Sunday, September 21, 2025
Proper 20C, 2025
Luke 16:1-13
I usually don’t preach directly from the commentaries I study in sermon preparation, those scholars who help us in our bible study. I sometimes will offer a short quote from a scholar or paraphrase a longer passage though not usually. But rarely have I leaned on the commentators as much as this week. This week, as you can imagine, I needed a little extra help and ended up diving into a deep conversation with one scholar - though that got off to a rocky start.
The favorite online site these days for sermon preparation and commentaries on all the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary is called Working Preacher. The scholar for this week is one of my favorites, John T. Carroll, who is a professor of New Testament at Union Seminary in Richmond.
Dr. Carroll opens his thoughts on this passage with this sentence, “The parable at the heart of this passage is a head-scratcher, one of the most puzzling texts in the New Testament.” Now, in my rush, or maybe in my relationship with the Holy Spirit, I read the hyphenated word “head-scratcher” as “heart-stretcher.” That little God nudge, as always, was something to pay attention to. We will have to stretch our hearts when we are faced with difficult passages like this.
Our first instinct, especially living in our current culture with it’s tugs to take sides, is to argue and blame and find what is wrong with this, or any, passage of scripture. As if we wrote it. As if we already know everything and don’t need to hear this again.
But friends, this is a head-scratcher and a tough one, so stretch your hearts here with me for a few moments while we take a look at it.
The parable of the Shrewd Manager, which we have just read together, is considered the most difficult parable of all of the parables Jesus used to teach us about the Kingdom of God. It brings to mind questions about justice and injustice, privilege and poverty, and is set in the middle of a section of Luke that is all about the dangers of wealth. But I’m going to propose that none of that is what Jesus is trying to emphasize here but that there is a bigger picture.
Succinctly, the parable is about a manager who got fired. He was accused of mismanagement. So, he seems to hustle to save his own reputation (and maybe he inadvertently saves the reputation of the owner too). He gives all the vendors a great deal on the way out the door. And he does this behind the business owner’s back. We would expect the owner to become enraged about this when he finds out but instead the manager is praised. Still fired. But praised.
This really gets our attention. We want justice. We want fairness. We want best business practices. And this clown gets away with what seems like a con.
What is Jesus up to here? Is he suggesting that it is a good thing to sneak around and work the books and have side hustles? You would think that this itinerant, essentially homeless rabbi with a gospel of love wouldn’t talk about business owners and managers at all - unless maybe that’s his audience. How can we understand this?
I got this bit from Professor Carroll:
“It is customary to regard this manager’s conduct as dishonest. After all, Jesus calls him an ‘unrighteous manager.’ Some interpreters, though, have attempted to defend his character. By reducing the contracted debts at the expense of his master, they suggest, he is not acting as a scoundrel but instead performing a virtuous act, whether removing unlawful interest built into the debt principal or voluntarily forfeiting his own agent’s commission.”
That all sounds like a bunch of excuses to me.
But, Professor Carroll continues, the story doesn’t highlight the manager’s virtue. Instead, it depends on his shrewdness in surviving a desperate situation. Ironically, his plan results in more of the wealth-squandering that cost him his job in the first place.
So we are left confused wondering why Jesus would use this story and wondering just what he is trying to teach us.
I’ve been fascinated and amazed at the news this past week. We are moving further into division in our country and our culture.
I’m imagining that you have all just anxiously leaned forward a bit in your pew. We don’t talk about politics in church! Don’t worry, I’m not going there.
But I am left pondering the divisions and tribalism and bubbles and conflict we live in. Why are we acting that way? What is the solution?
As I was working on this sermon, I had a vision. I don’t get huge visions or anything like the medieval saints, but I have learned, and you can too, to listen to those nudges from the Holy Spirit. And sometimes my imagination is not just fooling around and I’ve learned to pay attention. Maybe I was just daydreaming, but I think it was a divine vision, at least in response to my striving to understand this parable.
This little vision of mine was of a crowded house with one wall in the middle. The house was full of unhappy, angry people some shoving for more space while others were trying to be small. Then, there was Jesus lifting off the roof and inviting us all to fly away from this trap. We didn’t even need to tear down the dividing wall. We just left it behind.
