16th Sunday after Trinity – 23 September 2007

Two years ago I made the sort of mistake someone doing my job dreads. I double booked a wedding. It was my fault. When I received confirmation of a provisional date for one of the weddings I got distracted and did not move the booking form in my file. I didn’t I enter it onto the booking sheet either. The end result was that two couples sent out invitations to weddings on the same day, at the same time and in the same church. We did manage to marry them both, albeit rather swiftly one after the other.

Unsurprisingly perhaps the couple whose date I had not registered were very cross. Apart from my inevitable feelings of guilt and stupidity what I found particularly difficult to cope with was that, however much I said sorry, they saw no reason to forgive me for my mistake. I may be wrong, but I sense they said to themselves – we can never forgive him for that. But then, when you think about it, how often do we hear people saying those words. I know I’ve used them before now.

It is very difficult to make sense of today’s gospel reading. One commentator said those preaching on it yearn for the last hymn! But one helpful way to approach the parable of the dishonest steward is in the context of forgiveness. The parable opens with the master, a rich man, accusing his manager of squandering his property. We are not told whether the accusation is fair but the master is unforgiving and says he will sack him.

The response of the manager is unsurprisingly an attempt to minimise the potentially disastrous consequences of losing his livelihood and his status. His tactic is to be exceedingly generous and to forgive the debts of the master’s debtors, which he clearly controlled. This act of generosity would, he guessed, place him in a favourable light with the people he might be dependent upon after his dismissal.

It is at this point that the parable gets highly confusing. Because with an extraordinary u-turn the master starts praising the dishonest manager for being so shrewd in the way he handled his personal crisis. And in a particularly puzzling verse the Jesus says ‘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.’

If we look at these verses carefully the first thing we can note is that master did not praise the manager for his dishonesty. The manager is still labelled in the text as ‘dishonest’. But rather the master congratulated him for his realism and determination in dealing with a sudden emergency. It is how he dealt with his personal crisis that is admired. There is in fact something warm, even generous, about the master’s response.

We then come to Jesus puzzling statement to his friends, that is his disciples. I think the intended meaning here takes us back to Jesus’ injunction to the disciples in Luke 12.33 – sell your possessions and give alms. The implication is that all wealth is in some sense corrupt because it oppresses the poor. Wealth also leads to a corruption of true values – ‘where your treasure is, there your heart will be also’ Jesus had said to them before. And our reading today ends in a similar vein – you cannot serve God and wealth. The dishonest manager, whilst clearly serving his own ends, did it by way of a very generous act - forgiving people who were in debt to his master a very substantial portion of their liability. Effectively giving to the poor.

On Friday we celebrated the feast of St Matthew at our service of Holy Communion. Matthew was a tax collector befriended by Jesus who responded to the call ‘follow me’. Tax collectors were highly unpopular figures. They were seen to have sold out to the occupying Roman rulers by collecting taxes for them and they also had a reputation for lining their own pockets at the expense of the taxed. Jesus is recorded as having meals with tax collectors and sinners, outraging the Pharisees.

I wondered on Friday what the modern equivalent of the tax-collector might be. If the results of the Envisage questionnaires handed out on Heritage Day, which asked people what they disliked about Cobham, are anything to go by, it would be estate agents, traffic wardens and property developers. Imagine then if Jesus came to Cobham today he might well sit down and eat with them rather than come to Church. Quite a challenging image for us to cope with.

Jesus story of the dishonest manager and his master challenges us. He shows someone who is dishonest being generous and kind. He also shows him being applauded and forgiven for his generosity, even when its underlying motive was self interest. The master is being forgiving in the most unlikely circumstances.

The parable is a portrayal of God’s grace. At the very heart of the Christian gospel is the message of forgiveness. Daily we pray in the Lord’s Prayer ‘forgive us our sins, as we forgive those who sin against us’. Interestingly the Scottish version of the Lord’s prayer is ‘forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors’. Susan Durber, a URC minister, commented that a story about debts is likely to be a story about sin, forgiveness and grace.

And so gradually a picture emerges out of this strange story that reminds us that life is not black and white. Good and bad are not clearly separated, but are often interwoven. Good deeds often have very mixed motives. But the overriding imperative from God is to urge us to offer forgiveness, offer it even before we have been forgiven, even in circumstances that will not leave the scales of justice balanced. Because it is through offering this kind of unconditional love we begin to know the grace of God. And so do others.

Matthew the tax collector was transformed by Jesus’ unexpected call and non-judgmental act of sitting down to dinner with him. And that is the message of this parable. On occasions all of us will act in some respects like the dishonest manager. And we all will have opportunities to offer the kindness and forgiving acceptance of the master to those who have wronged us. Today’s parable is about sin, forgiveness and grace. We can all fail at times, intentionally or otherwise. However, it is not a sense of failure that should shape our lives, but a sense of forgiveness and over flowing grace,

© Robert Jenkins September 2007