Shrewd Investment (Luke 16:1-13)

“No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.” Luke 16:13

Money is a part of life, but it does not need to be master of our life. Christians, of course, want to serve God. We are called to follow his good commandments. But do we allow Money to be another master in our life?

Ultimately, we need to choose who we serve. Will we serve the hard taskmaster of Money, or the loving and gracious God, who made us and gives to us freely? The choice is yours.

Shrewd Investment (Luke 16:1-13)

Angela Rayner

Angela Rayner is out of the government. Earlier in the summer she was accused of underpaying stamp duty on an £800,000 seafront flat in Hove. What followed were denials and excuses over a number of weeks. But the pressure mounted, and the enquiries became more thorough and ultimately it was shown she had not taken enough care to make sure she paid the full amount of Stamp Duty and so she lost her place in Cabinet and as Deputy Prime Minister.

 It seemed her desire for money had ended her political career. Money can be an awful master, and the court of public opinion very unforgiving.

The Story of the Sacked Manager

In Luke 16, Jesus tells his disciples a story. Like most of the stories Jesus told, this was a parable. A story seemingly rooted in ordinary everyday life but intended to teach deeper spiritual truths about God and how we relate to him. Stories that at first glance look run of the mill, but on deeper reflection often contain many surprises.

 Most of the stories are straightforward and their meanings not too difficult to grasp. However, the story we are looking at today, about a manager who is sacked by a rich landowner, is probably one of the most difficult to understand!

 Let’s begin by trying to make sense of the story, and the surprises that we need to take note of.

The Rich Landowner and His Manager

The two main characters are a rich man and his manager. The rich man was probably a wealthy landowner. He would have owned many fields and vineyards. Rather than farming the land he owned himself, he rented the land out to others for a fee, probably a share of the expected crops. So, later we see that some of those renting owed him a certain amount of wheat for a field they would have rented to grow wheat, whilst another person owed a certain amount of olive oil, probably in exchange for renting an olive grove from the man.

 The manager, would have been responsible for handling all the accounting, collecting the rent and finding new renters for the fields and so on, a bit like a modern estate agent today. He would have been an able person and probably paid well for his work.

 The rich man hears that the manager has been wasting his possessions. It is not clear whether this is down to incompetence or corruption, but it is likely to be corruption. The word for ‘wasting’ is the same word used for the son in the previous story in Luke’s gospel who takes his inheritance and wastes it on wild living in a foreign land. The manager has probably been fiddling the books taking some money for himself and funding a wild lifestyle. But, like Angela Rayner, he has been found out.

Surprise 1: No Excuses

This is where we have the first surprise in the story. In most ancient stories like this, the expectation would be that the person accused would make all kinds of excuses and try and talk his way out of his predicament. Indeed, that is how Angela Rayner behaved, when she was first accused of not paying the full stamp duty.

But this manager does not do that. He says nothing to the master in response to the accusations. His silence betrays his guilt. All he can do is face up to the response of the manager. But that is where we have surprise number 2.

Surprise 2: No Jail

At this point, you would expect the landowner, irate that the manager had basically stolen from him, arrange for him to be locked up, possibly hoping that he may be paid back for what had been taken from him.

But the rich man does not do that. Rather, he simply says, ‘You cannot be my manager any longer.’ In other words, the master bears the costs of the managers wickedness, but he cannot continue to allow him to be his manager, if that is how he will abuse his trust. In the end, this is a fair but surprisingly generous judgement to pass on the manager.

The Cunning Plan:

The manager responds by speaking to himself and coming up with a cunning plan. In the preceding story, the son who ran away and wasted his inheritance also speaks with himself and comes up with a plan. In his case it is to go home to his father and hope he finds a welcome.

 The manager’s plan is also designed to ensure a welcome. He knows that his situation is desperate. He needed a job, or he would starve. He wasn’t strong enough for manual labour and he didn’t want to resort to the humiliation of begging, so he has to find a way to ensure he will be welcomed into people’s homes.

 The details of the plan become clear in the next couple of verses. Aware that he needs to act quickly before it becomes known that he is no longer the manager, he calls in the master’s debtors, those who owed rent on the fields or vineyards when the harvest came in. They still think he is the manager for the landowner, someone who had the authority to set the rental value. Such values could be renegotiated, if say, it looked like there was going to be a bad harvest. But, now the manager is offering them a special deal. Perhaps he is saying to them, look because your such a great guy, I have persuaded my master to reduce you’re rent. Here, take your bill and change it to half its amount!

