what we need so that we can in turn give to others in their need. It is easy to talk about how to spend money, how to save it, how it invest it, but it is difficult to talk about how to give it away.
Jesus talks about money a lot. He says we cannot serve both God and money. Jesus knows how we struggle with our limited resources, how we always want more. He knows how we hesitate to give for fear we won’t have enough when we need it. He even hears us when we say, “If I ever win the lottery I will give a lot away”. But Jesus wants us to experience the joy that comes from giving from what we have right now.
God is also forgiving and asks us to forgive others. “Forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us.”
We have to forgive before we can truly love someone. I think it is the forgiving part that we find the hardest. Oh it may be easy to forgive small infractions, insensitive comments or behavior that hurt our feelings. The problem is that we are asked to forgive EVERYONE. Forgive people who we don’t want to forgive, who we don’t feel like forgiving. Forgive people even when we know they are wrong. Forgive people when what we really want is revenge and we want them to hurt like we hurt.
I expect there is someone you can think about right now that you say I will NEVER forgive. You don’t even want to try. But Jesus tells us to forgive them. God has forgiven everyone of us, so many times, that it seems that it is the least we can do, to show our love for God and to thank God for forgiving us, the least we can do is to give forgiveness, of this unforgivable person, a try.
So right now, I want you to close your eyes, see that person in your mind's eye, and whether you mean it or not, I want you to say, “ I forgive you”. There, you’ve done it. You’ve taken the first step. You might be feeling an overwhelming rush of love but most probably don’t feel any different right now than you did a half minute ago. But you have started. If you will do that everyday, everyday simply say “I forgive you” when thinking of that person, eventually you will start to feel differently. You will start feeling that it is possible to forgive.
Timothy encourages us today to pray. Praying keeps us in relationship with God. In this relationship God will help us to be God like in our giving and our forgiving. And like the water drop, the ripples of love will keep going and going and will keep getting bigger and bigger in God’s Kingdom.
