Shrewd Priorities

Ninth Sunday after Trinity

August 5, 2012

Shrewd Means Getting Your Priorities Straight

Luke 16:8

The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.

Dear baptized souls,

To understand this parable, you need to know about farming in the Middle East.

To understand the point of this parable, you need to see how it connects to the verses before and after.

First, the parable.

1 Jesus told his disciples: “There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. 2 So he called him in and asked him, ‘What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.’

The master was a wealthy landholder. He had hired a man to manage his holdings. But word got back to the master that this manager was doing a bad job.

So the master calls in the manager and asks him, “What is this I hear about you?” An expert on Middle Eastern culture, Dr. Ken Bailey, calls this a classic Middle Eastern tactic. You ask a open-ended question, hoping that the manager—whom he knows is guilty—starts talking and accidentally confesses. This hanging-yourself-on-your-own-rope tactic often works.

But not this time. The manager keeps his cool. He doesn't say anything. He does what the master tells him and is walking down the hallway to his office to get his ledger, the account book. While he's walking, he's trying to figure out what to do.

3 “The manager said to himself, ‘What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m ashamed to beg— 4 I know what I’ll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.’

This manager had wasted his master's possessions. Since we live in 2012 America and not 32 AD Israel, we immediately think of politicians and bankers cooking the books, skimming off public funds, or fixing interest rates. But this is not necessarily how this manager wasted his master's possessions. He may have been cooking the books.

But he also might have simply been an unshrewd manager: people were taking advantage of him, he was not diligent in his accounting, he was making bad decisions on how to use his master's resources. In a word, incompetent.

But now his mind is focused. He's been fired. He's need to think fast and accomplish his number one priority—make some friends. And the manager's finally gotten wise. He shrewdly calls in each debtor one at a time, because he doesn't want what he's saying to one farmer, getting around to the other farmer right now.

5 “So he called in his master’s debtors, one by one. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’

6 “‘Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,’ he replied.

“The manager told him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.’

7 “Then he asked the second, ‘And how much do you owe?’

“‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied.

“He told him, ‘Take your bill and make it 800.’

The manager has them slash their bills and he makes them alter the numbers in their own handwriting, not his. He's trying to keep his fingerprints off the book-cooking.

Now here's something else to keep in mind. The minute the master fired his manager, the manager had no authority. But he put his shrewd plan into action so quickly that the farmers and the other servants in the house hadn't gotten the word that the manager's been sacked. And it worked.

As the manager was slowly walking back to his office, he tells his former master's servants to go and bring those farmers to him—and they obeyed. They didn't know he'd been fired. Very shrewd.

And he also is smart about how he cooks the books. He doesn't forgive all the debt. He seems to be acting on behalf of his master and making his master look good. Maybe something like the manager said something like this, “Hey, I know how it's been a tough harvest and you're hurting. So I talked my master and I and he, we, we decided that since you've been such a reliable tenant in the past, you really should get a discount this year.”

If we jump to the conclusion that the manager's crime was charging high interest rates and now was correcting himself, we miss the point of the parable. It's likely that the 800 gallons of olive oil and the 1,000 bushels of wheat were fair debts.

But here's where it gets interesting. The master is stuck. The manager has returned the books, as requested, and it's quite possible that a celebration has broken out in town. It's a celebration in honor of their kind and generous landowner and his wise manager. If the master fires the manager and then reverses the discounted bills (which the master had ever legal right to do, since the manager had been fired when he made the changes), the master is going to look like a jerk.

So what does he do?

8 “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.

So here's the point. Unbelievers know which way to jump. They have their priorities straight. They want to make money. So they get busy making money. They shrewdly make their careers the most important thing in their lives. Everything else comes last.

This parable is about priorities, not how to use your money. See how the parable connects to the Parable before and the Parable after.

The parable before is the Parable of the Prodigal Father. Prodigal means recklessly extravagant. But it also means spending everything you have for someone else. The father in the Parable of the Prodigal was prodigal—he spent his land and his reputation, everything he had, for his sons. He had his priorities straight—he wanted living sons.

This parable of the unjust steward follows right after and its point is the same—get your priorities straight. Unbelievers have got their priorities straight because their god is themselves and they do what their god says. Their priorities are going to destroy them, but they are consistent.

Believers, get your priorities straight. Use your baptized life in faithful service to your Savior. Be shrewd about yourself and about those around you and act accordingly. Get focused on the one thing you need: the cross of Christ. Be consistent—believe in His Cross that saves you and carry your cross. Make this your life's priority.

What comes after the parable of the manager is a mini-parable about money, and it really is a new idea. It shows us how getting your priorities straight is seen in how you use your money.

But the parable before today is much more than a lesson in money-management. It says, “What do you need in life?”

The world says, “Money. Sex. Reputation. Family. Friendship.” And the worldings go out and they get those things.

Christ says, “I am the way. I am what you need.” Dearly beloved, if anything is getting in the way of the cross, be shrewd and remove it. Focus on the cross of Christ, your Savior who loves you so much that He got rid of everything and became nothing for you.

In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen.