Text: Luke 16:1-13
Unedited transcript
Our Gospel begins exactly where we left off last time: Jesus speaking to his disciples and tells them about this rich man and a manager. here’s the thing: this is actually rather a complicated Gospel to talk about because it requires us to understand a number of things about the relationship between rich men and their managers or agents as they would be called, about Jewish law concerning usury and what was apparently usury but not quite, and other things all of which the Gospel writer clearly knows about and presumes that we know about. so I’m gonna have to ask you to forgive me if I explain this a little bit. I should say that you would get the full version of this from my late friend Duncan Derrett’s book, Law in the New Testament, which details I will put in the text below. so I’m going to give you a much-reduced account of what he sets out in fascinating detail.
one of the key things to remember is that the law of agency at the time basically meant that if you name someone your agent, a manager, for instance, then that person legally was you. that person acted in your name, they didn’t need to tell you very much about what they were doing. you would let them get on with it. if they did something illegal, then they would be responsible, for it but if they did something legal but not good for your business, then you would ultimately suffer for it. but in general, the relationship between agents and their managers was a necessary and a good thing and it was very carefully and legally protected. this manager has clearly been engaged in if not exactly usury, then something very close to usury. and this is an important point because it explains something about how our Parable ends.
usury was strictly forbidden by Jewish law. it was forbidden to take interest on a loan of any sort at all, nevertheless, there were things that might have been close to usury that needed to be protected against so they actually weren’t, such as for instance colleagues in a venture who might lend each other money so that they could both together make a profit, that was thought to be rather a good thing. and so it wasn’t properly speaking alone an interest though it might appear to be. so different ways of describing these things had to be done and the Pharisees had invented something called the dust of usury meaning something that might be seen as usury and you had to be very careful if you were doing it because you might be thought to be actually contradicting a major law while thinking you were getting away with something else. so one of the things that you shouldn’t do, for instance, is making a loan arrangement between friends written down because if there was anything suggestive of interest on it or even profit being made from it, from the loan, then that was a big No-No. It would be usury.
however there were certain loopholes that were got into, for instance, if you were sharing a project with someone so supposing that someone had some oil in their house, it might have been a tiny jar of oil, then they might be borrowing simply to take part in a bigger venture rather than something of which they had nothing in the house and therefore they were really committing themselves to you by the loan. so it was actually allowed for people to get big loans even if they only had a tiny tiny bit of the substance in question: a bowl of wheat, a jug of olive oil, of wheat – that would be enough to make alone with some sort of possibility of making a profit out of it for both parties understanding that anyone who was in the loaning business in order to destroy somebody, that was obviously a sin. but if there was something to do with trying to build something together, then it might not be. but obviously, you had to be very careful about this. so it would seem that what we have here is a manager who has been engaged in something either usurious or very close to usurious: using his master’s money or goods. and of course, it’s not written down in financial terms, it’s written down as a product because of course it’s much more difficult to detect if any interest or increase is being charged if a loan is made in the product.
so we have the rich man, nothing more about him, just a rich man. he has the disposable amount of money and he has a manager – perfectly straightforward – and the manager is accused of squandering his property, misspending – something about the manager has reached his ears. so he summons him and says: what’s this about I hear you? give me accounting for managing. in other words, present me the accounting books for the last year showing what you’ve learned, what you’ve done with the money, where it’s gone, what I’m expecting to get back so that I know when your successor takes over what the state is or the state of things is. I expect proper accounting of your period as my manager. this will be prior to my … use so you know that this is not something that I might change my mind about. so the manager says to himself: what am I going to do? my master’s taking the position away from me, I’m not strong enough to dig and I’m ashamed to beg. I’ve decided what to do so that when I’m dismissed as manager people will welcome me into their homes. in other words, I’ve got to use the situation I’m in now to make the best of things. if I’m sacked because people think I’m dishonest I’ll never get another job. if I’ve been cruel to people they won’t be friendly to me. so let me see if I can use my current situation to turn things around a bit.
so this is what he does: he summons his master’s debtors one by one and he asks the first: how much do you owe my master? and he answered: a hundred – well here it says jugs of oil – bats of oil. this would be about 4 000 litres of oil, 870 gallons of oil. so it’s a pretty large amount we’re not talking about, not just a couple of olive oil jars. and he said to him: sit down quickly and make it 50. now, what does that mean? it means that the oil has been lent at a rate of 100 per cent. effectively he was going to get back 100 per cent. and incidentally, that was the going rate for loans of oil at the time in the civil courts.
