So I just searched Google News for “Ponzi.” I was looking for one or two current examples of dishonest financial management to illustrate this week’s sermon on Luke 16:1-13, the parable of the “unjust steward,” or “dishonest manager,” or however you might find it translated and interpreted.
I was blown away to discover at least 7 or 8 current stories about the trial, convictions, etc. of various Ponzi schemers across the country and from several different professions and backgrounds. Among them were a former star University of Connecticut basketball player, an attorney, a house candidate and army reservist in Hawaii, and a Christian preacher and financial manager. Each of them had bilked people out of millions of dollars.
Most of us would be happy to see dishonest financial professionals locked up for years and all their assets taken to repay their victims, who often lose everything in these schemes. Yet when we look into our Gospel lesson for this week, we find Jesus setting up a dishonest manager as an example for us. It’s no wonder that most commentators see this parable as one of the most difficult, if not the most difficult parable of them all.
A few interpreters try to realign things here to suppose that this shifty fellow is actually doing something good in verses 5-7, the amounts removed from his master’s clients’ debts being either his own exorbitant commission or excessive interest charged by the master. As pretty as that picture might be, no, this fellow is slashing legitimate payments on his master’s accounts in order to garner favors from the debtors. Verse 8 calls him “dishonest” after this activity takes place.
The trait of the manager to be emulated is, of course, not the dishonest financial practice. It’s his shrewdness in how he uses money to build relationships that is the point of the parable. Our take away is exactly what is said in verse 9, to use our money in such a way that we will be welcomed into an eternal home, that is, to use what we have to glorify God and bless others. Basically that means we will be generous givers, letting go of “unrighteous mammon” (the literal words in verse 11) in order to be given the true riches of eternal life.
Jesus is trading on irony verse 8. When it comes to money, “the children of this age,” non-Christians, are smarter in using it to get what they want than the “children of light,” Christian believers, are in using what they have to seek their desire for God and His kingdom. The point is not to be dishonest, but to be as shrewd=wise in investing and using what we have for eternal purposes as others are shrewd in manipulating money for less honorable goals.