Being Perplexed Together
Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
To be perplexed in the face of the Scriptures is not a new posture. For those who have been keeping up with the lectionary, the last few weeks have picked a path through the tricky territory that is parables. This week has landed us on one which is, to use a technical term, a doozy. This parable concerns wealth, dishonesty, and a challenge to those with ears to hear to consider whom they ultimately serve. Perplexing indeed.
In the fourth century CE Augustine, bishop of Hippo in Roman North Africa, wrote a lengthy treatise titled De Doctrina Christiana. One of his goals in writing this treatise was to teach Christians how to read the Bible and how to communicate what they discovered in their encounters with the Scriptures. He spends a great deal of time addressing the questions “how do we understand the difficult texts?” and “what do these difficult passages mean?” They are questions not too far removed from the ones we engage with as we read this week’s gospel passage.
Rather than lamenting the presence of difficult passages of Scripture, Augustine celebrates them. Augustine writes “discovering things is much more gratifying if there has been some difficulty in the search for them. Those, after all, who never discover what they are looking for suffer from starvation, while those who do not have to look, because everything is ready to hand, often start wilting out of sheer boredom; in either case a malady to be avoided. Magnificent and salutary, therefore, is the way the Holy Spirit has so adjusted the holy scriptures, that they ward off starvation with the clearer passages, while driving away boredom with the obscurer ones” (Book II.6,8).
Augustine encourages his audience to adopt a posture of praise when encountering the difficulties of Scripture. It is this sort of posture that may serve us best as we attempt to explore what this parable might mean.
The first verse of this week’s reading tells us exactly to whom Jesus is speaking: the disciples. The previous string of parables were spoken as “all the tax-collectors and sinners were coming near to listen to him” (Luke 15:1), and the Pharisees and scribes were there, complaining about Jesus’ posture toward this audience. To this eclectic mix Jesus tells the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost son and his brother (better known as the prodigal son). Then, he turns to his disciples.
If you push beyond the bounds of the lectionary selection for this week, we learn that this was not a hidden aside given to the disciples. At the least, Jesus was not speaking quietly. At the most, the Pharisees were eavesdropping. Luke tells us that they ridiculed Jesus for what he said. I am sure they too were perplexed.
This parable is odd and uncomfortable. A rich man hears charges that his manager was not taking proper care of his wealth and tells the manager that his day working for him are coming to an end. The manager then goes out and tells those who owe his master money to change their bills so that they owe less. Why? To save himself, to grow his personal network, to have somewhere to lay his head at the end of the day lest he toil in the fields or beg on the streets.
“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.” (Luke 16:8). The manager is renamed a dishonest manager and the master who is firing him celebrates his dishonesty and cunning. Before, the manager was a man who squandered. Now, the dishonest manager is a man who can shrewdly cut a deal.
What Jesus says next causes our brows to furrow: “And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of wealth* so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” (Luke 16:9; *the NRSV supplies “dishonest” though the word here mammon simply means wealth)
What does this mean? I do not think this parable is a riddle to be solved, a nut to be cracked. By nature of being a parable, finding that one “correct” meaning is a Sisyphean task. Our task is to seek out ways of understanding this perplexing passage while listening alongside the disciples to whom it was spoken, rather than overhearing and scoffing.
Jesus’ instructions to the disciples are to be shrewd. The dishonest manager “acted shrewdly” in the same way that Jesus tells the twelve to be as shrewd as serpents in Matthew 10:16. This word carries with it a sense of having a discerning mind, of being prudent and pragmatic. The behavior does not have a value of “good” or “bad” attributed to it until we consider what the end goal of this shrewdness might be.
“No slave can serve two masters,” Jesus tells us at the end of this parable. “For a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth” (Luke 16:13). The dishonest manager acted shrewdly to save himself. He served the master of wealth. What difference might it make to act shrewdly to serve God?
I will be the first to admit, I still find myself perplexed about this parable. I am unsatisfied with my interpretation and many questions still remain. Yet, I find myself adopting Augustine’s posture of gratitude for such a difficult passage such as this. The questions that come from reading this parable spur us onward into other passages, they encourage us to consider what these words mean to our congregations, to our neighbors, and even to the people eavesdropping on our inquiries. Perhaps this parable is an invitation to sit in our perplexity and to learn to read the Scriptures with a discerning mind and an eye toward how we live in this world. If we can learn to do that on our own with the Scriptures, we may find ourselves learning how to sit in perplexity together. Thanks be to God.