(Note: This blog entry is based on the text for “Turning Point”, originally shared on October 27, 2025. It was the 377th video for our YouTube Channel, Streams of Living Water (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCB7KnYS1bpHKaL2OseQWCnw), co-produced with my wife, Rev. Sally Welch.)
There are people in this world who would steal everything you have if they
could. Some who steal from you would call it a blessing. Today, we’re going to
find out why they’re wrong.
What if you believed that people who get
rich are blessed. Rich people often say that.
It’s a form of the humble brag, because the unsaid part is that they
believe that they are being rewarded for being good people. It’s part of what
some people consider to be our dominant religion: Moralistic, Therapeutic,
Deism. The “Moralistic” part is the belief that you go to heaven by being good,
and that good people are blessed to living a happy life; it’s only fair. In
that sense, we are not so far from the culture in which Jesus ministered.
That’s why the beatitudes (declarations of blessing) in Jesus’ Sermon on
the Mount in Matthew 5-7 were so disruptive then and now.
Those beatitudes, in Matthew 5:1-12, included Jesus’ declaration
that the truly blessed are those who are poor in spirit, those who hunger and
thirst for righteousness, the merciful, the persecuted, and other things that
many people today struggle not to be because they believe the lie that
those things won’t make them successful. They are not the good life, and those
who are those things are not blessed.
But Jesus declares them to be blessed because we cannot be righteous
before God without a Savior, and they know that they need one. Those who
know that, and depend upon God for all things, are the people who are truly
blessed. In this world and in the life to come.
That’s why Jesus is also
disruptive in the reading from the Gospels that will be shared in the majority
of churches in the world this coming Sunday, Luke 16:1-13.
It’s been called The
Parable of the Dishonest Manager, The Parable of The Shrewd Manager, The
Parable of The Unjust Steward, and many other names, none of which are
complementary to the guy who thinks that he’s in charge.
Jesus has been on
the road teaching and doing miracles in the area just north of Jerusalem. He is
popular with the people, and they are coming out by the thousands.
But he will be
headed to Jerusalem to die, and he wants his followers to know what’s coming. He
is preparing them with a story.
Today’s story is a
parable, an earthly story with one specific meaning. It begins with Luke
16:1-2,
16 1Then
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. 2So
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.’
It’s never fun
firing people, even when the behavior of the employee makes it necessary. I’ve
done it, and it’s not easy. You know that the life of the employee is going to
take a turn for the worse. It’s never something to be done lightly.
Thomas Watson, the
founder of IBM, once had a senior executive who made a mistake that cost the
company $1,000,000.00 in the 1950’s, around $12,000,000.00 today. Soon after,
the employee came into Mr. Watson’s office and placed an envelope on his desk.
Mr. Watson asked him
what it was. The employee explained that it was his resignation. He wanted to
resign before he was fired.
“Fire you?” Mr.
Watson responded. “I just spent $1,000.000.00 training you.
There are
similarities between this story and the parable we are hearing today.
Sometimes firing
someone has to happen. And, in this parable, it didn’t happen for the reason
many people would think today.
Jesus lived in a
culture that was heavily based on honor and shame. Some of us have come from that
same kind of culture and can understand this parable better than others.
In this parable, the
rich man would not have cared as much for the loss of his property, as he would
have cared for the loss of his honor and reputation. He had been fooled. He
didn’t even know he had been robbed. Someone else had to bring the charges to
him and, it sounds like there was convincing proof that the rich man didn’t
know about right there under his nose! It brought him shame.
The rich man told
the manager to get the books in order and then to get out.
Does that sound like
a smart thing to do, to give the manager control of the books again? Well, he
does. And we see what the dishonest manager does with them as the drama goes
deeper, in verses 3-8,
3Then 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. 4I have decided
what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into
their homes.’ 5So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one,
he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6He
answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit
down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7Then 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.’ 8And 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.
So now, “The
Dishonest Manager” is “The Shrewd Manager”? That’s disturbing. What’s going on?
To see that, we have
to look at the parable that we don’t see today.
One commentator
points out that just before today’s parable of The Dishonest Steward is the
better known and more beloved Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32).
That’s a parable
about a family where a son clearly does wrong, but his wrongs are dismissed,
and he is restored to the family anyway. We see the generous love of the son’s
father in this parable.
Today’s Parable of
The Dishonest Steward is a similar story, but it is set in the business
world. The manager clearly does wrong, like the Prodigal Son, but when his
wrongs are dismissed, we are repulsed by the forgiveness of the manager’s
employer. Why?
The rich man in
today’s parable commended the manager for restoring the rich man’s honor and
his relationship with the community, for restoring the funds he had stolen from
their clients, and for doing what was needed in order to have a good life after
his employer’s judgment. Both the rich man and the manager are made whole.
It is like the
coming kingdom of God, only there, God restores the living relationship with
the one true living God that we broke. God restores our relationship of faith
on the cross, not because we deserve it, but in spite of our
unfaithfulness.
