The Parable of the Dishonest Manager – On not rehabilitating Jesus

Image credit: Притча_о_неверном_управителе._Картина_XXI_века:
Parable of the Unjust Steward. 2012. Canvas, oil. 80 x 70, by A.N. Mironov

Proper 20 (25), Year C
21 September 2025

Jeremiah 8:18-9:1
Psalm 79:1-9
1 Timothy 2:1-7
Luke 16:1-8

Saturday morning a week ago I was in Abbotsford to share a few words at the funeral of my friend Gerhard. I have known Gerhard since 2002. It was in the spring of 2002 that Gerhard had phoned me in Winnipeg to inquire whether I may be interested in moving to Peace Lutheran in Abbotsford. While I referred Gerhard to the bishop, his call was balm for my then wounded soul.
I began at Peace Lutheran in October of 2002 and Gerhard and I came to know each other well. I rode my bicycle a lot more during those days, some Sundays I would run to church and catch a ride home with my family. On one of those days Gerhard said to me that if all of us rode our bicycles like I did, we would not have to worry about climate change.
At his funeral his son said in the eulogy that his dad was born on a small farm in Poland where he had spent his childhood, and while he had lived in Canada for many decades, a large part of him had remained on the farm in rural Poland.
Remaining connected to the life on a small farm even while having moved half-way across the globe and having lived in cities for decades allowed Gerhard to see the life of industrial societies as unsustainable. That is what he was saying. He knew that riding our bicycles alone would not change things, for we are all part of an economy that is at odds with creation.

Wendell Berry, in an essay entitled Two Economies,¹ writes of a conversation with his friend Wes Jackson, who said that the kind of economy we need is the Kingdom of God. Berry elaborates, “For the thing that troubles us about the industrial economy is exactly that it is not comprehensive enough, that, moreover, it tends to destroy what it does not comprehend, and that it is dependent upon much that it does not comprehend.”
Elsewhere Berry has summed this up in this way, “Whether our politicians know it or not, Nature is party to all our deals and decisions, and she has more votes, a longer memory, and a sterner sense of justice than we do.”²
Later in the essay, Berry references William Blake and says that Blake saw a fundamental shift in the relation of humankind to the rest of creation and that in the 18^th century the dominant minds had begun to see the human race no longer as a part or a member of Creation, but as outside of it and opposed to it. And while the industrial revolution was only a part of this change, it is true that, when the wheels of the industrial revolution began to revolve, they turned against nature, which became the name for all of Creation thought to be below humanity.

The evangelist Luke has a particular interest in the economy. Mary praises God as the One who has brought down the powerful and who has lifted up the lowly, who has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty. When Jesus first speaks at the synagogue in his hometown, he quotes Isaiah 61 and proclaims the forgiveness of debts, the year of Jubilee. In the Book of Acts, which is also authored by Luke, the disciples sell their possessions and have all things in common. In the Sermon on the Plain, Jesus calls blessed the poor (not the poor in spirit) and speaks woe against the rich. The Lord’s Prayer speaks of the forgiveness of debts (for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us), and the parable before us is part of a series of parables that all connect to the village economy: The Lost Coin, the Lost Sheep, The Prodigal Son, to be followed by the parable of Rich Man and Poor Lazarus. Without question, the parable of The Unjust Steward also deals with economic matters. As we consider the parable, we do well to remember that the name of the parable is not part of the biblical text, and that to properly understand the parable we must put aside the bias expressed by it, and to notice that the protagonist who is praised by both his master and by Jesus. The question before is then is not how to rehabilitate Jesus by exposing the accounting tricks of the manager, but by seeking to learn why Jesus wants us to learn from him.

We already know that the scoundrel or the crook is the hero of the story. And if we happen to believe that following Jesus is primarily about being the kind of person that plays by the rules, then this story is deeply troubling, although we should not be surprised because the Lord we follow does not play by the rules either.

And yet, no matter how straight laced we are, we know that there are businesses that serve the common good and businesses that do not. The whole talk about the 1% is not made up but based on economic data. A year ago Oxfam International explained that the world’s top 1% own more wealth than 95% of the rest of humanity.³ Money means control, and thus such concentration of wealth is not only a misdistribution of wealth that leaves many poor, but it also undermines democracy, something that is unfolding as we speak. Oligarchy means the rule of a few, democracy is rule by the people.

Wealth concentration is not something new, though perhaps it has never been this extreme. Our story describes a stratified world of rich and poor with a volatile managerial class between the two. The manager may well have been dishonest and the story does not suggest anything other than that it would have been to his personal gain. I assume that he gamed the system of which he was a part. When confronted by the rich man, his master, he does not defend himself as most people would, even when such defenses may be futile.

Realizing that he is history and surveying his options, he opts not for a different career but for a different economic model. On his way to collect and return the books he meets with his master’s debtors who owe staggering amounts of agricultural produce. They do not know that he no longer has authority over his master’s estate and he forgives each the equivalent of a subsistence farmer’s yearly wages. He does this not to harm his master but to build social capital in the community, social capital that cannot exist in a world of extreme wealth concentration.

The manager opts against economic practices, which while legal, create wealth for a few and poverty for many. Instead, he opts for an economic model of kinship, of friendship, and neighbourliness.
Writes one commentator, the manager “has decided to defect from his patron’s world in which all social relations are cannibalized in service of accumulating wealth for the elite.” His strategy remembers the older, village-based ethos of generalized reciprocity, mutual aid, and hospitality.⁴
In the process of his defection the manager has created esteem for his master the master has never known.

It surprised us but it should not surprise us that the God who settles our debts by forgiving us, who welcomes home the Prodigal, who rejoices in finding the lost, would rejoice in the extravagant forgiveness of the manager and his defection to a healthier and more sustainable economic model, because this is who God is.

When elsewhere Jesus says to us, Be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect,” he may have this in mind, though it is not a condition, it is a grace.

May God give us the imagination of the manager who not only sought to save his skin but who began to think outside of the box he was given, so that we work neither against nature nor against each other. And we do this trusting in the God of grace.

Thanks be to God.