A Golden Parachute (Luke 16:1-13)

You have heard me speak, from time to time, of preaching from the lectionary. Well, what is that? It is a three-year cycle of scripture readings that offers, for each Sunday in the year, lessons from the Old Testament, the Psalms, the gospels and the epistles. I am a New Testament preacher and I choose to preach from the gospel texts, most of the time, though not always. Why abide by the lectionary? For the reason that it is designed to expose us, over a period of three years, to the “whole counsel of God.” I take that seriously, rather than just skipping around in the Bible and choosing texts that strike my fancy or support my prejudices.
But one of the problems lectionary preachers encounter is that sooner or later, the lectionary is going to present us with some texts that are difficult to understand and even harder to explain. Today’s gospel lesson is one of those. On the face of it, Jesus appears to be citing the actions of a dishonest man as an example for believers.
We read this passage and we want to say, “Hey, wait a minute, Jesus! This guy is a crook. How can this be?”
I.
On the face of it, Jesus appears to be citing the actions of a dishonest man as an example for believers. But if we dig beneath the surface, we can see that Jesus may have been describing the action of a dishonest man who chose to become honest in order to save himself.
There are two possible interpretations of the man’s conduct--with lessons to be drawn from both.
First, if we say that the transactions described in the parable were dishonest, as they seem on their face to be, we can hardly believed they were praised by the man’s boss, who was the victim of a fraud. If we say that these actions were dishonest, we can say no more than that the master commended the steward, not for dishonesty, but for realism, determination and resourcefulness in dealing with a personal and business emergency.
In that case, the parable must have been one of Jesus’ warnings about coming crises, a warning from Jesus to his followers, the children of light, that they would have to be as wise as the children of this world, to take immediate and resolute action in the face of impending disaster. And Jesus did warn of hard times ahead for them. And so, under the interpretation of the steward’s actions as being simply dishonest, we can hear in the story a warning from Jesus to his followers that they could not sit on their hands when the times called for resourcefulness and action.
But in a second interpretation of the parable, we can also make a case that the steward was not committing a wrong by his actions, but righting a wrong. These people were Jews, remember; and the law of Moses forbade the taking of interest from fellow Jews on any kind of loan or credit.
(Closer to our own religious history, Martin Luther agreed with the Old Testament prohibition against charging interest for any reason. But John Calvin recognized the difference between personal and production credit. It was not okay with Father John to borrow money to buy a bigger TV set; it was okay to borrow money to buy stuff to make soap that you would sell to your neighbors. This put our Calvinist forebears a step ahead of the Lutherans on making money.)
We simply don’t know how to interpret the dishonest manager’s actions. It may be that Jesus was offering another subtle criticism of the ethics of the Pharisees. In their time the Pharisees had found ways of getting around the law. They argued that the purpose of the law was to protect the poor and destitute from exploitation--not to prevent the lending of money or the extension of credit for the mutual profit of lender and borrower. They argued that there were some situations in which a loan could be considered a kind of business partnership and interest on the loan was just a fair sharing of profits. And if a man already possessed any measure at all of the commodity he wished to borrow--wheat, oil, etc.--he was not destitute and it was okay to charge him interest.
Thus interpreted, this parable is an attack on the niggling, insincere methods of scriptural interpretation by which the Pharisees managed to keep their religious principles from interfering with their business dealings.
They could have rationalized the actions of the steward in the parable. What he did was to return their promissory notes to the debtors and write new ones--without interest. And so, for the first time in his career, perhaps, he had done what the law of Moses required. It is called doing the right thing for the wrong reasons.
He was obligating the debtors to him. He was also building up his master’s reputation as a just man. He was ready to make spiritual capital by a munificent gesture--when there was no other course open to him.
The steward was too weak to dig ditches and too proud to beg, so he set up for himself a “golden parachute,” as it is called in the business world these days. He would save these creditors a lot of money, and they would be obliged to help him out when he lot his job.
It is common in the upper echelons of corporate management these days, for officers and directors to be protected from loss if a company is acquired by another in a merger or takeover, or if for any reason they lose their jobs. Their employment contracts protect them from loss and guarantee them handsome stipends if they are fired. In recent memory, Ross Perot caused so much trouble when he became a director of General Motors that the board paid him millions of dollars to leave. And in even more recent memory, many of the officers and directors of some of the nation’s largest bank left their positions with multimillion dollar payments in hand as their companies melted down behind them. Golden parachutes, indeed.
II.
This parable, according to verse one, was told to the disciples, not to the crowd, but in verse 14 we learn that the Pharisees, “who were lovers of money” were listening too. That being the case, perhaps it was Jesus’ principle point in telling the story that if worldly men like the landowner and his steward can recognize that their best interests will be served by keeping the good opinion of their neighbors, religious people ought to be equally astute in keeping the good opinion of both neighbors and God.
