MESSINESS, SHREWDNESS AND FAITHFULNESS

 Sermon preached by the Rev. Michael Anderson Bullock

[Amos 8:4-7; 1 Timothy 2:1-7; Luke 16:1-13]

Life is messy; isn’t it?  I suppose that in the face of all that the daily headlines present about hatred and war, starvation and power politics, and all the other things we do to one another, “messy” is the most gracious term one can use.  Yes, life surely is -- messy.

One response I make to the messiness of life is to pray.  Being overwhelmed by all the messiness, I am not ashamed to admit that I pray.  I pray because I don’t know what else to do.  So, in faithfulness, I commend my struggling soul to God for direction and as an antidote to despair.

One of the prayers I find myself regularly turning to is the “Collect for the Human Family” with its honest petition about dealing with the messiness.  Specifically, the Collect’s petition requests that God “take away the arrogance and hatred which infect our hearts; break down the walls that separate us; unite us in bonds of love; and” [here’s the messiness point] “work through our struggle and confusion to accomplish your purposes on earth…”[1]

Life – our life – is messy; and as the prayer indicates, the messiness confuses us and frequently causes us great struggle, to the extent that we are sorely tempted to lose faith in our God, in ourselves, and in one another.

In this regard I find today’s gospel lesson and the parable of the “Shrewd Manager” [he is not “dishonest”: more on that later] – I find this gospel and this particular parable not only to be shrouded in life’s messiness but also in the challenging reality of striving to be faithful while in the mess.

So, let me direct your attention to this reading and ask you to put yourselves in the place of what the translation we used calls “the manager”.  In the mess in which this guy found himself, how does faithfulness operate in his “struggle and confusion”?  But first, a necessary step-back.

In my teaching and preaching, I have consistently said that Jesus’ use of parables is one dramatic way he teaches us about God and describes life with God.  In fact, as recently as last Sunday (you undoubtedly recall!), I have said that the focus of Jesus’ parables is God: that the shepherd who leaves the 99 sheep to find the one stray and the woman who relentlessly seeks her lost coin allegorically demonstrate God’s mysterious nature.  But this perspective does not hold at all for today’s parable, which undoubtedly is the reason that the parable’s telling causes us confusion and for some, struggle.

I say this because the “manager” in the parable appears to promote actions and motives that are not exemplary, not ideals about God or the God-life that (for instance) we teach in our Sunday School.  To be clear, neither of the parables’ central characters (the so-called “dishonest manager”; the wealthy landowner) are direct representations of God’s will or activity.  As such, we have reason to be confused and struggle with what Jesus might be teaching.  However, rather than ignoring this inconvenient tension or recasting the piece into a more convenient “moral of the story” format, my own position is that this rough aspect of the parable speaks to something more involved than “honesty in employment, or accuracy in accounting”.[2]  And here, I suggest, is the point at which Jesus and his parable delve into the messiness – the messiness of faithfulness and the need for us to be prepared for it.

As I said at the outset of this sermon, the so-called “manager” in point of fact is not “dishonest”.  Rather, he is “shrewd”.  Who knew that “shrewdness” might be a spiritual virtue?  Well folks, Jesus did!

To be called “shrewd” has two connotations to it.  The word itself means “showing sharp powers of judgment, as in being astute.”

Now one connotation of being “shrewd” is negative, as in the Garden of Eden’s Serpent who was identified as “more subtle”[3] than all the other creatures God created.  Yet in the Hebrew the descriptor for this slithering quality is “cunning”.  This is to say that the snake knew the “temptability” of Eve and Adam and used this insight to steer them nefariously into disobedience.  But “shrewd” or “cunning” can also be a positive descriptor, emphasizing being “clever in practical affairs” – or more colloquially, not being a “sucker”.

At the parable’s conclusion, the wealthy landowner commends his estate manager’s shrewdness in his dealings with the estate’s changing economic circumstances.  At which point Jesus pipes in editorially to say that there is a difference between being shrewd and how one exercises one’s astuteness.

The more standard translation of what Jesus says is what we heard read: “The children of this world…are wiser than the children of light when it comes to dealing with their own generation.[4]  A livelier translation puts the notion of “shrewdness” this way: The master praised the … manager!  And why?  Because he knew how to look after himself.  Streetwise people are smarter in this regard than law-abiding citizens.  They are on constant alert…[5]

The issue I have raised with you about this parable and about the example of the shrewd manager is to put ourselves in his place and wonder how we can be faithful amidst life’s messiness.  And I have also raised the surprising issue concerning what may be called the “spirituality of shrewdness” and that Jesus was quite clear about the need for his disciples to be faithfully “cunning”.  The way Jesus put it is this: “Be wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”[6]

The landowner’s “estate manager” was not “dishonest”.  He was, however, shrewd.  He was “clever in his practical affairs”, using his sharp powers of judgment – about himself and his suppliers and the circumstances that surrounded them all.  The truth is that the landowner did not lose any money; neither did the suppliers, who actually received a rebate from the manager.  No, the shrewdness of the manager stemmed from cutting back on his own commissions, his own handling fees, that came from the “rents” the growers paid for the use of the landowner’s land.  The “estate manager” knew of his impending unemployment and, thereby, was motivated to cut his own commissioned income so that the growers, receiving their discount, would think well of him and welcome him when he was out of work and vulnerable.

All this strikes me as being similar to buying a car.  Each vehicle has posted on its window a “Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price” – the “MSRP”, as it is known in the trade.  Does anyone expect to pay that price?  No, because we all know that there is this “suggested price”[the MRSP”] and there is the price the dealership paid the factory for the vehicle.  The difference between the two prices is negotiable, and that negotiation requires “shrewdness” on the customer’s part if a “fair deal” is to be reached.

So, when the prepared customer works with the sales manager for an “out-the-door” price for the car or truck, when you the customer get less than the MSRP, you feel good about the “discount”; and if that agreed-upon price is particularly appealing to you, you will recommend that dealership and that salesperson to your friends and associates.  No one stole anything.  Any temptation to dishonesty can be mitigated by the customer’s diligent preparation about what the vehicle’s costs are and go from there.

That’s the faithfulness within the messiness of life.  Shrewdness.  Being alert.  Cunning in the sense of being sharp and clever in practical affairs.  Preparation and urgency is what the parable conveys in and through this surprising illustration.  “Wise as serpents and innocent as doves.”

But there is one, last, over-arching element to Jesus’ parable about faithful shrewdness, and it is this.  Don’t be so clever as to think that you can make a deal to replace God -- because none of us can.  And attempting such a thing makes us “suckers” – or worse.

Jesus admonishes us to the truth that it is not possible to can’t serve two masters: “mammon” and God.  It is an either/or reality.  At which point the profound wisdom of the Collect of the Day needs repeating: Grant us, Lord, not to be anxious about earthly things, but to love things heavenly; and even now, while we are placed among things that are passing away, to hold fast to those that shall endure…[7]

God at the center is real and lasting wealth; and if we realize that God has given us what we cannot provide for ourselves, then the faithful shrewdness begins!  Thanks be to God.  Amen.

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[1] Book of Common Prayer. p. 815.

[2] Andrew McGowan. “A Steward of Injustice” from “Andrew’s Version”, 9/16/25.

[3] Genesis 3:1: RSV.

[4] N. T. Wright. Luke for Everyone. p. 193.

[5] Eugene Peterson. The Message.

[6] Matthew 10:16.

[7] Book of Common Prayer.  Collect of the Day [Contemporary] for Proper 20, p. 234.