Day 286 - A Worried Man's Blues

A Sermon given to First Presbyterian Church, Soddy Daisy, Tennessee, Sept 22, 2013 and at St. Matthew's Shelter, Set. 23, 2013

OT Reading: Amos 8:4-12

NT Reading: Luke 16:1-13

We know when Jesus tells a parable there is a lesson in it. This one, however, has confounded theologians and ministers since it was first told, particularly verse 9, “... use wicked wealth to make friends for yourselves that they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” How do you gain a positive lesson from the actions of a dishonest person? Some very famous pastors have said there is nothing of value in this parable and others have struggled to re-interpret it to a more palatable and comfortable message. Some people even decide the dishonest manager get his job back making the story one of reward for working hard. I conclude if the manager got his job back, the parable would say so and it doesn’t. That makes my job harder. I first thought about skipping the whole lesson and talking about the Amos passage but decided we ought to walk through and try to get to the message Jesus saw in this parable.

I’m calling this sermon “A Worried Man” for two reasons. You may know the song, “It takes a Worried Man To Sing A Worried Song." "I’m worried now but I won’t be worried long." The first reason is because the dishonest manager was a worried man when the master called him in and said to give him an accounting of his business. There is another reason ands I’ll get to that one later. I’ll give you a hint, the previous parables by Jesus as he walked toward Jerusalem were spoken to the crowds or the scribes and Pharisees. This one is spoken to the disciples.

Back in the time this parable was told the ancient near east was a farming society.  Like farming today, it was dominated by a few folks who owned most of the land. Everybody else either rented land and gave the owner a cut of the proceeds or worked for the landowner and probably took a small share to feed the family. Basically the landowners lived off the people and had little regard for their situation. The landowners were the big people in the temple just like in the farming business. This had been going on since before Assyria invaded Israel and all the prophets took the landowners to task for it. Our reading in Amos today is a good example, but you can read Hosea, (It is not a pretty message), Isaiah or Jeremiah for some examples.

A landowner, the master, didn’t particularly want to get his hands dirty in cultivating and selling the yield of the land. Either he had people working the land, for example, growing olives and grain or making wine from the grapes for him, or he rented the land out to farmers.  The yield from the land, olives and grain and so forth, were sold to third parties and the landowner got his share that was most of the yield. It came in the form of either a portion of the crop or the proceeds from its sale according to whatever contract was written between the manager and the land user.

Managers made the business easier. The manager dealt with the nitty-gritty part of the business instead of the master.  There was nothing to stop the manager from adding his own fee to the transactions, or even taking a cut of the yield as long as the landowner got his income. It was often expected. The landowner may even not want to know exactly what the contracts say for good reasons. If he was charging interest to the farmer he was violating the Jewish Law. With the manager in charge, the landowner could plausibly say he did not know interest is being charged. In political circles today we call that unsavory practice “plausible deniability.”

Someone has come to the master and accused his manager of financial mismanagement. We don’t know what the manager did but we can assume that the manager is not a victim of malicious rumors. The master told the manager his job was done, and when he asks for an accounting for someone else’s use he is signaling to the manager the bad news that he has already begun making the arrangements for a change. Unfortunately for the manager, he has no trade skills, and probably no physical strength so he will not do well in the fields. All he has is the skill to “drive a desk” and a lot of pride, so his future is not good. Fortunately for the manager drawing up an account of his work takes some time. That gives him a little breathing room to think up a scheme, something his job prepared him to do very well.

This is a big deal in the social circle of the manager and his master. There is a level of trust and honor involved in this situation for both master and manager. The master loses face before his landowner friends if he admits his manager cheated him. The manager will lose face before his clients and associates if he loses his job. This saving face is a big deal as we remember from the fight over the best seat at the meal with the Pharisees.

The manager devises a creative solution that ingratiates him to the farmers. He goes to all the master’s clients and negotiates large discounts in their contract. This discount is a gift or benefit to the client and in this time the person receiving g the gift is obligated or indebted to the person who gives the benefit.

Jesus gives us two examples and they show we are not talking serious business by the amounts involved.  In one case he cuts the payment of 100 jugs of olive oil to the landowner by half, and in another case, the amount of grain by 20%. A hundred jugs of olive oil are about 900 gallons. We aren’t sure how much grain is involved but it appears it is perhaps as much as a 1,000 bushels. These big discounts, 450 gallons of olive oil, and 200 bushels of grain represent substantial business income.

Even though the contracts are re-written, the master knows the manager has pulled the wool over his eyes, but what can he say? Maybe the yield of olive oil was 50% less than normal, or the grain harvest 20% less than usual. Maybe the farmers were particularly sloppy that year, or left more in the field for the poor and aliens living among them than the Law said is the minimum. Probably the only thing in writing was the overall percentages of the harvested yield due the landlord.

It is even more complicated. The manager did not keep the money for the debts he forgave, he let the farmers keep it. The contract probably did not spell out exactly how much was harvested.

Even if he did know how much he discounted he can’t get it from the manager. And not knowing keeps him from going after the farmers. The manager has put the excess profit and the goods out of reach of the landowner.  If the master makes a public demand of repayment from the manager or clients, it makes him look bad in two ways that cause him to lose face. He showed poor judgment in selecting his manager, and he didn’t keep track of the manager’s activity.  Her really does not have much recourse against the manager, he was already going to fire the manager for mismanagement.

The master’s only recourse is to admire the shrewd skill of his dishonest manager who feathered his bed by obligating his clients with a good deal.  The obligation of a good gift is a very ingrained custom. It cannot be easily ignored or forgotten. The only face-saving option is to let the third parties think the master approved the unexpected windfall, privately recognize a shrewd fellow cost him some profit, and find another manager.

