The Crocked Manager

          Our Lord Jesus is on his way to Jerusalem.  Even from the distance the shadow of the cross looms down on his path.  He knows what the shadow means.  He struggles with the shadow.  But yet he continues on to Jerusalem.

          The people with Jesus--the disciples and the crowd-- they cannot see the shadow of the cross.  Jesus knows they cannot see.  In plain and simple language he has given them the facts--he is going to Jerusalem to die.  In plain and simple language, he has told them, that to follow him, they too must pick up a cross and follow him.

          But sometimes plain and simple language does not make a point.     And this our Lord knew.  Jesus knew that fiction was sometimes more honest than the facts.  Jesus knew that sometimes when we can't understand the facts, we can understand fiction

 And so he talked in parables.  He talked about lost and found things--lost and found sheep.  Lost and found coins.  Even a lost and found son.  Then he told another story:  A very strange, eerie, unsettling story.  A story that leaves us baffled.

          "Once there was this rich man," Jesus begins. 

          And we begin to get the picture.  Nice home in Potomac.  And a little 9000 square foot vacation home on Key Biscayne.  A chalet in Vale.  A yacht.   And probably lots of far flung investments.  Oil wells out on the Gulf.  Shopping malls in New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia.  Tenement buildings in Phuiladelphia.  Big stuff.  Spread all over the place.  Much more than one person could manage.  So The Boss had a lot of people to look after his various interests.  In the day of Jesus these people would have been called stewards.  In our day it's more apt to call them managers.

          One day the boss was looking over the reports from New Jersey.  Things looked too good to be true.  Then came an anonyomous phone call.  Ralph, the manager of his shopping mall was driving around in a new Buick.  "How can he afford a Buick on what I pay him," the boss said to himself.

          So right away the boss rang up, Ralph, the manager.

          "Ralph, how are things going up there in Jersey?"

          Oh just fine, TB.  Just fine."  By the way, everybody called The Boss, TB for short.

          "Well," the boss said," there are rumors floating around that things aren't as glorious as your reports. 

          "Oh no, TB, things are just fine."

          "Good," the boss replied.  "Then you don't mind that I'm sending my accountant up to audit the books and check out the properties?"

          "Oh, of course not," Ralph answered.  What else could he say?

          But when the conversation ended, Ralph started thinking.  He wasn't a crook.  At least not like the type of crook that goes out and robs banks or things like that.

          And yes, he knew things weren't exactly the way they should be.  Some of the money he was supposed to spend on maintenance, he spent on the Buick and sprucing up his own office--after all it was important that he present a good image.  And some of the stores were vacant and he just hadn't had time to tell the owner.  And he hadn't been advertising, because he spent the advertising money on the condo at Ocean City because he was a much more effective manager when he spent the weekend at the beach and beside it was important to have a good place to entertain future tenants.

          "What's going to happen when the boss find out.  I can't go out work at McDonalds.  And I'm too proud for welfare."

          Then Ralph, wise manager that he was, he concocted a plan. 

          First he called up the owner of one of the big anchor tenants.  "Look," he explained.  "Your lease is up next month and the boss says raise the rent.  Instead of a million bucks for the next five years, he wants a million point two.  But tell you what we'll do.  Let's you and me work out a deal.  You sign a lease with me tomorrow for five hundred thousand and slip me 100 grand and we'll call it a deal.

          Well that sure sounds better than a million point two.  So the owner did as the manager suggested.  Then the manager called the other major tenant and agreed to give him a new lease for 500,000.  "And, you know, Ralph told the tenant, "I don't know if I want to work for TB the rest of my life.  He doesn't pay that well.  I hear you need a manager in Ocean City." 

"Come to think about it, we do.  You tell me what TB's paying you and will raise him 25%"—once the new lease is signed" 

          The next day, the account visited the Newark NJ office.  She inspected the properties.  She looked at the books and picked up copies of the new leases.  Then she caught a 3pm flight back to Reagan.  I hadn't taken her long to find what she needed to find.

          Now when the boss listened to the accountant's report and read the new leases, he first turned crimson mad, then he started laughing.  He had been had.

        The manager had the authority to execute the leases.  Sure he was on the take.  But there was no way he could prove it.  Besides it was only for a million or so.

          So TB faxed off a letter:

          Dear Ralph.  :   "I greatly admire your skill in scheming and swindling me.  I couldn't have done it better myself.  Sincerely, TB.  P.S.  "You're fired."

          Now when Jesus had finished this parable or something sort of like it, he said: "The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.

