Either/Or

Jesus said to his disciples: “The person who is trustworthy in very small matters is also trustworthy in great ones; and the person who is dishonest in very small matters is also dishonest in great ones. If, therefore, you are not trustworthy with dishonest wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? If you are not trustworthy with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours? No servant can serve two masters. He will either hate one and love the other,, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.” (Luke 16.10-13)

On this Twenty-Fifth Sunday in Ordinary Time, the lectionary provides us with one of Jesus’ most difficult parables to understand. It is found in the first thirteen verses of Chapter 16 in Luke’s gospel and does not appear in either Mark’s or Matthew’s texts. I have not provided the parable in its entirety here, but only Jesus’ concluding remarks after he tells it. You are invited to read it on your own.

In short, the parable tells of a steward who squandered a rich man’s property. When the owner of the property learns of the misappropriation of his goods, he summons the steward, demanding an explanation. Knowing his time is short, the steward decides to adjust the debts owed to the rich man by several of his debtors, lowering the promissory notes significantly, cutting some in half.

When the rich man learns of the steward’s deeds, he unexpectedly praises the man for his prudence, the steward’s calculations ensuring his well-being even should the rich man fire him because the steward will now find friends among the debtors whose bills he reduced. Jesus then offers this thought on the matter, “For the children of this world are more prudent in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” 

He adds, “I tell you, make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth so that when it fails, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” He then offers a series of short aphorisms, concluding with a strong statement of fact, “No servant can serve two masters. As he explains, “He will either hate one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other.”

The problem with the parable, as we can see, is that Jesus uses this dishonest manager as a positive role model, seeming to praise his prudence or foresight when he realizes that his misuse of the rich man’s goods has been uncovered and so comes up with the ruse to win over the man’s debtors by making a deal with them, an act that strongly suggests he is once again doing something underhanded, although scholars twist themselves into knots trying to explain that maybe the steward was only deducting his own margin of profit from the deals.

As I said, it is a tough parable to explain. As everyone knows, I like to keep things simple. So I am going to suggest that we back up a bit and look at the bigger picture that Luke is painting for us in this section of his gospel. As we’ve learned along the way, placement of stories is always intentional for the writers of the gospels, their location in the texts generally serving the purposes and themes of the particular evangelist.

Simply stated, our best understanding of the parable may come from seeing where Luke has put it in his gospel. And when we take a step back, we see that the parable of the dishonest steward is sandwiched between the parable of the prodigal son and the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. We should not assume that that placement is coincidental. Quite the contrary.

At the heart of each of these three parables is possessions or money. In the story of the prodigal son, the younger son wants his share of his inheritance even before his father dies. Once he has received the money, he squanders it on a reckless and feckless lifestyle. Next follows the parable of the dishonest steward who squanders his boss’s holdings. Luke uses the same word “squandered” in both instances, the word conveying a sense of wastefulness and recklessness.

The third parable conveys much the same message, this time the rich man who dines on sumptuous meals and wears lavish clothing squanders his wealth while a poor man named Lazarus sits at his doorstep, starving and naked while the rich man ignores him. In all three stories, we find a fool, someone who is hoodwinked by the allure of money and who wastes the wealth that has been entrusted to him.

The prodigal son wastes his inheritance. The dishonest steward wastes the landowner’s possessions. The rich man wastes his wealth on himself, growing fat on the food from his table while a starving man sits on the other side of his doorstep. None of them uses their possessions in a positive way, but instead chooses to use the means afforded them in a negative way.

Shortly before these three parables, Jesus had told a story about another fool, the man who built bigger barns in which to store his abundant crops, believing his wealth would allow him to eat, drink, and be merry for the remainder of his life. We heard Jesus conclude that story by telling his disciples that they should “provide money bags for themselves that do not wear out, an inexhaustible treasure in heaven that no thief can reach nor moth destroy.” 

We can expect, then, to find the same call in these subsequent stories. The prodigal son learned soon enough that his money bags did not secure his well-being. To his credit, he came to see his foolishness and found his way back to his father’s house. Likewise, the dishonest steward saw his foolishness was catching up with him and made efforts to secure his future. And the rich man who ignored the beggar at his door only came to see the foolishness of his ways after his death, asking Abraham to send Lazarus to his five brothers to warn them against the same foolishness while they still had time to change their ways.

