Dear Jesus -
When I signed up for this vocation of being a pastor, I have to admit, I did not read the fine print. Or, I mean, I did, but I didn’t ever think I’d actually have to preach on it. I mean, I guess that’s my bad, I should have known what I was signing up for. But, honestly, Jesus, this passage is bonkers. So I feel like maybe an apology from you would be appropriate, even if I did sign at the dotted line before reading all the riders and clauses. This passage makes no sense to me. It’s right up there with Elisha sicking a she-bear on a bunch of boys just because they pointed out his bald head, or that one time God decided that the whole world should be destroyed so God sends a flood and even the innocent animals all die, or that time when God decided to torture Job so that he could win a bet with Satan. This passage may even be worse than that time God told Abraham to commit filicide, or when Lot offers his daughters to a sodomite mob. I mean, maybe not in the particularity of the act, but in the way that it just makes no logical sense whatsoever. In the sense that this isn’t just a one-off oddball situation between a neurotic patriarch, but you’re actually instructing all of us to be like this so called “shrewd” manager.
I have to be honest, Jesus, this isn’t your best work. It doesn’t hold a candle to the lilies of the field or the lost sheep or the prodigal son. Now those parables, they get it done. This one, if you brought it in to my creative writing workshop in grad school, would get ripped to shreds by all the writers in the room. Someone would say, “this text abuses the reader.” Another would roll their eyes. Another would rewrite the whole thing using their own words, and then praise it for how amazing it suddenly became. Someone else would try to couch the criticism in a constructive way. They’d say, “It’s really interesting that you’ve inserted so many contradictions in your narrative, but I wonder if the impact is lost on the reader because you haven’t taken its absurdity far enough?” The guy with the handlebar mustache slouching in the back of the room would speak up and say, “You’ve created a world in which the reader should occupy, but you haven’t been completely faithful to that world. You’re not following the rules you’ve set up for yourself.” It’d be worse than that one time I didn’t have a title for my poem, so I turned it in with the title of “untitled,” and somebody used a bright red pen to mark a huge x through the whole thing, and then handed it back to me.
Or maybe, Jesus, you’re going to pass the buck to Luke. Maybe it’s his fault that this is such a confusing and maddening parable. Maybe, when he was writing, he had all these notecards with all your sayings and stories strewn out on the kitchen table, and as he organized them one by one, these were the random notecards left over, so he just piled them on top of each other and inserted them somewhere there was a page break.
I mean, have you heard this story, Jesus?
Let me refresh your memory.
So. Right before this, you’ve just told this amazing story about the prodigal son. He wasted his whole inheritance, he rejects his family, his tradition and his faith on fine wine and cheese and women, and when he runs out of cash and gets hungry for the pigs’ leftovers, he comes to his senses, and walks back to his house. On his way, his dad finds out that he’s coming back, and so he lifts his robes, runs through the muddy fields, and doesn’t even let the kid get a word in edgewise before he’s embraced him and forgiven him and brought him back home in an embarrassment of sentimentality and emotion. Now that one was a good one. Why didn’t you follow that one up with another just like it, you know, to really bring the point home, to really communicate to us in neon lights what God is like — all gracious and forgiving and valuing human life above the almighty dollar. But no. Instead. You follow that pulitzer prize winning parable with this one - where a corrupt manager races to save his butt once his boss finds out that he’s been wasting the landowner’s cash. “Oh crap!” He says, once the rich man calls him out on his shady bookkeeping. “What am I going to do? I have no real skills, I’m worse at manual labor than I am at managing, and there’s no way I’m going to demean myself so low as to go out and beg, how will I survive this?” And being the hustler that he is, he decides that since he’s already burned the bridge with his boss, he might as well go all the way, and you know, really stick it to the man. So, in the hopes that he wins some favor with some folks who might have pity on him - or, at least feel indebted to him - he does some fancy accounting to reduce their debt to the rich man. And just like that, with the stroke of his quill, one guy who owes a hundred jugs of oil now only owes fifty. And another guy who owes a hundred containers of wheat gets his bill slashed down to eighty.
This reminds me, Jesus, of the whole student debt controversy we’re having in the United States, where, with the stroke of a pen, the president has just lopped off thousands of dollars from folks still paying back their college loans, and the rest of us are having an absolute fit about it. Except the rich master doesn’t throw a fit at all. In fact, he commends the manager for his shady dealings. Suddenly, instead of squandering, the manager is now “shrewd.” Ok. Ok. So, in your story, now we’re waiting for some kind of criticism of the master, at least, right? Something about how the master is just as corrupt as the manager, or something about how we’re in late stage capitalism and we need to forgive our debtors just as our debts are forgiven us?
