The Seventeenth Sunday after Pentecost

The Ven. Richard I. Cluett

This is not an easy scripture lesson to hear, and it is not an easy one to get, to understand what it meant to Jesus and what it might mean for us.

Let me start by saying that it is the 4^th in a series of parables placed together in Luke. We have the story of a lost sheep, a lost coin, a lost son and then this story of a rich man and his manager. But what have they lost?

The rich man has lost his property and the good will of his people, and the manager has lost his own money and the good will of both boss and farmers. The rich man did not have safeguards in place and the manager seems to have squandered the money. It doesn’t say he did anything illegal, by the way. When he realized his plight he went to each of the tenants and gave them a reduced amount to repay, so they could pay it back as soon as possible, so that he could pay the owner. Basically, what was deleted was his commission.

What did each gain? The landowner gained more of what he was owed than he ever received before, he gained the good will of the tenants (which he never had because of what he charged them) for reducing their debt, and he gained a grudging respect for the manager. The manager gained the good will of the farmers and the commendation of his employer.

Does this ring true for the world economy we live in? Does it relate to the economy of God’s kingdom? Luke is unrelenting and adamant throughout his gospel that the kingdom view of property is that it exists for the benefit of all.

Today’s economists tell us that in the world’s economy, money that sits idly by is not a resource at all. Money is useful, they tell us, only when it is in motion. It is the movement of money that brings prosperity to those through whom it moves.

And the divine economists, we call them prophets and saints – and we call one of them by the name of Jesus – they tell us that wealth and property in the economy of God are for the wellbeing of all God’s creation, and when the kingdom is fully realized money and property will not belong to anyone, it will be a resource for all. There will be no debtors.

And if he did nothing else, this manager did relieve people from their debts, and he dedicated his personal profit to that end.

It is significant for us to remember to whom Jesus is giving this teaching. It is not to the tax collectors and other sinners. It is not to white-collar criminals, not to the Pharisees, Sadducees, or Scribes. It is not to the rich merchants of Galilee. He is teaching his disciples. He is preaching to the faithful about their faith and their life. The teaching is about how the faith of the disciples of Jesus, then and now, informs our values, ethics, behavior and relationships with God, people, and money.

Some have said that this parable is not as much about morality as it is about apathy.

“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.”

There's a story about Henry Ford, the inventor of the automobile, who was visiting his family's ancestral village in Ireland. Two trustees of the local hospital found out he was there, and managed to get in to see him. They talked Ford into giving the hospital five thousand dollars (this was the 1930's, so five thousand dollars was a great deal of money).

The next morning, at breakfast, he opened his daily newspaper to read the banner headline: "American Millionaire Gives Fifty Thousand to Local Hospital." Ford wasted no time in summoning the two hospital trustees.  He waved the newspaper in their faces.  "What does this mean?" he demanded. The trustees apologized profusely.  "Dreadful error," they said.  They promised to get the editor to print a retraction the very next day, declaring that the great Henry Ford had given not fifty thousand, but only five. Hearing this, Ford offered them another forty-five thousand, under one condition: that the trustees would erect a marble arch at the new hospital entrance, and place upon it a plaque that read, "I walked among you and you took me in."

C. S. Lewis wrote about Christians, “Our Lord finds our desires, not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered us…”

So, what is it that the steward has done here?

The steward forgives. The steward forgives debts. He forgives things that he had no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, he forgives for personal gain, he forgives to compensate for past misconduct. It is this decisive action that he undertakes to redeem himself to be restored in his relationship with the farmers and with the landlord. He forgives.

So what's the moral of this story, one of the stories unique to Luke’s Gospel? It's a moral of great emphasis for Luke and for Jesus – forgive.

“Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors…" That comes from Luke (11:4-5). Forgive us our debts, forgive us our trespasses, forgive us our sins… as we forgive. 

One theologian put it this way: “Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason you want, or for no reason at all. Why forgive the debts of debtor nations… Why forgive someone who's sinned against us, or against our sense of what is obviously right? We don't have to do it out of love for the other person, if we're not there yet.

We could forgive the other person because of what we pray in Jesus' name every Sunday morning, and because we know we'd like forgiveness ourselves. We could forgive because we've experienced what we're like as unforgiving people… We could forgive because we are, or we want to be, deeply in touch with a sense of Jesus' power to forgive and free sinners like us. Or we could forgive because we think it will improve our odds of winning the lottery.

Pick one of the above or pick none of the above. It doesn’t make any difference.”

So, in the words of the Nike ad, why not “Just do it”? And if we do, I believe that you and I will find ourselves living a little more in line with the kingdom way that God showed us in Jesus.