Strangely Jesus seems to make the gospel ponzi schemer into an inventive hero rather than a villain. The dishonest manager fits among the scammers in our news who line their pockets with other people’s money. Surely Jesus can’t mean to commend the practice of an embezzler who compounds his crime by writing off debts owed his boss. We expect the boss to bring criminal charges against the crooked manager, not praise him. We miss the point of Jesus’ parable if we try to spiritualize the manager’s actions. Jesus is talking about his real world and ours.
Few of the people listening to Jesus would have missed his point. Farmers and small merchants would know perfectly well the kind of self-serving scoundrel Jesus’ parable describes, and so would poor sharecroppers and migrant workers who had to sell their hard labor to unscrupulous brokers just to stay alive.
In order for the rich to get richer in Roman-occupied Judea, the poor got poorer. The manager in Jesus’ story may well have thought he was doing nothing worse than anyone else in his social class. After all, the owner of the business still made a handsome profit; and the manager could feel entitled to a little extra since he provided an indispensable service in expanding his boss’s wealth.
The parable upends our usual way of looking at things when the boss praises the embezzler. The good the self-serving manager does is reducing the debts of the poor, carrying out what Catholic social teaching calls a preferential option for the poor.
The avaricious owner admires the manager’s skillful exploitation of his accounts to create a future for himself. The owner makes little of having his profits plundered for the sake of the powerless. The parable stresses the manager’s ingenuity.
This parable, which appears only in Luke’s gospel, shifts to the poor the prerogative of determining who will find a home in the messianic age. The poor are the ones with whom those with ill-gotten gains must make friends. The poor are the ones who will decide to take the rich in.
- What do you think motivates the manager? Is he punishing his boss for firing him, helping the poor for his own gain, or modeling God’s preference for helping the poor?
Luke’s gospel does not let the self-serving manager go without criticizing him. Luke follows the parable with a series of sayings that pass judgment on dishonest people. The sayings insist, whoever is dishonest with a little can’t be trusted with a lot. No one can trust a cheater. No one can serve two masters.
This parable focuses on ethics for the small middle class of Jesus’ time, those who deal with other people’s money and execute other people’s business. Luke is stressing Jesus’ emphasis on helping poor people.
The safest investment, according to the parable, is to throw in our lot with the poor, to serve God rather than pursue wealth. When money becomes scarce, those who already know how to live on less will welcome us into their homes.
- How do you invest in people in need?
For us today in a society with a large middle class, this parable is subversive. It works its way into our everyday lives where we expect the cheapest prices but the best products, where we expect corporations to benefit the poor and offer a living wage but stay competitive.
In the world of Sunday’s parable as in our world, including the poor in the common economic good challenges us. Jesus’ parable calls us to apply as much ingenuity in exploiting the economy for the sake of the poor as we ordinarily do to exploit the poor for the sake of the economy. And those of us who call ourselves Jesus’ followers are called on to make that change.
- What good things do you take for granted that are beyond the reach of poor people in your area or in the world?
- How do you benefit from the labor of poor people?
- What in your opinion most helps lift poor people out of poverty?