18th
Sunday after Pentecost; Yr. C, September 22, 2013
Amos 8:4-7; Psalm 113; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13
Sermon
preached at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church
The parable
of the Dishonest Steward is one that troubles most preachers when it pops up in
the lectionary. It’s a parable, a wisdom
story, so I guess it’s good to remember that it is more like a Buddhist koan
than an allegory. This is one of those
parables that makes us think, really think … because it doesn’t make sense to
our ears.
Does anyone
like hearing the dishonest steward praised?
Does anyone feel that his last ditch effort to make friends of those
indebted to the master has any merit?
Would any of you be proud of acting in the same self-serving way? Does anyone feel the least bit satisfied when
Jesus tells us that we are to make friends with dishonest wealth too? Oh, and by the way … you cannot serve two
masters. No one can serve both God and
wealth. Clear as a bell? Everyone get the point? I usually don’t.
I can make
some sense out of several parts of the reading, but never the whole thing. Some commentaries say that perhaps the
steward was just giving up his commission when he lowered the debts, but there
doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the lowering. Some say that the steward is acting out
justice, reducing the debt by the interest the debtors are asked to pay. That is, we’re supposed to believe that the
steward has been standing up for the poor all along, “squandering” the manager’s
money in the name of justice, and yet … clearly the steward is acting this time
to “make friends” who will help him when he is unemployed. Some people say, that all wealth on earth is
considered dishonest wealth, so the only kind of money available to us is
“dishonest”. So Jesus is really just
saying use it for good, even though the steward is clearly using it for his own
gain … not really for the benefit of the others. Others say that these two parts may not
belong together. The dishonest steward
portion may not have ben intended to go with the few verses about being trusted
with a little and lot anyway. I’m not
sure that’s even helpful. The passages
were placed together by one redactor or another for some reason. I sure wish we had that writer’s commentary
on the matter! But we don’t.
So,
I started reading around about this gospel pretty early in the week, and I
found the freshest interpretation of this parable I’ve seen to date. In the book, Feasting on the Word, Scott Bader-Saye talked about this. I’ll try to paraphrase. Basically, he wonders, what exactly is it
that we are to imitate about the dishonest steward? A clue is in the two words translated as
“home” in the gospel. They are actually
two different words in the Greek. The first
word oikus actually means
“home”. That’s what the steward is
hoping for … to put the debtors in his own debt, so that they will provide him
a home when he has no job. But the
second word translated “home” is skenas,
meaning “tent”. The steward is hoping
for one thing, and Jesus promises him another.
The steward is looking for a stable, secure, warm, sheltered place to
live with a warm meal on the table. Jesus
does not promise that. The steward seeks
these things through means of worldly riches.
Jesus says, “You’re not going to find what you’re looking for there”. Those kinds of things cannot be bought or
bartered; they are acquired through faith.
In
Jesus’ day, any wealth that was accrued beyond what was necessary to live was
considered “dishonest” wealth. The
people believed that all resources, including wealth, were finite. So if someone had more than enough, it must
really belong in the hands of someone who didn’t have enough. Everyone couldn’t have enough, if someone had
too much. From that point of view, any
money that was expendable was called “dishonest”.
Could Jesus
be saying, that our expendable income really should be given back to those who
need it? Given recklessly, the way the
dishonest steward squandered the manager’s money … but not for the purpose that
the steward intended. Scary thought,
isn’t it? That if we indeed choose to
follow the example of the dishonest steward, and give that “dishonest” wealth
back to those who really need it, we will be rewarded not with large comfortable
homes, and scrumptious feasts, but with the tents that our ancestors in faith
had in the wilderness.
In those
tents, our mothers and fathers in faith learned to trust God for security and
stability. The tent life was a free
life, one that freed them from worry. It
can free us from the desire to acquire goods and wealth beyond what we can
carry easily. The tent life is one that
is mobile, flexible, quick to set up and quick to move. You certainly can’t be carrying around a lot
of extra stuff with you if you’re going to be living in a tent. You have to be lean, trim and selective. Carry in, carry out. No fluff.
Bader-Saye
says, “the problem with the unjust
steward is not that he ‘gifted’ his master’s debtors (even his master commends
him for this), but that his gifting was poisoned by the ulterior motive of
receiving something back from those to whom he gave. Jesus encourages his listeners to imitate the
man’s scattering of wealth in order to receive the gift that is beyond return
and outside any economy of exchange – an ‘eternal’ tenting in which one is
received not into a settled domain but into a triune life that is eternally on
the move.”[1]
Amen.
[1] Feasting on the
Word Year C, Volume 4. Ed. by
Bartlett, David L. and Barbara Brown Taylor.
Westminster John Know Press, © 2010.
Proper 20, Theological Perspective,
pp. 92-96 by Scott Bader-Saye.
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