Three thoughts on a knotty passage

In organizing my calendar a month or so ago, I asked Helen if today would be a good Sunday for me to preach. She immediately and enthusiastically agreed, and it was only later, when I looked up the lectionary readings for today, did I suspect why.

Today’s gospel passage is, according to commentators, considered one of the trickiest to understand - and I don’t disagree. What exactly is Jesus saying in the parable of the unjust steward, as this story is known? How does making friends by means of dishonest wealth somehow meant to build the kingdom of God?

If each and every Biblical passage has one clear message that we Christians are expected to readily identify, I will be the first to put my hand up and admit I often can’t find it.

Fortunately, there can usually be one, two, three or more interpretations to be found in many stories of scriptures. If you’re Jewish, you aim even higher. "There are seventy faces to the Torah," states ancient rabbinical teaching. "Turn it around and around, for everything is in it."

I have always loved the Jewish metaphor for scripture being black fire on white fire - black referring to the inked words on the page, and white being the wider contexts and varied perspectives that are brought to the text. In Christian tradition as well we are indeed invited to engage robustly with the scriptures; to collude with the Holy Spirit in using our imaginations, learnings, and experiences to illuminate God’s message for us.

In that spirit, I decided to share with you some of the doorways into the gospel story that bubbled up for me during these past few weeks, based on what I was reading, seeing in the headlines, or experiencing in my daily walk through life. Don’t worry - I’m not going to ask you to listen to 70 different interpretations of the parable, though a 12-hour sermon marathon might make for an interesting fundraiser. Rather, I will offer up a few of my thoughts with the hope they will inspire your own further reflections.

Thought Number One:

What if the sin was not primarily on the part of the steward, but of the rich man? What if the rich man was a Trump figure, with an Elon Musk-style operative in the background, discrediting the steward unjustly in order to curry favour? Listen to the opening lines again with that in mind:

There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and and said to him, "What is this that I hear of you? Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.

In this version of the story, the rich man is being fed rumours and falsehoods; perhaps the steward is accused of "squandering" money by the equivalent of the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, which has wrought so much havoc in federal agencies in the United States.

Instead of allowing the steward to offer evidence on his own behalf and have a fair hearing as to the quality of his work, we see in the text that his dismissal is a fait accompli. Without waiting for any reply from the steward, the rich man says you cannot be my manager any longer. This despite the fact that the steward had not been accused of stealing or fraud - if he had been, he would have been fired immediately and had no further access to the books.

As it was, the steward chose to do what good he could in the little time he had remaining. Yes, it was largely to benefit himself, we are told, but it also benefitted those who were in debt to the rich man. And perhaps rightly so. One commentator, R.C. Sproul, points out that because Jewish law prohibited Jews from charging high interest rates on loans, the cost of the repayment was built into the product itself. In the first instance we are told about, the debtor owed the rich man 100 jugs of olive oil. Bringing it down to 50 jugs, the commentator suggests, restored integrity and fair-market value to the transaction. Unlike olive oil, wheat doesn’t spoil and so doesn’t carry the same risk in financial transactions. Therefore, it was only overpriced by 20 per cent, explaining why the steward only knocks it down by that much in the parable.

The rich man commends the steward not for his dishonesty in reducing the debts, but for his shrewdness. Perhaps he sees himself in the actions of the steward. The message to us is that strategizing for the best outcome isn’t in itself wrong - our duty, though, is to use our strategizing to advance God’s agenda, not our own. Jesus wants us to be focused on our mission; to use all the tools we have at our disposal to build the kingdom of God with as much or more passion and skill as an entrepreneur building their business. It is similar to the words we hear from him in the gospel of Matthew, where he commends his disciples to be "as wise as serpents and as harmless as doves."

