Revisiting that Dishonest Steward
I've spent quite a bit of time this week thinking about Jesus' story of the Dishonest Steward in Luke 16, last Sunday's Gospel. Let's give due credit to the fact that it is a quite brilliant story: concise, gripping, and utterly memorable. As preachers we too often take this for granted. Jesus was the Storyteller. But various people during the course of this week have told me they find the story difficult, puzzling, confusing; even after I explained it all to them in last Sunday's sermon! So I've been trying to think out why?
And surely one of the reasons is, that like so many of Jesus' other parables about money - most of which Luke alone records - it seems to be something that looks very like salvation by works that is being announced. This goes right against our Reformed or evangelical doctrine. Imagine, the very idea that we can buy our way into heaven by giving our money to the poor. Perhaps the reason we haven't heard much about this gospel was that for quite a bit of its history the Church and its leaders were among the rich of this world. They were more likely to end up with Dives in the tormenting fires, if stories like this were true, than with Lazarus in the peace and comfort of Abraham's bosom. And of course, it goes right against the doctrine and world-view by which we live in our capitalist system. You just don't do this kind of thing with rich men's money, whether they are your employer or not.
This leads to the second main reason for our puzzlement. It all depends on point of view: where am I in this parable? Far too often, if we were honest, we would see we were actually viewing the situation from the point of view of the rich landowner who is first defrauded and then outsmarted by his inefficient manager. Or just possibly, from the position of an employee who might want to keep his job, and therefore is desperate to be seen to be honest, above reproach.
But what about if we are the debtors, getting their debts reduced? What about if we are the man about to lose his livelihood - with no redundancy payments or pensions or social security to fall back on? What about if Jesus is saying to us: 'Listen, buddy: you are those people. Don't deceive yourselves: none of the money you have is yours, all the wealth you possess is someone else's (God's!) and you are about to lose the use of it real soon. Do something with it that will gain you some credit when you no longer have the use of it.'
Like I said, if we find this story difficult, it says far more about us and our assumptions and world-view, than it does about the story. And chiefly, it says we actually are probably devotees of Mammon rather than the God of the poor and the debtor.
And surely one of the reasons is, that like so many of Jesus' other parables about money - most of which Luke alone records - it seems to be something that looks very like salvation by works that is being announced. This goes right against our Reformed or evangelical doctrine. Imagine, the very idea that we can buy our way into heaven by giving our money to the poor. Perhaps the reason we haven't heard much about this gospel was that for quite a bit of its history the Church and its leaders were among the rich of this world. They were more likely to end up with Dives in the tormenting fires, if stories like this were true, than with Lazarus in the peace and comfort of Abraham's bosom. And of course, it goes right against the doctrine and world-view by which we live in our capitalist system. You just don't do this kind of thing with rich men's money, whether they are your employer or not.
This leads to the second main reason for our puzzlement. It all depends on point of view: where am I in this parable? Far too often, if we were honest, we would see we were actually viewing the situation from the point of view of the rich landowner who is first defrauded and then outsmarted by his inefficient manager. Or just possibly, from the position of an employee who might want to keep his job, and therefore is desperate to be seen to be honest, above reproach.
But what about if we are the debtors, getting their debts reduced? What about if we are the man about to lose his livelihood - with no redundancy payments or pensions or social security to fall back on? What about if Jesus is saying to us: 'Listen, buddy: you are those people. Don't deceive yourselves: none of the money you have is yours, all the wealth you possess is someone else's (God's!) and you are about to lose the use of it real soon. Do something with it that will gain you some credit when you no longer have the use of it.'
Like I said, if we find this story difficult, it says far more about us and our assumptions and world-view, than it does about the story. And chiefly, it says we actually are probably devotees of Mammon rather than the God of the poor and the debtor.
posted by Tony at 9/23/2004 04:55:00 pm
1 Comments:
You're quite right: I was actually quoting the Christian Aid advert at that point I think. But it's obvious that the rich West uses free trade only when it suits it (against the poor) but uses protectionism when it suits it too (against the poor).
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