2

September 18, 2016: Pentecost + 18

Luke 16:1-13: Who’s the Boss?

If you are a married man, I want you to pay close attention. I have a question I want to ask you. If you would say that you are the head of the household, if you are in charge, if you are the boss, that you wear the pants, raise your hand.

I got a slightly different response when I asked the question in our men’s Sunday School class. Wives, if you want to know what your husbands said, don’t ask me. What happens in the men’s Sunday School class stays in the men’s Sunday School class.

Asking a husband who is in charge in his marriage can lead to an awkward and uncomfortable conversation, especially if his wife is present. But it can also be entertaining. I remember once asking my Dad who was the boss in his and my mother’s marriage. He told me that, in spite of how things appeared, he was, but he only needed to make that known when it was absolutely necessary. “Choose your battles,” was probably the best marital advice he gave me.

We could have an equally awkward and uncomfortable conversation about a different relationship, and that is our relationship with money. This would apply to all of us. Whether we care to admit it or know, we all have a relationship with money. Talking about our money, and how we relate to our money, makes us uncomfortable. It’s nobody’s business, and we would rather not talk about it. Preachers should certainly not preach about it. But Jesus talks about it, a lot. So we must talk about it. Specifically, we need to ask the question, when it comes to us and our money, “Who is the boss in the relationship?”

Ask any biblical scholar and they will tell you that this is one of the most, if not the most, confusing parable ever told by Jesus. So don’t feel bad if you were struggling to make sense of it. In most parables we assume there will be someone who we are supposed to imitate, or a figure who represents God, so we can learn more about who God is, but in this parable, those things are hard to find. None of the main characters in this parable have a whole lot to admire. To even begin to understand what is going on here we have to know something about the way the economy in 1st century Palestine operated.

It won’t come as any surprise that the economy was largely based on agriculture. But it had drifted a long way from what God intended. When the Jews had originally settled in this area land was divided up equally among families, or tribes. But over the course of many years, some became indebted to others, until it reached a point where wealthy individuals owned most of the land and rented it out to individuals who would farm it and then give a portion of their crops to the landowner as payment.

It wasn’t unlike the sharecropping system that came to characterize the American South after the days of slavery, especially in the sense that the landowner was in a position to take advantage of his tenants. Through agreements that favored the landowner, the farmer could quickly become indebted to the landowner, with no real opportunity to ever rise out of it. It was commonplace for the landowner to hire a manager to act as a middle man between his tenants and himself.

In this particular scenario, a wealthy landowner learned his manager was managing poorly. The word Jesus uses here, “squandering,” is the same word used in the parable of the Prodigal Son, to describe the way the son was basically throwing away his father’s wealth. So the rich man demanded an accounting of his manager and told him of his plans to replace him.

The manager panicked. He wasn’t able to do manual labor, and he was too proud to beg, so he came up with an ingenious plan to provide for himself when he was no longer employed. Still acting under the authority of his position, he went to some of his master’s tenants and reduced their debts significantly, cutting one in half and taking nearly a quarter off another. This way, they would be obligated to return the favor, and help him out when he needed it.

This part of the parable is easy enough to understand, but it starts to get confusing when the master compliments his manager on his behavior because he acted so shrewdly. Because of our experience with parables, we immediately think the master represents God. And it doesn’t make sense that God would approve of someone acting in what seems to be an underhanded, sneaky way.

Well let’s not assume the master represents God. Let’s just say he is what he is, a wealthy landowner. And while what the manager did was a little sneaky, it’s not necessarily immoral. There are a few different ideas about how he was able to reduce the debts of those tenants so dramatically without getting in trouble with his master…

Some have suggested he was sacrificing the commission he would have received. Others have said his master was charging an excessive amount of rent and he was simply adjusting it to a more reasonable level. But a third possibility is that his master was charging interest on the loans he had made to these individuals. Charging interest was explicitly forbidden for Jews, but there were ways people got around the rule. One way was loaning money and requiring larger payments of commodities in return, like oil and wheat. So what the manager was doing was taking the loan and reducing it to the principal. And the master couldn’t say anything because it would shed light on what he was doing.

That last option makes the most sense to me, but really how the manager got away with reducing the debts is not relevant to the story. What is relevant here is that he found a way to use the system to his advantage. Instead of letting his mismanagement of wealth lead to his downfall, he used wealth to do something good for someone, while helping himself at the same time.

Then Jesus made a comparison between the ability of children of this age to use wealth to benefit themselves and the ability of children of light, who are a bit naïve when it comes to that sort of thing. Of course, children of light are followers of Jesus. Jesus’ followers then, and now, struggle to have a healthy relationship with money, and struggle to know how to use it wisely, to help grow the kingdom.

Let me share with you what I think are kind of the two extremes that represent the unhealthy relationships that Christians have with their money.

On the one extreme there are Christians that think any and all money is evil. They think that Christians shouldn’t have any, and are judgmental of those that do have money. They think that Christians shouldn’t have nice homes, or nice cars, or really any material possessions.

Jesus did have much to say to people with money. He said it would be harder for the rich to get into heaven than for a camel to go through the eye of a needle. He said that the love of money is the root of all evil. But what is evil is not the money itself, but the ways people can be taken in by money, and do terrible things to acquire more of it.

On the other extreme are wealthy Christians who completely disregard any biblical teachings on money. They spend it whatever way they choose. They have no regard for the poor or otherwise less fortunate. Maybe they even give 10% of their income to their local church, and then think what they do with the rest is up to them.

Either way, neither of these extremes represent the type of relationship Jesus wants us to have with money. In both examples, money is the master, dictating the person’s behavior, controlling their decisions and their attitudes. And it is supposed to be the other way around. Money should serve us. We should use money to bless others, to show kindness, to extend mercy, to be generous. In the hands of someone who knows how to use it, money can become a tool God uses to build the kingdom.

Something that is key to having a healthy relationship with our money is recognizing that it is not our money at all. All the wealth in the world belongs to God, and he entrusts a portion of it to each of us, to use for his glory.

For every animal of the forest is mine, and the cattle on a thousand hills…

-Ps. 50:10

The earth is the Lord’s and all that is therein…

-Ps. 24:10

This parable also makes the same point. The manager is given the task of being faithful with someone else’s money. We are all managers, stewards of what belongs to God. Our faithfulness with what God has entrusted to us will prove if we will be fit to share in the inheritance of true riches that God will give all of his children one day.

Several years ago there was a story on the news about a man who had won the lottery and wanted to give a significant portion to his church, but his church wouldn’t take it because of the circumstances. There are some Christians who feel that playing the lottery is a form of gambling, which would make playing the lottery immoral in their eyes. And this man’s particular church apparently felt the same way.

The story naturally led Christians and churches to have all kinds of conversations revolving around this issue, considering whether or not they would accept a donation under similar circumstances. I had one such conversation with a fellow pastor friend of mine, and I will never forget his response. He said, “I would have no problem accepting that money. The devil had it long enough. It’s about time it was put to use for God.” Like the parable, a story like that would raise some eyebrows, but as we have learned, money itself is not evil, what matters is whether or not it is being used for good.

You and money have been together for a long time. And you will be for many more years to come. Who is the boss in that relationship? Who serves who? Serve God, and money will find its proper place in your life.