Shrewd
Luke 16:1-13

September 23, 2007


Is there anyone here who has not seen one of the Godfather movies from the 1970’s? The tales of Don Corleone are among the most vivid modern parables of our world, without which The Sopranos would never had made any sense. Scott Hoezee of Calvin Theological Seminary remembers an infamous scenario just in time for our parable.

In Godfather II the flashback is to the origins of the Corleone crime family, to Michael Corleone’s father Vito and his rise to power.

Vito and two friends had begun to do well for themselves - so well, in fact, as to attract the attention of the local mafia boss, Don Fanucci, who was known as “the Black Hand.” Don Fanucci approaches Vito and says, “I hear you and your two friends were recently involved in some shenanigans which netted you $600 each.” The don then demands some protection money, telling Vito that he needs to wet his beak a bit to the tune of $200 from each of the three men. The subtext of this “request” was clear: “Pay up or else!”

Upon hearing of this development, Vito’s friends immediately and fearfully decide to pay up. But Vito has a different idea. He tells his two friends to pay him $50 each. Vito will give the don this money plus his own $50 and Vito will do it in such a way that Fanucci will accept the $150 instead of the $600 he had initially demanded. When his friends ask Vito how he's going to pull this off, Vito tells them “Never mind that, but just remember I did you a favor once.”

Vito then tells his friends to go to Fanucci the next day, tell him they respect him and that through Vito they will pay the don whatever he wants. The next day both men go and tell the don just that. Later Vito meets privately with Don Fanucci paying him only the $100 he had collected from his two friends. When the don demands to know where the other $500 is, Vito smirks and says he needs some time seeing as he was rather short of money at the moment.

Don Fanucci comes to believe that Vito has shaken down his own two friends. Based on what the two other men had told Fanucci earlier, the old don assumes Vito had already received $200 from each friend but is now pocketing most of it even as he courageously winks at the don, who becomes an insider to Vito’s little fake scheme. Surprisingly, the Black Hand turns velvet. He smiles approvingly, openly admiring Vito’s courage. “You’ve done well for yourself,” he says. Accepting the $100 as sufficient, he offers to let Vito work for him, adding if he can do anything for Vito, let him know! Fanucci respected Vito as a fellow wheeler-dealer, a fellow sneak and cheat who knew how to work other people to his own advantage.

I don’t believe I have ever heard Jesus called shrewd. Shrewd is not a Christian adjective, implying a less than fully honest and straightforward way of dealing with people. Yet, this is the word Jesus uses to describe the kind of person one should aim to become. It’s a good thing our Sunday Schoolers have gone off to their classes - this is adult religion, and usually too dangerous for adults.

Leap-frogging the parable of the Prodigal Son, we hear Jesus with a head of steam tell about this rich man whose manager is squandering his money in some fashion. This dishonest manager was taking advantage of being too close to the rich man’s cash flow. The rich man, just like Don Fanucci, has only heard reports of the manager’s improprieties on the grapevine. He is bringing in the accountant and one is usually guilty before proven innocent.

The manager never disputes his record. He knows he really is in deep trouble for he does not know how to make an honest living at manual labour or even be seen begging. So he devises a scheme based upon relationships with people on the lookout for a deal and doing a favour for those same people. Somebody has to be grateful for what I am doing for them. Beware of managers bearing gifts.

What he does seems a little too much free play with his master’s money and debts, but there has been a wealth of suggestions, particularly that he simply did without his usual sizeable commission added to each bill. 20%, 50%, all have been acknowledged in an unregulated economy among tax collectors and shady middlemen. Remember what I’ve done for you - is that the manager or Don Vito?

Aren’t you smiling just a little bit? Didn’t Don Vito’s little scam warm up some of the cockles of your heart? I know that all these scams are further proof - as if we need any - that they are scum. But let’s face it: the anti-hero has become the hero a lot these days, the likeable scoundrel, a remake of Jacob is the one you admire more. The righteous elder brother is a bore, and there is something ingenuous about him anyway. We like a little sleaze mixed in with our morality.

The master has ears everywhere and he liked it too. He commends the manager, and who knows, maybe he got his job back. The Gospel never seems to be interested in completing the whole story, and that’s always because the whole story is not the point.

OK, now let’s really face it: this is the Church. The concluding observations of Jesus in this parable drive the moralists in our midst crazy. We prefer to render the scripture into a neat moral, “Thou shalt not do bad stuff.” A couple of weeks ago, Jesus gave another example using kings and armies going to war, and now he’s going to tell us that this dishonest dealing is the Gospel? Should we impeach?

These two verses are not to be spoken in the Sunday School! Shrewdness and the ability to know how to use dishonest money is a wonderful trait. Eugene Peterson’s paraphrase changes the direction, “Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens. They are on constant alert, looking for angles, surviving by their wits. I want you to be smart in the same way - but for what is right - using every adversity to stimulate you to creative survival, to concentrate your attention on the bare essentials, so you’ll live, really live, and not complacently just get by on good behavior.”

As much as these parables are all about words, Jesus plays with words to get you and me to think and act in a way we have resisted doing. When all you do is reduce God’s way to moralizing proverbs, then you are trying to control God, reducing God to the way you prefer to live. God does not insist on perfection, in everyone following all the rules.

That’s why these stories are not told all the way through, so that we don’t bogged down in who wins and who loses. This is not Aesop’s Fables - there are no morals to the lesson. The law-abiding citizens are appalled by Jesus’ gluttony and drinking, by his associations with prostitutes and tax-collectors and slimy cheats, by his parables that pass off war and violence and con artistry as the people we have to listen to. We don’t get the point because we can’t stick to the basic essentials. Jesus wants us to use all our cunning, all our creativity, all our shrewdness to do the little things in relation to people, to be faithful in a little, to do what is right in a world that is not going to be perfect. Shrewd is the word. That is the Gospel.

Preached by Robert Kitchen
Knox-Metropolitan United Church
Regina, Saskatchewan