Grace, mercy, and peace to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ + Amen.
The parable that we hear from Jesus today is… well, infamous among preachers. It’s a hard text to crack. At first glance, it hardly makes any sense, and at second glance, it’s still confusing and maybe even a little frustrating. Add on top of that a sensitive topic among people like money and giving and you’ve got a text that can prove just as challenging to preach as it is to understand.
So let’s make sure we have the story straight: Jesus tells of a rich man with a manager. This manager works underneath the rich man as a steward of the man’s riches. He finds out that his servant has been wasteful and not done his job correctly, and so he seeks to fire the steward. But this firing is not immediate, apparently, because the steward has enough time to settle up some accounts. The steward makes a plan, knowing he’s backed into a corner, to make some friends with the clients through dishonest means, cutting debts for the clients before he is fired for good so that he can call in some favors when he is cut off from his employment. He significantly dents the debts of many of those who owe to his master, some even by half. After he does this, he encounters the master again, and believe it or not, the master commends him for it! The shrewdness is praised by the master.
Upfront, we may jump to the idea that the rich man is God, the source of all gifts and the one who gives possessions for His servants to steward. However, that makes it all the more curious that the one in the position of God would reward the steward for his “unrighteousness.” Our God is righteous and just, and hates sin, so why would he commend this action?
When we listen to this parable, we must do it carefully to find what Jesus is actually saying here. This servant is commended by the master for his cleverness as it puts the master in a position where the debtors are thankful and think well of the master for what the shrewd servant has done. To reverse the clearing of debt would cause the master to lose favor with the people. Beyond this, if the master would come after the steward for what he had done, the debtors would likely come to his defense. Jesus follows this by saying “for the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light.” This example is not exactly meant to model Christian behavior. The master isn’t a model for God, but of masters in the world. It is meant for a comparison.
If a man who is concerned only with things of this world is shrewd with “unrighteous wealth” to gain earthly friends and save his skin, how should a Christian live out their lives with their wealth? The steward had mercy on others for his own sake. How much more should a Christian be merciful to others for the sake of gaining eternal friends! The message of this parable shows us that the lives of Christians should be lives of generosity and charity through our “unrighteous wealth.”
But there’s another hang-up right there. What does Jesus mean by “unrighteous wealth?” In the parable, the steward is making dealings with money that’s not his, but entrusted to him by his master. The steward deals unrighteously because the wealth he has is not actually his own wealth, but his master’s. Here is where we find the real connection between the master and our Father in heaven: We too have wealth that is not ours. Everything that we have in our lives comes from God. Every last cent of our money, every last morsel of food, every cell that composes our body, this is all a wealth that has been provided to us to steward. It does not truly belong to us. What we do with the wealth that we have should be done keeping in mind that it is the gifts that God has given us, not that we have earned ourselves.
Another thing we ought to consider as we hear this scripture today is the fact that the Bible does not inherently come with chapter and verse numbers. The church developed these markers to help make it easier to navigate through the Scriptures, and we choose small amounts to go over each Sunday to make it manageable for a church service. While our Gospel reading for today is located at the beginning of the chapter, and cut off at verse 15, if we look to the greater surroundings and the words that preceded this parable, we find a possible overarching message from our Lord Jesus.
What directly precedes this message today of the parable of the unrighteous steward is actually the story of the Prodigal Son. This means that what directly precedes this message of the love, charity, and mercy we should show to others in the parable of the unrighteous steward is a story of love, charity, and mercy from God toward us. These two stories, working hand in hand, show us a message that our generosity and love for others ought to come as a response of the gifts that the Lord freely gives to us, and our cancelling of debts and forgiving others come from the mercy the Lord has toward us.
What follows after is our Gospel reading for next week, the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus. Here, too, we find a related message, showing what occurs if we are not merciful and lay up our treasures in earthly things rather than heavenly things. In the center of these two stories, this parable of the Unjust or Unrighteous Steward is an active call toward thoughtful, faithful stewardship.
God gives each and every one of us gifts to steward, be it money, talents, or some other thing. Rather than holding onto these things in greed, or using them to get ahead in this earthly life, our Gospel reading reminds us that all things end the same way: faced with the judgment of God ahead of eternity. For us Christians, we do not fear this judgment as we know that our Lord God has prepared a place for us and that we are redeemed through the saving work of Christ Jesus, but this does not mean we should feel free to use our “unrighteous wealth,” those gifts that we steward for God, however we please. We ought to use this wealth to benefit life eternal, using it to spread the Gospel and the love of God wherever we can to “make friends” for our “eternal dwelling.”
It is important for us to give according to our means. Our giving to our church, to the needy, and even our generosity toward one another is an important part of how God carries out His mercy toward His people on earth. When we do not give in charity and mercy, we are managing our “unrighteous wealth” unrighteously, as it is in part for this reason that God gives us our wealth to begin with. Of course, you are not asked to give if the choice is between giving and food on your table or a roof over your heads, God gives you your wealth in order to take care of those things too. But, as Jesus goes on to say in this teaching, this is a question about who you ultimately serve: do you serve money, or do you serve God? You cannot serve both. Your salvation does not depend on how much or how regularly you give, but rather, on if the Lord is your God or if it is another idol. Rightly ordered, it is just as Luke’s Gospel flows: you have been given tremendous gifts through the Lord’s mercy and charity. Even when you squander the gifts and act in sin against Him, He still forgives you as a Prodigal Son or Daughter. Then, out of joy and thankfulness, your generosity ought to come not as an obligation according to the Law, but as a response to the sweet Gospel of God’s love and generosity.
When we reach parts of the Scriptures that stump or even trouble us, we should always look more closely to the text and the words that surround it. There is a common phrase in the Lutheran Church that the way we operate in biblical interpretation is that “scripture interprets scripture.” The message of this text becomes clearer when we use scripture to interpret it: be generous with the gifts that the Lord gives to you, just as your Lord is generous, so that the kingdom of God may grow and continue through it.
In the Holy Name of Jesus + Amen.