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A pastoral resource for Christians in exile Barry J. Robinson
do you owe my master?" He answered, "A hundred jugs of olive oil." He said to him, "Take your bill, sit down, and make it fifty." Then he asked another, " And how much do you owe?" He replied, "A hundred containers of wheat." He said to him, "Take your bill, sit down and make it eighty." And his master commended the dishonest steward because he had acted so shrewdly. . . . The holy man was bestowing his teachings on a large gathering, and an old woman came to receive the empowerment. Now it was the custom for people to present a gift offering to the holy man in appreciation for his blessings, so the old woman had brought with her a kilo of freshly-churned butter, a principal medium of exchange in that part of the world. It was in a satchel under her cloak, and she intended to offer it to the holy man after receiving his blessing. However, there were a great many people who had come to the gathering that day. So when the holy man reached that part of the ceremony when he would ordinarily touch each disciple on the forehead with a sacred vessel filled with nectar, he simply instructed everyone in the large crowd to visualize the vase he was holding on his head and to imagine him placing it atop each of their heads. The faithful old woman, needless to say, did exactly as instructed and received the blessing in its entirety. But when the rite was completed, and it was time to offer her precious butter to the venerable master, she merely stood up and uttered - in a very stentorian voice, reminiscent of the holy man himself and almost echoing his own words, "Now simply visualize, master, that you are receiving as an offering this kilo of fine butter that you see on my head." And then, chuckling to herself, she made her happy way homeward, a wiser and wealthier woman indeed, and with her butter tucked safely away in her arm. + If you get the joke of that story you may just get the joke of that unusual tale Jesus tells in the sixteenth chapter of Luke, a story that has troubled biblical commentators and preachers for hundreds of years. There was a rich man who had a manager . . . said Jesus, and his audience would have understood immediately that he meant an absentee landlord, the kind that were very common in first century Palestine. They represented that ruling elite of very wealthy people who lived mainly in cities and who controlled vast tracts of land and the lives of all the people who worked those lands. The fact that they did not live on the land meant that these elites needed local managers to make contracts with all the local merchants and peasants in order to secure the profits from the various crops that were grown on their property. The manager or steward, as he is sometimes called in this story, belonged to that class of people called "retainers" who executed the will of the ruling elites. He managed the estate for his boss; and his job was to realize profits large enough to support the rich man's extravagant lifestyle and to provide the resources the rich man needed to fuel his endless wheeling and dealing with other rich people. Such managers did so by charging exorbitant interest rates for their owners and at the same time took under-the-table kickbacks for themselves whenever they cut a deal. It was how such managers made "a living"; and, no matter what we feel about it, owners never objected to such "honest graft". It was the way business was done, that is all. The manager in this story, therefore, occupied a very powerful but also vulnerable position. On the one hand his job was secure in so far as he kept rich profits flowing to his master. On the other hand, he was constantly susceptible to the back-stabbing and calumny that always exists among disgruntled workers; and, of course, we are talking about a world where the poor, which these day-labourers represented (don't they always!?), had every reason to be disgruntled because rarely, if ever, did they profit from their hard and efficient labour. The profits always went to the rich, in this case, the absentee owner; and nothing ever changed. Such workers would never complain that a manager was being too severe; for that is exactly what a manager's boss expected him to be - severe on the workers precisely so that there would be more profits. No, if they wanted to back-stab a manager they would have to bring other charges, . . . and charges were brought . . . that this man was squandering his property. What we are talking about are criminal charges not personnel infractions, not charges that would bring a reprimand from his boss but charges that would put a manager out on the street. We have no idea whether or not the charges were true. Jesus doesn't say. But all you have to do is try to imagine what it would have been like to have to manage that kind of system, always being caught in a cross fire between the master's greed and excessive demands, on the one hand, and the tenants or workers' endless complaints about being exploited on the other. The rich man will always keep a suspicious eye on his manager, and the workers will continuously envy the manager's power over them. In other words, Jesus is presenting a scenario that would have been very typical, very familiar to his audience. A distrustful and greedy rich man has heard anonymous rumours that his manager has been wasteful. Who knows why? Maybe he had used his master's profits inefficiently. Maybe not. Maybe the weather had been bad that year and crops were smaller than usual. Any excuse would have been used to back-stab and undermine the manager. True or not. It was, presumably, a situation that the manager had had to face many times before. This time, however, his boss decided to act on the rumours; and the manager's job was on the line. He knew that it would be absolutely futile to protest his innocence. Have you ever tried to contradict a rumour? Guilty of what? Taking too large a cut of the profit? Failing to achieve this month's quota? Not covering his backside as he usually does? It would be like fighting smoke. The manager doesn't even bother to defend himself. He is much smarter than that. The manager knows he belongs to an oppressive system upon which his security, indeed his very life depends. He is not a rich man like his boss; and he would never be accepted by ordinary working folk. It is all on the line for him. But as frightened as he is, he is not about to give up and drop out just because of another anonymous smear campaign. So this is what he does. He calls in the people he suspects are behind the rumours one by one and asks them to accept a huge reduction in the very contract they had made through him with the owner. Of course, it meant foregoing the very interest rate the rich man was charging to make his profit.
