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Hearing it again this morning, I think, oh, goodness. This is the text we have for today. Did you hear that part when, I think it was Emma reading, when she said, Make friends for yourselves by the means of dishonest wealth, so that then people may welcome you into their homes. I don't know.

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Y'all, whenever I have told someone that my chapel sermon text this morning is the parable of the dishonest manager, the response has been something like, Oh man, I'm glad it's not me. Or, Are you sure you can't pick another text? Did you want to try the Amos passage from the lectionary instead? Or my personal favorite was when I shared with Dr.

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Jensen over the phone what my passage was to be. And he just laughed, his signature Dave Jensen laugh, and said, oh geez, this parable confounds me. I hope I'm not alone. My study into historical and theological commentaries on this text reveal that scholars and theologians, pastors, and Christians like us have been confounded by this passage for centuries.

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I read more contradictory interpretations on this particular passage than on most others that I have preached on. What theologians and commentators can agree on This parable is enigmatic and complex. Mary Hinkle Shore says it this way, If parables are meant to disorient, this one certainly does its job well.

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When disoriented in scripture, as in travel, and if you know me, that happens to me a lot because I am terrible at directions, landmarks help familiar ground things we have seen before so let's see what we can find as I work to orient myself inside of this parable I notice that Jesus in Luke's voice gives us a few familiar landmarks or as video gamers might call them Easter eggs did you notice any The first, he squandered his property. We've heard that phrase before.

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Unfortunately, JD did not get to preach on this particular text, the prodigal son, last week, but it was right after the lost coin and the lost sheep. When we back up to Luke 15, we find this very same phrase. used for the son who squandered the father's property the next Easter egg that I notice is the internal dialogue of the manager himself the manager says this what will I do now now that my master takes this position away from me I'm not strong enough to dig I am ashamed to beg.

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I have decided what to do so that when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes. When we look back at the parable of the prodigal son, we remember the son who squandered his property in reckless living has this internal dialogue. How many of my father's hired hands have bread enough and to spare.

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But here I am dying of hunger. I know what I'll do. I'll get up and go to my father, and I will say to my father, Father, I have sinned against heaven and against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son.

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Treat me like one of your hired hands. Did you notice? In both of these internal dialogues, the dishonest manager and the prodigal son both focus on needing a change. A change in the nature of their relationships in order to secure welcome.

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The son decides. He decides that in order for his father to welcome him back to his home, he's going to tell him, I'll give up all of my access, all of my privilege of being your son. If only I can come home. If only you'll welcome me back.

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The dishonest manager decides that what he is going to do is reduce the debt load of his clients. in order to ensure his welcome into their homes after the rich man fires him from his position of being the manager. I find it interesting that only one needs to follow through with their thought-through plan. The other

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He finds himself immediately welcomed home without even making mention of the sins that he has committed. With these landmarks in mind, let's see what else could orient us in this disorienting parable. Who is this dishonest manager? Who is the rich man?

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Who would Jesus's original hearers know them to be? Yes, it's tempting to allegorize. It's tempting to use the stereotypical children's sermons answers. You know, who is this?

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It's God. It's Jesus. No matter what the question was. But this parable's complexity does not allow for easy stand-ins.

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Let's start with the rich man. There's our first clue. Maybe you remember in Dean Aimer's sermon two weeks ago, she focused on the man, remember? The man in Roman society.

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Here he shows up again. Wealthy enough to have debtors who owe him hundreds of gallons of olive oil. hundreds of bushels of wheat. These estates are not merely family farms.

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They are enormous. The rich man who has a manager, a manager whose livelihood is completely dependent on this position, completely dependent on the rich man. Without this work, the only options the manager can come up with are digging and begging. While Jesus does not outright name it as such, we could infer that this particular setup participated in the oppressive and manipulative system of wealth and land owning in Roman society.

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Were the already wealthy become even wealthier on the backs of those who found themselves dependent on their masters for livelihood. I also noticed this. The rich man, the rich landowner, he doesn't even call a meeting with the manager to see what's happening.

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He doesn't even take the time to check the accounts himself before firing this manager? No, he simply takes the word circling around, inferring that he has such incredible power as to alter someone's life with the flick of a pen, the declaration of a sentence. What about the manager?

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Also a he, Although not the man in Roman society, he works for the man. For some reason, when I see the manager in my head, I don't know if you all do this where you cast scripture, but I keep envisioning the sheriff of Nottingham from Disney's Robin Hood. Do you know who I'm talking about?

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He's really overweight and he has a really large belly and he's always got his money right here jingling in his purse. He's always, he's a shady looking wolf. And he's always patting his rotund stomach as he takes money for Prince John from everyone, even from that poor little bunny whose mother had scrimped and saved to give him a few coins on his birthday. For some reason, that's who always is in my head when I hear this parable of the manager, the enforcer for a rich man's money.

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Word on the street is the shady-looking manager is actually shady. He's been misappropriating funds, maybe using some for himself, but now the boss man knows. And he's caught. He's desperate.

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The urgency is palpable. We can hear it when he says, I'm not strong enough to dig. I'm too ashamed to beg. What am I going to do?

