“Dirty Rotten Scoundrels”

September 19, 2010

Luke 16:1-13

On the surface it would seem that I have a pretty straight-forward and easy job—especially when it comes to preaching. My simple task on Sunday is to encourage each of you and all of you to be good people, good Christians. And I’m helped in this work by the Bible, filled with texts that encourage us to love one another, to seek justice, to forgive as we have been forgiven.

When you consider in addition just how nice all of us are, well, what’s the problem?

The problem is the Bible—and in particular, parables such as the one we encountered this morning.

Jesus tells his followers a story that commends a dishonest manager. He concludes with these words of advice: “Make friends for yourselves with dishonest wealth.”

No wonder, then, that as we have been reading through the Gospel of Luke this year people say things to me like: “You’ve got a lot to explain.”

It’s the “explaining” that makes my job so difficult. In all honesty, I don’t know what to do with this parable. I’ve been struggling with it off and on for decades, ever since a friend showed it to me when we were in high school or college. He was troubled to find something like this in the Bible—especially coming from Jesus. What did it mean? Why did Jesus say this? And why would his followers remember and record this?

During Lent this year I preached a series of sermons based on the parables in the Gospel of Luke. I knew at the time that I didn’t want to come near the parable that we heard this morning. But as we’ve been walking along with Jesus on his way to Jerusalem, I stumbled upon this boulder in the road again.

This parable is puzzling at best. Why would Jesus tell such a story about such an unsavory character?

This parable is disturbing. It is troubling, isn’t it, to hear the advice of Jesus: “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone they may welcome you into the eternal homes.”

This parable upsets us. It confuses us. It calls into question our assumptions of right and wrong.

In short, this story of the dishonest manager does everything a good parable should do. We hear this parable and in our shock start looking at our world and our lives in new ways.

Oh, I probably need to continue to encourage you to be good—because through this parable Jesus reminds us that there is something of the dirty rotten scoundrel in each of us.

Let’s start at the end: “The 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 the children of light.”

We know where we’d like to be in that equation. We know what we’re supposed to be: the children of light.

It’s the “children of this age,” as Jesus called them—that is, everyday people in the world—who seem to know the score. They’re people who look out for Number One, who know the angles and how to work the system. They’re people, like the manager in the parable, who are in respectable positions and know how to use those positions to their own advantage. They are the people who take “shortcuts”: the student who buys term papers online instead of doing the work and the person billing the government for work never done. On a larger scale, they are Bernie Madoff or any of a number of governors of Illinois over the past 50 years.

And we’re left with the sense that if Jesus doesn’t exactly approve of how the children of this age act, he at least suggests that we can learn from them.

I don’t know. Maybe a dishonest manager can be a role model for us because—in some way—each one of us is a dirty rotten scoundrel. Yes, we all look pretty good in our Sunday best. But even though it’s often hidden from others, we also know about our Monday through Saturday worst.

In one of his books on the lives of children, Robert Coles wrote about an eight-year-old boy who was trying to do a good job in school. This child concisely assessed the human situation when he said: “We all behave sometimes, but sometimes we don’t. When we don’t, it is too bad.”

We want to be children of light—but Jesus reminds even his followers that we have much in common with the children of this age. We all behave sometimes, but sometimes we don’t. You might want to look at and follow the example of this manager, Jesus is saying, because in some way, you’re just like him.

And sooner or later—along with the dishonest manager and everyone else—each of us gets caught.

The Christian tradition speaks of the “last judgment”—a time of reckoning after death. We know from experience, however, that there are plenty of intermediate judgments in life as well.

If you take it easy at school and do as little work as possible, when the test comes there’s a good chance that you will fail.

If you can do shoddy work, when the storm comes there’s a good chance of destruction.

If you lie to protect yourself the truth will come out at the most inopportune time.

The newspapers and our own lives are filled with such occasions.

Waste the gifts that are yours.

Sidestep opportunities to love your neighbor as yourself.

Misuse those things entrusted to your care.

Your story will eventually sound like the one that we heard this morning: 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 anymore.”

Eventually the bills come due.

