17th Sunday after Pentecost
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Luke 16:1-13 - the parable of the Merciful Master

Focus: God is merciful and generous. Function: That the hearer may rely on God's mercy and generosity.

Grace, Mercy, and Peace be to you from God our Father and our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.

   On Monday morning, we were having staff meeting in my office. Deaconess Juanita asked me which of us would do the children's message for this Sunday. I said that, since she had done it last week, I would take it. Her response was something to the effect of, "good, I'm not sure where I would go with that gospel lesson…

   I didn't think that giving a children's lesson on the parable of the prodigal son would be that difficult. At that time, Deaconess Juanita had the great joy of informing me that the gospel lesson wasn't the parable of the prodigal son; it was the parable of the dishonest steward. "Great," I thought to myself, "not only do I have to give a children's lesson on the dishonest steward, I also have to preach a sermon on this text…what am I going to say about the parable of the dishonest steward?

I was not encouraged when I opened my favorite commentary on the parables in Luke's gospel and read that "most commentators affirm that this parable is the most difficult of all the synoptic parables.

   But after I spent much time reading about how a peasant in first century Israel would have heard this parable, I was put at ease. It is easy to misread this parable because we don't know a lot of the things that were simply assumed by those who heard Jesus tell this parable. In order to make it clear how this parable would have been understood in the first century, I would like to tell you a slightly embellished version of the story.

   There was a land owner who had a manager. He rented out his land to farmers and as payment; the land owner expected to receive a portion of the crops. The landowner hired a manager to help keep track of who had rented land and what payments were owed to him. Now the manager wasn't the most competent employee the landowner had ever had; He wasn't the most honest either. This manager had wasted his master's money and squandered his property. So the landowner called the manager into his office. "What is this that I hear you have done? You have wasted my property and squandered my money!

   The manager said nothing in his defense. He knew that the charges were true and there was no use disputing it. He knew he wasn't going to get out of it.

   I'll take your silence to mean that you aren't going to deny that you have been unfaithful to me. Well then, go and get my account books. You're fired and you are lucky that I don't have you thrown in prison for this! You know I could have you locked up until I recovered the property you wasted!

   The manager now has a problem. He isn't strong enough to do manual labor. He is too proud to go about begging for food and money. And he knows that once word gets out about the way his current job ended, he will never get hired as a manager by another landowner. His situation is hopeless! He has nowhere to turn. But the manager also knows that his master didn't throw him in jail when he easily could have - he has experience the mercy of his master.

   So the manager hatches a plan - one last ditch effort to make things turn out ok. He thinks to himself, "Here's what I'll do. I'll call all of my master's debtors. They won't know that I have been fired yet and they'll think that I still work for him. I'll reduce the debt that each owes. They will all think that my master approved the reduction. They will then love me because they think I have convinced my master to do this. And they will be praising my master for his generosity. Then my master won't have the heart to tell anybody that their debt reduction is void. And I'll have lots of friends to help me out when I am put out on the street.

   So the manager puts his plan into action. He calls in the first man and reduces his debt by 50%. He calls in a second man and reduces his debt by 20%. After he has finished doing all of this, the landowner catches wind of what has been going on. The landowner has two choices. He can tell the farmers that he had already fired his manager and that the debt reduction was null and void. This would have been within his legal rights…but it also would have incited the farmers to anger and rage at both the landowner and his manager. The landowner won't do that because he is merciful and generous. Instead, he decides to take credit for the debt reduction, to allow the farmers to think that he had authorized it in the first place, and to allow his reputation as a merciful and generous man to expend throughout the community.

   The manager knew all along that this is what would happen. He knew that the landowner was merciful. He experienced the landowner's mercy when he was fired but not thrown into prison. And he relied on the master's mercy when everything looked hopeless.

   The landowner then praises the manager for acting wisely. The landowner does not, however, commend the manager for his dishonesty. He praises the manager for relying on his mercy. He is considered to be wise because he knows where his salvation lies. It does not lie in his own efforts; it lies in the mercy of his master. This parable is really less about the crafty manager and more about his master. We might call it, the parable of the Merciful Master instead of the parable of the dishonest steward.

   But this parable isn't just about a noble landowner in first century Israel. This parable shows us a picture of God. The picture that we see of the merciful master is just a glimpse into God's character. Like the dishonest manager, we find ourselves in a hopeless situation; there is nothing that we can say in our defense - our sin has put us in a position of alienation from God. But like the dishonest manager, we also have a master who is merciful and generous. When we see that there are no other options and rely on God's mercy, then we receive the salvation that God so desperately wants to give us. Unlike the dishonest manager, we don't have to come up with some crafty scheme to get to God's mercy. He freely provides it to us and makes it easily available and accessible through Jesus Christ. Unlike the merciful master, our God provides even greater mercy to us. We are not just saved from a jail sentence, we are saved from eternal separation from our creator!

   The whole point of this parable is to show us where our salvation lies. Does it lie in our own excuses or our ability to defend or justify our actions? Not a chance. Like the dishonest manager, we don't have a word to speak in our own defense. Does it lie in a dishonest plan to defraud our master? Nope, not there either. Jesus wants us to see that our salvation lies only in God's mercy. Amen.

   Now may the peace of God which surpasses all understanding, keep our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus to live everlasting. Amen.