September 19, 2010

Our gospel today is another one of Jesus’ parables and this one, The Dishonest Steward may be the most puzzling of all. A rich man has a steward, an employee, and he finds out this employee has been embezzling from him. So he tells him, all right, we’re going to do an audit. The employee knows his time is up, so what does he do? Does he try to repay the amount he took? Does he hit the road? No, he goes back to the customers, and tries to cut sweetheart deals for them, thinking that maybe they’ll be kind to him after he’s thrown out by his boss. So now he’s cheated his boss twice. And what does the boss do? He says, “Good job, you’re quite a sly fellow.”

Any questions? Well, I have one, a big one, what is this about? The story ends here, but Jesus goes on with some sort of explanation. The steward’s actions are a model for us in some way, his shrewdness, his recourse to money. Then comes another saying of Jesus, that really doesn’t seem to relate to the parable at all: “You cannot serve God and Mammon, God and wealth.

What’s great about this parable is that it confronts us with the fundamental reality of parables. Their power lies in the fact that their meaning is unstable, uncertain. They defy all of our attempts to fix them into an interpretive framework so that we can control them. In that, they are like stories told in another religious tradition. The Zen koan in Buddhism is somewhat parallel. Probably all of you have heard at least one koan—what is the sound of one hand clapping. The parable, like the koan is meant to shake us up, to help us begin to see ourselves, God, and the world in new ways.

The parables are not about us, they are about God. I might restate that a little bit. The parables are about the kingdom of God. In Matthew’s Gospel, though not so common in Luke, Jesus often introduces a parable with the words, the Kingdom of Heaven, the kingdom of God is like …” In fact, in Matthew’s versions of the parables we read last week, Jesus introduces them with that phrase. So my question, our question might better be, what is this parable telling us about the kingdom of God?

And here’s where our conventional understanding hits a roadblock. Because we have a dishonest steward, caught in the middle of his dishonesty, responding with greater dishonesty, and being commended by his employer for his shrewdness, even though his shrewdness cost his employer a good bit of money. That’s not the way to run a business. But if you think about it, does the steward’s behavior really make sense? Do you think that customers whom he cuts a dishonest deal with are going to trust him enough to welcome him into their homes? After all, if he cheats his employer, isn’t it likely he’s going to be looking for a way to cheat his hosts?

I mean, think about it… if you cut a sweetheart deal with someone whom you knew was taking advantage of his employer, would you trust him in the future? Would you hire, let alone invite into your home, someone caught cooking the books, not once, but twice?

Well, I suppose one could read into the story a number of things that might explain the steward’s behavior, and his master’s response. Perhaps, he is reducing the bill by the amount of his commission; perhaps the customers don’t know that he’s been fired, and by lowering their bills, he’s making them think his boss is a good guy.

Somehow, as appealing as those possibilities might be to our ears, I don’t think it’s what Jesus, or Luke had in mind. Luke puts the story in the middle of a whole group of Jesus’ teachings concerning wealth. One of those sayings is, “for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with this generation than the children of light.” Is Jesus commending the steward’s behavior? Not necessarily.

The steward’s response to being fired is to take radical action, in order to preserve his life. He sees his goal and does whatever it takes to achieve it. Here, his actions are not that different from the behavior of other characters we encounter in Jesus’ parables. Take the two I preached on last week. Did either the shepherd, or the woman who lost her coin act rationally, act according to our ordinary standards of behavior? Why would someone leave 99 sheep unattended in order to search for the one lost sheep? Why would you, or I, or the woman in the story search high and low for one lost coin? And then, when you find it, throw a party to celebrate it? I mean, did the found coin pay for the party?

At their core, the parables are meant to surprise us, to challenge the way we think. If they are parables of the kingdom of God, Jesus uses them to instruct us about the kingdom, to remind us that the Kingdom of God is not about us, not about what expect or want. They are about God, about God’s reign, about what God intends for human community and for the world. Often in the parables we see someone sacrificing everything, betting everything on the kingdom. A man finds a treasure in a field and sells all he has to buy the field; someone comes across a pearl, and again sells everything. Here is a steward who has nothing to lose, bets everything on being received after he is fired.

But there’s another parable that may help clarify what’s going on in this one. Luke places this story directly after another, more familiar story—the Prodigal Son. And in some ways, the two stories are parallel. In both, one of the characters has stewardship of wealth, in both, that wealth is squandered. Where they diverge is that in the Prodigal Son, the son “comes to himself,” and seeks forgiveness. In this story, the steward is found out, but doesn’t change his behavior. Instead, on one level he acts even more irresponsibly. However, instead of being punished, he is applauded for his behavior.

Now clearly, this parable is also about wealth, and our gospel reading continues with some warnings about wealth. They are perfectly in keeping with the theme I’ve expressed already, that the kingdom of God is not about our values or expectations, but about God’s. You cannot serve two masters, God and Mammon, God and wealth.

On one level, the steward’s behavior should not surprise us at all. We are all part of a capitalist system in which we expect people to act in their self-interest. We see that happen all of the time around us. We see people crossing the line. Indeed, there are some who argue our financial crisis was driven by such behavior at the big banks and investment houses on Wall Street. What bothers us is not that people act in such a way, rather what bothers us is that Jesus seems to commend such behavior. I said earlier that the characters in the parables often exhibit surprising, even outrageous behavior. That’s certainly the case here. Jesus’ apparent approval of such behavior might be a reminder to his listeners and to us, that following him is all about behaving in outrageous ways. Certainly following him can lead to behavior or results that are far different from the cultural norm.

At the same time, Jesus’ words in this parable might be a useful reminder to us in these weeks as we begin our stewardship campaign. Grace has struggled for many years, living beyond its means. There have been times when our leadership has seemed not to be good stewards of the resources that have been entrusted to it. We have worked long and hard to re-establish that trust and to re-establish fiscal discipline. Still there is much to do.

There is more to good stewardship than fiscal responsibility, however. Last week we heard two parables in which the main characters acted quite surprisingly. The shepherd put ninety-nine sheep in danger to find the one that was lost. When the woman found the coin for which she had been searching, she threw a party to celebrate. Both did exhibit behavior that should serve as a model to us. Both of them acted in exuberant gratitude when they recovered what they had lost. Stewardship is not just about keeping a close eye on revenue and expenses.

Above all, stewardship is about remembering that what we have has been given us by God. Indeed, what we have belongs to God. That’s more than our material resources; everything we are, our skills, talents, even our time comes from our Creator. Even more, the gift of God’s grace, the love of Christ that we experience day to day, come from God. When we truly experience all of life as a gift from God, our gratitude should burst forth in celebration and gift. As we go forward in the next months thinking about stewardship, budgets, and the like, let us be as shrewd as the best financial manager, but let us also be as extravagant in our gratitude, joy, and giving as God has been towards us.