          Do you see what I mean?  This is a troubling story.  Is Jesus just trying to entertain us?  Are we supposed to admire this con artist, who very wisely looked after his own interest?

           How is God speaking to us through this unjust steward?  Is there something about this crook that you and I are supposed to emulate?

          This is parable is one of the most troubling parables in the New Testament.  In the past some critics have used this story to say, "Ah, we knew it all along.  This Jesus was nothing but a crook and he endorses crooks.

           Some scholars have suggested parable was fabricated.  Jesus really couldn't have told a story like this that seems to endorse a crook.  But I'm of the school that says the more problems a passage has; the more likely it is genuine.  If the story is phony, there was no reason to include it.  But if it is genuine, then it is included in spite of the problems. 

          What do we make of the story?  Well the traditional interpretation of this parable focuses on the resourcefulness of the steward.  Jesus is not applauding or endorsing the steward's fraud.  But Jesus admires the resourcefulness of the steward.  And so should Christians admire the resourcefulness of the steward.  Therefore Christians should be resourceful with their money.  In the context of the Gospels, this traditional interpretation goes; resourcefulness does not mean picking the right mutual fund.  Resourcefulness means investing our money for eternity.  That investment only comes through discipleship.

            I don't disagree with this traditional interpretation.  Certainly there is a valuable lesson here about the way we invest our money and our lives in the kingdom of God.  Come to think of it, this parable might make a good stewardship sermon.  But I think there is something else in this parable.    

          When we first look at this story, all we can see is a shrewd manager.  He wasn't shrewd.  He was a crook.  I'm sure his hair was all greasy and combed straight back.  He wore a dark suit, dark shirt, dark tie by day, and a black leather jacket by night. 

          There is no way to paint over this character.  He's a creep.  A schiniving little con artist.  And so the parable becomes so jarring and so upsetting and more and more of a problem.

          Then it hits us.  The problem is really the answer.  Jesus wants us to get upset.  Jesus wants to jar us.  Isn't that what he's been doing?  Think about some of the other stories Jesus told.

          What about the disrespectful son who goes off and wastes his inheritance.  He comes home in rags, reeking of booze and the cheap perfume of harlots.  What does the father do for this despicable kid?  The father throws a party.

          Or what about the business traveler, beaten, robbed, bleeding to death in a ditch.  Who do you expect to help him?  The good people, of course.  But you know the story.  The good people are the ones that pass him by.  Instead, it is a despicable, morally suspect Samaritan who gives aid.

          And what about this character in our story the one we've come to call the "Unjust Steward."  Who does he remind you of?  

          You and me, that's who.  We've met the scrandral and he is us.  White lying our way through life.  Deceiving ourselves into thinking that in God's eyes we deserve to be respectable.  Putting ourselves first.  Telling ourselves how good we are.  Telling ourselves that God owes us living.  Turning the cheek and the other eye to avoid the hurt of others.  We're the ones in a moral mess.  We are the disrespectable ones.  In God's sights, we are the crooks.

          So what does God do?  God sets out to save us.  Who does God send to save us?  The disrespected one.  The one who broke the Sabbath.  The one who ate with crooks and partied with harlots.  The One who earned the disdain of all those respectable people.  The One who was executed, like a common crook, with a criminal on either side.  The one the world saw as just another crook.

           One commentator, Robert Capon says that the unique thing this parable is that Jesus is insisting that grace cannot come to the world through respectability.  "Respectability regards only life, success, winning; it doesn't (match-up) with the grace that works by death and losing --which is the only kind of grace there is (p.150)   Fr.

          Could a respectable savior, born in king's house, dressed in fine clothing, companion to only the most respected members of society, could a respectable savior really have loved and saved a rogue like me.

          Jesus said he came into this world to settle up accounts between us and God.  So we get all dressed up, maybe put on a coat and tie or even a pulpit robe and stole.  And we come together to talk about the way he settled things.

          Then we remember.  Jesus up there on the cross, looking down at all our wheeling and dealings which so neatly nailed him to that cross.  Then we remember that we're the ones who deserve to be clobbered for all of our crookedness,  all of our misdemeanors against neighbor and all our felons against God.  Then we remember who we are--children of light, he calls us.  But we remember that hiding behind that light is so much that is so much like the world.

          We arch our forehead and look.  There on a green hill far away under a darken sky we see a cross.  We strain our ears and listen.  It's so far away.  All we can hear is his voice:  "Father, forgive."

 

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