Luke 16:1-13
Mercy, not Justice.
*Much of the verbiage and structure of this sermon has come from a sermon written and preached by Pastor David Petersen of Redeemer Lutheran Church, Ft. Wayne, IN. I am in his debt.
In the Name +
Traditionally, this parable was known as “the parable of the dishonest steward”. The English Standard Version (which we use for our bible readings in church) has recently changed the word “steward” to “manager”…probably because we really don’t have “stewards” in our modern world – we have “managers” instead.
I. Either way, the parable of the “unjust steward” (or manager) is not about “stewardship”.
Like all scripture, it happens to be about Jesus. In fact, none of the parables that Jesus tells are told in order to reveal the “law”. That means that, contrary to popular opinion, Jesus didn’t tell any of His parables as a means of “ethical instruction” – in this case, to teach us how to be better stewards. That’s not to say that we don’t need the law. We do need the law, and we need the law’s instruction in our lives. But that’s not Jesus's intention behind His giving us the parables. That’s the law’s job.
Instead, the parables (in their intended sense) are meant to reveal the Kingdom of God as it has come to us in Christ Jesus. In Christ, the parables reveal our God…coming to us according to His mercy. So, the true intent of the parables is ultimately, for the telling of the gospel.
The world doesn’t get this though, because the world doesn’t get the gospel. It only recognizes the law and as a result, this parable is problematic for them because at the end of the parable, the rich man (who we all know represents God) commends the steward for his dishonesty. And this of course, flies in the face of all that they think they know about God.
So, what are they to do? Well, we like stories like that of “Schindler’s list” where basically one guy “out-smarts” the powerful Nazi’s by means of what is technically, or at least legally, “dishonest”. In the same way, most of Western culture has enjoyed stories like “Robin Hood” where a poor thief wins the day while, outsmarting somebody who, in the eyes of the world is just, “too rich”.
And, as it turns out, for lack of a better alternative, that ends up being the de facto interpretation of this parable. To the world this is just another “Robin Hood” story about a “Schindler” who “wins the day for the little guy”. – But that’s not what this parable means. And anyone that’s been paying attention to what Jesus says, should be hesitant to follow the world’s interpretations and usages of the Bible anyway – particularly those of the parables. As He tells us in Mark, chapter 10: “To YOU (that is the children of God) it has been given to know the secrets of the Kingdom of God but to them (that is, the world) in parables, that “seeing they would not see…”. There is something to be seen here in this parable, that the world can not see.
II. The world hears this and goes, “Oh, I get this…”.
This is a “rich guy” and he gets outsmarted. BUT the world is wrong – and it is wrong because, as Jesus says, it has not been given to them to know the secrets of the Kingdom of God. In fact, the world gets it wrong in pretty much all the parables.
For instance, when the world hears the parable of the “Good Samaritan” it loves it because it thinks that Jesus is telling us to “be nice”. The world thinks that the whole point of the parable is that we should all “Be like the Good Samaritan”. “Love ALL people”. “Don’t be prejudiced or bigoted”. “Help people”. “Be kind”. And everybody can get behind a message like that. Except, in the context, that’s not the case at all.
Remember the context of the “Good Samaritan”: The lawyer comes to trick Jesus. He’s not being nice at all. So he asks Jesus, “What shall I do to inherit eternal life” – because he probably expects Jesus to give a lousy answer and then, if Jesus does give a bad answer, he can show that Jesus is an imposter or a heretic and they can get rid of him. But Jesus not only gives Him the right answer, he throws the lawyers trick right back at him! So he asks the lawyer something that the lawyer probably didn’t expect: He says, “What does the law say?”…”Well, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your mind and with all your strength and love your neighbor as yourself”. And then Jesus replies, “Do this, and you will live”.
Therein lies the problem. Being a Lawyer, this guy knows full well that he hasn’t actually done that. In fact, he wouldn’t be here trying to trick Jesus into perjuring Himself if he had!
So, in this case, the law does what it was meant to do. It catches him; it accuses him; it crushes him. And in response, the lawyer starts to try to do what everyone, born in the world does naturally: He seeks to justify himself. Like everyone else in the world, he looks for an “exception” to the law. He looks for an excuse. And thinking that the people he tricks and steals from aren’t really his REAL neighbors, he decides to try and take this route. So he asks, “And WHO is my neighbor”.
But he’s already in way over his head, even if he doesn’t know it…and the reason why he’s in over his head is that he doesn’t have faith. If he did, he wouldn’t be seeking to justify himself. Instead, he’d be like Abraham who, “believed God and God counted his faith in Him as righteousness”. He’d say, “Yeah, that’s true. Got me there. Thank God our God is the God that we know He is!”. He’d simply bow his head, throw up his arms and throw himself on the hope of God’s mercy.
Without faith though, he cannot help but suddenly be overcome with terrors of conscience because the law has revealed the true verdict, regardless of all his attempts at self-justification.
