Making the Best Friends with Our Dishonest Wealth

"Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth," Jesus teaches his disciples, "so that when you fail they may welcome you into an eternal home."

So, what do we make of this strange parable?  Even the most learned scholars have struggled to interpret Jesus's meaning, and some have just thrown up their hands.  Take Jesus' statement, "And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly."  Even John Calvin could say of this passage only that, "it is obvious that if we were to find a meaning in every minute circumstance, we would act absurdly."  So, are we to just dismiss one of Jesus's sayings and move on? 

As strange as this parable of the unrighteous, or dishonest manager sounds to us today; hopefully you will see that Jesus' Good News is not some pie in the sky far above our everyday struggle to do the right thing amid those who look out for themselves and no other.  Jesus knows that we live in a broken world, surrounded by those who would cheat us in the blink of an eye if they thought they could get away with it.  He understands the compromises we make every day when it comes to the managing and sharing of our scarce resources.  Jesus does not condemn us for doing the best we can.  He only asks that we not choose our eternal friends solely on the basis of what they can do for us in this broken world.

The story he tells today is one with which His disciples could easily identify.  And so can we.  "There was a rich man who had a manager."  A manager was charged with managing the property for an absent landlord.  He would rent parcels of the land to sharecroppers, then take a percentage of the value of their crops as a commission.  With the rich man absent, the manager had a great deal of power.  But he didn't have security, because the land wasn't his.  Managers in this position were caught between rich landlords who wanted more profits for themselves, and laborers who wanted more wages for themselves.

"And charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property."  Hmm, who brought the charges: laborers who thought he was claiming too much for his commission?  Tenets who thought the manager was overcharging their rent?  And does Jesus say whether the charges are true?  Maybe the manager had gotten greedy with his commissions.  Or maybe the workers got greedy for more than their fair share.  So said the rich man, "What is this that I hear about you?  Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer."  Whatever the truth or falsity of the charges, the rich man chooses to side with the many against the one, with the masses against the middle man.

And now our hero has a big problem.  He wouldn't last a day in the fields, but he's too ashamed to beg.  He's not a laborer, he's a numbers guy.  "But I know what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes."  Living in a world ruled by the law of, I scratch your back-you scratch mine, the manager knows how to obligate others to himself, even those laborers who had accused him.


"Then he [the manager] asked another, 'How much do you owe?'  He replied, 'A hundred measures of wheat.'  He said to him, 'Take your bill and make it eighty.'"  And the rich man, who left the managerial details to his manager, may sense that the bills are off, but he can't prove it.  And besides, does he want to shake down the laborers whose favor he curried by firing the manager?  What else could he do but "commend the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly"?

"For the children of this age are more shrewd in their generation than are the children of light," Jesus said.  We children of light must live among the dishonest that hide their true intentions.  We bask in the Sunday morning light reflected in this holy and God-filled space today.  Tomorrow we will get up and go back to meet those who try to be more shrewd than we are.  How shrewd will we have to be to protect ourselves?  The manager may not have been dishonest at the beginning.  But in order for he and his family to survive, he had to become "dishonest."  But how virtuous was the rich man for just accepting the charges against the manager at face value?  And how honest were the sharecroppers who perhaps defamed the manager?  How honest are any of us?

I love my iPhone.  But every now and then, as an exercise in honesty, I'll turn it over and read where it says, "Manufactured in China."  Apple claims to monitor the conditions in those Chinese factories, a program they put in place after some of those inhumane conditions were exposed.  But how sure can I be that I have not supported a factory owner in China who cares only about his profits?  And every one of us wants to get the most money possible for our labor as workers.  But as consumers, we want to pay the least money possible for everybody else's labor.  If all of us pulled the thread on every dollar we have earned or spent, I believe that we would find ourselves implicated in what Jesus calls "dishonest" or "unjust" or "unrighteous" or "worldly" wealth, depending on the translation.

Jesus doesn't take sides in the story he tells.  He doesn't try to tell us who is honest or dishonest, just or unjust, righteous or unrighteous.  We take sides all the time when it comes to "dishonest" or "unjust" wealth. And we're probably right about that dishonest wealth.  In fact, we're all probably right about that dishonest wealth, which means that if we keep taking sides we'll all end up in circular firing squads.  I don't think Jesus is saying to never take a stand against what we perceive as injustice.  But in this parable, Jesus doesn't want his disciples to get hung up on who is to blame. 

"Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth," Jesus teaches his disciples, "so that when you fail they may welcome you into an eternal home."  Who are those friends?  Surely it's not the dishonest who welcome us into the eternal homes.  Is it those whose backs we scratched?  Or will it be those to whom we give without any expectation of a Return On Investment?  Who are your "friends" to whom you are called to give without the expectation of receiving anything in return?

At the end of this physical life, cliché though it is, it bears repeating here that you can't take it with you.  Perhaps a less cliched way to put it is this: we shall all die poor.  So I don't leave you to wonder how dishonest you are, or which side are you on.  We will all die poor.  So, who will welcome you when you are poor?