“LET’S NOT DISMISS THE DISHONEST STEWARD”
LUKE 16:1-13
16:1 Jesus told his disciples: "There
was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions.
2 So he called him in and asked him,
'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'
3 "The manager said to himself, 'What
shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg--
4 I know what I'll do so that, when
I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'
5 "So he called in each one of his
master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'
6 "'Eight hundred gallons of olive
oil,' he replied. "The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.'
7 "Then he asked the second, 'And
how much do you owe?' "'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he replied. "He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.'
8 "The master commended the dishonest
manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are
the people of the light.
9 I tell you, use worldly wealth to
gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.
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.
11 So if you have not been trustworthy
in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?
12 And if you have not been trustworthy
with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own?
13 "No servant can serve two masters.
Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both
God and Money."
There are some things…..I
may not know and more many people that includes the Parable of the Dishonest Steward.
This is one of those parables that leaves you scratching your head a little.
It’s a parable that can leave you feeling a little baffled and befuddled. Millie Pearl used to tell a story that
describes the way this parable can leave you feeling. It seems there were these
two old hillbillies who lived all their lives up in the mountains of Tennessee. One
day they came down to the town at the foot of their mountain to buy some provisions.
While they were walking down the street they saw a priest with his arm in a sling.
One of the hillbillies hollered, “Hey preacher, what happened to your arm?” “Oh,” the priest
said. “I slipped and fell in my bathtub.” The hillbillies nodded
their heads and went on their way. A little ways down the road the first hillbilly
turned to the other one and said, “By the way, what is a bathtub anyway?”
The other hillbilly shrugged his shoulders. “How should I know,”
he said. “I ain’t Catholic.”
The Parable of the Dishonest
Steward can leave you feeling a little baffled and befuddled. After all it looks
like Jesus is telling us it’s okay to be dishonest. It’s okay to
be a little devious. It’s okay to deceive someone. The parable is a difficult one to decipher, but it would be a mistake to dismiss the Parable of the Dishonest
Steward. That’s because there is some valuable wisdom here. It’s wisdom that you can use to tackle the problems that you face in life. So, let’s go back and take another look at what the dishonest steward did.
Now there are a couple of
things that you need to know if you want to understand the Parable of the Dishonest Steward.
First of all, when you need to understand how people did business back then.
Back then when you made a loan it was common to charge the person interest that ranged between 100% and 150%. The other thing that you need to know is how God felt about that kind of interest.
In God’s eyes that kind of excessive interest was sinful. In fact there
are several commandments in the Old Testament that forbid that kind of excessive
interest. (Exodus 22:25, Leviticus 25:36, Psalm 15:5) That may be why the parable calls the steward dishonest. He
was dishonest because he was helping the rich man get even richer by breaking God’s commandments.
So, the dishonest steward
was told that he was going to be fired. Faced with that harsh reality he sat
down and began to weigh his options. He quickly realized that he wasn’t
strong enough to do manual labor and he was too proud to beg. Things were looking
very bleak for the dishonest steward when he suddenly realized that the way out of his dilemma was to simply do what God wanted
him to do. So, he called all the rich man’s debtors in and slashed their
bills in half. In doing that all the dishonest steward was doing was getting
rid of all the sinful interest. The dishonest steward did what God wanted him
to do and everyone ended up happy. The rich man’s debtors were happy because
they didn’t have to pay all of that excessive interest. The dishonest steward
was happy because now he had some friends who could help him when he needed that new job. Even the rich man had to commend
the dishonest steward for being so shrewd. I mean what was the rich man going
to do? Have the dishonest steward arrested for doing what God wanted him to do? For following God’s commandments?
The dishonest
steward discovered that there’s a big different between conventional wisdom and God’s wisdom. Conventional wisdom doesn’t solve problems. God’s
wisdom solves problems.
For example,
what do you do when someone does some thing that makes you angry? Convention
wisdom says you get even. Conventional wisdom says you give the person a taste
of his or her own medicine. God’s wisdom, on the other hand, says you forgive
the person. God’s wisdom says you sit down and have a heart to heart talk
with the person. God’s wisdom says you embrace the person with kindness
and compassion.
