Balmy Mammon
Jeremiah 8:18-9:1; Luke 16:1-13


September 23, 2001

Henry Ford, the story is told, returned to his family's ancestral town in Ireland. While there he made a promise to donate $5000 to the new hospital they wanted to build there. The next day in the paper the headline proclaimed, "US Millionaire Donates $50,000 to Hospital." Ford was horror struck and confronted the town officials. They were repentant and said they would put a retraction in the next day's paper.

Ford thought about what that headline would look like and relented. "All right, I'll give you the $50,000 on one condition." "What's that?" the politicians smiled nervously. "That you place at the entrance a marble arch with the Biblical words etched on it - "I Came Among You and You Took Me In."

Willie Stark, the corrupt politician in Robert Penn Warren's All the King's Men, sums up what is truth: "Just plain simple goodness."

"You can't inherit that from anybody. You got to make it out of badness. Badness You know why? Because there isn't anything else."

If it is true as commentators and common people are still saying this week that the world has changed after Tuesday, September 11, then how you and I hear the Scriptures being read has to be a different kind of listening. We have strained to hear goodness shine through all the badness which stains our lives, yet in the light of that Tuesday, there are many who ask in one fashion or another, "how much good does goodness do?"

Jeremiah as well is alive in a dead world. The Babylonians have burned and crushed his nation and people, and he is in despair. We sing the hymn, "There is a Balm in Gilead," trying to be as optimistic as possible. But what Jeremiah really asked was "Is there a balm in Gilead? Is there no physician there?" Nothing is left of value; certainly nothing that heals our wounds and brings us hope.

Will air strikes against the Taliban and Osama bin Laden bring us hope and renewal of life?1

Then this parable chooses us amidst our listening for hope and goodness. Jesus tells it with no break right after the more famous Parable of the Prodigal Son, and as far as anybody has been able to tell, there is nothing redeeming in this parable. It's about an embezzling manager and his cynical boss. Neither comes out high on the morality chart, yet the boss praises the manager for his continued, clever dishonesty, and Jesus apparently praises both of them by simply letting the story stand. Before we get too upset and too disoriented we should ask, "Who are these guys?"

"There was a rich man," Jesus begins, and that sets off some bells of warning. Rich men and women are not model citizens in the Kingdom of God. If Jesus starts talking about a rich man, the fellow is not going to be praised.

No details here, but one can imagine that the rich man was some kind of absentee landlord who had entrusted his business to a manager or steward. The latter was obviously not an honest manager, so as it inevitably happens, word creeps back to the boss about this man "squandering" - almost a nice word - his property.

The boss calls him and declares that he is fired, but strangely asks from this embezzler a final accounting of his property. Does he want his employee to steal more? Does he really expect an accurate, legitimate audit? One has to shudder at the naivete of this wealthy man, and wonder how he stayed wealthy.

Nevertheless, the manager changes and turns himself around in a new direction, though repentance is not the word most of us would use. This dishonest manager is pretty similar to the prodigal son in Jesus' previous parable. Both get into deep trouble through their own foolishness and dishonest actions; yet neither seems particularly sorry about what they have done, only sorry about what has happened to them as a consequence. In both parables we are privileged to hear their calculated inner thoughts, along with their plans to rescue themselves from their dilemmas.

Neither the prodigal nor the manager express any remorse for what they have done or even hint that they will lead a different life in the future. The prodigal is starving, yet knows that his father's slaves eat three square meals a day. The manager admits that he is a not fit enough to dig ditches, nor is his pride flexible enough to allow him to beg. Ah, they have a plan, a scheme, and they both work.

The manager calls in all his boss's creditors. He reduces everybody's bill, which makes everybody pretty happy. Probably he was foregoing his own personal GST and PST which were higher no doubt than 15%, higher than your VISA. He wants happy customers, for when he loses his job he needs people who believe he is a decent person and will take him in.

It all makes a lot of sense, because we've seen it happen many times over. In fact, you and I probably each have been just as calculating about getting ourselves out of a jam. However, we fully expect to pay for it in the long run.

The boss, the rich man, saw what was going on and he must have laughed pleasantly to himself and his manager. He commends the manager for his shrewdness, not his honesty. That's the end of the parable: no decision is made about the manager's job, but wouldn't you expect that if the rich man were so delighted with his manager's ingenuity that he would be kept on?

There is no comment about his behaviour, no attempt to balance the books or scales of justice and morality. No purgatory, no punishment. Should children be hearing this parable? Who are these guys, anyway?

Remember a few things. Remember the situation against which Jesus told these particular parables. "He eats with tax-collectors and sinners," the righteous church people said. Very seldom do we hear Jesus telling one of dinner-companions and drinking-buddies to repent and turn his life around. It happens, but not as often as you would like.

The people Jesus offers as models of the Gospel are not good church people. No one ever criticizes the prodigal son for not being more sorry about how he wasted his money. The manager is no more, no less sorry or repentant. These two were the tax-collectors of the soul, the sinners in white collars, yet God loved them unconditionally.

Remember that parables are not really about how you and I behave, but how God behaves. Most of us like the way the father receives with open arms his long-lost son which demonstrates a graceful free love which we are not able to earn. That father is like God we hope.

Why then should we not say the same thing about the rich man in the very next verses? Here is a God who does not forget that we are human. The manager embezzles money which is not his own, and no matter what happens he cannot take it with him. Everything you and I have has been given to us, and we have misused, squandered most of its value. We can't take it with us either, but we will be asked for an accounting, an audit, of what we have done.

God, incognito in a despised rich man, rejoices that this embezzler finally lost all thought of his own profits in order to make friends and neighbours out of his clients. What corporate executives make their decisions in this way? This is a God who clearly does not require you to become a saint in order to be worthy of God's love.

Remember, especially those of you who think that the day to remember from now on is September 11, that this parable is the Good News, the Gospel. Usually, God begins with you at your worst, rather than at your best.


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