On our recent western trip, our bus passed through some country said to have been the territory of the famous Butch Cassidy and his Hole-in-the-Wall gang. And since this was a morning for a long bus ride, to help pass the time, our tour guide showed us the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid” on the bus’ video system. Butch Cassidy and his sidekick were out-and-out criminals. They robbed banks and trains. And we are not supposed to root for such bandits. But we did. Everyone who saw that movie mentally and emotionally supported Butch and the Kid because they were, at least in the movie, such appealing characters--just a couple of happy-go-lucky guys who stole money…at gunpoint. And when we analyze our support for them, we realize that we were manipulated by the movie makers into liking these characters.
We cannot--and should not--give the same emotional support to the crook in this parable. But we must admit that as quick-witted and ingenious as he was in acting for his own self-interest, so we as followers of Christ ought to be enthusiastic and energetic in our lives as children of God.
It is always typical of a group following a strong leader that the group members abdicate their own power of decision making and turn it over to the leader. This is why cults invariably have one person at the top of the heap whose rule is unquestioned. Jesus did not want his followers to be like this. He saw an unfortunate tendency toward passivity in his followers. He saw in them an unfortunate interpretation of his description of God as a loving father. Some of his people were descending into an attitude of “big daddy will take care of us.” He saw them fastening on those aspects of the religion he taught as a relief from the religion of fear that was taught by the religious leaders of the day.
That same tendency toward passivity infects some Christians today, and Jesus doesn’t like it today, either. Some Christians today think of weekly worship as the full discharge of their duty, and Jesus doesn’t like that, either. Some Christians today would seem to be singing to themselves unendingly, “Be not dismayed, whate’er betide; God will take care of you.” Jesus doesn’t like that, either.
III.
Jesus calls on his followers to be active in the faith; not passive. We are to be busy serving; not sitting. The Christian life does not consist of soaking up salvation like spiritual sponges. Jesus calls us, as he called his disciples so long ago, to be busy…dreaming…scheming…deciding…doing.
Two men who have been particularly adept at dreaming and scheming in the business world are Bill Gates and Warren Buffet, both of whom are among the richest men in the world. Gates became a multibillionaire through his genius and some sharp business practices in the world of computers. Buffet became a multibillionaire through his genius in the business world and his mastery of buying and selling stocks. It must be seen--and it has been seen by both men-- that the acquisition of wealth often comes at the expense of someone else. I do not know what they think and how they feel about how they acquired their wealth; but I do know that both men have pledged to give at least half their billions to charity. They also have challenged another 80 of the world’s billionaires to do the same, and 40 of them have already agreed to do so.
Andrew Carnegie, a Scottish immigrant who became one of this country’s wealthiest men, used his money to build more than 2,500 public libraries. He had this to say about it: “This, then, is held to be the duty of the man of wealth: To set an example of modest, unostentatious living, shunning display or extravagance, to provide moderately for the legitimate wants of those dependent on him; and after doing so to consider all surplus revenues which come to him simply as trust funds…to administer in the manner…best calculated to produce the most beneficial results to the community.”
One more modern man observed cynically that money is how you keep score. Money can’t buy happiness, jokes one of my friends; a man with five billion dollars is just as happy as a man with 10 billion. But there is happiness to be found in giving it away to someone who needs it--and in the case of many of the world’s people, who need it desperately. Jesus calls us to a life of self-giving. And money is either a tool or a trap. We cannot serve two masters. We must decide for one or the other.
The Episcopal Book of Common Prayer contains these memorable words, “In all time of tribulation; in all time of prosperity…good Lord deliver us.”
Paul said to Timothy (I Timothy 6: 10), the love of money is a root of all kinds of evil. That’s the love of money; not money itself. Money is not bad in itself; money is good when it does not rule us, but serves us and others who need our help.
In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus has a great deal to say about the dangers associated with money, for money competes with God for our attention and affection. Wrong attitudes about money can bring about spiritual ruin. But it is entirely possible to use money in Christ-like ways. God give us resources that not only provide for our needs, but also allow us to demonstrate our faithfulness. God will know whether we used our resources to help others.
The real moral of this story is one that finds great emphasis in Luke’s gospel: forgive. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason or for no reason. Forgive because the Lord’s Prayer asks God to “forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And the real major character in this story is the master who forgave the steward for mismanaging his funds in the first place. That master, of course, represents the God who forgives us for our misbehavior. The currency, the money, of God’s kingdom is forgiveness.
CONC.
Whatever our circumstances, we can help people who have less than we have. Even poor people can help others. I remember the comment of a missionary to Brazil who responded to those Americans who said they could not afford to tithe their incomes. He said, “I know people who live in houses with dirt floors who do.”
Our calling is to see our personal resources, whatever they may be, as having eternal consequences. Do we see the connection of our money and possessions to the causes of Christ? Jesus does! He calls us to be clever and energetic with our resources, for his sake.
Obedience, heeding the calls of Christ, is our “Golden Parachute.” When the time comes for each of us to bail out, we may know that we shall land gently and safely. Amen.