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Without this job, I'm cooked. You can think of far too many people. Perhaps even ones that are known and loved to us who find themselves in precarious situations like these. Unable to imagine another future.

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Unable to imagine how they and their loved ones might survive when a job is lost. Desperation. What to do? What to do, he thinks.

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This is the hinge for me. This is that place in the parable where I find myself being oriented anew. Here's what the manager does. He goes one by one to each of the debtors.

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We only hear of two, but we can imagine that there are multiple. He reduces each of their debts. And this curry's favor for him, doesn't it? Now they're going to think of him not as the trickster manager with his rotund belly just coming for a few pennies, but as the one who reduced what they owed.

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We could let him stay here a few nights, couldn't we, honey? Remember when he turned our 100 jugs of olive oil debt back into 50? Come on in. Stay a while.

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And at first glance, this seems completely self-serving, even shrewd. Let's return to the man for a minute. The system that that man represents. A system founded on debt that become more and more and more burdensome to those who owe them, with egregious interest rates,

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Skyrocketing costs. And the man just gets wealthier and wealthier at every turn. Seems like he's never thinking, what could I do to reduce their burdens? But rather, where else could I make a quick buck, keep hold of this power?

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In this system, what the manager does is disruptive. maybe even subversive. The manager goes to everyone whose debts he knows are large and makes their burdens lighter. He interrupts this system of growing and growing wealth disparity with mercy.

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We don't know for sure. The commentators that I read all argued about this particular thing. If the amount that he's reducing it by. Is the amount of interest.

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Who knows? And the man. Praises the manager. Because of his shrewdness.

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Because he's so clever. Think about it. The man not only just earned goodwill, excuse me, the man just earned goodwill without having to lift a finger. Now those who owe money and olive oil and wheat to him think of him as a kind master, a kind landlord for reducing their debt.

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Meanwhile, he can think of his next get-rich scheme while they're thinking, oh, How gracious the man is. He's thinking, what's my next take? As I was preparing for this sermon, I was struck by the words of theologian Carolyn Mackey.

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She holds a blog called Women in Theology. And her words reoriented me. Here's what she says. It's striking to me that it's within this context of this wealth disparity that's growing that the shrewd manager enacts liberation for others by reducing their debt load.

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And then Jesus follows up this parable by saying, if you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust you with the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? She goes on to say, it seems to me that Jesus is saying the shrewd manager was faithful with what belonged to another. But what if that other was not the rich man?

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at all? What if the other whose funds the manager was faithful with were those who owed the rich man money, those who had been oppressed in the process of another building wealth? She goes on to say, particularly to white people like me, One way or another, what we have has been gained on the backs of others.

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Indigenous peoples whose lands our ancestors took. Black enslaved people who our ancestors bought or sold or benefited from. The cheap goods that we obtain at the expense of poorly paid factory workers half a world away. We live with dishonest wealth.

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with what belongs to another. What would it look like to be faithful with that? A local Presbyterian congregation made the news back in 2020, maybe you remember it if you were here, because of their incredible debt reduction for others. Through a partnership with RIP Medical Debt,

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A donation from this congregation of $100,000 ended up forgiving $16 million of crippling medical debt for Central Texans. As their mission director stated, this money helps the poorest of the poor in our community. These are folks who have to make decisions whether to pay for their medical bills, or pay their rent.

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Medical debt can haunt people for years. To be able to abolish that debt points directly to the call of Christ to love our neighbor. I also think it's shrewd. It's strategic.

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It interrupts a system that simply makes the wealthier get wealthy at the expense of the poor. It's a countercultural move against empire. Empire that seeks to oppress and harm and keep the man, the man meanwhile, oppressing, harming, dehumanizing others. Being shrewdly generous with our lives,

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includes thinking about how to bring liberation, not oppression, with our choices, our pocketbooks, our voices, our prayers, our actions. The parable reminds us that this call is urgent and that our neighbor's need is great. Jesus just had to have a word after this already disorienting parable and he says 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 it's when they're when it's gone they may welcome you into eternal homes whoever is faithful in very little is also faithful in very much Whoever is dishonest in little is dishonest in much.

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If then you have not been faithful with 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. A slave will either hate the one and

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love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other, you cannot serve God and wealth. It's urgent, disorienting for sure, and maybe reorienting us to the kingdom life that God desires and promises. One where proper relationship with God and others is always prioritized over wealth and its accumulation, over oppression and dehumanization, even in the face of sacrifice or risk to self. The former pastor of First Press Georgetown, Bobby Holm Lippert, coined these words,

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as he concluded a sermon on this text, and I could not figure out a better way to say them myself. So I'll close with Bobby's words. We worship a shrewd savior. The question then is this.

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If we know our savior to be shrewd, we know his power is made known in humility. We know his forgiveness is stronger than vengeance. We know Jesus's vulnerable love is stronger than sin, evil, and even death itself. And we know Jesus promises never to leave or to forsake us.

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So if we can bank on all of this, what step of faith can we risk? Would that the children of this age take note of some of these steps and have to admit, he says, shrewd people, those Jesus followers, they really do put their well-being, their future, even their life together on the line for the sake of love. May it be said of us, church.