Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you?” Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do now that my master is taking the position away from me?” I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
“Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot server God and wealth.”
Grace to you from the Mystery in whom we live and breathe and have our being.
“You cannot serve God and wealth.”
mammon
I’m tired of speaking on the topic of money. But here we are again, another parable about money. In this case it’s referred to as mammon. Mammon is wealth regarded as an object of devotion.
Many of the commentaries on this parable say this is difficult to understand. Aren’t all Jesus parables difficult to understand? Wasn’t that the intention of parables? To disrupt the patterns of your brain and awaken your soul’s conscience? Does saying we don’t understand this one mean that we understand all the others quite well? Hardly!
For me the real question is what makes this parable difficult to understand?
For me it’s difficult because I never had a healthy relationship with money. I was not taught to recognize the power of money. Growing up we didn’t have much of it. I did not understand that having enough or even more than enough was possible.
As a young adult I didn’t respect or understand the principles of saving and investing. I always thought these issues were for those who had money.
What I did receive in my home was comfort, love and home cooked food. People who were present at every important moment. Teachings about the value of putting God first and trusting God in all things. We were never without each other.
Mother cooked for drop-in guests. The dishes she created to stretch I thought were my mother’s best creations. Everybody seemed to think so. Who doesn’t love a shredded roast with green chili, a pot of beans, and a fresh tortilla and the hottest salsa this side of New Mexico.
So, forgive me for not being able to grasp these entrepreneurial geniuses in Jesus’ parable. All they were doing after all was to live out Adam Smith’s theory of the invisible hand of capitalism. Self-interest first.
a different economy
Before this parable, Jesus always proposed a completely different economy. Love for God and mammon cannot co-exist. One that didn’t begin with self-interest but begins with communal interests. The Lord’s prayer didn’t begin with my father it began with our father. Successes and sufferings were to be shared.
In the parables leading up to this one on mammon, one coin was worth seeking, one lost sheep was worth saving and one delinquent son was worth celebrating. That is God’s economy.
The story he is now telling is about a rich man and manager so immersed in the system of taxing the poor and rewarding the rich they see no way out. Perhaps Jesus was going to have to come at things shrewdly.
Because you see this is a story about the storyteller who was being shrewd.
It’s as if Jesus is switching sides and shelved all he taught about caring for the poor, feeding the hungry and the masters and managers being neighbors.
Jesus’ dove into the system of those times to unveil the sickness of the system.
Jesus was being shrewd. He might have been saying this is what happens when you operate in a system where love of money and self-interest reign. It is pure ego.
creativity and ego
Jeong Kwan is a celebrated Buddhist chef at a monastery in Thailand. She was asked how she creates such beautiful artistic dishes. She said this, “Creativity and ego cannot go together. If you free yourself from the comparing and jealous mind, your creativity opens endlessly. Just as water springs from a fountain, creativity springs from every moment. You must not be your own obstacle. You must not be owned by the environment you are in. You must own the environment, the phenomenal world around you. You must freely move in and out of your mind. This is being free. There is no way you can’t open to your creativity. There is no ego to speak of.”
It is a hard parable told by a shrewd man who presented it within the only system is audience understood.
I believe this parable is difficult to understand, even for the most theologically educated because we cannot think outside the box of our embedded understanding and systems.
We are presented today with a choice. A system built on self-interest that says others below us will do better eventually and unintentionally because of the success of my own self-interest. Or an alternative system where God is first.
shrewd jesus
I’ll close with Brian Mclaren’s assessment.
“The American church in nearly all its forms has thrived for 400 years because it made a deal: It told people, “you CAN love both God and money. Love of money stole lands and lives of millions of native people, enslaved and exploited people of African descent, created an apartheid system and Jim Crow, treated immigrants shamefully and exploited a beautiful land…”
I think this parable told by a shrewd Jesus is not difficult to understand but it is hard. It’s hard to leave the systems we’ve created, and pretend Jesus condoned and created them.
I think Jesus was calling it out by going into the system.
I know longer find this parable difficult. Just hard.
Amen
Wednesday Respite is a 30-min contemplative service of scripture, prayer, music and a Spirited Touchpoint by Henry Rojas, spiritual director at Spirit in the Desert.
Touchpoint is a reflection on where God’s story touches our life story. It is a short homily based on a biblical story of people in the Old and New Testaments and their relationship with God. Our spiritual ancestors’ experience of God’s grace connects with our lives in the present and our relationship with the Divine. Previous Touchpoints are available as PDFs or on SoundCloud.
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