Scripture Luke 16:1-13
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 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.
“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. If, then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”
Sermon
In 2019 an American billionaire named Robert F. Smith. was invited to Morehouse College in Atlanta to give the commencement address. Smith, an African American businessman, spoke to the graduates of one of the nation’s most prestigious historically black colleges, and in that speech, he announced that he would pay off the student loans of the entire graduating class. That generous gift to the 400 or so graduates cost the billionaire about $40 million [dollars].
For many students other than Morehouse class of 2019, the student loan crisis remains dire. Students can graduate with an expected payment of $1000/ month, an enormous amount for most Americans who also need food, housing, and medical care. According to the Education Data Initiative,
For the 2025-26 school year, federal student loan interest rates are 6.39% for undergraduate direct subsidized and unsubsidized loans, 7.94% for graduate direct unsubsidized loans, and 8.94% for Direct Plus loans. Private student loan rates vary significantly based on creditworthiness, with lenders offering fixed or variable rates ranging from roughly 2.9% to over 17.9%. [i]
Debt would seem to be always with us. In fact, ongoing, life-altering debt is at the heart of the parable Jesus is sharing with us today. I told our Bible Study this week that today is the first time I will ever have tackled this parable in a sermon. I just couldn’t understand it. It made no sense. The manager is in trouble for his frittering away the property of his boss, and then he reduces the debts owed to his boss, and then his boss congratulates him on the scheme? And, Jesus commends him too?
This was all a mystery to me, and not one I ever wanted to address publicly. Any one of those who were in the Bible Study will tell you that it was a mystery to all of us, even as class ended. But the historical context for the parable helps, and it is about the practices of the wealthy who preyed on the most vulnerable.
It’s all about Mammon, the Greek work for wealth, but which has gained an inflection of wealth that becomes the center of one’s life.
The first thing to know is that scripture forbids charging interest on loans, because the poor would be hurt most by such charges. And scripture speaks incessantly about our need to care for those who are poor and vulnerable.
The second thing to know is that the business model of those who extended loans ( in first-century Roman-occupied Galilee (which is to say, rich land-owners), was much like the business model of a loan shark today. The point was to accumulate property and to make it easy to take the family land of the poorest, who, of course, were the people most in need of loans. These folks, these peasants, were often illiterate. They would agree to contracts with exorbitant amounts of interest, sometimes hidden deep in the language, so that even the literate might miss them. They would have to pay 50% interest, often more, if they failed to repay the loan on time, which, of course, put them in the same kind of cycle of debt of many who are trying to pay off student loans today. [ii]
So, back to our parable. We have a rich land-owner who loans out money and goods. His manager, by the way, is also skimming off the top, with his boss’s knowledge and consent, and now, apparently, letting some of his boss’s holdings slip away, NOT with his boss’s consent at all. Maybe he’s pocketing the proceeds himself? He’s not an honest guy.
When his boss calls him on the carpet and tells him he’s fired, bring me the books, he panics. He’s in no position to be a day laborer, and he can’t bear the shame of begging. So here’s what he does.
The manager goes to all the people who owe money or goods to his boss, and, again, without his boss’s consent, reduces what the people owe. One possibility is that he’s simply not taking his cut, which would do no harm to his boss. Another possibility is that his boss’s portion is affected, but since the boss gains the goodwill of the whole town—at least for now—he’s willing to overlook it. In either case, the manager is certainly in the good graces of the community, and will, as he has said, welcome him into their homes. Which is good, as he might well lose his own after all this.
Another thing happens: In that place, at that moment, for just a while, the scales are rebalanced. Those who have been taking advantage are taken down a peg. And the most vulnerable, those who have been at the mercy of the loan sharks, are able to rise, just a bit. For the moment.
So, yes. The dishonest manager is praised by Jesus. And yes, his boss doesn’t call in the guard to take him to jail. And yes, Jesus praises him as shrewd—maybe even more shrewd than Jesus’ most devoted followers, whom he calls “children of light.” All because debts due to high interest rates are reduced and forgiven.
Every Sunday we Presbyterians pray, “forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.” We use Matthew’s translation of Jesus’ words (Mt 6:12), but Luke’s (Lk 11:4) are similar: “forgive us our sins, for we ourselves forgive everyone indebted to us.” Would it surprise you to know that this prayer refers to literal debts? As in money or goods owed? Debt was a killer of communities, a tool to further impoverish those who were already at the edge. It still is today. No wonder Jesus encourages his disciples to pray about it—for themselves and for their communities. No wonder he urges them to be forgiving of those debts, as they will find God’s forgiveness of their spiritual debts.
Mammon. Money. And the rebalancing of the world, the topsy-turvy way Jesus wants us to see it. This is a prominent theme, all throughout the gospel according to Luke: the reversal of the status quo, in which the big fish get everything and the little guys suffer. This is the gospel. Jesus talks about, preaches and teaches about, and ultimately, models it, in giving his life in solidarity with humanity.
Sometimes the inbreaking of the kingdom of God looks like a dishonest manager who has rebalanced the scales for the little ones, even if just for a moment. Sometimes the kingdom of God looks like a billionaire paying off an entire graduating class’s college loans. Sometimes the kingdom of God looks like Jesus leaving us baffled, but with the distinct understanding that we all belong to one another, and we all are responsible for one another, and we are all called in the end to love one another
Thanks be to God. Amen.
Footnotes
[1] https://educationdata.org/average-student-loan-interest-rate.
[1] Barbara Rossing, Commentary on Luke 16:1-13: “Gotta serve somebody,” Bob Dylan Sings. Working Preacher, September 18, 2016. https://www.workingpreacher.org/commentaries/revised-common-lectionary/ordinary-25-3/commentary-on-luke-161-13-2.