“The Criminal Christ”
Luke 16:1-8
First
Presbyterian
The Reverend
Thomas A. Sweet
September 19,
2010
Most
of the Bible commentators I have read across the years call the parable we have
read today the hardest one in scripture to understand.
Several of you this week have told me of your attempts to make sense of
it and you concur with those interpreters. I,
too, agree it is a very difficult parable – not only because it is a challenge
to comprehend, which it is – but because of the message it yields when we do
understand it.
First,
a little reminder about the role of parables because they occupy such a central
place in the teaching of Jesus. The
proper way to receive a parable is not to ask “What does it mean?” but, in
the words of my grandfather, “What in the Sam Hill is going on here?”
because most of Jesus’ parables fly in the face of convention and the usual
way of things. They often involve a
surprising twist of some sort or a reversal of some kind or other.
We also do not ask “What is the point of the parable?” so much as
“How is it inviting us to experience the
The
parable today begins with an anonymous whistleblower reporting to a wealthy
businessman that the manager he had hired to run his business has been reckless
in his stewardship of it. The word
that Jesus uses here is exactly the word he chose in the preceding parable to
tell of the prodigal son squandering the inheritance he had received from his
father. The prodigal wasted his
father’s inheritance in ruinous living and the manager in our current parable
was careless with the owner’s assets. I
take that as an indication that Jesus (and Luke) mean for us to find some
continuity between the parable of the prodigal son and our parable today.
The
business owner tells the manager that he is going to have to let him go.
He schedules a time to go over the books with the manager and then
he’ll give him his final paycheck. Do
you see here another similarity to the previous parable? The
prodigal finds himself all but dead in a place far from home and here the
manager finds himself facing a kind of death, too, as his means to the good life
to which he had become accustomed are coming to an end.
As
the manager thought about his future prospects, he judged himself to be too weak
and ill-suited to do manual labor and he was too proud to beg.
So he concocted a plan. He
knew he was going to need some favors when he was out of work, some largesse and
generosity, some hospitality, some friends who would look upon him kindly.
So one by one he called in the people who were in debt to his boss and
explained the situation and said, “You’re behind in your payments.
It’s made me look bad and irresponsible if not criminal.
He’s losing a lot of money. So
let’s do a deal. I can cook the
books a bit but we have to do it now.” So
he worked a deal with everyone who owed the businessman. To
one debtor, he said, “Take your bill and where you owed a hundred jugs of
olive oil, now mark it fifty.” To
another he said, “You owed a hundred containers of wheat but I’ll settle
with you on eighty.”
There
was no guarantee the plan would work. If
the business owner had any idea of what each of the debtors owed, he could be
furious at the manager for discounting his profit margin, sometimes by half.
But that risk was offset in the manager’s mind by the hope that the
debtors would be so grateful for the markdowns that they would look out for him
after he lost his job. On the other
hand, it is possible that the businessman would be ecstatic to get even half of
what he was owed as the debtors’ payments were long overdue and it looked like
he could be out all of it. And the
debtors could turn resentful that the manager was putting the squeeze on them,
even at reduced rates, in order to try to save something of his own skin.
As
it turns out, not only did the manager end up not being fired but the
businessman ends up praising him for his ingenuity.
So,
as I sort through the parable, I can see the manager as a Christ figure, a sort
of stand in for Jesus himself. How?
Well, first of all, the manager is dead.
Not literally, but, he was put on notice of termination and life as he
had known it would end. No more
cushy job to support a comfy life. But
he rises from the dead by means of forgiving portions of the debtors’ debts.
And, in his rising, the manager also raises others, as Jesus in his
resurrection does. He raises the
debtors out of their debt and they get a new lease on their lives.
And he raises his boss out of the prison house of business-as-usual and
arms-length respectability into a greater spaciousness of being that softens his
heart and helps him to see his debtors as his brothers and sisters, a much
larger life.
