Luke 16:1-13
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 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.
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?
And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
Let’s be honest: this is one of the strangest stories Jesus ever told. Preachers and scholars
have wrestled with it for centuries. And here it falls, on Bible Sunday of all days. A day when we’re supposed to say, “Thanks be to God for this book that makes us wise.” A day when children may receive their very first Bible and we want it to be much more than an ornament on the coffee table.
And yet this story? It sounds less like scripture and more like a Netflix con-man special.
A scoundrel manager cheats his boss, slashes debts, and somehow gets praised for it? Really, Jesus? A story where good things happen to bad people? Who is in the mood for that?
But maybe that’s exactly the point. The Bible isn’t a book of tidy platitudes. It’s a library of disruptive stories, stories that make us wrestle with God, with ourselves, and with the world as it is. As the renowned preacher Charles Spurgeon once said: “Defend the Bible? I’d sooner defend a lion. You don’t defend the Bible; you open its cage and let it roar.” So let’s open the cage. I want you to imagine hearing this on the evening news:
Earlier this week, the CFO of Parable, a Fortune 50 company, was in hot water for squandering funds. In released internal memos, the CFO said he had no plans of working at McDonalds or panhandling but had [quote] friends in high places. Facing termination, the CFO scrambled, called the company’s biggest clients and quietly slashed their debts. A supplier who owed 100 barrels of oil suddenly owed only 50. Another, 100 loads of wheat became 80. The clients were thrilled but shareholders demanded answers. In a shocking twist, instead of pressing charges against the man, the CEO praised him, not for ethics, but
for shrewdness. Jesus of Nazareth was pressed for comment and said: “It would be great if Christians had a sense of urgency as well as a sense of integrity. Too often they have one or the other. But whoever is faithful in little is faithful in much. Bottom line: You cannot serve both God and money.”
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Still not abundantly clear, is it? I could dismiss this as a “terrible parable,” or skip the hard parts and only hang out with the verses I like. That’s what many people do with the Bible.
And sadly many others don’t read the Bible at all. Instead, they read the actions of Christians in the news: pastors with private jets. Churches protecting reputations instead of children. Christians chasing power instead of serving the vulnerable. And they say: No thank you. But another way is to stick with it. To hold this parable to our ear like a seashell and listen for the ocean of gospel it carries. And what do we hear? A piercing question: Whom do you serve?
First, I hear that question as a warning. This parable sits alongside other parables about squandered funds. The prodigal son squandered his inheritance in the chapter right before this one. A rich man built bigger barns but lost his soul right after this parable. And that poor rich young ruler could not let go of his possessions any more than a camel could fit through the eye of a needle. Over and over, Jesus warns: “Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Truly, today’s parable may never make the coffee mug or the pillow at Michaels, but it has a summary line too clear to dodge: “You cannot serve God and money.”
Jesus warns that money is a decent tool but a terrible master. It seduces us. It warps our priorities. Preacher Tom Long wrote: “The money of this world that seems so permanent and powerful is, from God’s perspective, like Confederate bonds in 1862… The truly shrewd thing is not to invest in the world that minted it, that world is passing away, but to use it now for something lasting, because it is part of the life of God.”
This parable is a warning about allegiance, not allowance. About who owns us, not just what we own. When I need to come back to basics, there’s a quote by Ethel Percy Andrus that I say in my mind. “What I spent, is gone; what I kept, I lost; but what I gave away will be mine forever.”
Whom do you serve? Not too long ago, leadership at a large city church sat around a conference table. The proposal on the table: ten million dollars to restore their sanctuary: new lighting, roof repairs, an organ overhaul. Thankfully they had endowment funds to cover it. One elder, a man named George, said he’d support it, but only if they also raised ten million for a facility to house the homeless on their doorstep. Others balked. “Yes, we should help the homeless, but no offense, George. $10,000,000 sounds nuts.” People shifted in their chairs.
George said, “You know that woman who poured out perfume on Jesus’ feet. That’s what we would be doing. That’s what we should be doing,” he said. Finally, one elder spoke up: “I vote we pour that perfume.” One by one, every hand went up. And they did it. They made national news. Changed countless lives. But the shrewd part, I think, was the wisdom of asking at the right time whom do we serve?
That’s what this parable is about: letting the Bible roar with an intrusive question, the
same one Jesus posed to the disciples and the larger crowd that followed him. You can be very poor or very rich and still spend your days thinking about money. Whom do you serve?
But as I lingered with this parable, that question left my heart feeling heavy. It felt like exhausting thwack in a world where so much seems to be for sale. The parables of Jesus are
never just a graceless thwack. So, I lingered with the parable a little longer. I took the parable with me on a walk, where mustard yellow shrubs sent tons of seeds dancing onto the wind. And I asked myself in that place, whom do you serve? And that when I began to hear something else in this parable, to hear the amazing math of Jesus.
This parable is part of a long list of warning stories about money, but it is also part of a long list of stories of God’s multiplication tables … mustard seeds that grow into great trees, one
found coin that sparks a block party, and tiny acts of faithfulness that compound into eternal riches. Jesus said: “Those who are faithful in little are faithful in much.”
I have heard from two different friends lately about a practice in AA called “cash register honesty.” People in recovery practice unwavering truthfulness like someone showing where every penny in the cash register is at the end of the day. They rebuild trust through small acts of everyday truthfulness. They have learned that faithfulness in the little things is the only way to become faithful in the big things. When I thought about it this way, Whom do you serve began to feel like thrill of hope. Remember the one you serve!
If I want big things to change, all I have to do is start with small things:
I can champion people in their absence. I can be generous with a waiter. I can be patient with a child. I can take a casserole to a sick neighbor, donate to the food pantry, cultivate a church where LGBTQ friends and family are fully included in the life and leadership of this
congregation because of a deep reading of the Bible. Suddenly that’s no small thing. This church has cut its mortgage by 77% while at the same time funding affordable housing in Fairfax and hosting the hypothermia shelter here. I think that makes this place quite shrewd. A community of Christians who invest in the world as it should be. That’s no small
thing.
Albert Einstein once said that the most powerful force in the world is compounding interest. But I have learned that grace compounds. Hope compounds. Trust compounds. Welcome compounds. Welcoming one person well leads to welcoming all kinds of people well.
You start to remove all those pesky price tags that the world wants to place on people saying this person is worth more or less than that person. But, I believe this is only possible because of the one we serve, the one who gave his very self to us, and whose spirit is our eternal home.
Maybe we can’t see it like this all the time. Fear and violence loom large. Money talks way too loud. Guilt and comparison attempt to steal our joy. But we carry this story of the Bible with us, within us, and we give it to our children, and Kingdom of God grows, heals, welcomes and sets us free. Truly the most powerful force in the world.