11.07 | Shrewd
Luke 16
“I have decided what to do, so that when I am removed from management, people may receive me into their houses.”
Luke 16:4
Trying to work out Jesus’ meaning isn’t always easy.
We’re not alone in this. His disciples also often needed the parables explained. The crowds often didn’t understand them. His own description of the necessity of parables pointed towards an intentional obscurity.1
And yet, with two thousand years of cultural change, and a very different way of looking at truth, it can be even harder.
The ‘truth’ of our age, since the Enlightenment, has focused on that which is factual, that which is linear, or that which is logical. A ‘true’ statement, then, is understood to be one that has a formulaic nature to it. x + y = z. If something is ‘true’ it can be built on facts and logic, order and numbers. This thinking then takes a twist in the movements of postmodernism, where ‘truth’ gets tangled up with individual perspective (and its limitations), creating a mixture, in the contemporary mind, between ‘truth’ as linear fact, and ‘truth’ as a blurry reality that is limited to the standpoint of the individual.
All in all, we’ve got some layers to peel back to get to the intentions of Jesus.
And yet, when we come to parables like today, it’s difficult to get a linear or logical angle on it.
Because this parable, of the dishonest manager, is difficult.
Are we supposed to like this man? Is he an example to follow? He sounds more crafty than righteous, and when we read about his self-serving antics we expect him to get critiqued, rather than commended. This doesn’t seem as clear cut as a parable about a shiny and religious person. Rather, this feels more like a cunning wheeler-dealer figure—streetwise, for sure, but not exactly squeaky clean.
It’s a beautiful example of how Jesus’ parables don’t always work in the linear formulae of the religious.
Because the manager has been doing a bad job.
And yet the manger is commended.
How are we to read this?
One word:
Priorities.
The dishonest manager is commended, not because he did a great job to start with, but because he hurriedly uses the master’s wealth, in his last hours in the job, to invest in a greater kind of resource—in his case, social capital. He knows that he will be out of financial resource quickly, and so invests his priority in building strong relationships with the support base he is soon going to be dependent upon.
And it is this that is the point of his commendation. Because he had his priorities in a good place.
The word the passage uses to commend him (often translated as ‘shrewd’) isn’t an insult or critique. It can be translated as ‘wise.’ It’s the same word used for the ‘wise’ man who built his house on a rock,2 or the ‘wise’ servants who had oil in their lamps.3 Jesus isn’t insulting him. He’s genuinely commending him. He has his priorities in a better place.
As with the man, so with us.
Jesus wants His followers to hear this teaching, to consider the direction in which we use our resource.4 He urges His followers to invest their resource, not in the direction of accumulating lots more stuff (which doesn’t last), but investing into those things that truly do. He is inviting His followers to realign priorities—recognising that people are greater than things and that relationships higher than bank balances and that the eternal is more than the temporary.
Shrewd, for sure. And yet, as we see the outworking of his priorities, we join with Jesus in seeing in his imperfect model, a step further into the ways of the wise.
Reflect:
How am I using my resources right now? What might it look like to learn something from the shrewd manager?
Pray:
Lord Jesus,
Too often my lived direction,
If I’m really honest,
Is me.
My comfort; my career; my stuff; my ego.
I have all this fear that
I may not have enough,
And that,
Without self-preservation,
I will suffer.
But Father,
This shrewd manager challenges me—
He challenges me to shift my priorities;
To prioritise connection more greatly than accumulation,
And relationships more greatly than my resumé,
And the eternal more greatly than all that is passing.
And so, Lord,
Would you help me to reorient my choices,
As you reorient this heart,
That I may live from the values of your Kingdom,
As I align my choices towards my eternal home.
In Your Name,
Lord Jesus,
Amen
Old Testament:
For those also reading the Old Testament this year, your additional readings are here:
Isaiah 55-57 | Psalm 85
Matthew 13:10-17
Matthew 7:24
Matthew 25:4
He uses an Aramaic word—mamōnas (or ‘mammon’)—to describe this ‘unrighteous wealth.’ Mamōnas, as a Jewish idea, described money or stuff, but specifically money or stuff that had taken hold of your heart.