“And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.  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” (NRSV, Luke 16: 8-9).

This parable of the Dishonest Manager (or Unjust Steward) at first sight appears to present some difficulty because it holds up a dishonest man as an example to be imitated.

Here we have the manager of a rich man’s estate who has been given notice for culpable negligence.  Before he leaves, therefore, he sends for all those who have bought produce from the estate but have not yet paid for it.  He then hands them their IOUs, which he has been holding against the settlement of their debts, and tells them to make out fresh IOUs for much smaller amounts.  By putting them under an obligation to him in that way, the manager could look to them to help him when he was out of a job.

After the manager had left, the news of what he had been up to leaked out; and his master on hearing it, could not help admiring his foresight in using his employer’s money to secure his own future.  The “master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly…” (NRSV, Luke 16: 8).

And it is the man’s foresight, not his fraud, which Our Lord holds out as an example for the Christian to imitate, but with a difference.  For whereas the manager used material things for his material benefit, the Christian is to use material things for his or her spiritual benefit.

The money which the manager manipulated was not his own but his master’s: so everything that a Christian has is not his or her own but God’s, for “The earth is the Lord’s and all that is in it…(NRSV, Psalm 24: 1) and all we rightfully have has been entrusted to us by him.   Therefore in God’s eyes every Christian is a steward of God and accountable to God for the wise and conscientious exercise of his or her stewardship.

Christians must not selfishly squander their money, as the manager in the parable squandered his master’s goods; nor on the other hand must they selfishly hoard it, laying up for themselves treasure upon earth.  On the contrary, they are to cultivate an inner detachment towards it and use it faithfully by being rich toward God, that is, by giving to charity.

So far as the life of the soul with God is concerned, money in itself is so unimportant as to be irrelevant: indeed, it is a potential menace, because to set one’s heart on it and allow it to shape one’s conduct is destructive of any relationship with him: “You cannot serve God and wealth” (NRSV, Luke 16: 13, our emphasis).  Like fire, money is a good servant but a bad master.

You will notice that Our Lord tells us to use this world’s goods wisely and for the benefit of others so that we may be welcomed into “eternal homes”.  Such a motive – to give to charity and good causes with a view to saving one’s own soul – may seem unpleasantly selfish.  On the contrary, properly understood it is truly Christian.

The first duty of Christians is to love God and to love their neighbour and thereby save their own soul.  And money often happens to provide an opportunity to express that two-fold love by exercising the Christian virtues of compassion and generosity.  As St John puts it, “How does God’s love abide in anyone who has the world’s goods and sees a brother or sister in need and yet refuses help?” (NRSV, 1 John 3: 17, our emphasis), words which form an apt commentary on Our Lord’s parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus.

The principal object of Our Lord’s ministry of teaching was that people might learn to honour God by their character and conduct and in so doing to save their souls.  He was not specifically concerned to make life easier for people.  It was not easy for him and it was not easy for his Apostles, most of whom ended up by being martyred.

Indeed the whole purpose of Our Lord’s life, death and resurrection was to save the souls of men and women from that eternal separation from God which we call Hell.  And the Gospel – the good news – ultimately is concerned solely with that central fact of human salvation and with the means whereby each individual may grasp it.

Many today take Christ’s social teaching and isolate it from the rest of the Gospel as though it alone were the Christian religion.  They do not see that what is called practical Christianity, meaning good works, is a Christian activity and not Christianity itself.

For Christ’s fundamental concern was with the soul rather than with the body, with the next life rather than with this one.  That becomes clear when we ask the question, “Why did he wait in Gethsemane to be arrested and crucified?  Why did he not escape and continue his ministry of healing people’s minds and bodies of disease?”  

The answer is that he came to heal people of moral and spiritual evil, of the infection of sin, and that is something infinitely more serious than any physical need, because its destructiveness extends beyond the grave into all eternity.  That was his true mission and he would not run away from it by running away from its inevitable cost, the Crucifixion.

As has been truly said, “This life is not the play, only the rehearsal.  The play itself is given in the life to come” (Note)  And Our Lord never allows us to move very far from that background of eternal life against which the Gospel is presented.

We have only to think of his parables of the judgement, such as the wheat and the weeds (tares), the one stored in the barn, the other burned in the fire: or the edible and inedible fish, the one gathered into baskets, the other thrown away (see Matthew 13: 24-30; 47-48).  The same warning of the separation of human souls which the next life must bring, is contained in this parable of the Dishonest Manager.  For the time has to come when God will say to us, “Give me an account of your management, for you cannot be my manager any longer” (NRSV, Luke 16: 2).

The state of that account will be determined by the depth of our penitence for all the wrong that we have thought and said and done; and by the persistence of our endeavour to lead a life that expresses a true love for God for himself alone and an active goodwill towards all our fellow human beings for his sake.

For at the end of the day, that is the only relevant record of one’s life.

Note

Paraphrase from chap 23 of novel entitled John Inglesant written by Joseph Henry Shorthouse and published in 1881.