Readings: Amos 8. 4-7, 1 Timothy 2. 1-7, Luke 16. 1-13
The anomalies and contradictions in the story of the Dishonest Steward are so many and obvious that it is tempting to dismiss it at just one of those mysteries in the Bible which it’s better to ignore and get on with thinking about things we can grasp, and do something about. And yet there is a nagging feeling that Jesus’ teaching, or the story as told – why it was remembered and why Luke chose to include it- refer to something pretty fundamental to our belief, as relevant now as it was in its original contexts- of which there are several. I want to look briefly at some aspects of those contexts; first the moral and religious attitudes to wealth in Jesus’ day- in a word what the Old Testament has to say; second the social and economic circumstances of Jesus’ ministry; then the intellectual climate in which the story would have been remembered and retold and finally what were the influences on Luke when he put the story down on paper.
Looking backwards to the moral and religious ideas which would have formed the climate in Jesus’ time we have two statements, or principles, set out quite clearly in our reading from Amos and Psalm 113. Amos deplores the irreligious who pursue wealth at the expense of their fellow men, for whom the Law and religious practice (observing the Sabbath and Festivals) are merely an inconvenient hindrance in the relentless pursuit of profit. In Psalm 113 we see God the King and Judge, seated on high and looking down on earth, but concerned and ready to raise the poor from the dust and make them sit with Princes. All this has, of course, a depressingly contemporary ring. Respect for our fellow men is an obligation equal to our reverence for God; social ethics and divine morality are one, and this is the conclusion of our reading from Luke; “You cannot serve God and Mammon”.
That conclusion may be clear, but the parable is not. We can perhaps find some help, in understanding some of its difficulties, in the social and economic conditions of rural Galilee, which suffered (from the poor local inhabitants’ point of view) from absentee landlords. They appear quite often in the parables, as departing kings or absent vineyard proprietors, and while they appear on one level to represent God, their behaviour is often quirky and even irresponsible (as does quite often, the God of the Old Testament). The point in the parable of the Unjust Steward, may be that it is the Rich Man, evidently a landlord, who is the villain and the, apparently, unjust steward who does the right thing. So some interpreters have thought that the steward was either letting the tenants off excessive interest which they owed the Rich Man, or that the remitted measures of wheat and oil were the steward’s own commission which he forgoes. Neither interpretation gives a full answer, but they are the sort of ideas which might have been in the heads of Jesus’ first audience.
But why did that audience remember it? No one was writing down what Jesus said. What we have is a compilation of stories filtered through the memories of at least one generation. The first stage was what the original audience was struck by, but equally important was what they remembered later, and retold, thus the intellectual climate of the Early Church, just when his followers would consciously want to remember what Jesus had said is crucial; that was the start of the tradition that ends up in our four Gospels. What then were the major concerns of those early Christians? For this we must rely on Paul, whose letters are contemporary, and Luke’s, as author of Acts, account of the very early church. In both authors we see the Christians shaking off the world and worldly goods. The early Christians live a communal life selling up their personal belongings and giving to the poor, spending their time praying in the Temple. It was a community which wasn’t expecting to last long; it was expecting the second coming imminently, and so it despised worldly possession (along with sex, a sure sign that they were not thinking in the long term). When this strange community remembered Jesus’ stories it particularly remembered (and emphasised in retelling them) the dismissal of wealth and even family, the dangers of affluence. Maybe it condoned outright immorality in the treatment of property, as being what such, literally, vile and ephemeral items deserved. Bad behaviour in another context was, in respect of matter that was inherently evil anyway, simply irrelevant, even exemplary when faced with the second coming.
But moving on to when Luke was writing, no second coming had happened. Instead a disaster had struck the Jewish nation in the crushing of a rebellion resulting in the burning the Temple overturning of its foundations and the crucifixion of thousands of Jews on the hillsides around Jerusalem. The Jews and the Christians needed to rethink their religion. And for Luke the particular aspect of life that concerned him was the attitude to wealth and status, and the inclusion and exclusion that they entail; wealth at least improperly used wealth, as by the rich man Lazarus, will exclude us from heaven; Luke’s Jesus is remarkable for his inclusive concern for those excluded from society by poverty, illness or just being women. I suspect that some of the thinking behind this is the failure of the Jewish establishment, the wealth of the Temple and the introspective purity of the Pharisees. They had all failed to save Israel from destruction. This is the root of Luke’s hostility to the Jewish establishment and his expansive outreach to those outside it.
And money plays a big part in this; Luke realises, I think, that it’s a lot easier to despise money and the physical world generally, if you are well off. I hear some irony in the words “I tell you make friends for yourself by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” But there is respect too, maybe a little too much; it’s the faith that the poor often have, that money alone will solve their problems- I hear that in the commending of the Steward’s “shrewdness”- this is the same word as Matthew uses for the wise or prudent Virgins (who buy in advance enough oil to last the night). There is a place for calculation but let it be for the purpose of fulfilling God’s plan for the Kingdom; the right attitude to money and property is to ask how best to use it, however tainted it may be, to build a better world, and ultimately the Kingdom of Heaven. This thinking is behind the apparent commendation of dishonesty. It’s realistic and practical, but I confess it still leaves me feeling a little uneasy.
I have tried to see the story in the various contexts in which it was formed, but what about us now? We live in a world of startling inequalities in wealth and doubtful morality in much its creation and use. Wealth still troubles us, and perhaps it’s inevitable we should feel ambiguously towards it. But if we pray that God’s will be done on earth and for his Kingdom to come, we have to come to some resolution of these doubts and anxieties. I hope thinking, however inconclusively, about what Luke has to say, and how he came to be saying it, will help, because one thing is clear we are meant to use wealth, property, the material world for something, and that something is God’s purpose and not just ours. Amen.