The Hardest Parable (actually, it's not that hard) ~ Luke 16:1-13

16 Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. ² So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ ³ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. ⁴ I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ ⁵ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ⁶ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ ⁷ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ ⁸ 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. ⁹ 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.¹⁰ “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. ¹¹ If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? ¹² And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? ¹³ No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” ~ Luke 16:1-13

Pay careful attention:

A seashore is a better place than the street because you need lots of room. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Birds seldom get too close. If there are no snags it can be very peaceful. But if it breaks loose, you won't get another chance.

Confused? Without any context to frame the sentences, this paragraph doesn't make much sense. Now let me read it again, but this time let me provide some context—a one-word frame or interpretive key. The one word is kite. Now see if it makes sense:

A seashore is a better place than the street because you need lots of room. At first it is better to run than to walk. You may have to try several times. It takes some skill, but it is easy to learn. Even young children can enjoy it. Birds seldom get too close. If there are no snags it can be very peaceful. But if it breaks loose, you won't get another chance.

Just as the context of the kite helps the paragraph make sense. In the same way, when it comes to the difficult parable of the dishonest manager of Luke 16, if you don’t understand the context you will miss important details and the overall intent. So what’s the kite of this parable about the dishonest manager? What’s the context? What’s the point?

The first point in reading this parable (or any parable for that matter) is to remember that it’s not that hard. The context is key. It’s about the gracious welcome of God and grumbling Pharisees.

The background for our text is all the way back in chapter 14 – Jesus’ regular habit of eating and fellowshiping with “tax collectors and sinners” to demonstrate God’s gracious, disarming welcome, with no strings attached. This concrete ministry sparked outrage from the religious authorities leading Jesus to offer three bombastic parables (chapter 15) about a lost sheep, a lost coin and a lost boy (so to speak).  The specific context for the parable of the dishonest manager is Jesus’ response to criticism from the religious teachers and authorities about this welcome (15:2). Part of the reason that we miss these connections is that we are hurt by that which aims to help us – chapters and verse numbers. I know they’re helpful but never forget that they were added much later and not original to scripture. Chapter headings first appeared around the ninth century and verses in the sixteenth century. 

They can help us in many ways but they can also keep us from making broader connections that Gospel writers intended. Chapter headings and verses are themselves, in other words, interpretations. Don’t even get me started on “subtitles” which I believe might have been created by the Devil himself. So when studying the Bible always ask yourself, “What is the broader context?”

 Alongside the setting, however, is Luke’s attention to the audience. In 15:1 we’re told that “tax collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him” but we’ve already noted that the Pharisees were also there. In 15:2, Luke tells us, “And the Pharisees and the scribes were grumbling and saying, ‘This fellow welcomes sinners and eats with them.’” In the beginning of today’s parable it says that “Jesus told his disciples” (16:1) but guess what the Pharisees are still there. How do we know? Well, jump to verse 16:14 and bam! there they are – mocking Jesus – “The Pharisees, who were lovers of money, heard all this, and they ridiculed him.” In other words, Luke warns, when Jesus is teaching the Pharisees are always present. You may think you’re alone, you imagine it’s just you and Jesus, you believe you belong to a community of like-minded, faithful believers where everyone gets along and no one says anything hurtful or harmful or hateful. But friends, listen to Luke, the Pharisees are always there.

So there are two contexts in this parable. One is the contextual theme that Jesus wishes to discuss – the welcome that God/Jesus/and we offer to the marginal (sinners, the outcast, the poor). A welcome that is generous and open, disarming and extravagant, and one that has everything to do with money with no strings attached (go back beginning in chapter 14 and see how money plays a part in all these stories and actions of grace). So the setting for this parable is a context in which grace and economics meet. Where discipleship, welcome, and our wallets are the critical context. 

The other context is audience. In the presence of sinners or saints, outcasts or disciples, the Pharisees are always there – always listening, always grumbling, always undermining. And they aren’t simply curmudgeonly people but a constant presence is Luke’s Gospel insinuating that they exist in all of us - a Pharisaical spirit that seeks to grumble at Jesus’ grace toward sinners and ridicule Jesus’ extravagance for the poor. Ouch! And we haven’t even gotten to the parable yet.

The second point we need to remember is that it’s not that hard. When we understand the context, the meaning is plain. It’s about how we use our money to bless others and secure a welcome for ourselves.

So we’ve already learned that the context relates to hospitality and the lavish welcome of sinners. The meaning then, or theme of the parable, is to further connect with Jesus’ message of welcome and grace. 

