Dishonest Justice
Luke 16:1-13
We like to say that the Bible is useful for our instruction and spiritual direction. Yet, if we are honest with ourselves, we know that there are some parts of the Bible that give us direction, some parts that give us comfort, some parts that challenge us, and some parts that just plain confuse us. If we are really honest with ourselves, we know that there are some parts that make us wonder why it’s even in the Bible.
For example, John Wesley thought of Psalm 79 “as being highly improper for the mouths of a Christian Congregation.” And it is a tough psalm to read. If you will allow me to paraphrase it, it says something like this:
O God, you gave us Jerusalem to make it a holy city, but we didn’t try very hard to be holy
so now Jerusalem is not a very holy city.
O God, you made us to be your servants, but we didn’t try very hard to serve you,
so now we are being served up to our enemies.
People think you are a joke, and that we are fools.
O God, we now get it – we messed up, and we deserve this punishment.
But we also want to know when you are going to punish our enemies,
for they have been as bad as, if not worse than, us.
Give us a break, O God, and take out your anger on someone else.
Forgive us, not because we deserve it, but because it will bring honor to your name.
O God, smack down our enemies to shut them up.
Listen to our moaning, and give us a reason to cheer our enemies’ demise.
Make our enemies feel seven times worse than we have felt in our woes.
And then we will feel like your people, and then we will sing your praise.
It’s not hard to see why Wesley didn’t like this psalm. There is no repentance. There is no real sorrow for their sin. There is no offer of commitment to be faithful. Instead, there is a call for God‘s justice to punish others. There is a whining that wants a return to a preferred status. There is the implied threat that unless we get what we want we will continue to hold our breath and pout. And this reveals their underlying belief that God exists to serve us and to make us happy, instead of it being the other way around.
Most people in the church don’t worry too much about Psalm 79. We either ignore it, or we don’t read our Bible closely enough to notice it. Or, we may justify it because we know that it was written long before Jesus, who came to really set us straight about how to live before God. We know that Christians are to be honest, loyal, trustworthy, moral people – because that’s what the Bible tells us Jesus said.
But then we read this parable that Jesus told, where the hero of the story is a dishonest steward. It doesn’t seem like the kind of story we should be taking spiritual direction from – that we should be dishonest in our record keeping, cheat our bosses, and involve others in our conspiracy to defraud. It doesn’t seem like the kind of story we should be taking comfort in – that the way to get ahead in this life is to lie and cheat and steal. This is one of those passages that definitely challenge and confuse us. After all, how can we be both faithful and dishonest at the same time?
I have to admit that the scholars and commentators are kind of fun to read, if just to watch the mental gymnastics they go through to make this parable stick a landing. They say things like, “The story is shocking, just like the coming kingdom of God is shocking.” Or they say, “Conventional morality is not the same thing as faithfulness.” And while those things are true, that’s not really the message of this parable.
Some who struggle with this parable claim that it is simply a calling for us to be clever about how we deal with money. That seems to be the point of a sermon illustration involving Henry Ford, the inventor of the moving assembly line and the founder of Ford Motor Company.
The story goes that Henry Ford went on a trip to his family’s ancestral village in Ireland. Two trustees of the local hospital found out he was there, and they managed to get in to see him. They talked him into giving the hospital $5,000 dollars, which in the 1930’s was a great deal of money. The next morning, at breakfast, Ford opened his newspaper to read the banner headline: “American Millionaire Gives Fifty Thousand Dollars to Local Hospital.”
Ford wasted no time in summoning the two hospital trustees. He waved the newspaper in their faces. “What does this mean?” he demanded. The trustees apologized profusely. “Dreadful error,” they said. They promised to get the editor to print a retraction the very next day, stating that the great Henry Ford hadn’t given $50,000 after all, but only $5,000. Well, hearing that, Ford offered them the other $45,000.
Some might say that these two trustees were dishonest stewards. Some might also say that by their cleverness concerning human nature, these dishonest stewards were able to get 10 times the money for the hospital, which is a good thing. Some might say we should be so clever in raising money for the church. Some might say that – but I don’t think that we can include Jesus among them.
Again, we get into trouble whenever we read the Bible looking for good advice, instead of reading it to hear the good news. We get into trouble whenever we try to search the Bible for ways to save ourselves apart from God. Unfortunately, the desire for good advice is what sells most Bible studies today. Instead of dying to sin and being raised with Jesus into a life of responsible discipleship, we would rather have a list of scriptures re-worked as the shortcuts to a more secure marriage or financial health.
So what is the good news in this passage? How do we respect the authority of Jesus as the Son of God, and the calling to go on to perfection in love, and still make sense of this parable as good news?