And we need to recognize that this is what’s going on when Jesus tells parables. The gospel part is hidden so that the world, (like this lawyer) who only understands the law, might be brought to account. That’s the beauty of the parables. To a person that doesn’t know the mysteries of the kingdom, the parables only come across as more law. To the legalist and the worldly minded, all they ever hear out of the parables is: “try a little harder next time” or “you should just keep the law”. Or “next time, be more committed”. And in this case, when the parable is reduced to being nothing more than a picturesque way of illustrating the law, the “Good Samaritan” parable ends up being no different than what the lawyer already thought. And negates our Lord’s point.
Remember, that in this account, Jesus changes the question. Where the lawyer says, “Who is my neighbor”, Jesus changes the question to, “Who proved to be a neighbor to the one who fell among thieves”. And Jesus’ point is that the lawyer is the one among thieves. By a slight of hand of the Devil, the lawyer has been robbed of the what is now the “secrets of heaven”. And Jesus’ point is that the Lawyer needs to receive mercy from His God who has come in the flesh to be his helper, even be that long, sought out neighbor to him.
And like the Lawyer, you also need the One who is merciful. So, the ultimate question that every parable should be driving us to is this: “Where do you find such mercy?”. That’s the right way to approach the parables because, the real message behind every parabolic story is an exposing of the secret of the Kingdom of God. Through the parables, Jesus is exposing the secret, even while He hides it from an unrepentant, self-justified, and legalistic, world. This is spiritual truth for those that have been made spiritual by the gracious working of God!
III. This parable today is the same.
Jesus wants to demonstrate that the Kingdom of God can only be found in Him! In Him and Him alone we see God’s grace and His mercy – and this is important: You can’t miss the point here that’s being illustrated by this parable – the kind of mercy that Jesus is talking about is incredibly unjust.
So, think of another parable: the parable of the “Unmerciful Servant”. The guy owes something like 10,000 talents which is an unimaginable debt in today’s dollars. A talent was a years’ wages or the cost of an ancient battleship – and this guy owed 10,000 of them! And the point is that there is no way that any human being could ever pay such a debt back. But never-the-less, this man asks for patience and mercy from the master – and what happens? He gets it! Remember? He gets the mercy and is told, “You don’t have to pay this back”.
But then what happens? He no sooner walks out the door, than he a runs into somebody that owes him 100 denari – which is about 3 month’s worth of wages (still a significant amount but nothing like 10,000 talents) and he grasps this guy by the throat and demands that he be paid what he is owed -- even AFTER receiving mercy! Why? Because now that the shoe is on the other foot, what he wants is “justice”. When it comes down to how people relate to him, you’d better bet that he absolutely wants what the law requires. He wants the person that owes him to repay him. That’s justice.
But then what ultimately happens? Because he wants justice rather than mercy, the mercy that was given him is taken back. He’s thrown into prison and he’s told that he won’t get out until he’s paid every last penny.
And Jesus wants you to recognize that this is the world in which you live. The worldly and the unregenerate are continually crying out in our day for (what they believe will be) “justice”. They want what the law requires. Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. In fact, as the Apostle Paul testifies, the worldly are not capable of desiring any other thing because they don’t know mercy; they don’t know Him in whom we boast because they reject the true kingdom of God. That’s why they can make such a deal of a couple of rich women bribing colleges to admit their less-than-stellar-children. And you can name probably a hundred other issues. The world loves to “stick it to the rich” and if it’s someone that was formerly considered a “goody-two-shoes” – all the better! Eye for an eye. Tooth for a tooth. We want justice. And because the world is in unison on this issue, you can even find any number of pulpits today proclaiming just this very thing: justice. But rest assured, they may be quoting scripture and engaging in all sort of what the world would consider, “good works”…but they are not proclaiming the Kingdom of God in Christ Jesus. They are nothing more than the “unmerciful servants”, the lawyers and the thieves among whom those who have no good neighbors (in this world) have fallen.
IV. The parable that we have today helps shed light on it all.
And one of the things it illustrates is something that we all rejoice in: it illustrates just how unjust (by worldly standards) God’s mercy truly is. So, what happens? The steward gets “busted” for wastefulness (whatever that was). …and the rich man decides that ‘you can no longer be steward’ – “give up your books (or the account of your stewardship)”. And already there we see something of this man’s…mercy. The master no doubt expected obedience BUT when the steward’s disobedience (or incompetence, whatever it was) is exposed, he doesn't just throw the steward into prison and publicly humiliate him (which is his right by the law). And at that, the steward see something in his master which he latches on to this with everything he has. And in turn, he gambles everything on the character he perceives in the the landowner.
So, he goes and he calls in the people (these are sharecroppers…people that have agreed to a certain amount of rent) and he says to them, “Change how much your rent is for the year”.
This is another important detail: The farmers go along with it. If they thought that the land owner (or rich man) wasn’t going to accept it; if they thought that the landowner’s character wasn’t compatible with this; there’s no way that they’d go along with it.