But Jesus. It’s a total rhetorical fail. It makes absolutely no sense. It doesn’t jive at all with anything you’ve been saying in Luke’s first fifteen chapters. Jesus, you do realize, don’t you that you take the side of “the man” in this story? You take the side of all of those who make decisions just like this manager. You praise the children of this age, and then throw some major shade at the children of the light. And then you double down. You tell us all to be like this manager, like those children of this age, like the rich man in the story. You remember, right? You command us to “make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” I mean, have you even seen It’s a Wonderful Life? That’s not the moral of the story at all. Or, if you’ve missed that one, maybe you’ve read A Christmas Carol, where Ebenezer Scrooge learns that it’s not about the accumulation of wealth at all, but the relationships we make along the way? Ok. Maybe those are too post turn of the millennium for you. Have you heard the one about the prophet who walks into the temple and shocks everyone by reading from the scroll of Isaiah and says that he has come to bring good news to the poor, or the time he stood on a mountain and proclaimed that the poor were blessed and said, “Woe to the rich”? Or did you hear the one about the guy who had a huge harvest and didn’t know what to do with his abundance and so he decided to build a bigger barn to store all his stuff, and then God ends his life that night? Or the one about the flowers and the birds who don’t worry about stuff or money or how they’ll be taken care of; they just trust? Or the one where we’re reminded to sell our possessions, give to the poor, and store real, godly treasures in heaven, where they can’t be destroyed? Surely you’ve heard the parable of the rich man and Lazarus, right? Because, spoiler alert, all of these are things you’ve said. These, among others, are stories you’ve told, commandments you’ve given, warnings you’ve made. So, uh, what gives?
You even seem to contradict yourself within our single lectionary reading today. Remember when you said, immediately after this story, — I have it written down right here, — you said, “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?” You said to us, “You cannot serve God and wealth.” You can hear how that’s very different from the moral of the parable you give us, praising this “shrewd manager,” right?
So what the heck are we supposed to do with the contradictory and confounding parable/commandment/criticism sandwich from our lectionary today? How are we supposed to swallow that one when we’ve been chewing on all this righteousness and sacrifice and life-is-more-than-riches-burn-the-whole-system-to-the-ground casserole that you’ve been serving up this whole time?
This passage gives me whiplash. This passage confuses and confounds and makes me want to challenge all those theologians who insist that there is always a “plain reading of the text.” ‘Cause the plain reading of this text seems to contradict everything you’ve taught us, everything you’ve come to unravel, everything you got nailed to the cross and died for. Seriously, go home, Jesus. You’re drunk.
Unless, well, unless you knew those Pharisees were eavesdropping on your conversation. Unless you knew that they were going to take your words and twist them around and make them into something they’re not anyway, so you might as well leave their heads spinning. I know the lectionary cuts off before this detail, but it feels important. It feels significant, somehow. These particular pharisees are guys who are trying to keep one foot in two boats. They’re trying to love God and love wealth. They’re trying to do both, to serve both God and wealth. Is what you’re saying, Jesus, are you saying that we need to just pick one? Are you saying that maybe the rich man and the shrewd manager are actually more righteous than those of us who want to find a way to straddle both sides of the wealth and righteousness divide? Are you criticizing these pharisees because they’re so torn, all the time, between pleasing the system and pleasing God? Because if you are, then that gets real hard for me. It forces me to think about how wealthy I am, about how I am in the top ten percent of the world’s population when it comes to what I’ve got. If that’s what you’re doing here, then it gets even harder. Because then my attempt to give my kids a “good life” and new Nikes and drum lessons and Frappuccinos and money for college, and my anxiety about needing to save for retirement and have health insurance and get a new car suddenly becomes…not so righteous. Suddenly, the shrewd manager and his wealthy boss get to get in line before me, because, if nothing else, they were focused, they were one-minded, they didn’t put on a pretense about giving their lives to you and serving the poor and standing up for justice and then turn around and do the other thing. Are you trying to tell us that we can’t be of two minds, and if we are, then at least the shrewd manager is being honest about his corruption? ‘Cause if you are, then I really don’t know what to do. If you are, then I’ve got more worries on my mind besides a confusing and confounding lectionary passage. If you are, then I’ve got to reevaluate my whole perspective on how I live my life. And, frankly, I’m just not sure I’m ready for that right now, Jesus.
I think I’d rather be confused.
I think I’d rather blame you for your contradictions than wrestle with my own.
But, you know, thanks anyway, Jesus.
Sincerely,
Your lukewarm, often distracted and confused follower,
Jenn
Thanks be to God.
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