Wise Leadership

Luke 16:1-13

I think this is one of the most difficult parables of Jesus.

For starters, it seems to be encouraging dishonest behavior. And there was a tradition in Hebrew story-telling of the “shrewd hero,” the character who outwits others and gains the upper hand. This goes all the way back to Jacob, who “outwitted” his father-in-law after he did the old switcheroo with his daughters.

But it’s important to see the whole picture of what Jesus is saying. Jesus also says that faithfulness, that is, integrity, in small things is necessary to be given greater responsibilities. Jesus is not encouraging dishonesty in any dealings. That would be antithetical to his other teachings.

A parable has a central message. Not every detail of a parable is meant to be normative. This parable has a central message, and it’s not to be dishonest in our business dealings!

But that brings up an additional difficulty to this parable: It seems to have more than one message attached to it. I think the best explanation is that Luke is mentioning other teachings of Jesus on the subject of money and possessions which were not originally attached to this particular parable, which seems to end at verse 9.

Verses 10-12 are about the idea that faithfulness in handling small matters shows that we are worthy of having greater responsibilities. Jesus says that same thing elsewhere, most notably in the Parable of the Talents.

Verse 13 is Jesus’ teaching that no one can serve two masters, something that Matthew includes in the Sermon on the Mount. A slave could only have one master. A master is not just a boss. Obviously, a person can have two bosses. We don’t think it’s weird to have two jobs. But a slave only has one master. His whole life belongs to that one master. Likewise, we as believers cannot serve both God and MAMMON. MAMMON was an Aramaic word that encompassed money and possessions.

Like few other things, money has a tendency to gain mastery over us. If we are always anxious about money, it may be our master. If we are willing to sacrifice things, good character, or relationships to have more of it, it may be our master. If we are always reluctant to part with it, money may be our master. And only Jesus should be our master.

Now those two things that Jesus talks about in verses 10-13 are certainly true, but they are not the main point of the parable. So let’s talk about what is the main point of the Parable of the Shrewd Steward.

A rich man hires a steward to handle his affairs. This was common. For starters, there were many absentee landlords in the first century world. Enormous areas of land had been consolidated into the possession of the wealthy elite, and often they lived in a city far away from these rural lands. So it was not unusual for a large landowner to hire a steward or to purchase a slave who was trained to serve in that stead. Most stewards were educated slaves at this time. We associate slavery with unskilled labor because of our history before the Civil War, but in the ancient world, many slaves were well educated and highly skilled, often enjoying a better standard of living and higher social status than the majority of free people.

The most famous steward in Scripture was Joseph. First he became the steward of Potiphar’s household. Then he became the “steward” of the Egyptian jail. Finally, he became the steward of all Egypt. And stewardship is a fitting image for a believer. A steward doesn’t own what he cares for. He cares for it on behalf of the owner. God is the owner. Psalm 24 says that the earth and everything in it belongs to God. We are not owners. And as Christians, we are called to be stewards. In 1 Corinthians 4, Paul describes himself and Apollos as stewards of God’s mysteries, called to be faithful with them. In 1 Peter 4, Peter says that each of us is a steward of the gifts God has given us, and we must use them well to serve each other. That is the essence of stewardship: It is not ours. It belongs to another. But we are entrusted with its use for a season.

But this steward is accused of wrongdoing. The master calls him in and says, “You’re on your way out, buddy. Get a report together for your successor, then get lost!”

We don’t know if he really did wrong or not, but in any case, he’s distraught. “I’m too proud to beg and too weak to dig ditches.” Who is going to hire him if he’s fired for mismanagement? No one.

So he hatches a plan. He calls in the master’s debtors one by one. These are tenant farmers. They farm the land that the master owns. The master gets either a percentage or a predetermined amount of the crops.

The first owes the master 100 baths of olive oil, about 800 gallons in today’s measurements, a sum worth about 1000 denarii. The denarius was the daily “minimum wage” of the day, so this equals several years’ worth of work for the average laborer. No small sum. The steward says, “Make it half that.” Who wouldn’t want to save 500

denarii! The second owes 100 cors of wheat, about a thousand bushels. This is worth about 2500 denarii, and again the steward saves him 500 denarii.

Now it was not unheard of for a rich landowner to do something like this if there was a drought or some other hardship. It gave the owner a good reputation. “Times are tough. I’ll give you a break.” But the steward doesn’t have permission to do this. Do the debtors know that he’s acting on his own? We are not told.

In any case, his actions earn him favor with the debtors. They owe him now. And they also earn the master favor, as well. Now he looks magnanimous! And the steward’s actions have put the master in a bind. He certainly can’t send the steward to jail or he will lose his good reputation. He may not even be able to fire him. And if he does, then the steward will have others that he can go to.

Jesus tells us the meaning of the parable: “Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. In this way, your generosity stores up a reward for you in heaven.” The most important friendship we can make is to be friends with God. I think that’s the meaning of the phrase “store up treasures in heaven.”

When it comes to money and possessions, MAMMON, to use Jesus’ word, we are not the owners. We are stewards for a season, but we do not own anything in this world. So while we have it, we should use it to “make friends,” to make the world a better place, to serve others, to serve God. In so doing, we store up “treasures in heaven.”

Years ago, I read a book on stewardship called “The Treasure Principle,” by a fellow named Randy Alcorn. He talks about this parable in the book. The illustration he uses is to picture ourselves in the Confederacy in the last days of the Civil War. When the Confederacy states broke away, they printed their own money. But when the war was over, that money became worthless. If you had a million dollars of Confederate currency, and you were smart enough to see the writing on the wall, what would you do with it? Well, you would go out and spend it as quickly as possible to buy things that were going to hold their value: Gold, silver, land, whatever it might be.

Randy applies that same logic to all earthly wealth. It’s not going to last. Perhaps this seems especially true in a day when inflation is pushing double digits! So while we have control of it, we should use it to gain riches that do not perish. As Jesus says, “We should store up treasures in heaven.”