"Disciples Resist Greed" (September 21, 2025 Sermon)

Text: Luke 16:1-13

Last week, we looked at two simple parables. A lost coin was found, and there was a big celebration. A lost sheep was found, and everyone rejoiced. The message was clear: God rejoices abundantly and disproportionately when a fractured community is made whole.

And then there’s today’s parable. At first glance, it might make you wonder if Jesus has been out in the sun a little too long. It’s easy to picture Jesus’ disciples nervously eyeing each other while he shares this parable with the crowds. Maybe they thought like us: that Jesus should have stopped after those three nice parables about a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son. But Jesus continues. That’s just how Jesus is. When we want him to “stay in his lane,” he surprises us. When we prefer he wouldn’t talk about tough topics like money and economic justice, he doesn’t offer us an easy way out.

A dishonest manager commended? Jesus telling us to make friends using dishonest wealth? Come again? When I read this with some of you last Tuesday, the group pointed out that the final verse of this passage seems simple enough: “You cannot serve God and wealth.”  Why can't a sermon just focus on that part without getting into the previous puzzling parable?

Well, I’ve found a stubbornly consistent truth about scripture in my decades of wrestling with it: stories that confuse us often have the most to say to us if we have the courage to dive deep and understand the context in which they were written. And the key to understanding this puzzling parable is understanding the economic landscape of that day.  I give much gratitude to Christian author and pastor Brian McLaren for a video I watched of him explaining this context, and I’ll include it in my worship recap email later this afternoon.

Remember, everything in Jesus’ culture was heavily influenced by the Roman occupation; it affected every aspect of life. The Empire funded itself by taxing the people of its colonies, and those who often bore the heaviest burden of these taxes were the farmers in the more rural areas of Jesus’ old stomping grounds, such as Galilee in the northern regions outside Jerusalem. And a tale as old as time is that when there’s a group of people struggling economically, there are always others who come making promises to ease that burden, but rarely with good intentions. You see, wealthy people from Jerusalem would offer to pay the Roman taxes for the farmers in exchange for taking ownership of their land, effectively making them indentured servants. In return for having their taxes paid, the farmers had to give a portion of their goods, with interest, to their landlord—essentially trading one form of economic oppression for another.

For obvious reasons, these wealthy landowners were not popular with their farmer tenants. Therefore, the “rich men,” like the one described in Jesus' parable, would send middle managers to collect what was owed on their behalf, who acted as a comfortable buffer between themselves and their rightfully disgruntled “customers.” We can, therefore, think of this system as similar to the economic reality in which you and I live—a pyramid with a very few wealthy people at the top and many poor people at the bottom, with a shrinking middle class in between.

And so today’s parable begins with Jesus saying that this manager was “squandering” his boss’s wealth. Now, that same word (“squander”) is used in just the previous chapter of Luke’s gospel to describe the careless way the Prodigal Son spent his inheritance. But in this parable, the same word is used in a very different context. I suggest that this difference is because the definition of “squandering money” can vary depending on which part of the economic pyramid one inhabits. Remember, the way rich landowners made their money was by instructing these middle managers to squeeze as much as possible from the tenant farmers. Therefore, it’s quite possible that this middle manager disobeyed his boss by not squeezing enough money from the tenants to satisfy his boss’s greed.  What one person at the top of the pyramid considers “squandering,” another person at the bottom of the pyramid might call “grace.”  The bottom line is that we don't know.  But I think Jesus deliberately left the definition vague to tease our imaginations.

And so, the manager learns that he’s about to get fired. He panics, realizing he doesn’t have any other marketable skills, and decides that he needs to make friends in “low places” so he has some support on the other side of things. And here is where the rich man makes a critical error. The number one rule when firing the bookkeeper is to make sure you have the books in your possession before you do it! But he doesn’t do that. And the manager shrewdly decides to make the best of it.

And so, the manager “cooks the books,” in a way. A bill for one hundred jugs of olive oil is reduced to fifty, and another for a hundred containers of wheat drops to eighty. He keeps doing this until he gains many new friends! More than one Biblical commentator I read this week suggested that perhaps he simply forgave the interest that had accumulated since the original debts were taken out. While we might be tempted to focus only on the “shrewdness” of the middle manager, we should remember that charging interest on loans was technically forbidden by Jewish law. Therefore, the subtext of this passage is that the rich man was breaking the law long before the middle manager decided to take matters into his own hands to ease the burden for those below him.