Certainly, the
employer seems to be excusing the manager’s behavior, not forgiving it. But a
point is being made. What is it? Jesus says what it means in verse 9,
9And I tell 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 is a hard verse
to understand by itself. But I don’t think that it is meant to be understood by
itself. I think that it is a bridge verse taking us from a story about
dishonest wealth being used to restore relationships to the time when your life
is over and you have nothing to offer God at all. All you can do is to appeal
to your Savior, who restored everything for you.
Why? Jesus tells his
followers in verses 10-12,
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. 11If then you have not been faithful with the
dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12And
if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you
what is your own?
There is no good in
what we do. What we do is the result of who we are. We are sinners, cut off
from God by our disobedience and living in unrepentant sin. Or, we are saved
and restored to God by Christ’s obedience and living as new creations, born
again, transformed people. We do what we are.
That new life begins
and is sustained in repentance, in turning away from the old life and toward
new and eternal life in Jesus Christ. There is no other path.
That’s why this
parable is so disruptive. It’s a turning point. It challenges us to look at our
lives not on the basis of what the world calls success, but what God does.
Turning Point USA is
the name of a conservative political nonprofit organization co-founded with
Bill Montgomery by Charlie Kirk to reach young people with the values shared by his
organization. Charlie Kirk was also very clear about his Christian faith and
helped young people answer their questions and live openly as Christians on
high school, college and university campuses. Charlie Kirk was assassinated on
September 10th at a student gathering. He was 31 years old.
I have to say that I didn’t follow Charlie Kirk closely. I just saw some
of the videos of his presentations and debates, both in our country and abroad,
in which his primary goal was the respectful exchange of ideas.
A liberal arts education used to mean that you were exposed to a lot of
ideas and given the tools to think critically about them, to examine sources
and motivations, and to make up your own mind. Today, our campuses teach an
identity based progressive orthodoxy that cannot be questioned.
Charlie debated anyone who came to his presentations, and he would
listen respectfully. He would ask questions like. “Why do you believe that?”,
“What makes you think that you have been told the truth?”, “Would you be open
to considering other ideas.” “Can we talk about it”. He mostly kept his
composure, even when insulted. He spoke unapologetically about his failures and
about his Christian faith. Yet, he has been reviled as a generic hater, quoted
out of context, categorized and caricatured.
There are ideas that I have heard him say and that have been attributed
to him that I most certainly do not agree with. And, I’m sure that there are
things that I said when I was in my teens and twenties that I would not agree
with today, or would at least express in a different way.
But I would hope that we could all talk with one another about what we
believe without killing one another.
I hope that we can address rival truth claims without labeling and
dismissing one another.
I hope that we can move beyond stereotypes and see whole people in one
another, children of God.
We are all stewards
of what we have. We are managers both in this world and in the Reign of God. We
serve somebody or something.
How you live your
life from your heart is who you are, not just what you believe in your head
(that only sets us on the right path). Faith is what enables us to live on
God’s way. In fact, followers of Jesus were known as followers of “The Way”
long before they were known as “Christians”.
How do we live
together in our current state of fracture and fortress mentality?
I think that living
in faith is well expressed in 16th century Church reformer Martin
Luther’s explanation of the 8th Commandment, You shall not
bear false witness against your neighbor:
“We are to fear and
love God, so that we do not tell lies about our neighbors, betray or slander
them, or destroy their reputations. Instead we are to come to their defense,
speak well of them, and interpret everything they do in the best possible
light.”
So how does being
faithful with that with which God has entrusted us prepare us for the
challenges of being a follower of Jesus Christ? He concludes this parable with
the answer, in verse 13,
13No 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 wealth.”
So, in the end, the
question Jesus wants us to ask is “Who are we going to serve”. We can’t serve
God and wealth, or anything else that we put at the center of our lives other
than God, and still be faithful to Him.
Sally and I have
been audited by the IRS. Once or twice because they were targeting clergy, to
make sure they were actually clergy. And at least twice because they wanted us
to prove that we were giving as much as we do. They thought it might be too
much, given our income. We were proud of that! Giving is not a burden or a duty
for us. We are happy to give for the needs of God’s reign in this temporary
earth.
We are all stewards,
or managers, of all that we have. And we, like the manager in this parable,
will one day come before God and be asked to open our accounts.
We will face a
different accounting, though, than that required by the rich man.
Jesus calls us to
make our wealth a servant, not a master, to fund our ministry, what we
do in our congregations, what we do as a Church, and what we do in our daily lives.
We can’t have it both ways. We can’t serve God and wealth.
We seek only to do
what God has called, equipped, and sent us to do in response to what God has
already done for us. That’s the blessing.
One of my favorite
sports stories involves a comedian, Garry Shandling, who once reflected on Leo
Durocher, the ruthless coach of the Dodgers when they were the Brooklyn
Dodgers, and who said, “Nice guys finish last.”
Gary Shandling said,
“Nice guys finish first, and anyone who doesn’t know that doesn’t know where
the finish line is.”
Be a faithful
manager of your money and everything that God has placed in your hands to share
the good news of the cross, the greatest gift of all time.
Recommit yourself today
or make today your turning point.
No comments:
Post a Comment