the parable of the Merciful Master

Vicar Brett Wilson – Pentecost +17 – Luke 16:1-13 – 9/19/10

Do you ever watch a whole news program and feel like you've been put through the ringer, beat up by the sad, traumatic, political, or whatever. At the end of a long week have you ever gotten a phone call and hoped it would bring comfort but it brought unsettling news? News, whether it be on the television or far too near, can be scary.

This gospel story, the parable of the shrewd manager, is unsettling. It's scary. When I listen to it, it reminds me of listening to baffling tales on the news of tragedy and unfairness. We read of an account manager who is squandering or somehow stealing or being wasteful with money. This isn't too foreign, right? It's the gospel according to Bernie Medoff, Fannie May . . . The manager gets fired, ok. He realizes that he's not one for manual labor or begging, so, before he turns in the books and before the renters know of his firing, he goes to them and cuts their bills, all to save his own neck and buy favors for himself he can cash in on after he leaves. Today we have a term for this – a golden parachute – which all too often is in our news as CEOs give themselves bonuses or create huge severance packages for themselves to cushion the blow, even as their companies go bankrupt and workers are laid off.

When the master returns, we expect him to be furious – the manager was already fired and had no authorization to do any of this. But on the contrary, the master praises the manager for being shrewd, along with a cryptic statement about the children of this age and the children of light. The kicker for me, though is that Jesus closes the parable with this - “And 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.” Our Jesus – buy yourself friends, with dirty money . . .

It is a shocking, unsettling passage. I mean, what is Jesus saying here? If you feel confused, you're not alone. Commentators say this is the hardest of Jesus' parables and perhaps of all the gospel scripture we read in church. This text, though cryptic, rings close to home with financial scandals, economic worries, and confusion in our day. It seems dangerously unfair and conflicting. This text reminds me that living in faith is not always easy or cozy.

But stay with me – because being a people of faith sometimes means wrestling with texts that are hard. And I think that these are where we can really encounter Christ because Christianity isn't about a sugar-coated, easy-to-swallow answers for our life. The bible does give us laws, commandments, and instructions as a good gift from God – not to limit us but to free us to live a full life less tormented by sin. But this passage reminds me that the bible isn't an instruction manual, but an invitation to relationship, a relationship with God that will last your whole life and stretch to cover you in every way, and will also challenge you and push you deeper, to ask hard questions. So if Jesus' parables and our bible as a whole is about relationship, I think the most faithful thing I can offer you is a reflection on how this parable reflects our relationship with God.
So let's take a look at the relationships in this parable. The master, the boss, is one of judgment and mercy. Ok, this is our God – judgment and mercy. And this manager, he is smart and shrewd, but far from perfect, this sounds like humans. Though if we look at the structure of this parable, it brings to mind a much more familiar and comforting one – the parable of the prodigal son. Actually, the parable of the prodigal comes immediately before this passage, and in Luke's gospel Jesus often explains a point with a pair of stories.

So while these seem like very different stories at the outset, they have some key things in common that I think opens up this story about the shrewd manager in a new way. The so-called prodigal son who leaves home to spend his inheritance is parallel to the manager here. Both betray the trust of the father/master/God figure. Both of them are described with the same verb – that they “squander.” When both the son and manager are confronted with their crimes, they have nothing to say for themselves. No excuses are made. The son throws himself on the mercy of his father, and the manager throws himself on the mercy of the master. Kenneth Bailey writes “Both the steward and the prodigal experience extraordinary mercy from their superiors. The manager is not jailed for changing the bills; the prodigal is not punished for having wasted the family's assets.”

The dominant relationship here is that of the merciful master to the shrewd steward. of God to humanity, and God is defined by this extraordinary mercy. At the beginning of the parable the steward has committed a crime, and when the master discovers it, he doesn't jail, sue, fine, beat, or even reprimand the manager. This is something that maybe we skip over, but is the first clue to the relationship of mercy. Bailey writes, “[our] only option is to entrust everything to the unfailing mercy of the generous master, who, we can be confident, will accept to pay the price for our salvation. This clever rascal was wise enough to place his total trust in the quality of mercy experienced at the beginning of the story. That trust was vindicated. Disciples need the same type of wisdom.”

Every service we begin with words of confession, this is where we stand – trusting in God's
unfailing mercy, because Jesus paid the price for our salvation. We make no excuses for ourselves in the confession, but fall into the arms of the one whose mercy we already know, who is always by us, even when we sin, even when we feel confused or scared, God is there and so is God's full mercy. In both the parables of the prodigal son and the unjust manager this relationship between the father/master and the son/manager stays in tact. The son is welcomed back home and God's mercy, not the son's sin, is the real focus. This is why many, myself included, prefer to call that story the parable of the forgiving father. This next parable strikes us as confusing, scary, but in the end also focuses on God's mercy, and so what about we think about it not as the “unjust steward” but the “merciful master.”

God is with you each moment of our day, waiting right at your side to catch you when you fall, to forgive you when we sin, without limit and full of mercy. This parable is scandalous because we so want the manager to be punished, but it wakes us up to the radical nature of God's forgiveness – it is not about logic, but about love.

God's love overflows for you today, in this place. But God's mercy also overflows for you in the world – out there – on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, when you sin, when you have no excuse for yourself, there is God ready to forgive and welcome you home. To live as a disciple is to have no excuse for yourself but live boldly in God's mercy and forgiveness. To cling to the cross as a sign that God's mercy is without limits.

Because we are forgiven and shown God's mercy, we are opened to share it with each other. Something I keep coming back to is the mercy shown after the 2007 school shooting in the Amish community of Nickel Mines. While the crime seemed so egregious, so tragic, this did not stop the forgiveness of the Amish community. Rita Rhoads, a member of that community, spoke to ABC news about forgiving the gunman- "If you have Jesus in your heart and he has forgiven you … [how] can you not forgive other people?" Rhoads said. Freed by God who forgives us, and Christ who paid the price for us, we are called to be shrewd to find the good news of God's mercy around us in our world.

The merciful master has forgiven you. In the name of God, who is father, son, and holy spirit, Amen.