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16 th Sunday After Pentecost - September 19, 2004 |
Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management because you cannot be manager any longer.’ The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job, I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg—I know what I’ll do so that when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’ So he called in each one of his master’s debtors. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ ‘Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied. The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.’ Then he asked the second ‘And how much do you owe? ‘A thousand bushes of wheat,’ he replied. He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it eight hundred.’ The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” TRUSTING MERCY WHEN IT COUNTS A number of years ago when our son was perhaps 10 years old, he found himself in a serious predicament through which he had seriously offended his parents, was resoundingly scolded, and sent to his room. After a while, some surprising howling was taking place at the top of the stairs and I looked up to see a very distraught boy sobbing and crying out, “Isn’t somebody going to hug me?” He took a significant risk in asking that because he knew we were angry. There was the possibility that we might have ignored him and just let him cry. But he knew us better than that so he decided to trust our mercy, something with which he had some experience. And, of course, I ran up the stairs and embraced him. After all, this was our son! Today’s text presents us with one of the difficult parables of Jesus, one which many a preacher would prefer to avoid. There it is, however, assigned as the Gospel lesson for today, and it’s better not to run from it because it teaches an important lesson about trusting mercy when it counts. It tells us about a manager who knew about his boss what our son knew about us. Jesus is telling his audience not to miss out on understanding this same thing about God. A Parable with a Shocking Twist Let’s review the major points of the parable. A manager is fired for reasons we aren’t told, but it has something to do with wasting the boss’ possessions. Uncertain what to do next when he is without a job, he comes us with a shrewd plan. He seems to have been responsible for collecting a portion of each year’s crop as rent for the landlord. Quickly, before anyone finds out that he’s been fired (in which case the tenants would know he had no authority), he tells the tenants to reduce their annual obligation to the landlord. Assuming that he still spoke on behalf of the landlord, the tenants would be delighted by this magnanimous gesture and appreciate the landlord all the more. After all, tenants sometimes had difficult relationships with their landlords, especially if they had to make the same payment in a year when the crops had failed. Here was a bonus, a Christmas gift, no matter when it came, and the tenants were able to feel very good not only about their landlord, but perhaps about his manager as well. When the manager presented the books to the landlord, it was obvious what he had done. The manager took a risk in sharing this information with his boss, but then he apparently knew him fairly well. After all, in an oriental society, the boss could have had him put in jail for mismanagement, but he didn’t. And he could jail the manager for changing the tenant’s payments without his authority. But that seems not to have happened. The boss, in fact, commends the manger for acting shrewdly, given his predicament, his crisis. He was in a serious situation—and what did he do? Knowing that his master was a compassionate man (or else he wouldn’t have tried this), he conceives of a strategy in which he trusts his boss’ mercy at a time when such trust counts. Wondering What Jesus is Calling us to We don’t really know what follows, as is true of a good many of Jesus’ parables. Jesus does say, in a kind of off-handed observation, that worldly people are often cleverer in their dealings with one another than spiritual people. But as in a preceding parable, that of the Waiting Father (often called the Prodigal Son), we are left to wonder whether the boss hires the manager back, whether the manager tries to find a job back in town with the people in whose good graces he now stands, or whether he gets thrown in jail. You remember how it was in the parable of the Waiting Father, where we are left to wonder whether the elder brother accepts the father’s invitation to come in for the celebration or whether he just stays out in the “Back Forty” and sulks. Here it is similar. This is part of the end stress of a good parable. We are not only left pondering, but we are forced to ask ourselves what different endings may mean for the character—as well as for us. These are typically called Kingdom parables which have an eschatological dimension to them. That is to say that Jesus is inviting hearers to appreciate that God is beginning something new in people’s lives and there are consequences in ignoring it. God is inviting people to trust his love for them, his compassion and mercy, no matter the crisis. Whether they do or not is important because