Well Done Manager! Luke 16:1-13

Bible Reading : Luke 16:1-13

Topic : Well Done Manger! - The Shrewd Manager Discounted the Debts

Pentecost 20 59C G

Lamentations 1:1-6; Psalm 37:1-9 or Psalm 137; 2 Timothy 1:1-14; Luke 17: 5-10

         How can we be happy? 
         A lesson by the parable of the dishonest manager in the Bible..^^* 
        어떻게 행복할 수 있을까? 
        부정직한 청지기에게서 배우는 교훈..^^*

I believe that today’s reading gives us a clue about how we can be happy. 

Today’s Gospel Reading shows us several numbers. It also gives us information about losing jobs, outstanding debts, accounting documents, and the inter-relationship of people and communities.

I did not study Economics, but I have read some popular books about it. Recently, I have read a book Expulsions-Brutality and Complexity in the Global Economy by Saskia Sassen. Sassen’s book also told me about the same kind of numbers as we already saw it in the reading, and gave some information about global relationships of our society.

There has been a 60 percent increase in the wealth of the top 1 percent globally in the past twenty years; at the top of that 1 percent, the richest “100 billionaires added $240 billion to their wealth in 2012 - enough to end world poverty four times over.” …….

In 2010, still a period of crisis, the profits of the 5.8 million corporations in the United States rose 53 percent over 2009, but despite skyrocketing profits, their United States corporate income tax bills actually shrank by $1.9 billion, or 2.6 percent.

Today’s biblical story and Sassen’s words are giving overlapping information about wealth. As a theological learner I want to talk about social justice by studying the numbers in the biblical text.

Who is the rich man?

Who is the rich man and how much wealth does he have?

We have some limited information about the rich man, but he has a personal manager to manage his farm and company. And also there are several debtors who have to pay him quite a lot of money. One hundred barrels of olive oil, that one debtor had to pay, was worth 1,000 silver denarii, and a thousand sacks of wheat, that the other debtor should pay, was worth 2,500 silver denarii. One denarius was a day's wage for a laborer in biblical times. If we compare this with the minimum wage in New Zealand, it would be NZ$122,000 for the first debtor and NZ$305,000 for the second debtor in today’s money. According to Luke the Gospel writer who recognised the two copper coins in a very poor widow’s hand(Luke 21:2), the amounts the denarii of debts in silver coins are astronomical compared to the two copper coins. As we know, the value of the two copper coins was 1/40^th of a denarius, and it was the widow’s total living cost in her limited circumstance. There was a huge gap between the rich and the poor in Jesus’ day.

We can easily imagine that the rich man is a billionaire who is living in a luxury world far away from his farm and the debtors. The amount of the debts we calculated might not be an important amount of money to him. Most of all in the context, the rich man does not need to keep an intimate relationship with his property manager. For example, he gave notice of termination to his manager just after he heard a complaint about his work. A scholar studied that the complaint was said from another person who might have hostile intent.(Luke 16:1-2) It was quite an easy process to dismiss the manager.

Who are the debtors?

Let us think of the debtors. They might be poor tenant farmers who rent the farm from the rich man. Their debts had increased so much several years. It might be added to the original debts. Those days, the average price of a slave was about 600 denarii. According to the calculation, the tenants including their family members might become slaves of the master because of their unpaid debts.

In fact, we can think that their labour was very hard back in those days. Let us remember the words of the dishonest manager. He said, “What shall I do? I am not strong enough to dig ditches, and I am ashamed to beg.”(Luke 16:3) His complaint explains the normal situation of their society. The manager could become a slave on short notice. Digging and farming were hard labour and begging was too shameful to live by in their culture. For the poor farmers, if they could earn 400 denarii a year in a normal situation, they could not buy enough things necessary for their daily lives.

John Chrysostom, the Archbishop of Constantinople in 4th century, told about the farmers situation like this.

“Could there be more unjust people [than the owners of land who draw their wealth from the earth]? For when we examine how they treat the poor and miserable country people, we reach the conclusion that they are more inhumane than barbarians. On the people who must hunger and suffer all their lives they constantly lay impossible levies, burden them with toilsome duties, and use them like donkeys and mules, and even stones; ……. [They] now stand there with empty hands, still deep in debt, when they then shiver and quake not just from hunger and failure but also from the tormenting of the overseer, from the warrants, the arrests, the calling to account, the foreclosure of the lease, and from the unrelenting demands? Who can enumerate all the things that are done to them, all the advantage that is taken of them? From their work, from their sweat, storage bins and cellars are filled, but they are not allowed to take home even a little bit; rather, [the landowner] hoards the whole harvest in his own chests and throws them a trifling sum as a wage.”  Ekkenhard Stegemann and Wolfgang Stegemann, translated by O.C. Dean Jr. Minreapolis, The Jesus movement - A social history of its first century, Fortress Press, 1999.

What has the manager done for the debtors?

I could read again this dishonest manager’s story in the light of the law in the Bible. The teaching of the Bible gave me a different view on the manager’s actions.

Leviticus taught us not to charge any interest by this statement; “Do not make them pay interest on the money you lend them, and do not make a profit on the food you sell them.(Leviticus 25:37)” In the same way, Jesus taught his disciples too; “If you lend only to those from whom you hope to get it back, why should you receive a blessing? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount! No! Love your enemies and do good to them; lend and expect nothing back.(Luke 6:34-35)” Deuteronomy in the Bible recorded the law of the seventh year; “At the end of every seventh year you are to cancel the debts of those who owe you money.”(Deuteronomy 15:1) In this way, the people of God had to be generous and help the needy around them.

According to these teachings, the manager was not a dishonest person, but did the right things for the debtors. Only in the view of the rich man, he was dishonest, but in the view of the biblical teachings and the poor debtors, he was good. The manager’s actions could not be understood in the view of the modern economic system which is based on a money system of interest or benefit.

In this view, Jesus could praise the dishonest manager, because the manager is no longer bad but a good manager who treated the poor debtors well. I believe that Jesus called him dishonest because most of the wealthy people thought him as dishonest. Jesus might use the title, “dishonest”, to accuse the wealthy people, especially Pharisees(cf. Luke 16:14). This is possible because Jesus clearly praised the manager’s actions as good and wise. In addition, we might remember that Jesus had told to the disciples to be better than the Pharisees when he taught the Beatitudes.(Matthew 5:20)

The manager was living in a village conquered by Roman Empire and where Greek culture invaded. In the Roman or Greek law, the manager can be judged as a dishonest manager. But what a brave and good manger is he in the view of the biblical message.  

Conclusion and Blessings

Jesus confirmed how money can be treated. He said, “No servant can be the slave of two masters. ……. You cannot serve both God and money.”(Luke 16:13)

Today’s text is a well-known biblical story but as one of the most difficult to be understood. However, the message is clearer than any other stories in the Bible. We as the followers of Jesus cannot serve money even though we are living in a culture of modern developed capitalism. Let us keep our love, faith and hope to serve God rather than serve money. Well done, Manager.

May God bless the poor around us to be happy in God’s Kingdom. May God bless us to serve God as well as our neighbours..^^*