Notice, that in verse 6, he tells the renters to change the bills quickly, he wants to do it before news of his sacking gets out, so that the change in contract remains valid, and those whose bills are changed will return the favour by welcoming him into their homes in the future.

Surprise 3: The Manager is Praised!

But then the landlord finds out what is happening. How is he going to respond to even more of his money being lost? This time you would expect him to be furious and to want the man thrown into jail.

But that is not what happens. In fact, what happens is he praises the manager for being so shrewd or clever. He knew he was in trouble, and he came up with a very clever way to survive. Perhaps such a clever manager is worth keeping after all. Indeed, although he had lost the landowner more money, at least he had made him look good and generous among those who rent his fields.

The Key to the Story:

So, that is the story, but what is the point that Jesus is making. What spiritual truths does it teach us about God and what it means to be his.

First of all, Jesus is not teaching us to fiddle the books, if we are accountants. At the end of verse 8, he says that the manager in the story is an example of someone of this world, not a person of the light. We are not meant to fiddle the books. Nonetheless, the implication is that we are meant to learn from his shrewdness.

So, what are we to learn? To help us with that, it is worth considering who each of the characters in the story are meant to represent.

The Landowner is clearly the person in charge or the owner in the story, the one with authority. In all of Jesus’ parables, such figures represent God. In the stories Jesus tells, it is where these characters act in surprising ways, that we are shown the teaching points about God.

So, although it is not the main point of the story, it does shows us something of the mercy and generosity of God.  The first surprise was that the manager was not jailed. The landowner showed great mercy and generosity towards him, whilst not wanting to allow the defrauding to continue. In the same way, the God of the Bible, is not a harsh judge. He is merciful and generous. Indeed, he sent Jesus to pay the price for our sin, to ransom us from the consequences of our wickedness. God cannot allow us to continue in wickedness forever, but he wants to offer us a way out from the consequences of our sin.

The last surprise also shows that he is concerned for his reputation. The manager commends the manager, who has made him look generous to those who rent the fields from him. We pray in the Lord’s prayer, ‘Hallowed be your name’, we should know that what matters is that God is glorified as a generous and merciful God before all people.

But the main character in the story is The Manager. Who does he represent? This is trickier. But Luke makes it clear in verse 1, that this story is addressed to the disciples and in verse 9, Jesus tells the disciples to behave like the manager.

So, in what sense is this dishonest manager a symbol of a disciple? In the story, the manager is someone who understands that his previous life has left him in a terrible situation. He does not make excuses to his boss, neither does he pretend to himself that everything is OK, he accepts that his situation before his boss is desperate.

In the same way as disciples of Jesus, we know that we cannot argue our way into God’s good books. We can’t come to God with excuses and expect him to let us into his eternal home. We have wasted the life, gifts, talents and resources God has entrusted to us on our own wants and desires. We have failed to give to God the full stamp duty he deserves. Like the manager, we deserve to be punished, but like the manager, we know by faith, that we are living in a moment of God’s mercy, that by the generosity of the cross, we do not have to face the punishment we deserve. That is what it is to be a disciple of Jesus.

So, as those who find that for the moment, we still have the gifts, the talents and resources that God has entrusted to us, how are we to use them now? The manager used them to secure his future, to ensure he would be welcomed into the houses of others in the future. In the same way, Jesus says, in verse 9:

“I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” (Luke 16:9)

In other words, Jesus is saying, that shrewd disciples will not hang on to their wealth, which is ultimately God’s wealth, to feed their own selfish desires, but they will use it to make friends in this life, who will welcome them into heaven. In other words, they will invest it into the work of the church, to help ensure that others can learn of the generosity of God. Such people will then be with you in eternity, literally eternally grateful to you for the part you played in helping them find faith in Jesus.

So what?

Perhaps you are not yet a disciple of Jesus? If not have you come to understand how merciful and generous the God of Jesus Christ is. That you cannot make excuses to him, but need to trust in his mercy and generosity and live in the light of that? Will you become a disciple of Jesus?

 Are you already a disciple of Jesus? Then do you see what difference that should make to how you use your wealth? Are you investing for your eternal home or wasting your wealth on the here and now?