The Shrewd Steward & Biblical Economics
Amos 8:4-7; Luke 16:1-13
Season of Creation 3 — Sunday, September 18, 2022
The Rev. Dr. Ritva H. Williams
Did you know that there are 2300 verses in the Bible that focus on money. Our reading from Amos is just one example. The prophet criticizes grain merchants who are eager for the holy days to be over so that they can get on with making money through dishonest means. Amos points out how these merchants, “make the ephah small.” Today we call this “shrinkflation” — the practice of reducing the size or quantity of a product while keeping the same price. The merchants of Amos’ day also “made the shekel great” by enlarging the weight used to measure the silver coins used to pay for goods and service. The result: buyers had to hand over more silver coins for smaller packages. Today we call this inflation — the purchasing power of a dollar decreases as the the price of goods increases. In Amos’s day such practices resulted in people being sold into slavery. Today, shrinkflation is legal as long as the weight and number of servings per package is clearly marked, and inflation is regarded as a problem for governments to solve. Scripture, however, regards these practices as unethical and unjust, calling greedy manufacturers and merchants to account for them.
Jesus devotes 15% of his preaching, and 11 of 39 parables to the subject of money. The main characters in today’s parable are a rich man and his steward.
Now, in the world of Jesus all goods existed in finite, limited quantities. To acquire more than what you or or family needed automatically meant that someone else had to do without. For one person to get rich meant someone else was reduced to poverty. Honest, upstanding folk were content with their fair share, and those who tried to get more were regarded as greedy thieves. as demonstrated by the saying, “Every rich man is a thief or the heir of a thief.” Wealthy men tried to avoid being labeled thieves by having their financial affairs handled by managerial slaves trained to do the “dirty work” of acquiring and managing their money. Managerial slaves were praised and rewarded for doing whatever was necessary to further their owners’ interests, and came to believe their well-being depended on their loyalty to their masters.
That is true of the steward in this parable too until anonymous persons bring charges against him. We are not told who his accusers are. We have no way of knowing if they were debtors wanting revenge, envious fellow slaves, or neighboring landowners offended by someone they perceived as an uppity slave. We don’t even know if the charges were true, especially as master does not demand repayment of the allegedly squandered funds.
The steward responds by going to his master’s debtors and renegotiating their contracts to reduce their debts by 50 and 20 per cent respectively. Notice that these persons pay their debts with jugs of olive oil and containers of wheat indicating they are peasants who don’t have access to money. They pay in kind towards land rent, loans to buy seed and farming tools, and loans to pay taxes that come due before the harvests are in. The amounts written in the contracts, which the peasants cannot read for themselves, include interest charges that increase their debts by as much as 50%. Basically the steward cancels the interest charges which would have covered his salary and provided the masters with profits on his loans.
Yet, the master commends the steward’s shrewdness, his street smarts. But for what? The Greek text literally reads, “the steward, the one of unrighteousness.” It is not clear whether is it the steward who is unrighteous, or the contracts he manages.
Charging interest on loans is strictly forbidden in the Bible, especially charging interest on loans to the poor and most vulnerable members of society (Exodus 22:25; Leviticus 25:35; Deuteronomy 20:19). Therefore, the master, his steward and contracts with their hidden interest charges would have been unrighteous.
The Bible also advocates for the cancellation of debts every seven years (Deuteronomy 15:1-2; Leviticus 25). The original Aramaic and Greek words of the Lord’s Prayer are not “forgives us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us,” but “release us from our debts as we have released our debtors” (Matthew 6:16; Luke 11:4).
The steward only cancels the interest charges. This will provide material benefits to the debtors. It will also improve the steward’s relationships with the debtors, and by extension elevate the debtors’ opinions of the rich master on whose behalf they believe the steward is acting. The master and his steward are now instruments of grace and mercy acting in accordance with God’s teachings. The master recognizes that the steward has shrewdly created a win-win situation for everyone.
Early church leaders consistently pointed to the steward in this parable as a positive example for Christians to follow. Bishop Cyril of Alexandria, asserted that in this parable, Jesus shows the rich a means of salvation. He urges the rich to avoid an eternity in hell by giving away at least some portion of the wealth they had acquired through extortion and fraud, opening their hands to anyone in need.
Preaching on this parable more than a thousand years later, Martin Luther defined “dishonest wealth” as “that which we have above our needs and we will not use in helping our neighbor; for this we possess unrighteously, and before God it is stolen goods … Therefore, as the saying goes, the greatest owners of property are the greatest thieves; because they possess far more than they need, and give the least possible to others.” In Luther’s view, even though the steward was motivated by self-interest he did the right in reducing the debts of those who owed his rich master. Luther urged Christians to use their wealth to care for the poor as a grateful response to Christ’s grace, mercy, and love.
Our forebears in faith heard in this parable a heavy duty critique of the rich and those who represent them. They understood that how we use our money is a spiritual matter, because how we use our money exposes our values and priorities.
So what should we take away from this strange parable? Pastor John van de Laar writes:
“we need to ensure that we have not fallen into the temptation to accumulate money for its own sake … we must ensure that we do not engage in exploitative practices … and that we are quick to use our money for grace – forgiving, helping and uplifting the needy in our communities and neighborhoods. If we take this call of the Gospel seriously … we may find ourselves seeking connection with and offering grace to those who are considered to be undeserving.” (from “Proper C 20” at sacredise.com)
Please pray with me:
God of extravagant and inappropriate grace, we thank you for the wealth we enjoy, and for all the opportunities we have to share it. Where communities wrestle with inequality and division, may we use our wealth of love and welcome to bring about equity and connection. Where people suffer from poverty, lack of opportunity and shame, may we use our wealth of money to bring about sufficiency and dignity. Release us, God, from bondage to the myth of scarcity, to greed and gluttony, so that we can fully embrace your extravagant grace. In Jesus’ Name, Amen.