Thought Number Two:

I recently read an article in the Atlantic magazine about a study in which researchers found they could tell the voting preference of a person with 95% accuracy just by looking at a scan of their brain. It turns out that when conservative-leaning voters are shown graphic photos of physically repulsive things like mutilated animals, filthy toilets, and faces covered with sores, their brain lights up differently than that of liberal voters; a whole different network is activated. Disgust is experienced on a physiological level much more strongly. Researchers showed other images as well, pleasant ones, for example, or violent ones. But for other emotions there was little difference in the brain response between conservative and liberal thinkers.

I thought of Jesus working constantly among the sick; touching lepers, crossing taboos, healing the dead. He showed no disgust at sickness or physical decay. According to the study, that would make him unlikely to lean conservative. He would be less likely, perhaps, to draw hard political lines or to worry about borders. And if that’s the case, maybe some of these passages are tricky because he doesn’t fall into black-and-white, us-and-them thinking that people of all political persuasions can demonstrate. He erases traditional divisions. He invites Matthew, a tax collector and therefore an object of dislike and distrust, to be a disciple. He makes a Samaritan, by default considered an enemy of his Jewish listeners, to be the hero of his story about the good neighbour. And in today’s gospel he talks about what we can learn from the unjust steward.

Do we follow Jesus in this practice of working beyond divisions or discord? How would our words and actions change if we similarly refused to be led by our conscious or unconscious prejudices, and were willing to listen and learn from those we may disagree with, or have little in common with?

Imagine you, a child of light, sitting down with a shrewd, hard-nosed, thoroughly secular business person. You want to figure out how to raise funds for a new youth ministry, and you ask them about some of the ways they achieve success in their world. Who knows what they might tell you that could prove to be a turning point in that youth ministry - and who knows what you might tell them that could plant a seed of faith that grows long after your conversation is over. Maybe we should be trying harder to make connections and build relationships outside of our "children of light" bubble.

Thought Number Three:

In the gospel passage, Jesus says "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," and he asks "If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?" This term "dishonest wealth," rightly sows confusion in the reader. What exactly is Jesus advocating for? It sounds kind of sketchy, to say the least.

The term "dishonest wealth" is translated differently in other versions of the Bible, where instead we hear it called "unrighteousness wealth," or "unrighteous mammon," or "worldly wealth." Basically, it just means our worldly goods - not necessarily ill-gotten. Although we often hear people say "Money is the root of all evil," the actual Bible verse they are paraphrasing says something subtly but significantly different.  As Paul writes to Timothy in 1 Timothy 6:10, “For the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs."

Jesus tells us in this passage that we cannot serve God and wealth. It’s not that we can’t have wealth - we just can’t serve it. God has to come first.

A C.S. Lewis quote popped up in my reading this week, one that I hadn’t heard before. "There is no neutral ground in the universe," he said. "Every square inch, every split second, is claimed by God and counterclaimed by Satan." We don’t talk much about Satan these days - but if we define Satan as anything that pulls us from our walk with God, then money, the quest for power, a self-seeking individualism, the longing for fame, a tendency to laziness, then yes - just about every second of the day asks us to choose if we are living to our full potential as a child of God.

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So, there are my three, rather disjointed reflections on our gospel reading today. I’ll leave you to find the other 67. I encourage you to join one of the longest and largest book clubs in the world, and to find regular time in your week to sit down with the Bible. To interpret your world and your faith through the lens of scripture. We have Bible studies if you’d like company with that, or a bunch of books that might help. Don’t be afraid to use your imagination and take the story where it speaks to you.

I won’t say there are "no wrong answers," because if our reflections on scripture are leading us away from better appreciating God’s divine love and mercy for all, that’s definitely a red flag. But there are lots of good answers, and depending on your mood, the season of your life, your current hopes or struggles, you might find fresh insights that are particularly uplifting or helpful.

Next week we’ll read further in Luke; we’ll hear the story of another rich man, and a poor man named Lazarus. In the meantime, perhaps today’s message might prompt you to think about how you manage your own worldly goods, and what master you serve. We may not always understand every scripture reading inside and out - but we do know that putting God at the heart of all our choices is never the wrong answer.