While usury was forbidden by Jewish law, there were secular courts and this was perfectly standard. why was oil so expensive to borrow? why was it 100 per cent? well because the oil could easily be tampered with, and if you lent good oil to somebody, they could mix it with sesame oil or other forms of cheap oil, and it could be adulterated. so it had a high-interest rate because it was more easily temperable basically, we had to be more careful with what you were going to get back. then he asks another: and how much do you owe? and he replies: 100 containers of wheat. he said to him: pick a bill and make it 80. and his master commended the dishonest manager. well, let’s look at the 80. he says the 100 containers of wheat. well, again this is a kor of wheat. we’re talking here about something close to a thousand bushels of wheat or 40 000 litres of wheat, or a thousand bushels of wheat. Again, a very large amount of grain. and he says: take the bill and make it 80. in other words, what he had originally lent had been 80 or the equivalent of 80 kor at an interest rate of 25 per cent. the 25 per cent would include both the interest and the insurance. and incidentally, 25 per cent was pretty much the going rate for wheat loans at the time of Christ in the ancient Middle East. it’s good to know that these things are not invented, these figures are not invented, if you lent 80, 25 per cent of 80 is 20, add 80, and do so you owed 100.
so he’s saying: I’ll get back to 80, which is of course where the starting figure was. now his master commended the dishonest manager. what had he done? well, he’d done two things: first of all, where before he had in his apparent dishonesty he treaded very close to actually being usurious, if not actually being usurious, which would have been bad for him and his reputation but also bad for his master’s reputation. it was also onerous on those who had borrowed. so he’s doing several things at once: he’s putting his bill which he could get away with in the secular courts but he would have had a bad reputation and he would have broken God’s law; he’s putting it right with God’s law, thereby giving his boss a good reputation. he’s losing the amount that he would have been able to skim off for himself because the currency presented to his master would of course have shown his master not being usurious.
so he is giving up that which is skimming off and he’s using the goodwill that not charging it to make friends so that he comes across both as an honest person who could be hard properly but also someone who has been very friendly to people who were in debt, and giving the impression, at least, that it’s he who’s done them a favour. so he’s been very shrewd: he’s managed to save his master’s reputation and buy himself friendship with people thinking that he’s doing them a favour and the masters letting him off. so obeying God’s law, giving the master a good reputation, and making friends. he’s done it very shrewdly by discounting the bit from usury that he was going to take and he’s done it very exactly.
so the master commends the dishonest manager because he’s actually shrewdly. and then he says here: for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than other children of light.
It means you have to have a certain sense of what your dishonesty is in order to be able to make it up to people. that’s what’s been going on here. and not only did he make up to but to turn it into something good. that’s what he’s done: he’s taking something and turning it into something good.
And I tell you: make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth. now again, the phrase ‘dishonest wealth’ is quite technical. ‘dishonest wealth’ refers to that bit of the wealth which was dishonestly acquired, in other words, the extra 25 per cent in the case of the wheat, or the extra 100 per cent in the case of the oil. that was the dishonest bit, so you’re saying: make friends for yourselves by means of ‘dishonest wealth’. if you’ve got something that is dishonest, use it to make friends. that’s the recommendation. if something has come to you dishonestly, you can’t use it for yourself because that would be to confirm its dishonesty. it would be you entering into the dishonesty of the thing. but you can use that which is of morally dubious status to do things for other people. and that’s a way of making things good for the person who’s manager originally and for yourself. whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much.
now interestingly our dishonest servant turns out to have been faithful in his dishonesty. so whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. remember this. the next line then says: if then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you true riches? remember, our servant was honest and faithful with the dishonest wealth. he took the dishonest wealth and made things right with God by not charging usury, gave his boss a good reputation, and made friends. and it said, if you’re able to do that then you will be entrusted with much much more because it shows that there is a fundamental honesty in you. you know what is right and what’s wrong, and you know how to make good use of what you are given. that means you will be given more. and if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own?
you’re saying: okay, now that comes back to us. all of us, anything that we have is what we have been given. if we make things dishonestly, then with just the little things that we can add on, then we’ll be dishonest with everything. but if starting with something which someone has given us, like a rich master, we are then able to turn potentially dishonest things into something honest, we will be able to be given much much more.
If you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? in other words, the notion is that we start having to learn how to be really shrewd in working out how not to be exploitative but how to make sense of what has been given to us in order to put us in the position of receiving more. the more we give away, the more we’ll get – this is absolutely the pattern of desire which comes through in Luke’s Gospel. “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
In other words, the law of God, remember, is against usury, it’s greatly in favour of generosity, and here are the words love and hate in the first verse and then it says ‘devoted’ and ‘despise’. Actually, the word for devoted is ‘cleave to the one’, and for despises the word used very frequently for those who reject God. so these are the words referring to the cleave to God or dishonour God, despising God. so what is he saying here? he’s saying: the true master, the one who gives you absolutely everything, is God. and if you cleave to him, you will find out ways of making things which are apparently dishonest into honest things, which can do you good. or you’ll find yourself actually being really interested only in the financial outcome, in which case you will pursue dishonesty, and you will make yourself dishonest.
in other words, it’s what’s coming upon you, that is really the question of your riches, not what you start with. what you start with, of course, is that which enables you to open up to what is coming upon you. if what is coming upon you is from God, then you’ll be able to grow in generosity. if what is coming upon you is for money, then you will be a slave to it and it will run your life. that seems to me to be what is being said in today’s Gospel.