But, what we see here is that they also expect the land owner to be merciful. His character is known. So, they agree to it and of course, they praise him. The steward goes back, he turns in his record or the account of his stewardship and now the landowner’s happy. He’s actually happy about this particular injustice because it has to do with forgiving debts and with essentially giving away – the Kingdom. He’s happy because this action demonstrates to everyone His mercy. And so, instead of firing the steward, He allows him to keep his reputation and he even honors that particular bargain.
ON THE BOOKS AND ACCORDING TO THE LAW THE PEOPLE BENEFIT FROM AN INJUSTICE BECAUSE THE MASTER DELIGHTS IN NOT ONLY MERCY, BUT BEING KNOWN AS THE MERCIFUL.
Trans: If there’s anything to take away from this as to “how to be a Christian” and in regard to “how to live our lives, ethically”, it’s that our lives should be lives of praise and thankfulness. Because we are like those tenant farmers who rejoice in the character of our God!
V. Now, Jesus does then go on to talk a little bit about money.
Because the next line is: “Make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous mammon so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings”. But it’s important to recognize that this is a new section of the text and that this is NOT part of the parable! Commentators have gone all kinds of crazy directions with this verse because they hear this and think, “Oh, I guess my job is to try and bribe secular and pagan people so that they’ll like God and maybe even me!”. That’s not it.
What’s going on is that Jesus is in transition from the parable and there’s now a 4-line poem about who God is and the right use of finances.
So, the poem goes like this: First of all, money SHOULD be put to use for the good of our neighbors. It’s temporary and always will be. You can’t take it with you (as they say). So, really, you SHOULD be engaged in acts of charity and mercy, including with your money…and it SHOULD be spontaneous…it SHOULD just “flow out of a continually thankful and grateful heart”. And, as anyone that’s kept up with their catechism knows, all these “SHOULD’S” are nothing but words of law!
And Jesus isn’t done! If that’s not enough to humble you, Jesus then makes the transition to talking about how faithful you are with TRUE RICHES – that is, the gospel itself. Grace. The mercy of God. Who you are in Christ Jesus. What you’ve received by faith. How faithful you are with that, will be seen in how faithful you are with…money (and other stuff). Right? We love, because He first loved us! “Apart from Me, you can do nothing” (Jesus says). That’s what we mean when we say that “Good works are proof that faith is living”. That’s what St. Paul means when he says that “If you say you love God and yet hate your neighbor, you are a liar”. The reality is that the gospel will impact and effect how it is that you live your lives.
And this ought to make us very afraid, because who wants to be judged by this standard? I mean, who is so dull or spiritually apathetic that they actually think of themselves in the same way that the Lawyer that first told Jesus, “Oh yes, all this I have done since my youth!”??
So, while a focus on “good works” might start out as a bunch of ideas about “faith, and ‘works that we can all get behind’”, and a reminder that “we SHOULD all care for our neighbors and that money is a tool”, it quickly escalates to what is actually at stake…and that is this: YOU CANNOT SERVE TWO MASTERS.
It quickly escalates to the point where it exposes you like it did the Lawyer. It exposes that you have NOT been faithful with mammon. It exposes that you have been even less faithful with true riches, and that if this is the law’s true opinion of you…then guess what? Your master has been Satan. YOU CANNOT SERVE TWO MASTERS AND THERE ARE ONLY TWO.
Conclusion: There’s only way out of this condemnation and that is to go back to the parable…and this time, hear it as the word of gospel that Christ wants His children to hear. Let this parable take you back to the greatest injustice and the worst form of economy (as far as the world would be concerned) of all time – an act of mercy that makes no sense at all in the economies of men…an act by which God would pay for the rebels that hated him…by which he would give them what they sought to steal…by grace, and that He would even grant them the right to be called His children in the process. There’s never been a mercy and an injustice like the sacrifice of Jesus for sinners (who didn’t even want Him!). On account of their sin, they would much rather have been given money and what they considered “justice” in His place. And yet, this is the foundation of all of our hope and the knowledge of it is what changes lives. The knowledge of it is what causes us, like the steward, to bet everything on the character of the Creator of all and to go about living our lives accordingly: The knowledge that God actually wants to forgive our debts, that He loves our praise, that He wants to be known as the One who wants to give the Kingdom away; that He wants you to know Him…the true God…who is first and foremost a God who delights in showing mercy!
This is what the Kingdom of God is and how it lives in our lives. It makes no sense in the economies of men but it makes perfect sense in the economy of salvation. God in fact is somewhat “wasteful”. As a farmer, He goes out and scatters seeds even “wastefully” as He showers His word of mercy upon us. In mercy, God has been completely “unjust” (according to the ways of the world) because He has forsaken His own Son…condemning Him in our stead, that we might be declared innocent and righteous. It is this, as the Great Faithful Steward of God writes off, once again your debt…that gives you every reason to thank and praise His Name as you go about the new life that He has given you forever. In the Name +