the Dishonest Manager

Reflection on Luke 16:1-13
The parable of the Dishonest Manager

Some of Jesus’ teachings are elegant and straightforward, expressed in just a few lines. My favorites are those that begin “The kingdom of God is like…” They encapsulate the endless power of God’s love and the interrelationship through God of all things living. They are easy to memorize and to relate. The parable of the Dishonest Manager is not one of these.

Fortunately, the parables in Luke 15 provide an overture to the Dishonest Manager, and Luke 16:14-16 serve to drive home the point: Faithfulness in God is demonstrated by hospitality to the poor, and it is impossible to both serve God and pursue personal wealth. Extracting this lesson from the parable required a tidy volume of footnotes however, at least in my Bible, and I was glad to have them. Without footnotes, my next step would have been to try holding a mirror up to the printed page, hoping the meaning would magically appear in the text’s reflection. “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.”

As I read that phrase I consider the generation of aspiring MBAs being taught by my husband at the community college. Then I ponder the fate of all those young people whose strengths won’t earn much financial security in this age of outsourced manufacturing jobs and the suppression of the minimum wage. Shrewd we are, with our health in the hands of for-profit drug makers and our pensions tied to the stock market. Shrewd our government has increasingly become, passing laws that line the pockets of the CEOs and the lobbyists while millions of children lack adequate health care and thousands of full-time workers cannot make ends meet. “I want to walk as a child of the light.”

We teach our children in Sunday School the things that were made by God: stones, trees, wheat, animals, people. We teach that other things have been made by humankind: bricks, electric lights, telephones, currency. We are empowered by God with the talent and free will to improve the lives of all – or just the lives of some. When we ask Why does God allow some of us to suffer while others profit, it’s worthwhile to ask ourselves whether we might alleviate the pain in others’ lives (as well as our own) if we all acted together the way Jesus instructs us. “The kingdom of God” is here on earth – “Whoever is faithful in very little is faithful also in much; whoever is dishonest in very little is dishonest also in much. And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” It’s Confucian and convoluted; but sometimes we want to struggle with these lessons, we want them to be difficult, almost obscure – perhaps our intellectual struggles seem to buy us time against the profound simplicity of acting “faithfully.”

“You cannot serve God and wealth.” In the end, it’s pretty straightforward.