Maybe that’s just wishful thinking or maybe that’s what heaven is all about, but I can’t help but think that we are capable in this life and in this time on Earth to rise above all this hate-filled division.
One of the scriptural images I carry with me when I’m struggling to head-scratch and heart-stretch is that reminder from St. Paul. “When I became an adult, I put away childish things.” (1 Corinthians 13:11) At the same time, I’ve learned to balance this with the words of Jesus, “Unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 18:3)
If you’ll notice the difference, Paul uses the word “childish” as that behavior to put away and Jesus says “child-like” is what we should become.
I think we need to keep our childish ways in check. You know, that tendency we all have toward selfishness and greed or gluttony for that matter. I suppose all of the vises are from child-ish ways.
But we also need to allow our hearts to fly away with Jesus when he calls us and this happens every day. It is not a once and done thing that happens at the end of our lives. We can work at becoming more child-like - more spontaneous, more playful, more connected and that best of all child-like quality of making friends with anyone we encounter, regardless of what tribe they are from, or how wealthy they are, or who they are married to, or the color of their skin.
In 1968, I had a huge melt down. Maybe melt downs were in the air at that time in our political history as well. But in 1968 I was only 6 years old and had only been in first grade for two months when it happened.
The problem was over a feather! The teacher of our First Grade class over at Washington and Lee Elementary, Mrs. Hudson, gave us construction paper and crayons and safety scissors and instructed us to draw a feather on one of the pieces of paper, then color it and then cut it out. We worked quietly on our projects for what felt like hours though was probably only about 20 minutes. Mrs. Hudson was very engaged in her classroom walking around and talking quietly with each child encouraging us.
I finished my feather ahead of the other children and I was very proud of what I had created and I was proud of myself for sitting quietly while waiting on everyone else to have the chance to finish their work. When Mrs. Hudson decided that we were all done, I expected a “show and tell” moment and was excited about the opportunity to show off my feather hoping it would win “best” or something like that. These were child-ish thoughts.
Instead, Mrs. Hudson asked us to place all of the feathers in a basket and then she distributed them back out again later. In the mean time, we made a simple paper band out of boring brown paper and stapled it to fit our heads. When we got our feathers back, we were instructed to staple one feather each to the back of the band and then we’d all be able to pretend to be the Indians of the Thanksgiving story.
Well, the lack of political correct treatment of indigenous peoples in this story aside (something that was far from my awareness at that point in time), my problem with Mrs. Hudson was that I didn’t get my beautiful, best feather back from the basket. I got someone else’s feather and in my child-ish opinion, their feather was fat and ugly!
So, I had a meltdown.
I wanted my feather back. I wanted my artistic expression. I wanted attention!
I did not get my way.
When we sing songs from our youth like “This Little Light of Mine” we are reminded of this lesson which I learned from Mrs. Hudson in First Grade: Shining your light is a means of sharing and connecting and hoping in community. It is not a spotlight for you on your stage.
Jesus is not telling us to selfishly cheat the boss and he is not telling us to take sides. He never taught us to divide ourselves and blame the other side and build walls. Not in this parable, not in any of his teachings. Jesus invites us all to join him in his gospel of Love and follow him - in child-like ways. But he also advises his disciples that some will choose evil over love, selfishness over community and refuse to join him on his path - his Way of Love.
But we won’t refuse. We know better. We know how to follow in faith and lead in hope and let go of our selfish, child-ish ways.
I think where we need to land in all this pondering is not to land on any particular site, or point, or blind loyalty, or statement, or rule, or regulation. We need to let go and let God and fly away from this trap through the roof with Jesus. This is not escapism. There is much work to be done as we follow him.
People have lost faith these days that it is possible to just follow Jesus in this life. We’ve lost hope that we can break through all the division. We’ve lost hope in even love.
But, hope still springs eternal. And stretching our hearts is always the answer. So friends, go forth from this particular head-scratching with your hearts stretched wide open and live into a child-like faith that remembers love and lives in hope.
Amen.
The Rev. Dr. Kathy Kelly
1 John T. Carroll, Professor of New Testament, Union Presbyterian Seminary, Richmond, VA, from Working Preacher, https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-25-3/commentary-on-luke-161-13-6, accessed September 19, 2025.