Luke 16
Money is perhaps the most difficult topic in the American church today. Our society considers it a taboo subject; it’s not polite to ask how much money someone makes or how much they paid for their car (or, as likely, how much they owe on their car). Within the church the silence can be stifling [1]. It is awkward at best for a paid minister to stand up and deliver a sermon on money, and unlike countless other moral topics which are discussed with relative safety, a frank discussion of money is likely to offend someone in the room.
Yet fewer topics could be more important. Everyone has some amount of money, and the Christian who does not feel its pull is a rare individual indeed. What we do with our money we consider to be intensely personal, yet if we are “not our own” (1 Cor 16:9), then our money surely isn’t, either. In chapter 16 of his narrative, Luke presents three brief perspectives on money. Unfortunately, these often are pulled apart and analyzed individually, which ultimately drains them of their collective meaning.
Luke begins with the parable of the “shrewd manager”. This is one of the strangest parables in the Gospels. The manager is accused of being wasting his master’s possessions, and we can only assume that it’s probably true, given that the master announces his intention to fire the manager. But instead of expounding on this fault, the story moves in an entirely different direction. The manager, on his way out, calls in the debtors and “cooks the books” to reduce their debts. Here’s the odd part: when the master finds out, he doesn’t sue his manager for ruining him financially. He doesn’t take him to court and demand his head. He doesn’t send him to a place where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth. No, he commends the manager for acting “shrewdly”.
Huh?
The message is clearly not that we should go out and give away other people’s possessions for them, yet something about this dishonest manager’s action is commendable. What exactly is it? Thankfully, Jesus explains it for us:
I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
Luke ends this chapter with the story of the rich man and Lazarus. There is no discussion of why the Lazarus goes to Abraham’s side while the rich man is sent to Hades, so we are left to infer that it is because the rich man lived in extravagant luxury while completely ignoring the poor man at his gate.
With these verses as context, let us look back at verse 10:
Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?
This is one of the textbook verses for any discussion of Christian “stewardship”. But what kind of stewards are we to be? Based on the context, I have to conclude that we should be generous to a fault; ready to use our physical means in any way possible to further the kingdom of God. When Jesus refers to being “trustworthy in handling worldly wealth”, he isn’t referring to having a balanced retirement portfolio, refinancing at the right time, or keeping track of each penny spent [2]. Jesus’ point, it seems, is that the the dishonest manager has - paradoxically - been trustworthy with worldly wealth.
Jesus next statement is more blunt and haunting than nearly any other sentence in the entirety of Scripture: “No servant can serve two masters. Either he will love the one and hate the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money.”
The problem - no, my problem - is that I want to serve two masters. God first, of course; but I have to pay some service to Money. I have to eat, I have to clothe myself, I need a place to live and a means to go places. Money enables me to do what I do.
Jesus offers no such compromise. Either I will the love the one and hate the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. So if I don’t despise money, what does that say about my devotion to God?
Footnote: I actually wrote this several months ago, and just neglected to post it. In Bible class on Sunday, we talked about the parallel passage in the Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 6:24), and I more or less quoted the last three paragraphs above. A counterpoint was brought up from just two chapters back, where Jesus says that anyone who might follow must “hate his father and mother, wife and children…” Scholars agree that in that passage, “hate” means something more like “reject”, implying that anyone who is not willing to choose Christ over family cannot be a follower. So in this passage, perhaps “hate” means something like “prioritize”, in that we should be willing to choose God over money. Yes - but the statement is still far stronger than that. It’s not a matter of priority, of which master we serve more. Jesus is asking which master we will serve.
[1] I don’t want to say that the church has completely neglected this topic or entirely failed in this area. Growing up, I heard a number of sermons and discussions about money, and surveys have found that religious people are in fact more generous. Yet while we’re willing to talk about money in generic terms, I think we often fall short when it becomes too personal. When I read this chapter of Luke and similar scriptures, I see how much farther God is calling us.
[2] All of these are good things. I don’t have a mortgage or a sizable retirement portfolio, but I do try to keep a record of where I spend my money. That’s just not what Jesus is commanding in this passage.
