Mark Tabata’s Weekday Devotionals
Wednesday September 2
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Luke 16:1-9 (ERV)-Jesus said to his followers, “Once there was a rich man. He hired a manager to take care of his business. Later, he learned that his manager was cheating him. 2 So he called the manager in and said to him, ‘I have heard bad things about you. Give me a report of what you have done with my money. You can’t be my manager anymore.’ 3 “So, the manager thought to himself, ‘What will I do? My master is taking my job away from me. I am not strong enough to dig ditches. I am too proud to beg. 4 I know what I will do! I will do something to make friends, so that when I lose my job, they will welcome me into their homes.’ 5 “So the manager called in each person who owed the master some money. He asked the first one, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He answered, ‘I owe him 100 jars of olive oil.’ The manager said to him, ‘Here is your bill. Hurry! Sit down and make the bill less. Write 50 jars.’ 7 “Then the manager asked another one, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘I owe him 100 measures of wheat.’ Then the manager said to him, ‘Here is your bill; you can make it less. Write 80 measures.’ 8 “Later, the master told the dishonest manager that he had done a smart thing. Yes, worldly people are smarter in their business with each other than spiritual people are. 9 “I tell you, use the worldly things you have now to make ‘friends’ for later. Then, when those things are gone, you will be welcomed into a home that lasts forever.
What are some lessons that we can learn from this parable?
Let’s study.
The first thing to notice is that this has often been identified as the most troubling of Christ’s parables. On the surface, it seems that He is giving praise to a man who apparently rips off his boss!
Many commentators affirm that this parable is the most difficult of all the synoptic parables. As we have observed, the problems are so complex that both Tomas de Vio Cajetan (1469-1534) and Rudolf Bultmann declared them insoluble.’ The multiplicity and complexity of the problems of this parable are succinctly stated by C. C. Torrey, who writes, This passage [Luke 16:8f.] brings before us a new Jesus, one who seems inclined to compromise with evil. He approves a program of canny self-interest, interest, recommending to his disciples a standard of life which is generally recognized as inferior: “I say to you, gain friends by means of money.” This is not the worst of it; he bases the teaching on the story of a shrewd scoundrel who feathered his own nest at the expense of the man who had trusted him; and then appears to say to his disciples, “Let this be your model!”2 The seeming incongruity of a story that praises a scoundrel has been an embarrassment to the Church at least since Julian the Apostate used the parable to assert the inferiority of the Christian faith and its founder.3 Our need for a more precise understanding of the culture that informs the text is perhaps greater in this parable than in any other.” (Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke, 894-900 (Kindle Edition): Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company)
In this parable, a landowner has a “steward” or “manager.” This was a word with similar meaning to “apostle,” one entrusted with the authority of the person over him to carry out certain tasks and responsibilities. Realizing that his steward had been doing a bad job and was likely ripping him off (the ERV says “cheating him”), the landowner proceeds to fire him. He then orders him to turn over his accounting books.
The steward, realizing that he is unable to secure other employment, decides to reduce the outstanding bill of his master’s other renters. By doing this, there are two possible outcomes.
One possibility: the steward’s master will be praised and hailed by the people in the community for his generosity in reducing their debt so graciously. If the master follows through with terminating the steward’s employment and explains that it was all a scam on the part of the steward, then he risks turning the others in the community against him! So there is a good chance that the steward will get to keep his job.
Second possibility: The unjust steward is still fired, but he will have the advantage of having made friends of those whose debts have been greatly reduced by his influence. As such, they will “welcome him into their homes.” This was a first century phrase that meant “to offer him a job.” (Epictetus, “Concerning Those Who Are in Dread of Want,” Discourses 25.2, The Book of Epictetus, ed. T. W. Rolleston, trans. Elizabeth Carter (London: Ballantyne Press, n.d.), pp. 207-8.0).
Either way, it seems as if Christ is giving praise to a man who intentionally defrauded his employer.
Could there be more to the story then what we have often read on the surface?
Before we go further, let’s point out that what the steward did in reducing the debt of his employers renters was not really illegal. He was well within his rights to do this. Indeed, when we compare the actions of the steward with Jewish law at that time, we see that his actions with reducing the debt of renters were not illegal.
Derrett argues convincingly that the steward is a legal “agent” for the master and so acted under the Mishnaic regulations governing such agents. 1I The Mishna mentions specifically a fee to be paid by the renter to the agent who draws up the rent contracts.” In addition to this (judging from modem village customs), the steward will likely receive a little something “under the table” from most, if not all, of his master’s renters. A token amount is considered legitimate and honorable. At feast time, harvest time, and at other important social occasions, he will likely expect some gratuity from his master’s renters. 12 He is criticized only if his demands are unreasonable. None of this appears in the accounts. What is recorded on the bills is known to the master. This is clearly evident in the Mishnaic passage cited above, which says of agents, “They may not write contracts of share-tenancies or fixed-rate tenancies except with the knowledge (and agreement) of both parties, and the tenant must pay the fee.”13 What is written on the bills is public information discussed openly in the community. Furthermore, if the steward tries to inflate the bills, the debtors will be fully aware of what is happening. They can appeal to the master unless he is a partner-in-crime. If the steward has been cheating the debtors to the extent of 20 to 50 percent of their bills, he will be bitterly hated by them. Once he falls from power he will have to leave the community. No further deception, even if it is to their economic advantage, will lead those debtors to welcome him into their homes. (Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke, 940-944 (Kindle Edition): Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company)
Indeed, it was commonplace for property owners to reduce the rates of their renters at times, so what the manager did here was not illegal.