In Luke’s gospel, Jesus has just told three parables to the grumbling Pharisees – the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost sons. These are all parables about the importance of all God’s children, and about the grace of God that seeks us when we are lost, and celebrates when we are found. In these parables, God is the shepherd who brings the sheep home. God is the woman searching in every nook and cranny until the lost is found. God is the father who loves both of his sons unconditionally.
But then Jesus shifts gears,because he has shifted his audience. He tells this parable of the dishonest steward to his disciples, not the Pharisees. Jesus tells a parable to those who know there are terrible consequences for the poor when they are not able to pay what is owed.
The experience of those listening is that the dishonest steward will get all that he needs to pay the landowner by taking it from those who are beneath him. The expectation is that the steward will save his job by having the poor make up the difference. “Taking from the poor to give to the rich” was the standard operating procedure of the day, because all that mattered to the steward was keeping the rich man happy.
So, the first surprise in this parable is that the steward takes away from the rich man instead of taking from the poor. The poor do not get poorer, the rich man does not get richer, and the steward survivesto workanother day. And if this was where the parable ended, with this little Robin Hood twist, we might see this as a story about God’s preferential treatment for the poor.
But then we get these words about being faithful in little and great ways, and the admonition to not be dishonest in little or great ways. We are challenged by these words of Jesus, that if we are not faithful with money, then how can we be faithful with the truly important things in life? We are told that we can only serve one master, and money is the wrong choice.
We are left befuddled and confused. Do these words explain the parable, or do they stand on their own? And if they stand on their own, is there a harmony between the parable and these words, or do we have two separate teachings on two separate issues? I think we have two separate teachings, with the parable representing the action of God, and the words representing our response to this action.
We miss the good news because when we hear this parable, we make God the landowner, and we make ourselves the dishonest steward. We miss the good news because, in our continuing saga of trying to save ourselves, we have left Jesus out of this story.
This is a parable about what Jesus does for us. Jesus is the dishonest steward – at least, as far as the justice of God is concerned. We are the people who can’t pay to God what we owe God. We are the people who are in debt to God because our sin. We are the people of Psalm 79 who deserve the punishment of God because we have not been all that holy, and we have not always been good servants, and our only claim before God is that“hey, at least we are no worse than everyone else.”
Like the people of Psalm 79, we need a break if we are to be ever right with God. In this parable, Jesus tells his disciples that he comes to give us that break. Jesus asks us, “What do you owe God?” And we answer that we owe God everything – all that we are, all that we have, all that God hopes us to be – it all belongs to God. And we confess that we have fallen short, that we have not done all the things God would have us do. We have not loved our neighbors as ourselves. We have not loved God in our every thought, word, and deed. We cannot pay to God what we owe God.
We know, as the Apostle Paulwrote, and as the people of Psalm 79 whined, that the wages of sin, the punishment for our sin, is death and loss and shame and suffering. We know that the justice of God requires this, even as we wish that it didn’t apply to us.
It is into this reality that Jesus comes to us. Jesus helps us to see just how much we owe God, and then he shows us how we can live a life that is worthy of God. And in this parable, Jesus the stewardsays to us, to those who cannot pay in full, “Do the best you can. Do as much as you can. Do what you can do in going on to perfection in love. I will then mark your account ‘paid in full,’ because I will take care of the rest of what you owe.”
Jesus is the dishonest steward in that he takes away from the justice of God, from what we rightfully owe God. But this is not a “get out of jail free” card, as his grace sometimes gets portrayed. This is a “mercy of God” card for all the times we fall short. We are still called to fulfill the law, and to love our neighbor, and to worship God, because this is still what God’s justice requires of us.
Rather than being upset by this action, God commends Jesus for understanding how to win favor with God’s people. It is through the stewardship of God’s grace that Jesus not only saves us from the wrath to come but also saves us for life in the kingdom of God on earth as it is in heaven. Jesus is commended because he still upholds the need for God’s justice, even as he extends God’s mercy.
We owe God our love and our loyalty. We pay this whenever we practice the means of grace, and whenever we love our neighbors as Christ has loved us. We are accountable for this, and more. We are accountable for it all, even as we are unable to pay all that we owe to God.
Into this, our reality before God, Jesus comes in and rewrites what we owe. Jesus changes the terms of God’s justice by taking the hit for us, by paying for our sins, our shortfall, on the cross. Jesus shows us mercy, which gives us reason to rejoice in God. So what the world considers “justice denied,” God considers “mercy applied.” Jesus gives us both the love that forgives us, and the love that holds us accountable. Jesus knows that the justice of God is less about smacking people down, and more about being people being lifted up in God’s favor. And that is good news, indeed!
We may not be able to pay all that we owe, but that is no excuse to not pay all that we can. And we can all pay more love to God, as we are enabled to receive more grace through the Holy Spirit, so that we can live more like Christ. So let us stand and give God his due, as we worship and sing as best as we can, for more love to Christ!
UM Hymnal 453 “More Love to Thee, O Christ”