Herzog identifies this moment as an example of “communitas,” the dissolving of social stratification when the group enters a liminal space-in this story, ostensibly, the transition to “Your kingdom come, your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven.” Perhaps this is where God is in this parable-in the spaces between the wealthy, the middle management class, and the poor, who for at least a moment join together in collective liberation. The universe’s axis tilts toward justice. And the rich man is liberated from his unjust practices. The money-manager has a path to survival. From Exodus 22:25: “ If you lend money to my people, to the poor among you, you shall not deal with them as a creditor you shall not exact interest from them.” For a strange moment, everyone’s best interest is served at once. The percentages by which the debts are reduced suggests that the steward is eliminating the interest on the debts it brings him into compliance with Jewish law which forbids usury and predatory lending that creates even more debt. What accounts for his strange reaction? Perhaps his guilt is assuaged. Our head-scratching occurs when the master commends the steward for, essentially, cutting his profits. It is important to note that nowhere in this text does Jesus call the steward’s actions “unjust.” It was within the power of the steward to reduce the people’s debts, and he chose to do so.
Yes, he reduces their debt out of self-interest, but the debt relief is nonetheless real for those who are granted it. From that perspective, the actions of the so-called “dishonest” or “unjust” steward do not seem dishonest or unjust at all. It’s also possible to read this parable from the age-old perspective in which peasant farmers, sharecroppers or indentured servants are often indebted or exploited by their landowners or some middleman who gets rich by buying their goods at low prices and then selling high. The commendation is directed not toward the manager’s dishonesty per se, but “because he had acted shrewdly” (v. Knowing that he would be fired, the money manager cooks the books of his boss’s clients so that they will owe him favors when he loses his job. Most likely, the original hearers of this parable would not have identified with the rich boss but with the debtors, or maybe even with the manager, who would have been part of the retainer class-by no means a peasant eking out a subsistence on the wealthy landowner’s estate, but still a dependent currying favor with an elite family in order to survive.
This passage also has one of the hardest-hitting punch lines. Jesus says that how we relate to money is an important barometer of how we relate to God. Material wealth is one measure of our spiritual health. This parable certainly provokes and has confounded biblical scholars for millennia. I’d bet my life that no children’s minister has ever explicated this passage in a children’s chapel! I’m thinking that the verse, “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,” would go over like a lead balloon in Sunday School.
This is important because the theology matters, especially when one has to make sense of a parable like the one told in today’s Gospel. I won’t go into the reasons why there are different translations of the prayer but know that Jesus used the Aramaic word translated as debts and debtors. We Episcopalians pray, “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us…” The Presbyterians, among other Protestant denominations, pray the original translation, “Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors…” from Matthew Chapter 6. We all chuckled, and the tower of Babel ensued followed by more laughter.
CHAPTER 6 SUBSISTENCE CHEATS FREE
When it came time in the liturgy for The Lord’s Prayer, her pastor spoke up and said that the Presbyterians should feel free to pray their version, while we Episcopalians could pray ours.
My colleague is an Episcopalian, the son of an Episcopal priest. This past April, I had the privilege of officiating the marriage of one of my Cathedral colleagues in Sumter, South Carolina at the bride’s Presbyterian church.
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