“Role Model?” based on Luke 16:1-3

September 18, 2022
by Sara Baron

Parables are not fables. They don’t
teach us a direct lesson that can be immediately applied to living a
good life. Case in point: the parable of the dishonest manager. If
I were giving awards for the most morally ambiguous parable, this one
would be in the running.

For starters, the issue presented is of
a DISHONEST manager, that’s who we’re dealing with as the… hero?
The dishonest manager gets fired, but before the word gets out, he
cancels some of the debt of the owners debtors, presumably aiming to
get hired by one of them for his next gig. So he is dishonest,
underhanded, and self-serving. And he gets commended by the person
who had fired him and used as an example of kindom values by Jesus?

This guy is our role model?

Let no one say the role of the preacher
in interpreting the texts for a modern audience is easy.

But… let’s give this a try.

First of all, I think we better have a
solid sense of this
story in its historical context so that we read less into it and hear
it more as first hearers would have. Here is redacted commentary
from the Social Science Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels:

Rich landowners
frequently employed estate managers (often a slave born in the
household) who had the authority to rent property, make loans, and
liquidate debts in the name of the master. Such agents were usually
paid in the form of a commission or fee on each transaction they
arranged. While token under-the-table additions to loan contracts
were common, all the principal and interest had to be in a publicly
written contract approved by both parties. There is no warrant for
the frequent assumption here that the agent could exact as much as 50
percent above a contract for his fee. If that had been done, the
rage of the peasants would have immediately been made known to the
landowner ,.. who would have been implicated in the extortion if he
acquiesced. This is clearly not the case in this story.

Traditional
Israelite law provided that an agent was expected to pay for any loss
incurred by his employer for which he was responsible. He could also
be put in prison to extort the funds from his family. If the
dishonesty of the manager became public knowledge, he would have been
seen as damaging the reputation of the master. Severe punishment
could be expected. Startlingly, however, in this story he is simply
dismissed.

In the case of
the dismissal of an agent, the dismissal was effective as soon as the
agent was informed of it, and from that time forward, nothing the
agent did was binding on the person who employed him. The plan
worked out by the manager thus had to be enacted before word of his
dismissal got to the village. …

The scheme of the
manager is to seek new patrons….

The debtors here
[paid a fixed amount of the produce]. The size of the debts is
extraordinary. Though such measures are difficult to pin down, they
are probably equivalent to 900 gallons of oil and 150 bushels of
wheat. Storytelling hyperbole may be involved, or as recent
investigations have suggested, debts are large enough that they may
be the tax debts of an entire village. …

The “rich man”
presumably has …an interpersonal attachment to his manager. Having
discovered the mercy of the landowner in not putting him in prison or
demanding repayment, the manager depends on a similar reaction in the
scheme he cooks up. It is a scheme that places the landowner in a
peculiar bind. If he retracts the actions of the manager, he risks
serious alienation in the village, where villagers would already have
been celebrating his astonishing generosity. If he allows the
reductions to stand, he will be praised far and wide (as will the
manager for having made the “arrangement”) as a noble and
generous man. It is the latter reaction upon which the manager
counts.¹

The more I read about the Jewish
peasants of Jesus day, the more I am convinced that they were well
aware of the systems of injustice that kept them down. I find this
to also be true of people living in poverty today.

I’m not sure if there is an actual
protagonist in this story, really. The rich man is definitely not
seen as a good man, in a society were wealth was assumed to be
stolen. But, the person whose job it was to enable the rich man’s
continued wealth accumulation was ALSO not seen in a positive light.
Many people I know can identify with the managers bind. He was
better off being a manager and getting a decent cut of the accounts
he created than he was in most other positions he was eligible for,
but working for “the man” whose very wealth oppressed others was
also inherently dishonorable work. Or at least, I believe the
peasants would have seen it that way.

And quite often when I think too hard
about what it means to work for “The United Methodist Church”, I
fear it too is inherently dishonorable work, even if I believe
working for THIS church is a moral good. There are SO MANY jobs like
this though. Working for the health care system – YAY, caring for
people! But also, making wealth for investors in insurance
companies. Sigh. Working in education – YAY, teaching people
things they need to know! But also, participating in a system that
maintains income INEQUALITY over lifetimes. Groan. Actually, come
to think of it a lot of jobs, probably most jobs, are really morally
ambiguous given the fact that we live in a society that treats a
large percentage of people as expendable, and the institutions and
systems of society are part of how we maintain this system.

(Right now I feel like John Oliver when
he talks about how incredibly cheery his show.)

