Say what?

In our gospel for next Sunday morning, printed below, we hear Jesus tell a very troubling shocker of a parable. It’s hardly preachable. The preacher does well to look at the other readings for the day and perhaps preach on Jeremiah or First Timothy and the psalm. Or to talk about something cute his grandson said this week that should be a darling lesson for everyone. Or reveal that he struggled with the text and lost, by preaching about something Garfield said to John in this morning's funnypaper.

Or to check his/her references and sources and see if perhaps Jesus did not really say this at all, that it’s something Luke the evangelist put on the lips of Jesus, and may be dissed altogether: Not So. A scholar's test of ID-ing to Jesus personally, for example, is frequently the text itself, the sense of it. The more shocking it is, the more likely Jesus said it. Going to the Jesus Seminar of distinguished scholars, for example, with their red, pink, gray, black color code method of deciding, very few passages are even pink. This one is almost uniquely bright red for unequivocal certainty that Jesus said it. He actually told this. God help us. Or, God help the preacher.

Even Luke saw that the parable begs rationalization, and verses 8b on are just that. But the “hard saying” -- the Man said it. What could he possibly be telling us?

Well, he’s speaking to his disciples. It doesn’t say “to the Twelve” or to the crowd or to the scribes and Pharisees, it says “to his disciples.” That’s us, eh? Let’s grant that he’s not advocating dishonesty, eh? What then? Well, the dishonest manager has been caught, and he’s desperate, isn’t he. He’s facing being fired and maybe being sent to jail. He’s desperate. He’s got to try quickly to appease his boss somehow. To make up for it in some measure. How somehow to mitigate? He calls in the biggest accounts, cuts out his own proper and legal if exorbitant commission, tells the debtors that if they pay right now, all they have to pay is the balance. The manager’s boss gets his due immediately, the debtors get a huge discount, and the dishonest manager loses his commission but gets forgiveness and praise for fast thinking and being so clever. Best of all, the dishonest manager gets to keep his head.

Every parable is meant to have one point. What’s it here? Well, sinner, if you can't see yourself in the parable, there's a problem. When you’re caught in your sin, you’d better repent: do everything in your power to make amends, make up for it as best you can and be forgiven, and perhaps even praised for using your head. Use your imagination, your wits, your common sense. Don’t, you can go to hell.

TW+

Luke 16:1-13 (NRSV) The Parable of the Dishonest Manager

16 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 mammon 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 mammon, 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 mammon.”