Description
This parable about the Shrewd Manager is not terribly well known, in part because it’s so contentious and difficult to understand. Unlike with better known parables, where we can identify the kind of behaviour that Jesus is encouraging, or understand what the Kingdom of God is like, this parable is much more complex. Is Jesus telling us that he wants us to be like the Shrewd Manager? To rip off one’s boss, or the poor, so one can get ahead? Is Jesus telling us, in the immortal words of Gordon Gekko from the 1987 movie Wall Street that “Greed is Good”? Does the parable endorse all sorts of dishonest practices for “the good of the gospel?”
This is a parable we need to wrestle with. In a world where the rich and powerful always have the whip hand, and the poor, the widow and the orphan always suffer, the Jesus of Luke’s gospel turns the world as we know it upside down. Jesus is the manager in the story. He’s the one who is taking what belongs to the Master (the Father) and giving back more to people than they truly deserve. Jesus the Shrewd Manager takes more grace and mercy and forgiveness than can be imagined from the Father, and gives it lavishly and extravagantly to those who are marginalised, poor and suffering. Jesus doesn’t just cancel peoples’ debt or forgive their sin in the way that it happened in the Jewish Temple system where a complex system of rituals had to be paid for and performed – but rather, in the words of Paul, “All are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus.” (Romans 3:24.)
How then should the wealthy respond when they hear this parable? Brendan Byrne SJ suggests that this is another example of a parable where a ‘great reversal’ occurs. As is common in Luke’s gospel, there is no benefit in storing up wealth: it exists to be given away. Thus, the wealthy should be ready to give away their wealth to the poor now so that when God’s great reversal comes, and the poor have their place in heaven (Luke 6:20), the poor will then welcome them and offer them the hospitality of God.
