Gospel
Lk 16:1-13 or 16:10-13
Jesus said to his disciples,"A rich man had a stewardwho was reported to him for squandering his property. He summoned him and said,'What is this I hear about you? Prepare a full account of your stewardship,because you can no longer be my steward.'The steward said to himself, 'What shall I do,now that my master is taking the position of steward away from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I am ashamed to beg. I know what I shall do so that,when I am removed from the stewardship,they may welcome me into their homes.'He called in his master's debtors one by one. To the first he said,'How much do you owe my master?'He replied, 'One hundred measures of olive oil.'He said to him, 'Here is your promissory note. Sit down and quickly write one for fifty.'Then to another the steward said, 'And you, how much do you owe?'He replied, 'One hundred kors of wheat.'The steward said to him, 'Here is your promissory note;write one for eighty.'And the master commended that dishonest steward for acting prudently."For the children of this worldare more prudent in dealing with their own generationthan are the children of light. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth,so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.The person who is trustworthy in very small mattersis also trustworthy in great ones;and the person who is dishonest in very small mattersis also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth,who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another,who will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other,or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon."
Sermon in Church Times
THE PARABLE of the dishonest steward is notoriously the most problematic of all the stories Jesus told. In trying to undo its knots, scholars tie themselves in fresh ones. Commentators are bewildered by it. Those preaching on it yearn for the last hymn.
The scholars, the commentators, and the preachers have all been in too much of a hurry to explain. They have forgotten what Jesus himself said about his parables — about all his parables, not just this one. Jesus did not tell us stories, so he said, to make things simple for us. If a parable such as this bewilders us, then it is doing its job (Mark 4.11-12). As with any good story, the only answer to the question “What does the story mean?” is to tell it again.
The urge to explain the parables is natural enough. A parable explained is a parable contained. We have made it safe. It no longer threatens us. This anxiety to bring the disturbing teaching of Jesus under ecclesiastical control is there from the start. It is evident, for example, in the “explanations” of the parable of the sower that Jesus is said to have provided privately for his disciples when the crowds had gone away (Mark 4.13-20).
Our haste to explain leads us to interpret the parables simplistically and superficially. The last story Jesus told was that of “the prodigal son” (Luke 15.11-32), the text for countless sermons about the readiness of a loving God to forgive. Such sermons speak truly, but they miss much that is strange and subversive in the familiar tale.
The Methodist scholar Sheryl Anderson has pointed out recently that, while the son in the pigsty may have “come to himself”, there is no evidence that he was in the least repentant. His reasons for setting off home with his rehearsed speech were calculated and prudential (Children of God, edited by Angela Shier-Jones, Epworth, 2007). Much like the steward in our story, he had come to a crisis in his affairs, and he had to act swiftly and shrewdly to avert disaster.
The difficulties the parable poses are real enough, of course. It is hard to say where the story stops and where the “moral” starts. Who is praising the steward in verse 8? Is it the master? If so, we are still in the parable. Or is it the Lord? If so, it could be that we have stepped outside the story, and that it is Jesus who is commending the rogue for his resourcefulness. (The New Revised Standard Version’s “his master” is a flagrant mistranslation.)
The jury is out on the issue of just how dishonest the dishonest steward in fact was. To determine his culpability would require a familiarity with the intricacies of Jewish laws of usury that few of us have the leisure to acquire.
What will resonate with many a modern reader in the frenzied Western world — other times and other places may shed a different light on a story — is the fact that the steward faces catastrophe unless he acts fast. A growth industry in our own times is “crisis management”. Organisations are advised to have a crisis-management plan in place, and there are highly paid consultants eager to advise on the making of such plans. The Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management is no doubt on every bishop’s desk.
Our contemporary dread of imminent crisis, a fear as well-founded as it it is all-pervasive, enables us to identify with the dishonest steward. We are all in his shoes, however meticulous we are in managing our own finances. The fear we feel of what must surely overtake us — the coming global flu epidemic, the act of terror that will overshadow 9/11, the enviromental catastrophe by which our much-abused planet will visit its retribution on us — all these imminent judgements should make us take this disconcerting tale to heart.
There are four stages to crisis management, so the experts tell us. The crisis must be identified, a response to it must be planned, the crisis must be confronted, and then, and only then, can it be resolved. Our steward takes all these four steps.
The man may have cheated and lied. That is not the point. What matters is that he is not unnerved by the dread of what threatens to befall him. He responds to the crisis speedily and effectively, and for that — not for cooking the books — he is congratulated.
John the Baptist’s cry, that the raised axe is about to fall (Luke 3.9), echoes through all the Gospels and across all the ages. We have no reason to suppose that our forbearing Lord will stay his hand much longer.
If we have the horse sense of the “dishonest steward”, we, too, will “flee from the wrath to come” (Luke 3.7). That is going to be difficult, so the closing verses of our Gospel suggest, if we are overloaded with this world’s goods.
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