KGL+
Sermon
Trinity Church Boston
September 21, 2025
Year C, Proper 20
May the words of my mouth and the meditations of our hearts together always be acceptable in your sight, O God, our strength and our redeemer. Amen.
Well, if you enjoy neatly tied up Bible stories replete with moral clarity and a feel-good ending enabling you to go out into this complicated and constantly shifting world with two feet steady on the ground, I offer you thoughts and prayers this morning.
Our gospel today is, at best, a convoluted anti-hero scenario, which has pitted well-intentioned scholars and theologians at each other’s throats at the sheer number of possibilities a mere thirteen verses can possess. The Lukan parable that we’ve just read, known as ‘the Dishonest Manager’ or the ‘Shrewd Steward’ (say that four times fast), on close reading has very little to do with the nature of the parables that we are used to hearing from Jesus. There is nothing which can surprise more than a story where the one who has swindled and negotiated his way out of a sticky situation is commended to us as a model to emulate.
But Jesus loves a good surprise.
This morning, our gospel is about a manager who is accused of mismanaging his employer’s accounts. The rich employer calls him to respond to the accusations (although the manager never confirms them), and it is clear that the manager’s employment is over. In light of the manager being called to account for his possible misdeeds, he does a quick bit of soul searching: ‘What will I do,’, he says, ‘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.’ That moment of introspection over, the manager moves into high gear, reaching out to those who still owe his master and he negotiates their debts lower; for those who owed the master 100 jugs of oil, he marks them down to fifty; for those who owe one hundred portions of grain, eighty. We know from his interior monologue that this generous gesture has a less-noble edge to it—it will render future favors possible for when he needs it the most: either to gain future employment or maintain his status in the cultural honor system of the ancient near east.
The master discovers his manager’s actions, and yet instead of eviscerating him, he commends the manager for being shrewd in his response to this situation. The word Jesus uses here for ‘shrewd’ is the same Greek word which Jesus uses to describe the wise and foolish bridesmaids in the Gospel of Matthew—those who are wise, or prudent, or shrewd—phronimos in the Greek– are the ones who planned ahead and brought extra oil with them in anticipation of a long wait to welcome the bridegroom.
Talent recognizes talent in the master’s perspective– as in Dorothy Sayers’ radio play on the life of Christ, The Man Born to be King, Jesus tells this story with the punchline, “Fellow, you’re a thorough scoundrel – but I do admire your thoroughness!”
We forget sometimes that parables are not allegories—especially when we hear of a landowner, or lord or king and assign them roles within the story which align with whatever framework we inhabit ourselves. We want to assign role-for-role in real life scenarios so that when Jesus tells us to ‘go and do likewise’, we have a paradigm at hand for how to realistically respond.
While the morality might not be as clear cut here as we would prefer, Jesus is very clear on what is commendable about the manager: namely, the steadfast, single-minded energy he has placed into his own self-preservation. While it might not have the whiff of altruism that we might expect from someone who just- *just*- moments ago told parables about seeking one lost sheep of one hundred; or sweeping the room for the one lost coin of ten; or the reception of a self-interested child back into the household with joy—let’s be clear that the manager’s strategy is quite brilliant in a few ways: the master’s debtors directly benefit from his generosity (a rare upside to a very lopsided economic framework which maintained debt as shame); also, this forgiveness it looked good on the master himself— a manufactured mini-jubilee of relief and generosity, word of which would no doubt get around to all the places it needed to reach; and it enmeshed those whose debts had been relieved more closely to the master himself—it would bind their loyalty more firmly, as they would have believed the manager was acting on behalf of direct orders from his master.
Also, it would have been a terrible look for the master to have reneged on the debt forgiveness offered on his behalf (real or not real)—or to have publicly acknowledged- admitted– that he had been manipulated by the person he trusted to be in charge of his accounts.
The manager, he is a thorough scoundrel. But I’d like us all take a moment to admire his thoroughness.
From this parable, Jesus draws his listeners—while he has been addressing the Pharisees and scribes who had complained about his eating with the tax collectors and sinners, Jesus specifically aims this parable towards his disciples—and draws their attention to two main points.
First, he tells what he calls the “children of the light” that they should be as shrewd engaging in building up God’s kingdom as the manager was at his own self-preservation. Just think for a moment of all the wisdom, savvy and creativity the manager showed in this parable— he used what was at hand to ensure his survival, and even the possibility of thriving beyond this situation which should have wrecked him. Jesus points out to his disciples that if someone can use that kind of energy on things which are inessential and self-focused, just imagine what could be done with that kind of passion towards things which are essential.
I recall on occasion staging a fit as a child (even as the perfect one I clearly was) when I was asked to clean up my room or to put toys away; I would spend an inordinate amount of energy on protesting and fighting the task set to me. To which my parents would often respond, ‘If you spent the same energy and time on actually cleaning your room as you have on arguing, it would have been done already.’ Imagine the potential of the children of God if we put the same effort, wisdom, productive anxiety and passion behind the love of God as we do in other facets of our lives— imagine if we harnessed that, the kingdom might already be in place.
Second: things matter, Jesus says. The Gospel of Luke repeatedly highlights the inequities and inequalities of God’s people in terms of wealth, access, power. And yet, Jesus tells his disciples here to use the things we have—use the money, use the connections, use the things of this world to glorify God and incarnate a reign where the end isn’t about accumulation, but rather seeing those things only as a means. The telos, the end goal, Jesus says, is what differentiates the scoundrels from the savvy: if we claim wealth as the goal—accumulating for ourselves alone, we miss the point of all of Jesus’ teaching. But, as Jesus says, “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?” Here, the “little” means the use of money, and the “much” means our response to God. We’re not talking about a little money versus a lot of money, or even ill-gotten gains versus honestly earned wealth. We’re talking about what’s inessential versus what’s essential; in the words of today’s collect, the “things that are passing away” versus the “things that shall endure.”
It’s uncomfortable to listen to Jesus muddy the waters regarding our sense of righteousness when it comes to money and power and the ‘stuff’ of this world—usually contained in our date books, our checkbooks, our property lines, rather than directing us towards the purely spiritual, claiming that as the means of kingdom building alone. There are plenty of places in scripture where a more ascetic framework for living is encouraged, and in some ways that allows us a sense of ego-approved appropriate sacrifice when we choose to have less, when we disenfranchise ourselves on purpose. And yet– Jesus pushes his disciples to consider the interplay between how the things of this life, this existence—interface with those of our desired eternal life. It is easier to keep the sacred and profane safely separated and compartmentalized, but with this challenging—at best!—parable, Jesus points again to the complexity of a faith both eternal and incarnate, as he himself is.
And what he proclaims, which can feel so counter intuitive to us—is that what we have at hand- and in hand– here in this life can be used to proclaim the realm of God but only if we remember that none of it is really ours to keep at all.
Only a God who knew the messiness of the incarnation—of being both human and divine, loving and hurting, sheep-chasing, coin-hunting, fatted calf-preparing as a means of love, could find redemption and promise, phorismo, wisdom, prudence, shrewdness, in a thorough scoundrel. And this is the Good News for us, Church. For if Jesus can find the holy in the manager, then we may have a chance at the kingdom as well.
Amen.