Is Shrewd Good? – Luke 16:1-13

A text – 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 wealthso 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 Mammon.”

A reflection:

This is a difficult parable to sort out. Jesus is speaking here to his disciples, not a larger group of followers. We don’t really know which character to root for – both the manager and his boss seem to be corrupt or at least appreciative of conniving. We know they are debt collectors, and we might wonder if they are charging outlandish interest on the loans…perhaps. And the debtors are saved a lot of pain by the tricky “amount due” reductions of the manager. One imagines they will be grateful to him even when he is out on the street. So some good comes out of the story – the people most vulnerable to and least well-served by corrupt practices are a little bit ahead at the end. Bible scholars are as confused by this teaching as we are, apparently. So let’s interpret on the basis of what we know.

Jesus loved to eat and talk with people who lived only on the fringes of behavior acceptable to the Pharisees and the culture in general. He had compassion for them, and he may even have appreciated their skills for surviving. And he always appreciated when the poor person got a break. Maybe he is counselling his disciples to not shy away from welcoming and dealing with the shrewd, and maybe he is telling them that some good can come out of monetary dealings if the poor are given a break. If you have ill-gotten gains, he may be saying, do good with those funds so that the left-out might be elevated for a change.

More than that, Jesus is urging us to choose where we will put our faith and trust and energy and confidence – in Mammon(wealth), or in God. For Jesus, the answer is obvious: God is the source of all that is important. If your relationship with God is solid and is nurtured daily, you’ll have fewer dilemmas about money – you’ll probably always know what to do with it, at least. As the disciples were being prepared by Jesus for the time he would no longer be with them, these stories would become more and more clear.

A prayer:

Lord God, Thank you for loving us. Thank you for giving us the teachings of Jesus and the stories told by St. Luke, even when they are not exactly clear to us. Help us to focus on you and your love for us, and appreciate all the people you give to us on our journey of life, no matter their occupation or skills. Help us to leave their judgment to you. Amen.