The parable begins with a rich man and a manager who is accused of “wasting his possessions.” That manager is called to account and realizes that he is in trouble because the loss of a job would also be the loss of a roof over his head. That’s why his solution, in vs. 4, is to secure a “welcome” for himself in other people’s homes. So he sneakily reduces the financial obligations of his master’s debtors who agree to the ruse as willing participants.

But in a shocking turn of events, rather than being upset by the clear dishonesty, the rich man, who himself seems a bit shady, commends the dishonest manager for his shrewdness because he kept the end game in mind and secured for himself a place to go. After that, in vs. 8, Jesus jumps in to offer his own assessment. “Children of this age understand how the world works and use it to their benefit; why do children of light not understand the ways of the kingdom of God? 

Jesus’ use of “this age” in vs. 8 (BTW NOT “world” as the NIV translates) draws on a division of time between the present and the age (or kingdom) to come. So Jesus speaks of the dishonest manager as having prudently taken advantage of the system at this time while stressing that children of light should take their directives from the next age. If they did understand the ways of the new age, how would this be made manifest in their practices? Simply put, in vs. 9 he says that they would use “dishonest wealth” or money of this age to “make friends” in order that they might be welcomed into eternal homes. 

An underlying reality in the first-century world is that “making friends” was a cultural and economic reality. The exchange of money, created and solidified various forms of friendship.  It wasn’t Facebook that maintained friendships but patronage and responsibility. Both money and the manager are characterized as “dishonest” because they both belong to this age and thus have no place in the age to come. Yet, money and remembering the end-game, being mindful of the end, do have a critical role this side of heaven. Use your wealth, Jesus urges, with the end in mind because the poor are the ones who will welcome you. What kind of welcome will you receive?

Jesus then goes on to round out the parable with a few thoughts on money which I would summarize in the form of a question, “If you can’t be trustworthy with money. How can your spirituality be trusted?”  By the way, friends, as far as I’m aware of, Jesus never talks this way about Bible reading or prayer! When the kingdom is our treasure, we switch from hoarding to giving. When we elevate kingdom priorities and keep our end in mind we liberally share our wealth. And in the process we not only restore and liberate the poor but also ourselves. We begin to realize that the enemy of grace might not be works but greed.

Jesus is saying, “I’m not really interested in your story of faith. I want to know about your story with money. Your checkbook will show me what you believe about grace, who you worship, and what you truly believe about salvation.”

Finally, don’t be fooled. This parable is hard. You can wrestle with it. Just don’t laugh. 

I don’t believe that this parable is difficult to understand – that grace, money, and our belief about the next life work and flow from the same place. This parable is hard for one reason. I don’t want to do it. I’m not even sure what to do. I certainly don’t want to connect my spending to my spirituality. I want my Christianity to be about my Bible not my wallet, my worship on Sunday and not my budget on Monday.
 But this is still a parable. It’s okay to be troubled, perplexed, off-kilter, even a bit fearful. Jesus does not offer us a rule, a guideline or even policies that we can either follow slavishly or utterly dismiss. He tells us story that reveals how interconnected and complicated following God can be. Wrestling is a proper response of anyone who would wish to live such a story. But this is neither an excuse to do nothing or to laugh dismissively. Laughter or ridicule is the Pharisaical spirit at work. It seeks to undermine Jesus’ teaching by not taking it seriously.

Pastor Ian has reminded us repeatedly that parables are not really moral fables. They are apocalyptic stories that aim to help us see. It’s not simply about welcoming the poor and the outcast and giving a few dollars. It’s about trusting God’s story of how the world works and God’s declared end for our lives.

But what can you do? What’s one thing that you might engage as a disciple who believes that money and theology connect?  Do something each month or each week that shows you don’t love money. That you don’t serve it. Do something on a regular basis that surprises people with money as an act of grace. Sacrifice something of yours that helps another out. Each week. Can you imagine what our world would be like, think of us, if the church acted like that? So be a disciple. Be like an Austin Perine. 



This is my parable for you. 

(Click on the link and watch the following video)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vJFlO9-poJ8 

Friends, show love with the end in mind. Why is it a four year old of this age is more shrewd in dealing with his own than are the children of light? If we live as apocalyptic people we will surprise our city with the grace of God regularly in ways that show true sacrifice and real love. No one, not even a Pharisee, can truly scoff at that.