even unscrupulous characters in stories, tenant managers for instance, worldly types, trust compassion on occasion! And the results just could be surprising. What do you think? How readily do you trust compassion? Many interpreters have seen something very different in this parable, namely Jesus recommending deceitful business practices. And this gives them such trouble that they avoid this parable like the plague. However, Jesus often uses unscrupulous characters in his parables like an unjust judge, a neighbor who doesn’t want to be bothered and a man who pockets another’s treasure by burying it in a field. More important is how Jesus frames the lead character in the story. As in the story of the Waiting Father, it is not the prodigal who has the leading role, and here it is not the manager. It is the compassionate landlord whose character invites one to risk his very future by trusting when the crises in life overwhelm. Called to accept the embrace of a compassionate God It is such a landlord, God himself, that Jesus invites us to trust when the solutions to contemporary crises defy practical advice and logic. And it is such mercy, held fragilely in human hands, which also invites our consideration. In your work life, family and personal life, there are times when all the strategies you might consider are not clever enough. Consider for a moment these situations. You make a serious error which leads to a neighbor being outraged at your behavior. You wonder what to do and decide to call a lawyer who can challenge the neighbor’s own behavior in similar circumstances. And so you start a war, when a simple appeal to mercy might have made estranged people friends. A child breaks a mother’s favorite vase, and in terror leaves a note to remind the parent that he/she once broke something belonging to this son/daughter, instead of appealing to a mercy so well known from other settings. A lover forgets a spouse’s anniversary and, overwhelmed with embarrassment, creates a wall of excuses further alienating the partner, when a plea for forgiveness, from Jesus’ standpoint, might have been so much cleverer. At far more profound levels in our lives, there are serious lapses in judgment, moral failures and sins of omission and commission that force guilt to take its heavy toll in our emotions. We want to be free of this guilt so we sometimes create excuses or rationalize or justify our behavior. Or we try to make up for our failure by trying to be better next time, or at least as good as we can possibly be. You remember how it was in the Church’s history when indulgences were sold to people so they could pay for failures or when acts of contrition were required which showed how sorry one truly was. Then, however, Martin Luther and others reminded us of God’s mercy, the extravagant kindness which it might be clever to possess when real crises come. How important it is for us—because in some situations it’s the only thing that counts—to trust in the mercy of a loving and gracious God. Actually, there were some who used to point to this parable and say it signified the inferiority of the Christian faith. To invite someone to model themselves after unscrupulous business practices seemed like religion at its worst. Jesus’ point is quite different, however, and his point is the genius which Christianity offers to the world. If this dishonest manager solved his problem by relying on the mercy of his superior, Jesus is saying, how much more will God help you in your crises when you trust his mercy (Kenneth Bailey, Poet and Peasant, 105). The choices given to every hearer One can only wonder what might have happened if the manger had decided to visit all his tenants and bad-mouth his boss about his having been fired? To what positive ends might that have led? Or what might have happened if the landlord had permanently imprisoned his manager for speaking without authority and creating deceits of which the landlord didn’t improve? Some very negative, hostile, vengeful attitudes might have resulted from such behavior. This story wants us to anticipate something more than that from the one who represents God for us. Our God does not seek to get even, or to have us get even with each other. God seeks to hug us while we are still sinners and create the new alternative to the law of retaliation. He hopes to encourage us to appeal to his mercy, a mercy he shared most completely at the cross and empty tomb, so that we can delight in his embrace no matter how embarrassed we are by our unscrupulous behavior. With our God, there is always a new beginning, and there is no new beginning which takes place without mercy.. One can only wonder what might happen should you not respond to this mercy when you find yourself in your next crisis? When you next have a choice about an attitude or a behavior which will either enslave you or set you free? The parable begs you to think about it. Prof. Dr. Dr. David Zersen, President Emeritus SUGGESTED HYMNS: There’s a Wideness in God’s Mercy, like the wideness of the sea; There’s a kindness in his justice, which is ore than liberty. For the love of God is broader, than the measure of man’s mind; And the heart of the eternal, is most wonderfully kind. |
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