In the case of the hakirin the Mishna provides for reductions in the fixed rents. If trees die, or blight spreads across a field, or a spring dries up, the owner is expected to make a reduction. Discussions of this kind always take place between renter and owner in the Middle East even if there is no legislation to provide for them. Usually the renter would have to request and argue for some reduction. (Kenneth E. Bailey, Poet & Peasant and Through Peasant Eyes: A Literary-Cultural Approach to the Parables in Luke, 1094 (Kindle Edition): Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company)
However, there is something else here that we need to consider. It is very possible that this parable is an addendum to what Jesus had just preached, the Parable of the Prodigal Son!
By the fourth century the parables of the unjust steward and the prodigal son were separated by a chapter division. If the monks who established those divisions had kept the two parables in the same chapter, the entire history of the interpretation of Luke 16: 1-8 would be different. The two parables have a significant number of parallels. Among these are: Each has a noble master who demonstrates extraordinary grace to a wayward underling. Both stories contain an ignoble son/ steward who wastes the master’s resources. In each the wayward underling reaches a moment of truth regarding those losses. In both cases the son/ steward throws himself on the mercy of the noble master. Both parables deal with broken trust and the problems resulting from it. These parallels suggest that the parable of the unjust steward needs to be examined in the light of what precedes it.[ 1] I am convinced that this parable continues to discuss theological themes that appear in the parable of the prodigal son. The subject is God, sin, grace and salvation—not honesty in dealing with money. T. W. Manson feels that the parable of the unjust steward “may almost be regarded as an appendix to the parable of the Prodigal Son. [ 2]”. (Kenneth E Bailey, Jesus Through Middle Eastern Eyes: Cultural Studies in the Gospels, 332 (Kindle Edition): Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic)
The parallels between these two parables strongly suggest that they are both designed to teach us about those who are living in prodigal lifestyles who make the decision to repent. Indeed, it is very probable that the reductions that the servant made in his master’s debtors were the commission that he himself would have received from his work. Perhaps he had been defrauding them as well, and the reductions he made to their bills was comparable to how much he had exploited them. If so, this could be another clue that he was repenting for the wrong that he had done.
With his own financial ruin on the horizon, and the unbearable shame it will bring, he takes drastic measures to control the damage. In fact, although he is portrayed as the steward of unrighteousness from the beginning, because he was squandering his master’s assets, his final action may actually have been legitimate in the eyes of the debtors, even if it was unethical and unjust. Quite probably he was canceling his own sizable commission, which had been calculated into the amounts owed his master. In such a case, what he did was shrewd and perfectly legitimate, because he was taking his percentage of the profits and returning it to those whom he had been overcharging. The window of opportunity between the announcement of his dismissal and his departure from his post enabled him to exercise one last time the power vested in him as an agent of his wealthy master. The steward’s bold initiative displayed a new approach for the excessive goods he had squandered. At least the scattering of his master’s goods most likely refers to dishonest business dealings rather than ineffectual management. He probably took a cut at both ends, first by overcharging clients and second by embezzling his master’s goods. The master could have had him imprisoned, but instead mercifully fired him. Now the steward was giving his cut to others. He no longer sought only to enrich himself. Instead he sought to help someone else who had been wronged. In the end, the gracious master praises the dishonest steward’s shrewd conduct. (Brad H. Young, The Parables: Jewish Tradition and Christian Interpretation, 232-234 (Kindle Edition): Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic)
Viewed from this vantage point, the unjust steward actually is a further addendum of Jesus to the Parable of the Prodigal Son, showing again the amazing grace of the Father on all who will turn from sin and to Him.
There are many other lessons that we can learn from the unjust steward.
This parable has been a problem for many readers because they have imagined that our Lord is commending dishonesty. But of course, that is not what Jesus is doing. Even in the story, it is not the Lord who utters words of commendation but “the master,” and even then the praise is only for the dishonest man’s shrewdness. There is only one way the manager is set before us as an example, and that is in his ability to see what was coming and plan for it. In that one characteristic—though he was certainly far from commendable in other ways—he was eminently wiser than countless people who perhaps have never cheated anyone out of anything yet fail to plan for that moment when they must, each one, give an accounting before God. When we analyze the shrewdness the manager showed, we find it in four areas. In each he is a model for the foolish of this world. First, the manager saw the issues clearly…The second area in which the dishonest manager is commended to us for his shrewdness is in his care for the future…The dishonest manager is also an example for us because he made provision for what he knew was coming.…The shrewd manager of Christ’s parable should be emulated in one final point; he moved quickly. Having seen the issues clearly and caring deeply for his future, he made provision at once. He did not delay; there was no time to lose. Neither is there time for you to lose if you are not yet in a right relationship to God. (James Boice, The Parables of Jesus, 133-139 (Kindle Edition): Chicago, IL: Moody Publishers)
Father, please give us wisdom and discretion in how we live. Help us to learn well from the parable of the unjust steward. Amen.