So in the midst of the realities of
income inequality, injustice, and violations of Jewish law, comes
this incredibly morally ambiguous parable. I think the way I can
most easily make sense of it is if the debts forgiven are the debts
of the whole village. That brings the whole thing together for me –
including that it suggests the Rich Man owns the whole village which
was common enough in the Roman Empire but INHERENTLY immoral in the
tradition of the Ancient Jews who believed that every family got land
access that could not be taken away from them. This is related to
the banning of INTEREST, which keeps people from being stuck in
poverty cycles. The rich man owning the village means that the
morals of the community have been deeply violated, and both the rich
man and his obsequious servants are at fault.

The post-firing actions of the
dishonest manager have some accidental Robin Hood implications then.
He cancels debt, creates a better balance, eases the lives of the
people. But, it is still pretty clear that he does this FOR HIMSELF,
and the benefit to the people is mostly accidental.

Now, this has some themes that fit
other parables and other teachings of Jesus. There is a value in the
cornering of the rich man into being generous, in winning the
“shrewd” fight, and in taking care of the people, no matter the
intention.

While I believe that the “moral” of
the story is likely tacked on later, the Jesus Seminar thinks it goes
back to Jesus and I think Luke placed it well. “No servant can
serve two masters. No doubt that slave will either hate one and love
the other or be devoted to one and disdain the other. You can’t be
enslaved to both God and a bank account.” The book “Debt: The
History of the First 5000 Years” says that the world’s major
religions emerged IN RESPONSE (to counter) the world’s first market
economies. That is, there started to be an assumption that markets
were GOOD, and defined what life should be, and those who won at the
market deserved it and those who lost at the market deserved it, and
that was just how life was.

In the face of that, religions said,
“nope.” I would make a claim the author didn’t, that this was
related to the Spirit of God NOT being invested in the markets and
the hierarchies they created in the “value” of human life. But,
in a quite literal sense, religions countered the claims of the
market. Money is NOT what matters most. Individual wealth is NOT a
sign of a persons goodness. Instead, all people have value.
Instead, goodness is related to the way All the people are cared for.
Instead, the COMMON GOOD is the definition of a successful society.

God cares for the peasants, even though
the market does not.

This morally ambiguous parable is
likely NOT one we want to take as a simple role model story. BUT, in
the vein of great parables, it is one that invites us into
consideration of our own lives and our own roles. When are we
serving “the rich man” and harming the poor? When are we serving
ourselves, and who is that helping and hurting? When are we serving
the poor, and why? How are we implicated in the systems that
oppress, and how and when are we motivated to shake them up? And,
maybe – when we are backed into a corner afraid for our own
well-being, can we find ways out that help others along the way?

Serving God and not money is not
encouraged in our society. I often fear our economy is the actual
“god” of our society. But the God of our Bible, and the God we
learn about from Jesus is deeply invested in offering us alternatives
to worshipping the economy. Thanks be to God for being worthy of our
worship for being the worthy center of our lives. Amen

1Bruce J. Malina and Richard L. Rohrbaugh Social-Science
Commentary on the Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press,
2003) “Textual Notes: Luke 16:1-16” p. 292-3.

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/
https://www.facebook.com/FUMCSchenectady

September 18, 2022

Sermons

“Requirements” based on Micah 6:1-8 and Matthew 5:1-12

February 2, 2020February 11, 2020
by Sara Baron

By
my records, this is the 4^th time I’ve preached on the
Beatitudes here, and the 7^th time overall. To be honest,
this makes things a little bit challenging. To be a responsible
preacher, I think I have to go over the basics each time, but to be
an INTERESTING preacher I need to offer you something new. The
Beatitudes, however, have been around for a while and they aren’t …
well…new.

In
fact, they’re so not new to those of us with lifetime exposures to
Christianity, that I’m not sure we can hear them anymore. Bruce
Malina and Richard Rohrbough wrote the “Social-Science Commentary
on the Synoptic Gospels” which is one of the most useful books I’ve
ever met. They put the Gospels into a social context, and use it to
explain how things would have made sense in the stories and to those
first hearing the stories.

Their
commentary on the Beatitudes is particularly helpful, as they
DISAGREE with the general consensus that “blessed” can be
translated as “fortunate” or “lucky” or “happy.” Those
are all good translations of the Latin version of the text,
but they miss the social context of Jesus’s day. Instead, they point
out:

The language used here, i.e. ‘blessed’ is
honorific language. … Contrary to the dominant social values, these
‘blessed are…’ statements ascribe honor to those unable to defend
their positions or those who refuse to take advantage of or trespass
on the position of another. They are not those normally honored by
the culture. Obviously, then, the honor granted comes from God, not
from the usual social sources.¹

The
honor bit of this isn’t simply honor like we understand it today.
One of the primary points of the book is that honor and shame were
understood as a zero-sum reality in the Mediterranean region at that
time. One was born into a certain amount of honor or shame and the
only way one gained honor was by gaining it FROM someone else and
that person then experienced an increase in shame. Honor was the
FUNDMENTAL value in society, and it was a “limited good.” In
fact, the “poor” and the “rich” in the New Testament are not
actually economic terms to begin with. Rather, to be “poor” was
to be a person living with less honor than one was born to, and to be
“rich” was to have gained honor from others. Malina and
Rorhrbough put it this way, “The ancient Mediterranean attitude was
that every rich person is either unjust or the hair of an unjust
person,” one who had stolen from others what they had.²
They conclude that,”The terms ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ therefore, are
better translated ‘greedy,’ and socially unfortunate.’”³
(This isn’t to say poverty wasn’t an issue, it was just such a
UNIVERSAL issue that it wasn’t actually the focus.)