That’s what an elderly
man did one day when some teenagers started to hang out in front of his house.
Unfortunately, the teenagers were noisy and a little unruly. Instead of getting
into a fight with them though the elderly man decided on another course of action. He
walked up to the teenagers and mentioned how good it was to have them there. He
told them that it helped break up the monotony and the loneliness of the day. In
fact, the elderly man told them that he would be willing to give them $5 if they would come and visit him every day. The teenagers thought that was a great idea.
So, for the next two weeks they came every afternoon to hang out in front of the elderly man’s house. They played their boom box, ate junk food and laughed and had a great time.
Then one day the elderly man told the teenagers that because he was on a fixed income he would only be able to pay
them $1 a day from now on. The teenagers were indignant. “No way,” they said. “We’re not going
to waste our time hanging around you every day for a measly $1.” So, they
quickly gathered up their boom box along with the rest of their things. Suddenly
the elderly man found himself standing there all alone surrounded once again with nothing but peace and quiet.
When
you’re faced with a problem don’t do what conventional wisdom tells you do. Do what God’s wisdom tells you
to do. Here’s another great example for you. It’s a bit of God’s wisdom that might be of value the next time you find yourself working your
way through a pile of bills.
In his book Maverick Ricardo Semler shares a lesson that he learned at one of his company meeting many years ago. Ricardo Semler is a Brazilian businessman who has a reputation for being a little
unorthodox when it comes to running his business. For the past 25 years Ricardo
Semler has let his employees set their own hours and wages and even choose their bosses are going to be. The result has been increased productivity, long-term loyalty and phenomenal growth for his company. In his book he talks about a company meeting where there was a request to spend $50,000
for new filing cabinets. The request came from several different department that
desperately needed the filing cabinets. Instead of approving the $50,000 though
they decided to hold the First Biannual Semco File Inspection and Clean-out Day. The
plan was simple. Everyone was instructed to look inside every file folder in
every cabinet and purge every nonessential piece of paper. Ricardo Semler discovered
that he was one of the company’s biggest file hogs. He already had four
large filing cabinets with a request for two more. After he cleaned everything out he discovered that he only needed one filing cabinet. Everyone else discovered the same thing. By the time they
were finished the company actually auctioned off dozens of unneeded filing cabinets.
Conventional wisdom says
I need to make more money so I can pay my bills. God’s wisdom says maybe
I’d be a lot happier if I had less things in my life. Yes, there’s
a big different between conventional wisdom and God’s wisdom. The dishonest steward learned that problems get solved
when you use God’s wisdom.
Here’s
one last example for you. I think you’ll all agree that there’s a
lot of negativity out there these days. People are always complaining and criticizing
each other. Conventional wisdom says you do that so you can get ahead. After all the most important thing is to look out for #1. God’s wisdom, on the other hand, says that
instead of knocking each other down you do what you can to build each other up. Instead
of accentuating the negative you accentuate the positive. That’s what the
Rev. Jesse Jackson’s sixth grade teacher did. In an article that appeared
many years ago in the New Yorker magazine he remembered the first day of school with his sixth grade teacher. Her name was Miz Shelton. On that first day of school Rev.
Jackson remembered that “she began writing these long words on the blackboard we couldn’t understand, never even
heard of before. We all looked around and started whispering to each other, ‘She’s
got the wrong class. She thinks we’re the eighth-grade class.’ Finally someone called out, ‘Miz Shelton?
Those are eighth grade-words. We’re only the sixth grade here.’ Miz Shelton turned around and said very sternly, ‘I know what grade you
are. I work here. And you’ll
learn every one of these words, and a lot more like them, before this year is over.
I will not teach down to you. One of you…just might be mayor or
governor, or even president, some day, and I’m gonna make sure you’ll be ready.’”
It doesn’t matter what
the problem is that you’re facing. It could be a neighbor who’s got you a little out of sorts. It could be a lot of stress that comes from too much to do and too little time to do it. It could be a marital problem or a money problem. Whatever
it is, just remember that amazing things happen when you stop using conventional wisdom and start using God’s wisdom
to solve your problems. It worked for the dishonest steward and it can work for
you too. Amen.
Rev. Dr. Richard A. Hughes
September 23,
2007
