Luke 16: 1-13
This scripture lesson is difficult! How do we make sense of Jesus seeming to tell us to cheat the folks we work for to ensure our own advantage?
This gives us a good chance to review what we know about the gospels and their historical accuracy. Because these stories were written down decades after they happened and because they depend on the memory of people who weren’t there for the action but only heard those who were there tell about it later, it’s impossible for us to know exactly what Jesus said. He made no you-tube or tik-tok videos as it happened. We all remember important events accurately, but no two people remember them exactly the same way.
Scholars then are given the job of figuring out “what really happened” and that’s not actually possible to do. There are some general rules for thinking about what’s probably original to Jesus and what’s been re-interpreted as the stories were told and retold over the years. One of those rules is that the most accurate story is the most difficult. People aren’t likely to make up or re-imagine stories that are hard to understand or exceptionally challenging to the way things work in the world. This story qualifies on that account. We aren’t sure what Jesus really meant by praising the employee who seems to have cheated his employer out of debts owed to him and for doing so in order to protect his own future. The middle part of the reading explains what Jesus meant by talking about being faithful in small matters and large ones. In the whole scheme of things the explanation is more likely added by folks remembering the teaching than original. When you’re retelling a confusing tale, you try to make it easier for folks by telling them what you think it means. The core of this teaching is the story about the employee and debts forgiven and then the final bit “you can’t serve God and wealth.”
If we’re going to understand this story centuries later, we have to remember what we know about wealth (and poverty) in the first century. This was a time of rich and poor and not much in between. There were property owners and peasants. The peasants worked for the owners as farmers or fisher folk or even slaves and barely squeaked by. The owners inherited their wealth in the form of land and land-based businesses or were given it as a political reward or the spoils of war. There were a few folks who worked as managers and were able to improve their financial lot, but for the most part you ended life in the same place you started or maybe a little worse off. There was nothing fair or just or compassionate about the economic system of the times.
It makes sense then that Jesus, who was advocating for everyone being valued and treated fairly, would critique the economic system of his day. In fact, Jesus talks more about money that almost anything else. Most of the point is that the rich exploit others for their own advantage rather than sharing equitably with those who were poor, hungry, widowed, disabled or otherwise able to provide for themselves.
Most of us have been raised in an American mindset that says if you work hard, you’ll get ahead. If you get a good education or take advantage of business opportunities, you can move up in the financial world. The reverse of that is that if you’re poor it’s a sign of being lazy or unwilling to try harder. In this part of the country where many of our families can point to homesteaders who came to claim land and worked incredibly hard to turn prairie into a productive farm, or we can talk about ancestors who started businesses or were the first to go to college and get a job as a teacher or manager, this American myth holds true. We are the ones who have worked hard and been able to provide for our families.
In recent years we’ve become more aware that this story doesn’t hold true for many of the people in our country and certainly not for those in developing countries. It’s simply not true that every person has an equal chance to succeed. Not everyone gets a good education simply by going to the neighborhood school. Which neighborhood you live in makes a difference. Not everyone has access to a good job even if they are willing to work very hard. Yesterday I was listening to a review of the book Nickled and Dimed which decades ago chronicled how hard it was to make a living if you started out poor. If the job you can get is cleaning houses or stocking shelves at Walmart or changing oil in cars, you can work even harder than many people and still not make enough to support yourself and your family. During the pandemic we heard often that the people most exposed to Covid dangers were the ones who worked the hardest and made the least income. It’s an important reminder that in our time as well as in Jesus’ time economic inequity is real.
Maybe people loved this story from Jesus because he advocated sticking it to the man in charge with the big bucks. It’s not right that some few folks are rich and the others are vulnerable and hungry. If you can do a little something to change that, go for it. Certainly the first followers of Jesus formed communities where those who had wealth shared it and those without were cared for. When we read The Didache we learned that the community planned ways to help people learn skills and find work so that they could support themselves and contribute to the community. Our president keeps reminding us that work and dignity are closely related and that it's good for government to help people prepare for and find good jobs. That’s a first century theme that still works today.
Mainline Christianity in our time is a middle class endeavor. We think about faith and money from that mindset that’s ingrained within us. It’s important for us to hear this story Jesus told from the mindset of poor folk, because that’s who first heard it. It’s important for us to hear this call for equity of opportunity and of wealth, and Jesus implies that the God-message of worth for everyone is more important of the wealth message of get as much as you can. In our time we’re being challenged to think about what our responsibility is to all people – to everyone who can get an education, learn skills, find work. To everyone who deserves to eat and be housed and have access to health care regardless of their ability to work. To everyone who contributes to the good of our whole society in many different ways – and sometimes just by living among us.
People of faith have something to say about economics and human dignity. It’s not a simple message today just like this story wasn’t a simple message two thousand years ago. But it’s up to us to have the conversation about wealth and to seriously advocate for equity. There’s a lot that needs to be improved and we need to be part of that improvement. We begin by believing that God cares about everyone, and we care more about God than about our personal comfort or amassing assets. It’s a beginning place. Let’s see where we go from here.