The Unjust Steward

A Sermon for the Ninth Sunday after Trinity
Preached at the Church of St Bartholomew, Regent Park Toronto
21 July 2008

Quia filii huius saeculi prudentiores filiis lucis in generatione sua sunt. For the children of this age are in their generation more prudent than the children of light. Luke 16.9

A steward who cheats his master, and when he is fired cooks up a scheme to cheat him even further and is then praised by his master for his prudence and shrewdness is hardly someone you would expect Christ to hold up as an example for us. But this seems to be what we have just heard in the Parable of the Unrighteous Steward. Though there are other characters in Jesus’ parables who are pretty shady: the unjust judge, the neighbour who does not want to be bothered in the night, and the man who pockets someone else’s treasure by buying his field, but this fellow takes the cake. The only way to make the steward’s actions anything other than embezzlement and fraud is by making excuses.
From ancient times enemies of the Church have seized on the seeming incongruity of a story that praises a scoundrel as a charge against the faith. Christians themselves have found it to be rather an embarrassing story, and have come up with an almost endless variety of ways to make sense of it, Usually, they fall back on allegory, but this has only confused the issue. One of the wisest of nineteenth-century Anglican commentators on the parables, Archbishop Trench of Dublin, began his look at this one by saying,

No one, who has seriously considered, will underrate the difficulties of this parable—difficulties which Cajetan found so insuperable that he gave up the matter in despair, affirming a solution of them impossible.

Cardinal Cajetan was one of the great biblical scholars of the sixteenth century: if this parable was to much for him, it is daunting indeed. (If you want a good book on the parables, by the way, I commend Trench’s Notes on the Parables of the Lord; it is readily available in libraries or on-line at the Internet Archive.) Trench notes many of the previous attempts to interpret this parable, but finds that

very many of its interpreters have (to use a familiar expression), in my judgment, overrun their game. We have here, as I am persuaded, simply a parable of Christian prudence, —Christ exhorting us to use the world, and the world’s goods, so to speak, against the world, and for God.

If we read the story carefully it is obvious that Jesus is not praising the dishonesty of the steward; rather it is the rich man in the story who praises his steward’s prudence, on hearing of his scheme. And perhaps it is no more than saying something like: “There’s a clever fellow!” The whole incident makes the point in the verse that I have taken as my text, “For the children of this age are in their generation more prudent than the children of light.”
To understand this verse, we need to note that “in their generation” is not the clearest of translations. What the Greek actually means is ‘towards or for their own generation,” or as Moffat rendered it, “for the children of this world look farther ahead in dealing with their own generation than the children of light.” Another rendering could be “for their own ends and purposes”. Who are the more prudent? The “children of this age” or “of this world”—where we think physically of “the world”, the ancients thought temporally of “the age”. [There really is no difference. In our prayers the phrase “World without end” translates in saecula saeculorum, “unto ages of ages.” I am reminded of the CBC broadcast of Pierre Trudeau’s funeral where the voice-over translation given for the French version of this phrase was “for centuries and centuries. But I digress.] Trench explains the phrase well:

The children of this world' are the Psalmist's ‘men of the earth,' those whose portion is here, and who look not beyond; who, born of the world's spirit, order their lives by the world's rule. The phrase occurs only here and at Luke 20.34; 'children of light' he has in common with St John (12.36) and St Paul (1 Thess v.5; Eph v.8) The faithful are called by this rather than any other of the many names of honour which are theirs; for thus are their deeds. which are deeds of light, done in truth and sincerity, even as they are themselves children of the day and of the light, are contrasted with the 'works of darkness.’

What Christ declares in this verse is that the people of this world, make their business with one another more profitable,—obtain more from it,—manage it better for their interests, such as those are, than the children of light manage their business with one another.
Here our Lord does not hold the actions of the steward up as an example to us. But his actions have two aspects: one, his dishonesty, is blameworthy; the other, his prudence is something which should be abundantly, but is only too weakly, found among Christians. The heart of this parable, then, is found in the Lord’s words, “Ecce ego mitto vos sicut oves in medio luporum; estote ergo prudentes sicut serpentes et simplices sicut columbae; Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves: be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves” (Matt 10.16).
Indeed, this parable sends us to learn from the worldlings. Christ says to us that it is good for us, at least occasionally, to learn from them. For the children of this world rake their ends seriously, and work hard to achieve them. How often do we hear of those who sacrifice themselves, their families, their comfort, their digestions, in order to achieve success. How often do we hear people praised for their drive. We claim, we preach that the ends for which these sacrifices are made will pass away, but that our faith offers us an eternal reward.
It is not just the ordinary worldly folk, who are neither particularly bad or good, who can teach. us. Trench, quoting St Bernard, noted that

deeds of bold bad men have a side, that namely of their boldness and decision, on which they rebuke the doings of the weak and vacillating good. They are the martyrs of the devil, who put to shame the saints of God; and running, as they do, with more alacrity to death than these to life, may be proposed to them for their emulation.

An illustration of this point is found in a story of one of the Egyptian desert fathers:

Chancing to see a dancing girl, he was moved to tears; being asked the reason, he replied, 'That she should be at such pains to please men in her sinful vocation; and we in our holy calling use so little diligence to please God.'

Here we may begin to see why Jesus would tell such a story about a scoundrel, for only such a stark contrast can realty make this point.
The parable goes on, and in the remaining verses the focus is set more sharply on how it is that the children of light must be more prudent in dealing with their own generation. The best interpretations of the parable tell us that just as the Steward used money—and that is all that the expression “mammon of unrighteousness” really means here—to ensure his temporal habitation, we are to use it to ensure the eternal habitation. In short, by almsgiving. However, our time is pretty well up—for the days when a real hour glass guided the preacher are long past—and for today we must rest content with this consideration of the parable of the Unrighteous Steward. But this is enough, for in what we have considered, the Unrighteous Steward says to us in challenge and in rebuke, “I pursued temporal things as if they were eternal, with all the intensity I had: you pursue eternal things as if it were less than the temporal.” Let us look into our hearts to find what answer we can make.