Kingdom 101, Dude!

your kingdom come,
your will be done,
on earth as it is in heaven. ~ Matthew 6:10

Bro! Broseph! Where you been, man? Dude, you have missed so much. He has been pouring the work on. Surfing in Crete? Dude – that’s so cool. Are you going to be ready for the final? It’s going to be tough. Yeah, I don’t care if it’s Kingdom 101, Jesus has been killin’ it. A few days ago he took the whole class outside, told us to put away our phones – something about “he who has ears to hear let him hear” – whatever! Anyway he took us outside, sat down and the mind blowin’ began. Check this out – I called it the lecture of awesomeness. Everybody’s using it. But you’d better get it in gear because he moved up the final. It’s tomorrow. I know, you’re in big trouble because if you fail this you can’t take the next class on parables, which I’ve heard is brutal! Yeah, I’ll help you study but only if you help me get the number of the blonde girl who sits on the side. Yeah she’s from some  place called Gaul. Okay – that’s later. Notes. Okay. Here’s my sense of what Jesus was talking about – Kingdom 101.

1.    Lesson One: The kingdom of God is confounding. We don’t get it. And when we think we’ve got it, listen to Jesus, we probably don’t.

Right off the bat you should know that Jesus never gives a straight answer. He gives hints, analogies, parables and images but never a definition and only brief explanations. Jesus asked us what the kingdom of God would look like and a couple of the smart kids from Jerusalem were like, “An overturning of affairs in which God would come and reinstitute Israel’s political and spiritual fortunes by raising up Jerusalem.” That new kid, Simon the Zealot, whips out a knife and says, “Killing Romans.”  Dude, he’s my room mate. And others talked about “reestablishing a godly order with righteous people.” And Jesus was like “well those are good answers but still miss the point and he starts tell stories and giving examples which made no sense: down was up, tax collectors and sinners before priests and saints, poor over rich, peace beats war, small takes big. And I just raised my hand and said, “I don’t get it.” And you know what he said back, “Good. You’re not far from the kingdom of heaven.” What the heck is that supposed to mean?!

So here’s what I think. With Jesus, he doesn’t tell stories to explain truths in interesting or even helpful ways but to call attention to the unsatisfactoriness of previous explanations and understandings. Robert Capon says that the purpose of parables is “to pop every circuit breaker in their minds.” I don’t know what a circuit breaker but it sounds powerful and painful. It’s like the first response he wants from us is to say, “Wait! What?” He wants us to unlearn our faulty assumptions, to first admit we don’t understand. And Dude – he gets after it. Do you know that he told some of the other professors, the Pharisees, that prostitutes would be entering the kingdom before they would. We were like, “what?”

Someone asked Jesus why he spoke in such difficult ways, bizarre stories, strange analogies, unexplained metaphors and he answered by quoting from the book of Isaiah that he does that so “seeing they might not see and hearing they might not understand.” (Mark 4:12). Dude, this guy quotes Scripture so strangely. He claims authority over it. One of the smart students asked, “Who do you think you are, God?” Some people at this point dropped the class. They were like, “This is too hard and he’s too weird.” But I think they’re missing the point. What Jesus wants it seems concerning the kingdom is to first create an unmade up mind. He is not trying to confuse us, not simply interested in playing with us, but he wants to confound us, even to infuriate us. 

It made me think of the lyrics of one of my favorite singers, Jason Isbell, who sings about the mysteriousness of everyday life. In one song he offers what I think is a Jesus’ point about the kingdom:

You thought God was an architect, now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow
And everything you built that’s all for show goes up in flames.

Jesus’ stories are often like pipe bombs blowing up our own ideas of how the world is supposed to work and what it looks like when God comes. It’s going to be way different than what we thought. Dude – no, you can’t use that on the test. That’s my idea. You don’t even like Jason Isbell. 

So the first bit of homework was to pay attention to what bothered us, to carefully consider those places where we felt pushed and shoved and rather than dismiss what was being ask what needs to blow up. And then he said to us again, “He who has ears to hear let him hear.” And I was finally like (mimic explosion around your head) “mind blown.” 

2.    Lesson Two: It’s not about heaven. It’s heaven on earth. It’s godly rule meets earthly realm. 

 

As Jesus lectured and took us on field trips, we begin to get the impression that the goal of the kingdom was not to fill us with enough spiritual hot air so that we float above the earth, like the Pharisees. His goal seems to be to teach us to pray in such a way that material matters like what we wear, what we eat, and how we treat others ARE spiritual matters. 