The manager on the other hand has in reach the good will the farmers who owe him for the blessing.  they are obliged to treat the manager with high honor.

If our story ended right here with the master praising the shrewd actions of the dishonest steward we would have a secular morality play. The dishonest manager in the world of high finance used his cleverness to recover from a lost situation of great value to him. The master still got a return, not as big as it could have been; but his coffers are full and he is done with his dishonest manager who feathered his nest quite well for the consequences of his actions. The moral might be, “All’s swell that ends well, or never panic and stop thinking in a crisis.”

Most business people have encountered this kind of cunning where some manager, or client has gotten rich at the expense of the boss in a way can’t be easily remedied.  I actually experienced a similar situation once when I was remodeling my home in Chattanooga. I hired a brick mason to lay a concrete block foundation wall for my new garage. I let him order the block from the building supply house and the order came in two loads, first a single pallet of blocks and then all the rest. When the bill came I saw by my records there was a flat too many charged to me and we realized the mason had arranged delivery of an extra pallet perhaps in cahoots with the driver and used it on another job, pocketing the cost of the blocks from the contractor of the second job and disappeared. The supply house corrected my bill but was out the price of the pallet of blocks, there was no way to prove the blocks at the other job were the ones used. It cost me a little more, I had to hire a good mason instead this fellow.

But Jesus is not done with his parable. He continues on, “For the sons of this age are more shrewd among their own generation than the sons of light. And I tell(order) you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” This really makes this parable almost impossible to understand without really thinking.

Most people who think they are penitent and religious likely do not think being “shrewd” or “clever” is a positive thing. Jesus must mean something really more significant for us than that.

There is no doubt money and material possessions are part of this parable, and there is no doubt from previous parables what Jesus has to say about the lure of status, wealth, and materialism, so maybe” dishonest wealth” is another overstatement referring to our material wealth. If we have a lot of money by earnings and savings, it probably came by being a good businessperson. Being a good businessperson requires knowing and walking near the boundaries of propriety, and being a hard bargainer and hanging onto money rather than spending it, so the money may not be as clean as we want it to be.  (By the way, we can all count our blessings and define what “a lot of money” is for ourselves.) 

So who are these friends that Jesus says are going to welcome us into eternal homes if we use our dishonest wealth well? It must mean we are to use our material resources for the glory of God. Who else can offer an eternal home, who else, as the hymn goes, is a true friend but Jesus?

Maybe the problem is that we take the statement (loveof) money is the root of all evil and make the leap that all money is evil because we have so many examples of greed and suffering in the face of wealth.

Jesus does not really condemn wealth in a clear-cut way. He did tell the disciples to go out on their own with only the clothes on their back and preach as a way to find receptive minds. It is written that money is the source of all evil. However, when I get to Luke 19 in about a month we will find a surprise twist. Jesus calls the tax collector, Zacchaeus to service and praises him; not for giving all his wealth away, but for giving half of it away. I’ll not spoil that passage by telling it all now but we are using this sermon as a prologue to it, so remember it.

Luke, and Paul, say the present material world, is fading away and the Kingdom of God is breaking in.  Paul says in Romans 8:22, "We know that the whole creation has been groaning in labor pains until now. This means that though we long for the completion of the Kingdom of God, we are still walking in this old world that is full of wealth and possessions. That is what this parable is about, using the wealth and material possessions of this present world.

Our challenge is do we use creatively whatever wealth and possessions we have for the glory of God, or for our selves. (Remember, YOU define your wealth.) Using it for the glory brings us to closer to the Lord, worrying about hanging onto our wealth prepares us for despair because soon the material wealth will be gone. You can’t take it with you. The words in Greek are an imperative, “you do this.” Jesus orders us to use our cleverness with wealth to support God’s work on earth, not like dishonest people who use it to pad their earthly station.

We can be thankful for the last three verses that solve much of the confusion in this weird parable. Jesus asks us, “If you have even only a little wealth in the form of a modest lifestyle and you cannot manage even those modest gifts to glorify God, how can the Lord expect you to manage great gift of salvation he desires to give you? If you can’t faithfully manage your own wealth, why would anyone trust you with their superior wealth?

The closing verse (13) is a quote that we all remember. The issue here is focus. “No person can serve two masters, the material world and the kingdom of God, you will come to hate one and serve the other.” This is the choice and temptation of our blessings. This is what the quote reads, “The love of money is the root of all evil.”

Even though this old world is passing away as the kingdom of God enters, we do live in it tasked with doing justice with our wit and what we have in this old material world. The question before the house is, “Shall we be faithful stewards striving with our minds to find ways use our blessings to magnify God’s glory, putting God first; or, shall we use it for our own glory like the dishonest steward, putting us first, (for a while)?”

I’ve said before that poverty is a spiritual condition, not an economic one. This parable is about poverty. It is not about the size of our material wealth, it is about our spiritual condition. The sin that separate us from God if we are economically impoverished is envy of the wealth of others. It blinds us to the value of our own talents to do God’s work. The sin that separates us from God if we are wealthy is loving it more than God. That love blinds us to God.

Jesus is not glorifying dishonesty, he is telling us to be a worried man and use our clever minds as well as the dishonest do, so our possessions work towards the glory of God. Use the cleverness of our minds to make us a beacon of faith in Soddy Daisy, Chattanooga and where ever you go. Whether we have a little money or a lot, a little talent or a lot, are a big congregation or little one, it is a sin to use it unwisely. Use it with care and shrewdness so you keep your eye on the prize, then you do not lose your way home. And brothers, there is a home. AMEN.