In the earlier video I mentioned, Brian McLaren indicates that in this story, the middle manager experiences an “a-ha” moment when he suddenly understands that he is just as replaceable in this flawed economic system as those who are “beneath” him.  And so he decides to switch sides.  He is essentially switching his allegiance from those above him in the pyramid to those who are beneath him.  And that’s the truly remarkable thing about this parable.  And if there’s any doubt in his listeners, Jesus drives the point home with the following uncompromising sentence: You cannot serve both God and wealth.

So what are the takeaways here?  What are we to do with this shrewd middle manager, this greedy landowner, and these relieved farmers?

You and I cannot help but exist in a fundamentally broken economic system where the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. You and I cannot change that, at least not instantly and not as individuals. Most of us, I would guess, occupy a place in society similar to that of the manager in today’s parable, somewhere in the middle of the economic pyramid.  And in ways that we both realize and perhaps don’t, you and I have been taught that it’s a savage rat race where we fight over each other to get higher at the expense of those beneath us who are trying to do the same.

Jesus was no fool.  He was fully aware that the vast majority of his listeners had no choice but to navigate as best they could this fundamentally broken economic system.  But he didn't want his followers to think that that reality absolved them of any sense of responsibility or agency to work toward a kinder, more equitable arrangement.  It’s as if Jesus is telling his followers then - and us, his followers now - that most people have some sort of influence or power in whatever position in society they occupy.  And we can use those levers for good or for evil.

And it’s not like Jesus hasn’t suggested this elsewhere in Luke’s gospel. You may recall earlier in the gospel when the soldiers and tax collectors come to John the Baptist asking him, “And we, what should we do?” John replies to the tax collectors, “collect no more than the amount prescribed to you.” He also tells the soldiers, “Do not use your power to extort anyone.” In a similar way, Jesus is sharing this tough truth about the Kingdom of God: we can worship God or we can worship money, but we cannot do both.

Last Thursday, Kim Row and I attended a racial equity training with other colleagues in our Presbytery. One of the videos we watched spoke at length about the reality of the practice of “redlining” during the suburban boom after World War II. Coincidentally, our church building is located in a neighborhood that was developed during this period. Banks across the country in the 1950’s used color-coded maps to decide whether to give or deny home loans. The neighborhoods considered the “safest” investments were marked green. The next level was yellow, then orange. The neighborhoods labeled as the “least safe investment” (mostly Black neighborhoods) were marked red. This is where the term “redlining” comes from.  Investors would then prey upon the fears of white people to buy their homes as they sought to move to “safer” neighborhoods, perpetuating a terrible cycle of segregation, disenfranchisement, and disinvestment in black communities.

Two observations are important here.

First of all, this practice was 100% legal.  It was federal policy.  This reminds us that just because something is “legal” does not make it right or just.

Secondly, this unfair economic system didn’t just appear out of nowhere. No, it was made. It was built. It was put into place. And that requires a lot of time and many people. Throughout the process, there were countless chances for people like you and me to withhold support and say, “You know what? This is wrong. And I’m not going to be part of it.” And, of course, some people did. But not enough. So you and I are called to deconstruct the harmful patterns we’ve inherited.

And so, I’ll close with this question: what’s the good news in this next?

First of all, the good news is that you and I are not powerless.  Jesus was a divine agent of social change and, as such, knew that hopeless people do not challenge injustice.  Jesus is telling us that we do have the capacity to link arms in solidarity to build a better neighborhood where money serves relationships and not the other way around.  Most of us occupy some sort of space in society where we can use our privilege to make a difference for people like the burdened farmers in today’s parable.  Which invites another powerful questions that we might ask of our churches:  are our churches known to be friends to the poor or tools of the rich?

Secondly, the good news in this text is that joining together to oppose greed, as we disciples are called to do, should not—or at least, must not—be a partisan act. If we are honest, both sides of the political spectrum in this country are involved in supporting the ruthless economy we live in. Jesus told this parable long before you and I created the modern, US-centric labels of “liberal” and “conservative.” Therefore, we should not listen to this text’s subversive economic message as Democrats or Republicans, but as followers of Christ.

Thirdly, and finally, the good news in this text is that God has promised that oppressive economic pyramids will be upended.  Matthew, Mark, and Luke all include Jesus saying the same thing: the last will be first, and the first will be last. This story isn’t suggesting that all rich people are evil or that money itself is bad. Instead, it’s emphasizing that greed is bad and that God has promised that greed will not have the final say. You and I are called to get on board with that promise!

In the name of God the Creator, Redeemer, and Sustainer, may all of us, God’s children, say: Amen.