(I
had a similar thing happen to me this week when I mentioned at our Aging &
Saging gathering on Thursday about the audacity I found in one of our neighbors
who came week after week to our summer hot dogs nights on the piazza and seemed
to take advantage of our hospitality by asking for ten or twelve or sixteen hot
dogs to carry out which, I said ungenerously, he was probably taking home to
save for future meals. Dave Anderson
then had the temerity to point out to me that I am undoubtedly a saver, too,
only being of more fortunate circumstance I save money to provide for my future
meals and needs, a luxury the neighbor in question doesn’t have.)
Finally,
the manager who played fast and loose with his boss’s money is a Christ figure
because he is, in a manner of speaking, a “crook,” like Jesus.
The criminal Christ. The
“crimes” that Jesus commits are crimes against the good order of both
religion and respectability, but they serve the interests and cares of God’s
kingdom.
Today’s
parable says in story form what Jesus himself said with his life.
He was not respectable in the eyes of religious authorities or religious
decorum. He healed on the Sabbath,
he consorted constantly with sinners and outcasts, and he died a criminal’s
death on a cross between two thieves.
The
thing is, the church almost always wants to make Jesus and the gospel
respectable. One of my favorite
theologians, Robert Farrar Capon, writes that the church hardly can resist the
temptation to gussy Jesus up and make him a respectable citizen.
“Even more,” he says, “it can hardly ever resist the temptation to
gussy itself up into a bunch of supposedly perfect peaches, too good for the
riffraff to sink their teeth into.” Thus,
good order is preserved.
The
problem with respectability is that it betrays our lack of trust in God.
Respectability comes from tight management, keeping things under control,
pressing for conformity. It is risk
averse. There is a rigidity to
respectability that makes little opening for grace, or God.
Respectability regards well only life, success, and winning whereas grace
only works by death and losing.
But
it is hard for most of us to trust grace – which is of God – and that is why
we work so hard at preserving our respectability.
The problem with doing that is threefold: it keeps at bay those around us
who cannot quite manage respectability themselves; it values prudence over risk
when sometimes risk is the more faithful road to take; and it does not touch
those places deep in us that are in need of grace because we work so hard at
maintaining our respectable façade. I
know people who are rotting on the inside – broken, desolate, desperate for
life – but they are afraid to acknowledge it, sometimes even to themselves.
And thus the amazing grace of God available in our dead ends and at our
wits ends, the saving grace of God bestowed liberally on us in the midst of our
failings, faults, and foibles, remains elusive as long as we play charades.
Respectability
built on the sand of our own continual striving offers its own rewards and they
often are substantial – a good reputation, an elevated place in the community,
the praise of others, the sense that we are successful.
But it is wearying, isn’t it, the pretending that all is always well,
the repressing of thoughts and feelings that might dent our respectability but
would enliven us if they were allowed to surface because they speak of our deep
truths and desires?
Our
parable today is a parable of grace that says that God is at least as likely to
show up in our failures, weaknesses, losses, and shadiness as in our successes.
Grace is scandalous in a respectable world.
Need more testimony?
“The
shepherd left the ninety-nine sheep that were safely in the fold and went to
find the one who had strayed.”
“Quickly,
bring out a robe – the best one – and it put it on him; put a ring on his
finger and sandals on his feet. And
get the fatted calf and kill it, and let us eat and celebrate; for this son of
mine was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found!”
“The
Pharisee prayed, ‘God, I thank you that I am not like other people: thieves,
rogues, adulterers, or even like that tax collector over there.
I fast twice a week and I give a tenth of all my income.’
Meanwhile, the tax collector would not even look up to heaven, but was
beating his breast and praying, ‘God, be merciful to me, a sinner.’
I tell you, this latter one went down to his home approved rather than
the other.”
“Those
who seek to save their lives will lose them while those who lose their lives and
respectability for my sake will find life.”
And,
as the song says, “Through many dangers,
toils, and snares, I have already come; ‘Tis grace has brought me safe thus
far, And grace will lead me home.”
Amen.
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