Profit Margins
A Sermon for the Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 18, 2022
The Rev. Robin Teasley
Jesus said to the disciples, "There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, `What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.' Then the manager said to himself, `What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.' So, summoning his master's debtors one by one, he asked the first, `How much do you owe my master?' He answered, `A hundred jugs of olive oil.' He said to him, `Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.' Then he asked another, `And how much do you owe?' He replied, `A hundred containers of wheat.' He said to him, `Take your bill and make it eighty.' 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. And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
"Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? No slave can serve two masters; for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth." Luke 16:1-13
“Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” This is Gospel? Really Jesus? Making friends by means of dishonest wealth sounds kind of edgy to me. There's a lot in this parable that I don’t understand, so I read lots of commentaries only to find that no one else really understands it either. For one thing it is a complicated text. Scholars think the author included the parable and then tacked on some sayings he liked at the end because he did not know where else in his gospel to put them. For today, I want to focus on the strange phrase that Jesus uses – dishonest wealth – make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth.
In the retail environment, products are sold at a markup. As consumers, we know this but we willingly submit, and are taken advantage of by this markup, because it’s convenient, its packaging is alluring, we like the commercial, our mother always used it, or it’s right there in the checkout lane and too tempting to ignore, just like that pound of overpriced chocolate covered raisins that tempted me in the checkout lane.
You may be surprised to realize just how hefty some retail markups really are. Bottled water costs over 2,000 times more than tap water. If you make coffee at home, it costs about 25 cents a cup, but that same cup will cost you almost three dollars at Starbucks. At the movie theater, people will pay popcorn premiums of 1,300 percent simply because they cannot resist that buttery aroma. That's a lot of markup, and some of it may be justified, but might there also be some dishonest wealth in there? Is the retailer, the middle man, profiting too much? How much is too much? How much do we really need?
In ancient Palestine, the manager was the middle man between the rich landholder and the merchants and farmers in the exchange of goods and services such as buying and selling grain, oil, and crops and in collecting rents. It was expected that he would make a profit for himself in these transactions. As long as the master’s profits kept rolling in and the manager didn't get too greedy, the master was fine with the manager making a little profit from each deal.
The manager’s position in this complex system was both privileged and vulnerable. While he had a relatively high standard of living, he was completely dependent on the goodwill of the master. Listen to what he says in verse three, “What will I do now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg.” We might assume that he is whining here, and trying to avoid honest labor. But maybe he began to come to himself and see the larger picture, that he was not physically able to compete with the peasant laborers for the hardest, most menial of jobs. He would be reduced to begging and, in short order, would find himself living in poverty, like so many laborers did. He began to understand that he needed the support of his community.
The manager’s action seems dishonest to us, even though many of us can admit that we have also been there in that place of panic. We have made a bad decision, taken the wrong action to try to save ourselves. I’m guessing the dishonest manager had no small amount of anxiety as he was about to be fired from his position.
I wonder if, as he saw his livelihood passing away, he began to see what was truly important and what would endure. As he began to understand the importance of relationships and community, he reached out to his master’s debtors. We could talk about whether his behavior was dishonest or self-preserving or a last-ditch effort to avoid a job digging ditches. We could give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he messed up, realized it, and did what he could to make reparations.
In his desperation the manager called the debtors in one by one and reduced their debt. The wealth he was dealing with was dishonest wealth. Yet, in that moment of clarity, in that moment of metanoia, that place of repentance where we turn around and change our behavior, the manager did just that. He made a conscious decision to use his dishonest wealth to help others, to create relationships with those less fortunate than himself. And in that moment, the rich land owner honored his repentance and his move from selfishness to generosity.
Even though the manager had squandered the master’s wealth, he changed his behavior and helped others. He did this because he knew something of the character of his master. He knew him to be generous and forgiving. He should not have panicked, and as he had hoped, the master’s character held true. He acknowledged the manager’s resourcefulness, his generosity towards others.
Wealth is something we are not always willing to talk about. I have to wonder if that’s because we are not willing to admit just how much we cling to it, think we need it. We fear life without enough of it. Could it be that the kind of self-centered storing up of treasures for ourselves that we tend to do is actually squandering? I suspect we squander what we have been given more than we might like to admit, whether it be money, time, material possessions, a relationship, or a responsibility.
Is it possible that all wealth is really only a dishonest wealth? Dishonest in the sense that we believe that wealth itself can be our salvation? It cannot. Dishonest in the sense that we claim to have attained our wealth on our own? We never truly attain wealth on our own; rather it is all a gift from God. We are blessed with uncountable riches. But often we squander the opportunities to make friends for ourselves, and God, by not using, not sharing, what is given us.
The good news is that the genuinely important things in life do not have price tags and dollar signs attached. Once we realize that, we are then free to turn; to turn our hearts and souls and minds and bodies, as well as our wealth and resources, to the task of serving God by serving one another. The good news is that God loves us and forgives us, over and over. God’s grace never runs out. God is more generous than we can ask or imagine. It’s a profit margin we cannot afford to pass up.
Title Image: Tax Collector, Marinus van Reymerswaele
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