Desperate Times

Luke 16:1-13

September 22, 2019

When I used to teach an Introduction to Ethics course I would start the first day of class off by showing a clip from the movie, Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl. There is a wonderful scene at the beginning of the movie where two of the main characters, Captain Jack Sparrow and Will Turner, have commandeered the fastest ship in the King’s fleet to go after what their hearts desire most. Sparrow wants to retake his ship, The Black Pearl, and Turner wants to rescue his true love, Elizabeth Swann. Sparrow is an unapologetic pirate, while Turner has devoted his life to fighting pirates. But in order to get what they both want so desperately, they have to work together.

In this particular scene Jack tells Will an unsettling truth about his father. Will always believed his father was a merchant marine, an honest sailor who was killed by pirates. But Jack knew his dad. He knew him for the man he was, a pirate and a scallywag; Bootstrap Bill was his pirate name.

Will doesn’t want to believe this about his father. He doesn’t want to believe that his father could have ever sailed the high seas as a pirate. But Jack tells him it’s true. Jack tells Will that, yes, his father was a pirate, a good pirate, but he was also a good man. Jack tells Will that he will have to square himself with that knowledge someday, but if they are going to accomplish their goals then Will has to decide if he can sail with him, Captain Jack Sparrow, a very, very good pirate. It remains to be seen if Sparrow is also a very good man.

I would stop the movie at this point, and ask my students this question – can you be both a pirate, someone who works or lives in a way that is less than morally acceptable, and still be a good person? We would spend the rest of the semester trying to answer that question.

This scenario from Pirates of the Caribbean is an imperfect illustration for this parable we have before us in Luke’s gospel; but it in all honesty trying to find the right illustration for this parable is a challenge to say the least.

We learn from Jesus’ first words that the manager in this parable is dishonest. He was a dishonest manager whose deceit was found out. Had the master never heard about how the manager was mishandling the master’s money, maybe the manager would have just kept on living the way he did. But the master did hear, and he called the manager on the carpet for his dishonest deeds. The manager knew he had entered desperate times. He knew the jig was up, and he realized that he was not strong enough to dig ditches and too proud to beg. So he resorted to desperate measures. He decided to make friends through shady means so that when he was dismissed, he would have at least secured places where he would be welcomed. He went to the people who owed debts to the master and reduced them.

“You owe 100 jugs of olive oil? Sit down, quickly, and make it 50?  You owe 100 containers of wheat? Let’s cut that down by 20.”

You would think that when the master found out about the manager’s desperate measures, that he would be in even greater trouble. But this is where the parable takes a strange and unexpected turn. The master does not berate the manager for his dishonest behavior, his desperate and sneaky conduct; he commends him for it. The master praises him. The manager has acted shrewdly, the master said, and that is a good thing.

If that isn’t troubling enough, when Jesus finished telling this part of the parable, he then said some of his most confusing words ever.

“And I tell you, make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”

Wait. What? The response to the manager’s actions by the master and certainly Jesus’ response seems counterintuitive to everything we think about discipleship, about following Jesus, about being Christian.

I mean let’s be real here, dishonesty, even though it is used to do something good, is still dishonesty. But in this passage the dishonest quick thinking and the astute shrewdness of the manager is praised. Even though there is no reason to believe that the manager was acting out of anything but self-interest, the way he deals with his desperate times is not condemned but lifted up as an example for all who were listening.

Wait! What?!

In the last few verses of this passage, Luke’s Jesus seems to be explaining why he thinks the dishonest manager’s actions are praiseworthy. Yet quite frankly, the explanations leave me more confused than ever. If you are faithful in a little, you are faithful in much. If you are dishonest in a little, you are dishonest in much. If you cannot be trusted to do the right thing with someone else’s wealth, how can you be entrusted to do the right thing with what you have been given? It culminates with these words,

“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.”

I thought that perhaps I might get this passage a little bit more if I was sure about the definition of the word “shrewd.”

Merriam Webster states that if someone is shrewd, they are “marked by clever, discerning awareness and hardheaded acumen.” To be shrewd was to be aware, astute and cleverly discerning of whatever situation is at hand. That certainly seems to fit the manger. Here is one more thought: another way to translate the Greek word for shrewd is worldly. The dishonest manager was worldly in how he dealt with his situation. Yet again, this seems counterintuitive. Aren’t we as believers supposed to be in this world, but not of this world? Aren’t we supposed to stay outside of and away from all that is considered, “worldly,” because we have been taught to believe that worldly is wrong or bad or tainted? But here’s the thing, we are in this world. And in small ways and large, the world is in us. We live in a world where money matters. Maybe it is wrong that it does, but it does. Will any of us upon leaving here today throw away whatever wealth we may have? Will we sell all that we have and trust that we’ll be taken care of? Probably not; because just like that manager the idea of being that down and out is scary, and because even if we don’t have firsthand experience with homelessness and poverty, we see its effects all around us. Poverty is not glamorous or spiritual. Poverty is hard. It is dangerous. It is suffering. So I doubt that any of us would gladly surrender all of our wealth for poverty.

Yet, perhaps the point Jesus was trying to get across was not that being dishonest was okay, but that when it comes to wealth we have to be realistic, not idealistic. The dishonest manager was praised for his shrewdness, his worldliness. What does it mean, then, for us to be worldly when it comes to wealth?

Maybe one thing that it means is that we have to recognize that we are going to be thrust into situation after situation where we have to make a decision. Are we going to serve wealth? Or are we going to use whatever wealth we have to serve God? In the end the manager used wealth to build relationship. We may not like his desperate means, but he took his desperate times and built relationships out of them.

How do we use our wealth? Perhaps more to the point, do we use our wealth? Are we enslaved to our wealth, or do we find a way to use our wealth to build relationships – not just with the people that we love, but those beyond our doors? Do we use our wealth to build up the kingdom? Do we use our wealth to further relationship with others and with God? It becomes a question of stewardship. How do we use our wealth to serve God?

It seems to me that maybe one reason the dishonest manager was praised was because he used wealth at all. Wealth is a tricky thing. I convince myself that if I ever get to a certain level of wealth, that I will be generous with my wealth. I will make sure I give away as much of it as possible. I will most certainly use it to build up the kingdom. But will I? I don’t know. I do know that most of the time I operate as though I will never have enough. Scarcity drives me. It drives my decision making about money, and about a whole lot of other things. I am so worried that the money will be gone, that it will run out and the ones I love will be left without, that being generous and building up the kingdom is not the first thing on my mind.

Maybe that’s the problem. Maybe that is what Jesus wanted those who would listen to hear. The dishonest manager did something with the wealth he had control over. He reduced people’s debts. Yes, he was dishonest. Yes, he acted like a scoundrel would act. But he did something with it. He built relationships where there were none. Maybe Jesus wants us to understand that whatever wealth we have or don’t have, we are called to serve God first. The kingdom of God is in our midst, but nothing clouds our vision, our ability to see God, like money does. So we have to talk about it. And we have to talk about it at other times than stewardship emphasis season. We have to talk about money, and we have to do something with our money. We are called to serve God and to build relationships with others. We must be shrewd with our wealth, so that the gospel can be proclaimed and God’s kingdom can be fully realized.

This passage is still confusing. It still seems upside down and inside out, but the good news is that God works through our confusion. God works through our fear. God works through our desperate times and our desperate measures. God works through us, and that is what we must trust. God works through us. God calls us in spite of ourselves, and God loves us, today and everyday.

Let all of God’s children say, “Alleluia!” Amen.