And here is the really funny part of the story. Each person who comes in to sign a new contract wholeheartedly agrees to do it. By accepting the reductions in their contracts, the very workers who had accused the manager of "squandering" the rich man's money revealed how willing they were to do the very thing they had accused the manager of doing. Moreover, they were willing to put their John Henry on it! It is as if the manager, by his actions, says to his master, "You want to know who is really squandering your money? Take a good look at these tenants of yours. The other thing the manager is doing by this action is reminding the rich man who is responsible for writing contracts on his behalf, how much he has to gain by putting his trust in him, and how much he has to lose. So let me ask you. Would you get rid of a manager who was that shrewd, who was able to beat the mob at their own game? Indeed, now that all the cards were on the table, a manager who managed to put new cards in the master's hand over his workers? And the master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted so shrewdly . . . Is it really any wonder? He is a very shrewd little fellow, this manager. Caught in a cut-throat system where owners distrust their managers, workers hate managers and managers must use both owners and workers in order to survive, this manager, by means of his outrageous actions, manages to reverse all of these scripts. He relieves poor people of the burden of their debts and keeps his job at the same time. + Karl Barth once said of this parable that out of this "sad story of wrong-doing" came something that "looks almost like a piece of the kingdom of heaven". It is not hard to see why. This man accused of being dishonest managed to forgive other people their debts in a way that they wouldn't have been forgiven otherwise. And maybe that is the most that can be said for this strange, funny little tale - that it is "almost like a piece of the kingdom" of heaven - because in the reign of God even the weak have weapons that can produce good results in a world dominated by the strong. STUDY AND REFLECTION Jeremiah 8.18-9.1 - The 8th chapter of Jeremiah is filled with provocative and disturbing imagery, all of which provide a panoramic scene to the text before us. The anger of God and the despair of the people bring uncontrollable grief to the prophet who loves both Yahweh and the people. The prophet hears the cry of the people from across the land and the cry of God who cannot understand why the people have continued to provoke his anger. There is no more poignant picture of God in the old testament. Here is a God who is vulnerable and hurting because the intimacy with his people has been lost.
1 Timothy 2.1-7 - There is no doubt. Paul felt called to proclaim a message that the Good News of Jesus Christ was for everyone. Although it calls on the faithful to pray for those who rule over us, it does not suggest submission. If anything, the text is part of a primitive Christian confession and focuses primarily on the work of Christ.
Luke 16.1-13 - Some scholars have said that it is a parable that lost something in transmission and therefore whose meaning is practically unintelligible (Bultmann). Others, that it is vintage Jesus (Herzog, Scott, Funk). Whatever the meaning, it is an all too typical scenario Jesus paints of users and exploiters. The plot, however, surprisingly turns to rejoicing because of the shrewdness of a man who is on the spot.
FOR FURTHER REFLECTION - "CESAR: ' And the rich person who sees a change coming in the world (and you see it coming if you read the Gospels) and doesn't take steps to be admitted into the just society that is going to come, into the new humanity that's not going to die (which is what eternal dwelling places means), that person is acting like an idiot." - Ernesto Cardenal, The Gospel In Solentiname "Here then we have two worlds, one of selling and one of giving . . . Jesus asks us to penetrate the world of selling in order to penetrate it with grace by our faithfulness to God, the only Master." - Jacques Ellul, Power & Money HYMN 260 God Who Gives To Life Its Goodness (Voices United) SEPTEMBER OVERVIEW BY THEME AND TEXT September 5, 2004 - Proper 18 - 'COMING OF AGE WITH JESUS' - Luke 14.25-33 September 12, 2004 - Proper 19 - 'AND GOD WORE RED GYM SHOES' - Luke 15.1-10 September 19, 2004 - Proper 20 - 'ALMOST LIKE A PIECE OF THE KINGDOM' - Luke 16.1-13 September 26, 2004 - Proper 21 - 'BUYING A FIELD AT ANATHOTH' - Jeremiah 32.1-3a,6-15
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