Thank You For Your Dishonesty

Luke 16:1-13

One of the lessons I see many of today's youth learn is that friends won't always be your friends. I have been a witness to several incidents in which one friend turns against another, hurting deeply their now ex-friend's feelings.

It's not an easy thing to watch as some of these friendships were believed to be solid and unshakable. There have been times, however, when I've seen how the friend who is soon to be hung out to dry realize it's coming, and begin to make new friends. In those cases, what I've seen is that the new friends are almost always better.

It's an interesting dynamic which not only exists in high school, but in many other areas of our lives. Somehow we can see when something bad is coming towards us and we begin to think how we're going to rise above it.

Today's parable is a tricky one. It's placement in Luke is part of a series of stories in which Jesus is talking to a growing crowd of tax collectors, scribes, and Pharisees. The story is told in a way as to have us thinking the manager is being rewarded for cheating his master. And to tell you the truth, he kind of is being rewarded for that, but not for the reasons one might think.

The key phrase as I see it comes in verse 9, "And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes."  That verse says to me that eventually all of your riches will be gone and what lasts forever are relationships grounded in love.

Yes, the manager cheats his master out of quite a bit of what is owed to him, but in the process the manager wins the approval of those who owe those things. In what seems to be a desperate act for survival the manager finds a way to ensure his future is, at the least, comfortable. In making that decision, the manager becomes willing to let go of what is already being taken away, and move towards that which may be unknown but welcomed.

In other words, the manager is letting go of the things which have been in control of his life to begin living his life free of those same things. Yes, he's doing it in a dishonest way, but who is he being dishonest to? And in the cheating, how much is he really hurting his master?

This parable has, and most likely always will have, more questions than answers. As I'm learning more and more on my journey it's not the answers that are important. The questions really are what the journey is about. So, that being said I'm going to stop here and leave you with one final question...

Is Jesus commending the manager for being a cheat, or is Jesus commending the actions of the manager for being willing to take a chance on cheating for the assurance of a future?