This
understanding of honor, and the connection of honor to “blessed
are…”, is the key to understanding the Beatitudes in their
original context. The challenge is that sometimes the text has been
used to mean the opposite of it’s intention. When “Blessed are…”
is translated “lucky” it can SEEM like the beatitudes are saying:
“Lucky are the ones who struggle, don’t worry about them, they’re
better off than you think.” Thus the social order of the day,
whatever day it may be, is upheld and people’s suffering is
justified.

That
sounds sort of like what a STANDARD set of honor and shame statements
would have been – the ones describing society as it was in Jesus’s
day:

Honorable
are those born into good families.

Honorable
are those who are spoken well of in the town square.

Honorable
are those who own large estates.

Honorable
are the elected officials who make the rules.

Honorable
are those who have many servants.

Honorable
are those who have the status to control others.

Honorable
are those who have the ear of power.

Honorable
are those who can enforce their will with violence.

Honorable
are those who speak, and others have to listen.

That
is, honor belongs to and is used by those are are already powerful,
important, and wealthy. So, shame belongs to the powerless, the
unimportant, the poor, and those who lose status. This clarifies
just how different the statements in Matthew’s gospel really are.
Because those that society shames, God does not.

Given
the information we have, the Beatitudes might be heard as:

Honorable to God are those who have lost the
honor of society, while they do not own the kingdoms of earth, they
are part of the kindom of heaven.

Honorable to God are those who are mourn, while
they have lost that which matters, loss is not the final word.

Honorable to God are those who refuse to harm
others, while they may lose out on power and wealth, they will end up
with everything that truly matters.

Honorable to God are those who hunger and thirst
for fairness, righteousness, and justice – it is coming.

Honorable to God are the merciful – those who
do not demand what they have a right to and shame others – they
will also receive mercy when they need it.

Honorable to God are those who are pure in
heart, the kind, for when they look in the world, they are able to
see the hand of God at work.

Honorable to God are the peace-able people, the
ones who reject violence and seek win-win situations, they are like
God.

Honorable to God are the ones who are shamed by
society for making the right choices, they also are a part of the
kindom of heaven.

Jesus
is describing an ENTIRELY ALTERNATE values system, one that ignores
the things that society cared about and instead focuses about caring
for each other, building each other up, not being willing to do harm,
and inverting the assumptions about how honor and shame work.

The
work of Jesus in this Matthew passage tracks well with the questions
posed in Micah. In this passage God reminds the people what God has
done for them, and they respond with a wish to show appropriate…
well, honor and difference to God. This leads to the question, “With
what shall I come before the LORD?” and the initial thoughts are
the sorts of gifts one might bring a king to indicate that one
understands oneself to be a vassal – that the approval of the king
is important to your own continued life. But the answer is that
God does NOT work like that. God isn’t looking for bribes, like the
kings of the world. God is looking for something else entirely.

You
may well know this answer: to do justice, and to love kindness, and
to walk humbly with your God. Sounds a bit like the Beatitudes,
doesn’t it?

I
asked a question last week about how we as Christians are supposed to
be in relationship with the world. I think, perhaps, this is a large
part of the answer. We are to exist within an alternative value
system, one that sees the world with different eyes. We are to see
the values of justice, and of kindness, of humility, of peacefulness,
of humility, of mercy – and let those values guide our lives. How
we relate to the world at large is not in rejection or complicity –
it is with seeing it with different eyes.

In
the video for the Living the Questions study last week Rev. Winnie
Varghese suggests that as Christians we should be dreaming dreams so
big that the world thinks we are CRAZY, and the dreams are
impossible. The reason, she says, is because God dreams of a truly
just society, and we’re supposed to be dreamers with God. I think
that both Micah and the Beatitudes point us in the direction of God’s
dreams – of value systems that value compassion, collaboration, and
kindness. May we dream right alongside of God, and act accordingly.
Amen

1Bruce
J. Malina and Richard L. Rorhrbough Social-Science Commentary on the
Synoptic Gospels (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2003) “Textual
Notes: Matthew 5:1-12” p. 41.

2Malina,
400.

3Malina,
401.

Rev. Sara E. Baron
First United Methodist Church of Schenectady
603 State St. Schenectady, NY 12305
Pronouns: she/her/hers
http://fumcschenectady.org/

02-02-2020