Again, the key to all three is seeing the place where each person ended up. The prodigal son, recognizing his poor choices, returns home and finds himself in the arms of his benevolent father. The dishonest steward deftly makes plans to secure his future by winning the favor of the landowner’s debtors. Sadly, the rich man who wasted his time on earth finds himself in “a place of torment” after his death.

In telling these stories, Jesus makes clear to his listeners that if they want to secure a place with God, then they must not be “lovers of money,” the phrase that he attaches to the Pharisees at the close of the parable of the dishonest steward because they have heard Jesus tell the story and their response was to sneer at him, their love of money apparently greater than their love of God, even after Jesus had told them, “You cannot serve both God and mammon.”

It would seem, then, that Jesus is consistent in putting before his listeners the choice–God or money. Either/Or. You can’t love both. I’m reminded of something the Cardinal-Archbishop of Jerusalem said recently when he was asked what lesson he had learned over his many years of service in the church. He answered, “Money and religion cannot co-exist.” Again, either/or.

Jesus understood as much, which explains why he urged his followers to give away their possessions to the poor so that they could secure a place with God. If, instead, they worshipped their possessions, as did the official whom we will meet in a short while in Luke’s gospel who could not let go of his possessions when Jesus told him to “sell all that you have and distribute it to the poor so that you will have a treasure in heaven,” then they will find themselves separated from the God who cares for the widow, the orphan, and the foreigner.

As Jesus sees it, our possessions are not ours, but are ours to share with the less fortunate. When we are generous in giving what we have to those who do not have, then we are serving God. If, on the other hand,  we hoard our possessions, thinking only of ourselves and our well-being, we are not serving God. To use Jesus’ words, we are “devoted to one and despising the others.” 

And while we may think holding onto our money is a good thing, Jesus sees it as squandering what we have been given. Its purpose is to allow us the means to serve God, not to serve ourselves. In other words, if we die a rich man, we have squandered all our wealth, no different than the prodigal son who wasted his inheritance on wayward living, no different than the dishonest steward who misused his boss’s holdings, and no different than the rich man who stuffed himself on big meals but offered not even a scrap off his table to Lazarus.

Again, I think the phrase that we may want to take to heart is the one that Jesus used to refer to the Pharisees, describing them as people “who loved money.” It is an ugly indictment of these men who were purportedly scholars of the Law and interpreters of God’s will. As such, they failed miserably, at least by the measure that Jesus put before them. Their love for God was miniscule when compared to their love for money.

In Jacob Needleman’s book “Money and the Meaning of Life,” he quotes a friend who is a CPA and who describes her work as a ministry. She sees herself as a “priest-accountant” because when she sees someone’s financial records she says she sees their lives, their contradictions, their hypocrisies, their hatred and pettiness, their phenomenal cruelties, and their incredible wishful thinking.” 

That reality might suggest that the person who knows our souls the best is our accountant or the guy who prepares our taxes. The brutal truth of the matter is how we use our money is a mirror of our souls and the best expression of what we believe. Jesus said as much when we hear him say in Luke’s gospel, “Where your treasure is, there also will your heart be.” 

As we take time to consider Jesus’ words that we find in these several parables today, we may want to look at where our heart is. If we find our heart is in sharing the material goods that we have, then we have narrowed the space between God and us. If, on the other hand, we find that our hearts are intent on amassing more for ourselves, using our possessions solely for our own benefit, and turning a blind eye to the needs of others, then we have put a great distance between God and ourselves.

When it came to money and how to use it, Jesus did not make it difficult for us to understand. He never saw money as an end in itself. Instead, he saw money as a means to draw close to God through our sharing of our possessions and through our almsgiving, opening our hearts to the disadvantaged, the disenfranchised, and the displaced. When we are able to use our money to benefit the many others, then we are not lovers of money, as were the Pharisees, but lovers of God as were those called by Jesus to follow in his footsteps.

–Jeremy Myers