There is some health in a religious sense that our lives are called into account. Life is not without meaning. It matters.

It matters how we use our time.

It matters how we use our gifts.

It matters how we use our money.

A voice asks: “What is this I hear about you?” It might be our own conscience that raises the question. It might be the very voice of God. Those words come with a sinking sense that the report is not a good one. Sooner or later, dirty rotten scoundrels get caught.

All of us do.

And what are we going to do then? Give up?

At this point, as in many good parables, we are thrown a curve ball. The message from Jesus to dirty rotten scoundrels like us is “Keep going. There’s still a chance to try again.”

Look at our friend and role model, the dishonest manager. Threatened with the loss of his job, he assesses the situation. Hard labor is beneath him and he is too proud to beg. This problem will not be resolved by polishing his resume, although a little “networking” seems to be in order. After thinking about the situation a little more, an answer comes to him: “I know what I’ll do!”

This leopard doesn’t change his spots. In spite of being called into account, the manager brazenly continues to misuse his position and squander his master’s resources. As is typical in parables, the amounts here are incredible. A debt of some nine hundred gallons of olive oil is cut in half. The debt of a vast amount of grain is reduced in a similar manner.

All of this is done without respect for his position or his master. The manager takes this shrewd approach in order to protect his future, so that other indebted to him will take him into their homes when he is out of a job.

 Even loosing his job becomes a new opportunity. In spite of loosing there is finding. When your back is against the wall, there is still the hope that with your own resources you will find a way out.

There’s something in all of this that hints at the nature of forgiveness:

An invitation to go on even when we should stop;

The chance to stay in a relationship even when the cord has been cut with your own knife.

Golf clubs are now more “forgiving” than they used to be. That is, newer clubs take your flaws and work with them. If you have a bad slice the club helps correct it. I read about these and think: “I need a set of clubs like that.”

Even more, I need a life like that—one that takes my flaws, my sin, my rottenness, and works with all of that.

Was it F. Scott Fitzgerald who said that there are no second acts in American lives? Many people keep proving him wrong. A disgraced governor becomes a reality TV star.

The children of this age often seem to be very good at this. And it’s something that we in the church forget to our peril. So often it is the voice of the church that says, not “You are forgiven,” but “You made your bed, now lie in it.”

I love the words of one woman whose life had been a mess. She discovered, in her words, “Not only do you not have to sleep in the bed that you made, you can go out and buy yourself a whole new bed!”

This is the good news—and it’s nothing that you haven’t heard before, but we need to be reminded about it again and again. We keep coming to this place week after week to hear it. This is the good news: no matter how messed up your life is, no matter how dirty and rotten a scoundrel you are—grace abounds and we can begin again. We need to hear this week after week because it’s so hard to hold onto such a strange and healing message.

The manager was commended for his shrewdness, not for his mismanagement. In a difficult situation he made wise use of what he had and came out on top.

Having heard the words of Jesus, we are encouraged to do the same—to make wise use of the resources of forgiveness freely offered, to pick up our lives and move forward even in the aftermath of our poor management, our wasting of resources.

Keep going. We are all given the surprising chance to try again.

All along we struggle with what one person called the “problem of good.” Astonishing as it seems, good keeps happening, even through the dirty rotten things that we do. Hope and grace are given, letting scoundrels like us to pick up and carry on.

It wouldn’t have to be this way. But since it is, why not rejoice in the wonderful new opportunities we are given each day?

This at least is where I’m at in trying to understand this parable. And I know that there are holes in my understanding and my explanation that are large enough to drive a Mac Truck through.

This parable is troubling—and it serves as a reminder to us that all of the words of Jesus are troubling. When we think we understand them, there’s a good chance that we’re missing something. And yet we keep listening to them because they are the words of life.

We’re left with this strange parable and those astonishing words to meditate on in the days ahead.

Life in Christ isn’t always straightforward. We follow. But we understand only in part. We keep trying to be good people—and I will keep encouraging you to be your best. When that fails, with the resources of forgiveness and grace entrusted to us, let us keep moving ahead.

Who knows? Perhaps God will one day commend even dirty rotten scoundrels like us.