Clever in a Crisis

Parable of the Shrewd Manager, Marinus Claeszoon van Reymerswaele, 16th Century, Oil on Oak Panel, National Museum of Warsaw, public domain, click on image to link to the source.

Gospel of Luke 16:1-13

Years ago, I clipped an article from the newspaper about the circumstances surrounding an unusual highway accident.[1]  A Brinks armored truck crashed on an overpass above an impoverished neighborhood in Miami. Bags containing part of its $3.7 million load flew out of the vehicle, burst open, and floated into the eager hands of residents and rush-hour commuters.

As far as journalists could determine, only three people bothered to return any of the money.  One was a firefighter, who found a 50-pound bag under a bush.  He handed it to a police officer without knowing it contained about $330,000.  Another was Herbert Tarvin, a sixth-grader who gave 80 cents to his teacher.  And the third was a neighborhood resident named Faye McFadden, who turned over $19.53. 

For Ms. McFadden, a single mother who made minimum wage in sales at a department store, the guilt of hanging on to the few bills and coins she plucked from the street was too much.  “My heart wouldn’t allow me to keep the money,” she said.  “It wasn’t mine.” Obviously, others felt differently: More than $500,000 was never found.

A reporter interviewed a young man named Gus, who said,  “We deserve a little something. It landed in people’s yards ….  What do you expect them to do?”  Joe Klein, who had been a bail bondsman in the neighborhood for thirty years, said “I don’t know which is more moral: to return the money and leave your children impoverished, or maybe send them to college and enrich your family for generations.  It’s hard to feel sympathy for the insurance companies when you live in grinding poverty.”

In a strange way, Joe Klein’s argument sounds sensible.  On the one hand, we applaud the three honest individuals who returned their findings.  On the other hand, we can understand some of the reasons why others did not.

A similar paradox seems to lie at the heart of our gospel text  for today, commonly known as Jesus’ parable of the Dishonest Manager.  I never have liked this story. It raises many questions and gives few answers. Some Bible commentators have chosen to move over these verses as quickly as possible.  Others have spiritualized bits and pieces of the parable, encouraging Christians to keep careful accounts, or to be good friends to those who are in trouble.[2]

The problem with this text is that in it Jesus seems to praise dishonesty.  On the surface of things, it looks like Jesus reacts to this manager much like the Miami residents react to taking money from the armored car.  “Yes, this is a crime, but in these circumstances, it is a smart move.”

We know Jesus was creative and original in his interpretations of scripture and life experience.  There’s no doubt that some of his actions and words were intended to shock people out of complacency.  Maybe this is one of those cases. 

But it’s also possible to understand Jesus’ words in a way that shows no praise for dishonesty. In his classic commentary on Luke, Joseph Fitzmyer offers an alternative interpretation of this parable based on a careful study of economic history.  He suggests that the “rich man” of the parable is probably an absentee landlord.  In antiquity, the “manager” was commonly entrusted with the transaction of all usual business,  and empowered as an agent of the landlord. Fitzmyer notes that it was general practice in the ancient Mediterranean world for the manager to charge a large agent’s commission when lending his landlord’s property.  Fitzmyer suggests that the manager is praised not for his original mismanagement, nor for reducing the amount owed to the master.  Rather, the master praises the manager for eliminating his own commission from the debtors’ bills.  In this reading of the parable, the manager is not praised for his sin, but for his cleverness in crisis.[3]

It is as if Jesus is saying, “I wish that the people of God would be as shrewd and as clever for the sake of the gospel as other people in the world are shrewd and clever for themselves. Every day, people go to work and devote all kinds of energy and intelligence on making a financial profit. Every day, disreputable people are passionately working to advance the agenda of their clan or tribe in ways that harm the common good. So will we, Presbyterian Christians, serve the world with at least equal energy, intelligence, imagination and love?

My former preaching professor Tom Long tells the story of a visit to a congregation in which he discovered an extraordinary example of shrewdness – authentically countercultural Christian shrewdness --  in a seemingly ordinary day at church. A woman in her late 20s was sharing a moment for mission on behalf of the stewardship committee. The moment for mission included personal testimony. She said, “As a restless child in worship, I would wonder, ‘Where is the Holy Spirit in this church?’ Is it in the organ pipes? Or the stained-glass windows?’

Then her voice softened. ‘As you know, a few years ago, I lost both my parents in the same week. Driving home from the hospital, I stopped by the church, just to think and pray. Sarah Graham – the kitchen hostess – was in the church preparing the Wednesday night dinner. She was very busy, and there were pots on the stove cooking. But she happened to walk by the sanctuary, and saw me sitting there. She knew what was happening my life, she knew my parents. And she just took off her apron, and came and sat beside me, and held my hand while I prayed. “It was then that I knew where the Holy Spirit was in the church.”

Tom Long says that Sarah Graham could have kept her apron on, and kept cooking, and no one would have thought the worse of her for it, preparing as she was to feed one-hundred hungry people.  But she had the ability to discern the gravity of the moment, “to know that the meal being prepared in the kitchen paled in importance before the needs of a grieving woman sobbing in the sanctuary.  When Sarah Graham took off her apron, she showed herself not just to be a Christian, but a shrewd Christian, a Christian of energy, intelligence, imagination, and love.”[4]

In the parable of the dishonest manager, Jesus praises the wise action of a sinner faced with crisis as a way of encouraging in the children of God a cleverness at least as wise. Jesus says use your talents, your time, your material possessions, those things that you cannot keep forever, for ends that will accrue spiritual rewards you can never lose.  In this way, you prove yourselves to be shrewd children of light, and make friends who, at the end of time, when all things run together, will welcome you into God’s eternal home. 

NOTES

[1] Cash Found After Crash Tests Needy In Miami,” The New York Times, National Edition, 12 Jan. 1997, sec. y, p. 10, col. 1.

[2] History of exegesis summarized by Joseph A. Fitzmyer, The Gospel According to Luke (X-XXIV), Vol. 28a in The Anchor Bible, ed. W. F. Albright and D. N. Freedman, New York: Doubleday & Co., 1985, pp. 1095-1099.

[3] Fitzmyer, p. 1098.

[4] Thomas G. Long, “Making Friends,” a sermon on Luke 16:1-9, Journal for Preachers, Pentecost 2007, pp. 53-54

READ MORE, https://www.fpcedw.org/pastors-blog