Thompson's Blog

Spiritual Shrewdness

Luke 16:1-13

1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2 So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ 3 Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7 Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ 8 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. 10 “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? 13 No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

It’s not easy to see what Jesus was trying to reveal when he told this parable of the dishonest steward.  The parables that Jesus told were never designed to reveal all aspects of the kingdom of God, but with this parable you have to make an effort to convince yourself that there’s anything in here worth understanding. Neither the master nor the steward have characteristics that are obviously redeeming. On the surface it appears that a questionable character is commended for altering the books and generating a soft landing for himself.

The conclusion of this entire passage is pretty clear and easy to embrace. I think we all can see the value of not dividing our allegiances, but the parable that sets up this conclusion isn’t so easy to grasp.

And there’s another thing that compounds the confounding nature of the parable. There is some commentary attached to the parable that is worth noting, but it doesn’t help us understand the parable itself. The actual parable seems to end midway through the eighth verse with the master expressing pleasure with the behavior of the steward. I want to focus on the actual parable, and I think it’s helpful to hear the parable without the commentary that follows, so here’s what it sounds like by itself.

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. ²So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ ³Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. ⁴I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ ⁵So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ ⁷Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ ⁸And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly;

Now as we think about what this may mean I think it’s helpful to remember that Jesus didn’t tell this as an anecdote in a business ethics workshop. Jesus isn’t functioning as an instructor in a management seminar. Jesus is being more like an EMT who’s trying to administer a proper shock to the heart of a dying patient than as a teacher in continuing education class. What we know about Jesus is that he was perfectly distressed by the absolute lostness of the religious leaders of his cherished faith, and he was trying to disrupt the false teaching that had been going on.

Jesus was out to expose the lostness of the religious leaders of his day and to reveal the mysterious truth about our God. And one of the tools he used in his effort to transform the way people were wrongly thinking of God was to tell these shocking tales with odd twists.

This is a strange parable without an obvious lesson, but one of the things Jesus was doing when he told this parable was to totally contradict the teaching of the scribes and Pharisees in a shrewd manner. He didn’t just stand up and proclaim that they had no idea what they were talking about, he told a story that revealed an opportunity for those who had been doing the wrong thing to behave in a new way and to reestablish themselves. On one level I think this parable is an invitation for the Pharisees and scribes to see themselves in a new way and want to change their ways.

This may be a stretch, but I think if I had been in the role of a Pharisee, and if I heard Jesus tell a story of a person in a management position who had been caught squandering the goods – I think I would have leaned in to hear what he was saying. And I think I would have liked what I heard. Because this manager who knew he hadn’t been doing things quite right didn’t react defensively. This manager made an honest assessment of the situation and he responded creatively. He found a way to provide for himself in a clever manner, and he was commended by the master for his ingenuity. It’s not an ethical business model, but I think it was a way for Jesus to invite the dishonest managers of Israel to see our God in a new way.

The one redeeming characteristic of the dishonest steward was that he recognized the authority of the master. He had taken advantage of his position in the absence of the master, but when he was confronted with this accusation he didn’t even try to pretend that this was not the case. He didn’t consider trying to make excuses for himself. He didn’t even try to promote the illusion of propriety. He knew that he was seen for who he was, he made an honest assessment of his situation, and he did what he could to preserve his lifestyle.

He knew the gig was up, and he knew that he wasn’t going to reestablish a relationship with his master under the same circumstances. He had no illusion about his ability to continue to defraud his master, and he did something that provided him with some new options.

This is an interesting parable (to say the least), and it’s important for us to make a distinction between the immorality of the steward’s behavior, and the cleverness of his solution. We aren’t to imitate his dishonest behavior, but we are to take note of the whole new life that he established for himself. He reveals what it looks like to serve one master or the other, and it calls for us to identify in an equally clear manner which master we have chosen to serve.

The behavior of this steward isn’t a good thing if you are trying to understand what it looks like to actually serve God, but it sheds some clear light on the difference between serving one master or the other. This parable provides us with a lesson on the value of self-understanding, and the importance of seeing who it is we seek to serve.

We don’t generally see shrewdness as a spiritual characteristic because when we exercise shrewdness it’s usually done in a self-serving manner. I think we often associate shrewdness with people who see clever investment opportunities, and we generally think of shrewd investors as those who find ways to make lots of money for themselves. It’s not a bad thing to be a shrewd investor, but I think we would all agree that shrewd investing is not a spiritual endeavor – it’s an economic endeavor. Some people are inclined to think if you make a lot of money at something you have been favored by God, but that’s not anything that Jesus ever taught. I think what Jesus was trying to teach with this parable is that there’s more than one way to be shrewd, and if it’s God that we want to serve we need to engage in some spiritually shrewd behavior.

I think the point of this parable is to encourage us to see who it is we seek to serve, and to ask the question of how diligent and creative we are being in our effort to develop that relationship. I don’t think it’s news to any of us that the most satisfying experiences in life are the ones that enhance loving relationships with other people and draw us closer to God. And if this is what we want we need to understand if that’s what we are working for or against.

I’m advocating that we engage in some spiritual shrewdness, but I don’t want you to hear me saying that we’ve got to be as clever and conniving as this dishonest steward was in order to gain God’s attention and favor. I’m absolutely sure that it’s not through our own creative efforts that we find ourselves in the company of God, but I do think we’ve got to be pretty shrewd in order to see through our own illusions of ourselves. We aren’t just good as presenting nice godly images of ourselves to other people, we’re pretty good at keeping ourselves from seeing who we serve and what we love more than anything else.

The best thing that ever happens to any of us is for us to have those experiences where we come to realize the gig is up, and we understand ourselves to be perfectly exposed as the frail, flawed, misguided, and confused individuals that we all have known ourselves to be. I’m not actually wishing that on anyone next week, but there’s something beautiful that happens when we encounter personal failure. There’s something redeeming about seeing ourselves as incredibly limited human beings in need of the love of God and our neighbors.

Sometimes those experiences are foisted upon us. On a show last week on CNN I heard Mitt Romney talk about how it feels to lose a presidential election. One of the most memorable illustrations of the emotional cliff you fall off of when you lose such a race was when he talked about being on the world stage one week and being in line to check out at Costco the next week in order to restock their empty refrigerator. Personal failure happens, and that’s a terribly painful experience, but it can put you in a beautifully redeeming place. Often God’s love becomes the most clear to us when our illusions of personal accomplishment have been stripped away.

But I don’t think we have to experience public disgrace in order to put ourselves in such spiritually rich places. I think the kind of shrewdness Jesus was calling for us to have is simply for us to develop yearning for the truth. We should want to see ourselves for who we are, and to see God as God really is.

When Jesus told this parable I think Jesus was offering an opportunity for some terribly misguided people to wake up and see how wrong they were about him, about themselves, and about God. It was an odd invitation for them to serve the one true master. But it wasn’t just for them. We all need to recognize the ways in which we squander the true master’s goods, and give ourselves fully to false gods.

It happens to all of us, and such temptations never cease, but neither does the love of God. Opportunities for redemption continue to come our way, and by the power of the Holy Spirit we sometimes find the wisdom and the courage to step in to that beautifully searing light of truth.

Thanks be to God. Amen