The sixteenth chapter of Luke begins with what I have come to think of as the fourth “lost and found” parable. The first three were in chapter fifteen. Each of these parables gets slightly more difficult to understand and much more complex. So let us first review the previous “lost and found” parables. First there is the lost sheep. The shepherd leaves the flock in order to find the one who is lost. This is followed by the woman and the lost coin. Here, the woman sweeps the house clean in order to find the lost coin. Each of these parables end with radical celebration. The level of celebration is possibly even greater than the value of the sheep or the coin.
In the third parable we read of the lost son. He is not so much found as he finds himself and returns home on his own. The result is great celebration. In this parable an added layer of the human condition comes when we are confronted by the attitude of the older brother and his resentment of the younger brother who has come home.
Now in the fourth parable (I call it the parable of “lost justice or righteousness”), we meet a manager described in the NRSV as dishonest. He is called in Greek ἀδικία (adikia means injustice), but I believe that unrighteous captures the description of him much better. Although in this story we are told charges are brought about the management of the rich man’s estate, that the manager is squandering or wasting the rich man’s property, we do not know whether this is true. We only know that charges are made and that these charges result in the dismissal of the manager.
Because our unrighteous manager is able to later cut the amount of the debts owed to the rich man, we know the manager has been handling the affairs of the estate in a manner that benefited the rich man. We are invited to understand that the manager has been putting energy into his relationship with the rich man and gaining wealth at the expense of the share cropper/debtor. The Levitical law declares this as unrighteous. And yet, when the charges are made, the manager is given his walking papers seemingly without a process for appeal or audit that might vindicate his work.
Much time has been spent on the manager’s ethics. Was his unrighteousness cheating the rich man? Or, was his unrighteousness cheating the people? How is it that he can suddenly reduce the bills of the people owing goods to the rich man? Does the reduction of debts make the unrighteous manager righteous?
The parable doesn’t really help us understand any of that, but it does help us understand something about living in righteous relationship with others, or how to build trust in an adversarial world. In his life of acquiring status and wealth, the manager developed a relationship with the rich man at the expense of the share cropper/poor. We come to know that this relationship is unrighteous. The manager’s status and wealth depends on the status and wealth of the rich man.
Like Joseph of Egypt in days of old, the manager’s authority is always second to the rich man/Pharaoh. But that place in the world lasts only as long as the temporal authority allows it. As Potiphar’s wife is able to cast Joseph down, so now an outsider casts down the manager.
Faced with being put out on the street, the manager does what the manager is best at: he builds relationships. This time the relationship is with the debtors of the rich man’s world at the expense of the relationship with the rich man. Here the strains of the Magnificat come echoing down from Luke 1. “[God] has filled the hungry with good things and sent the rich away empty. [God] has helped his servant…in remembrance of his mercy according to the promise he made to [the] ancestors; to Abraham and his descendants forever.”
At this point, I believe the parable raises the question of righteousness (δικαιοσύνη, dikaio-synē), what is a righteous or healthy community, by addressing the relationships that sustain us through the actions of the manager. Are they the relationships of power, wealth, and status? Or, are they the relationship of people who gather in co-operative work together? Is the lasting relationship the fight to the top? Or, companionship of the poor? In the terms of Luke 15:1-2, is it life among the grumbling Pharisees and scribes, or at the table, eating with tax collectors and sinners?
As the whims of Egypt sent God’s people into the wilderness to find God’s mercy and promised relationship of constancy, as Luke’s Gospel proclaims a preference for the poor and the promise of always having one another, so now the manager finds trust and relationship among the people he formerly oppressed. This new relationship is more sustainable than the relationship the manager had with the rich man. It is a relationship of mutual support. The manager gives up something of himself and in doing this, he reduces the debt burden on those around him. Shrewdness, guile, cleverness, even wisdom help the manager find mercy among the people that has lasted at least to the forever of this day. In this new place of mercy, he attains righteousness in relationship with the people.
No wonder the rich man commends the shrewdness of the manager. I sometimes wonder if there is a touch of jealousy in the commendation. Instead of being shamed, shunned, and shattered, the manager finds lasting new relationship of welcome, mutuality, and mercy (embracing each other, needing the forgiveness of debt on the one hand and the forgiveness of oppression on the other). In this new relationship the unrighteous manager finds his lost righteous state. No longer is he advancing his place in the world through interest on goods; instead he has found a way to live among God’s people with what is enough. He has found a way to use unrighteous wealth or dishonest standards as a means for building up and enriching the lives of the people.
We are reminded of Abraham’s bargaining for the people of Sodom and Gomorrah, Abraham and Sarah’s laughter, Jacob’s bargaining for his birthright and his foiled bargain for Rachel. We are reminded of the tricks Joseph plays on his brothers and his ability to interpret dreams. We recall Moses and his bargaining with Pharaoh and the visitation of the plagues. Yes, we remember the long history of Abraham’s descendants up to and including a clever carpenter who died on a cross in order to conquer death, making righteous or justifying the world through himself. Is this not God using the unrighteous power of Satan and the world against itself in order to redeem God's people? All of this comes to us in this little story of a rich man, his manager, and the working people of the world. We may even get a glimpse of Paul’s ministry begun on the Damascus road.
About four hundred years ago, George Herbert wrote, “Living well is the best revenge.” In the last century this statement became a bumper sticker and people took living well to mean living large. It was a statement made to support consumerism, but I am convinced that living large is not what he meant.
What I believe George Herbert meant was that we should live ethical lives in our times, i.e., in caring relationships with one another. As such, I think that this little saying encapsulates this parable in a single sentence. If you want to live a life that does not seek advancement based on the oppression of others, that does not depend on racism or classism, a life that does not risk our environment and access to fresh water for the sake of a few dollars, then build relationships that nurture the lifting up of all. Indeed, living life like this is living well.
When we live for wealth and status, we only serve ourselves and a privileged few, but when we live for others, we make space for Christ’s reconciling presence to redeem and reclaim us making us right with God and one another. God’s work is always with and among the people. It is not the accumulation of money and power.
May you live well this week knowing the best revenge in the relationship of wholeness found in the reconciling body of Christ.
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