We had this pop quiz and the question was, “What does it mean to inherit the kingdom of heaven?” And so many people put it means going to heaven when you die. I wrote, “Jesus is talking about the kingdom of heaven, the place we’ll go when we die. And at the end of the Gospel, he will do something radical so that we can go there.” And when I got it back he gave me a D and then wrote that he was being gracious. I went during office hours and asked if he could bump the grade since he said that we wouldn’t really understand the kingdom and he laughed. He didn’t change my grade but asked,. “What did I say about prayer?” And then I remembered him teaching us to pray, “Your kingdom come; Your will be done, on earth as in heaven.” The phrase kingdom of heaven is not so much about a place but the establishment of God’s rule. The place, Jesus always point us to, is earth and he’s always telling us that the kingdom story is that God is reclaiming his sovereign authority over the earth. That the earth is the place of God’s kingdom assault and that the things of this earth remain the very territory over which the battle is being waged. Basically, we learn that the kingdom wants us body and soul, which is why he cares how we spend our money, invest our time, treat those who are poor, or who we choose to eat with.

The two images of Jesus’ kingdom message revolve around God’s sovereignty (his rule) and his role as Creator. So kingdom spirituality is not simply about hearts but also bodies that God made. Not merely about prayer but also bread. It’s about paying attention to birds and flowers and finding nonaxiousness. Or encountering enemies and handling them without violence. It’s about words and works, dispositions and deeds, salt and light. So, you can’t say it’s not political (as if human well-being is purely an interior decision) nor can you say the kingdom is merely voting to better ensure our rights or to promote better social programs (as if the problems of this world are simply organizational ones).

The kingdom of God is not simply about a relationship with God or loving God but also about a relationship with our neighbor, the stranger, the sick, even the prisoner. Jesus says – “as you did it to one of the least of these . . . you did it to me” (Matt. 25:31-46). He’s constantly reminding us that one cannot worship and serve God or follow him and not be concerned about justice here and now. 

The homework for this lesson made me uncomfortable. Jesus told us, “I’m not really interested in your story of faith. I want to know about your story with money.” He talks a lot about money. He then asked us to come by and show him our checkbook stating, “That will show me what you believe and who you worship.” Dude!

The next lesson is one which I have been puzzling over which is always swirling around these discussions, “Who is Jesus? What’s his relationship to God’s rule?” Okay, call me crazy but this is what I’m coming to believe. 

         3.    Lesson Three: Jesus is the very kingdom itself in person.  In Jesus we have a parable of what the kingdom looks like. 

In one of our study sessions someone asked, “Is Jesus a revolutionary?” Well, in a sense, we all agreed, he was. Jesus was similar to revolutionaries we had encountered who claimed some sort of Messiah status and announced the kingdom of God, like Judas of Galilee (remember?), who led an open rebellion against the Romans and Jewish collaborators. But someone else then said that Jesus was a double revolutionary because though he shared a revolutionary spirit with many other Jews, the means by which he believed this revolution would happen was radically different. We still expect that to make the world right God needs to send in the tanks. The whole point of Jesus is that when God wants to change the world he doesn’t send in the tanks but the meek and the merciful, the peacemakers and people with a passion for justice. We need to see this from the inside out. It’s not the point that if I am one of these persons God is going to bless me. It is people like this through whom God is reclaiming his rule over the world.

But it’s even more than this. The kingdom also revolves around who Jesus is in a particular way. He is the one who is above the Scripture, who could do what only God could do like pass judgment or offer forgiveness for sins – only God can do those things! 

And a thought hit me. Maybe Jesus isn’t simply a revolutionary who is trying to bring the kingdom. What if Jesus is also the revolution? And this is why many of the stories, parables or actions that Jesus tells are not so subtle references to himself as the king and that it is these stories that infuriate his listeners the most. And this means something very important. It means that the kingdom of God is first and foremost God’s work, mission, initiative, and victory. So we live into this Jesus life, kingdom activity, with gusto because it’s end is secured not by us directly but by him. Which means that even as a follower I can weep, grow weary, and seemingly suffer defeat and the kingdom will still come.

Homework: And so the last homework assignment makes so much sense now. Jesus told us to pray that God’s kingdom would come. 

I have to admit that his teachings gave me a terrible paralysis thinking that it’s all up to us. If the fate of the world, the outcome of the future is solely on my doing, or even yours, then we are screwed – Peter’s world history convinced us that we are without hope. 

I’m realizing that the kingdom coming is not some stating some silly notion that everything that happens occurs because God planned it that way. To talk about the inevitability of the kingdom is stand upon the amazing resilience of God’s purposes. God’s intent for the world isn’t stumped by our plans. God’s will will be done on earth as it is in heaven. God’s kingdom, His will being done, is a declaration of what God is doing before it implies anything that we ought to do.

In seeking out the God’s kingdom and praying that God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven, I’m schooling myself to want what God wants, to receive not what my heart desires per se, but rather to become so enthralled with a vision of what God is doing on earth that I forget the story that the world has told us – that we have nothing better to do than to satisfy our desires. I am teaching myself to look forward to, and be, God’s kingdom come.