The Unfaithful Steward


Today's gospel lesson is a parable about stewardship, but it is a truly bizarre parable. There was even a discussion among some of my Facebook friends about how to preach today’s gospel. Elizabeth Kaeton described it as, “The Worst Parable Ever,” and expressed the difficulty as follows:

I confess I am sorely tempted to break the discipline I was carefully taught and preach on Jeremiah or Amos, or the Epistle or even, as I've experienced some of what at least one of my professors would describe as "lily-livered preachers" do: The Collect (gasp!). Anything but this wretchedly confounding gospel. Well, I guess everybody's gotta do something while waiting for the Parousia.[1]

In the Palestine of Jesus' time, absentee landlords were quite common.  In this parable, Jesus tells his listeners about a property owner who gets word that the servant he has placed in charge of his affairs has been squandering his property. The landlord confronts the steward, demanding that the books be audited.[2]

"What will I do?" the steward wails.  He's going to lose his job, because he's as guilty as sin.  He's going to be thrown out of his cushy position. He doesn't want to have to beg for a living, and manual labor seemed just about as bad. 

Then it comes to him.  "I know what I'll do," he thinks, "I'll go to a couple of the people who owe my master money, I'll reduce their debt, then they will welcome me into their homes when my master throws me out."  And so, one by one he calls the property owners debtors in.  These people were like sharecroppers who would give the property owner a portion of their produce as rent for the use of his land.  And with the stewards help, they reduce their debts from one hundred jugs of olive oil to fifty, and from a hundred containers of wheat to eighty.

What does the property owner do when he finds out what the manager has done?  He commends the dishonest steward for acting so shrewdly.

This is where it gets a little tricky.  At first glance, it looks like Jesus is telling us to be crooks.  Go ahead and cheat, lie and steal in business, as long as you're shrewd about it.  Be creative in your income taxes, as long as you don't get caught.

But in reality, this parable is a parody.  The story is meant to be humorous, and to make its point by being outrageous.  Jesus wanted his hearers to be caught up in the absurdity of the steward's position and to laugh at his creative solution to his plight. 

This is not a story about business at all, but about us.  About how we should take care to provide for ourselves with an eye toward God's kingdom.  "Make friend for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes," Jesus tells us.[3]  He is not telling us to be dishonest, but to use the things we are given in this life to further the kingdom of God.  We are very wise when it comes to using our time and talents and treasure in providing for ourselves in this world, he seems to say, but how are we using them to enable our spiritual growth?

The gospel lesson today is about our stewardship of the time and talent and treasure that God has given us, and how we use those gifts.  Because, remember, the key to the concept of Christian stewardship is that all of our time on earth, all of our talent to do things, all of the treasure we may amass, all of this comes from God, and that we are only managing it for God. 

Unfortunately, most of us are like the steward in today's parable.  We are squandering our master's property.

We are squandering the time God gives us.  Years ago, The Anglican Digest had a short article entitled, "How You Spent It."  If God granted you 70 years of life, the article said, you would spend 24 years sleeping, 14 years working, 8 years in amusement, 6 years at the dinner table, 5 years in transportation, 4 years in conversation, 3+ years in education, 3 years in reading, and 3 years watching television.  The pathetic fact is, if you went to Church every Sunday and prayed five minutes every morning and night, you would be giving God five months of your life.  Five months out of seventy years.[4]

And we usually don't discover how valuable and how limited our time is until it's too late.  One of my favorite lines from the movie Grumpy Old Men is by Burgess Meridith, when he tells his son, "You know, the first ninety years, they go by pretty fast."  Let's not squander that first ninety years. 

We are squandering the talents which God has given us to use. Most of us are quite ingenious at what we do for a living, and we bring to our professional careers, our hobbies, and other endeavors close to our hearts an energy that secures our recognition as successes in the world.  But we're rarely as energetic in our endeavors for furthering the Kingdom of God.  In today's parable, one of the points Jesus was making was that if the disciples put as much energy into spreading the Kingdom of God as the steward did in securing his future, they and the world would be a much better place.

But we are reluctant to use our talents as God intended.  This reluctance is evident from the dismal participation in most of the activities parishes engage in, whether they be for social justice actions in our communities, or even fellowship activities with each other.  No matter what the activity, the same faces are the ones that show up. It appears that the depth of Christianity most of us aspire to is sitting through a Church service once or twice a month and singing, "Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so."  While it is perfectly true that Jesus loves us, this is hardly the picture of the ministering community that our Lord and Savior calls us to be.

Finally, we are squandering the treasure that our God has bestowed upon us.  At the end of our Gospel lesson, Jesus tells us, "No slave can serve two masters . . . You cannot serve God and wealth."  Frankly, most of us agree with Jesus on this and have decided to serve wealth.  In our rush to secure the comfortable life, or even in our desire to secure those things which we consider the necessities of life, we have pushed God aside. 

The standard of Christian giving has always been and will always remain the tithe.  Ten percent of our income.  Gross income, not net.  It is the standard to which we should all be working toward, if we are not there already.  Yet nothing makes people squirm in the pews more.  Nothing raises more resistance.  Ask someone if they tithe, and they will respond, "what I give is between me and God."  That means, "No."  

And the hardest thing to understand is that the concept of giving from your treasure is not about securing money for the work of the Church, or for the work of some charity.  We all know that money is needed by every organization in this material world, to make payrolls, to keep a roof over our head, but we don't give to meet these physical needs. 

We give to meet our spiritual needs.  Time and time again, when the subject of money comes up in the Gospels, Jesus points out that money and material things can get in our way, can get between us and the Kingdom of God.  "Go, sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come, follow me," Jesus says to the rich young man.  When the young man heard this word, he went away grieving, for he had many possessions.[5]

The good news is that today's lessons are about stewardship.  The bad news is that they are also about accountability.  We don't like talking about stewardship.  Especially about stewardship of treasure.  But we really hate talking about accountability. 

But there it is.  The rich man in today's parable calls the servant in to him, "Give me an accounting of your management."  And in one of our Old Testament readings, we hear the prophet Amos railing against those who defraud and who live off the poor and swearing that God will never forget any of their deeds.[6]  Accountability is central to our faith. 

We are accountable for our actions, and we are accountable for our stewardship.  May our master find us unashamed to stand before him and give that accounting.



[1] Elizabeth Kaeton, Facebook, 18 September 2019, 11:45 AM.
[3] Luke 16:9.
[4] Op.cit.
[5] Matthew 19:21.
[6] Amos 8:4-7.

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