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S. Pentecost 15.25 Luke 16:1-15

‘And the Lord commended the dishonest housemaster that wisely he did…’

It pains me to admit it, but the Christian Bale Batman is not right (!)—and I love Batman and the Christopher Nolan-Christian Bale Batman above them all—when he says ‘It’s what I do that defines me.’ Actually it’s what I trust that defines me, determines my place in the universe.

That’s really the Christian Gospel in a nutshell. It is not your running of the verbs, your works of the law that justifies you, but IT’S JESUS’ running of the verbs that justifies you by faith in him alone!

Luther rediscovered this crucial truth in the 16th century after Christendom had almost totally lost the plot under West and East Roman Imperial Christendom that runs everything by the law for the institution’s self-interest and that would make company men and women of us all, mere cogs in the wheels of a totalitarian state (sure glad that never happens in our world! 😉

I would say this parable of Jesus might be the One Parable that Rules them All? It is certainly a litmus test as to whether you get Jesus and his Gospel, or… not. In seeing this, I am deeply indebted to my old friend the Rev. Dr. Fr. Arthur A. Just Jr. (who approved this message!) who expounded this parable to me years ago and in his Concordia Commentary Series volumes on Luke. (Sometimes you just have to let ‘art’ flow over you 😉

I never understood this parable until Art shared his reading with me. And I’m far from alone in not getting it. Nearly every commentary I’ve ever checked flags this as a weird one that is difficult to understand. God commends an unrighteousness housemaster who is wasting his goods and cooking the books to win friends for himself after he’s fired? Huh?

And Jesus puts him forward as a model for how we should make friends for ourselves by unrighteousness mammon and creative accounting?! And then says we can’t serve God and Mammon but only one or the other? Huh? What in the world is he saying?

You can see the confusion in how the translation is mangled. I’ve corrected it for you by simply being more… literal. The ESV has the protagonist in the parable as a “manager” a 20th century bureaucratic word that is light years away from the Greek οικονομον which transliterates “Econo-Man”, or more prosaically, “economist”.

With the great prestige economists enjoy in our world, I can see how Modern Finance would weigh in to change the translation! They are hated enough already, I suppose. But, in fairness to the Dismal Science, our word “economist” is not what the Greek οικονομον would conjure in their minds. It’s a compound word οικος (which means house) and νομος (which meant ‘pasture’ to Homer and ‘law’ or ‘way’ to Plato and Aristotle). I’m sorry for the language lesson but Dr. Just’s skill with Greek is why he can see things other scholars miss!

So since a ‘pasturer’ is most literally a feeder of sheep or a ‘shepherd’ the literal translation of οικονομον would be “house-shepherd”. But since these are urban folks we’re talking about in this story, city-slickers, it’s a euphemism for what my old school used to call ‘housemasters’ but today are called ‘heads’ of the various colleges that make up the University. After the summer of 2020 the word “master” had connotations today’s students didn’t appreciate, so it was changed—because the inmates run the asylum now, so: ‘I’m never goin’ back/to my old school.’

My old teacher Hans Frei was housemaster of Ezra Styles and his job was to be like a father and mentor for the kids under his care. He would solve disputes and console the distraught and tell you an alternative way to live your life—if yours had become unmanageable, as mine had, maybe try the old Xn Way?, that road less traveled by that has made all the difference for ‘me and my, me and my… friends’.

Now this ‘housemaster’ Econo-Man, not Art Just, no Hans Frei. No! He’s a real piece of work! He’s been wasting his ‘Lord’s goods—κυριος is the word for “Lord Jesus” and “Master Jesus” is not what we’re used to hearing, so I corrected that too, for you. We’re not told the exact nature of the waste—whether it was theft or just mismanagement, or “Yes!”.

But the important thing is: this housemaster was found out, and told he was fired. So that very day he gathered the creditors of his Lord and had a massive price cut, so that when he was job hunting next week, he’d have people who’d receive them into their houses.

And here is the genius of Dr. Just. He sees that the plan of the dishonest housemaster only works if the Lord backs him up on offering the deep discounts! The housemaster’s betting the house on his Lord being gracious, merciful, forgiving! Because… if the Lord charges him with fraud and has a claw-back on the money lost, the guy is doubly screwed!

And the dishonest housemaster’s faith is rewarded, richly! There is no clawback. The Lord backs him up—in fact, may not even fire him at all? It may have been a test to lighten up and be reckless with the Lord’s stuff (‘reckless’ and ‘faith’ parse pretty much the same in Jesus’ lexicon 😉

‘Mammon’ is a Syrian loan word to Greek and means stuff or wealth we’ve gained in ways that are not entirely… kosher. And all the stuff that we say “Mine! I earned that!”—our 401Ks, our bank accounts, our houses, boats, and what not, that’s Mammon if we say “Mine, I earned it!”.

It’s only when we see EVERYTHING we have, even our body and soul, is GOD’S—hopefully to burn through in a wild summer fling with Jesus, our one, true love!—that we finally GET HIM!

Tom Waits gets IT, in “The Long Way Home” when he sings “Money’s just something you throw off the back of a train/ gotta headful of lightnin’/ Hatful of rain…” That’s the Spirit! Money and earthly treasure is just something to fling away as something that was never mine— Dr. Just says almsgiving is the best way to do that flinging and I agree!

This parable redefines RIGHTEOUSNESS not as something we do but as something that comes only by faith in Jesus Christ who loves us and gave himself up for us and our sins on the cross, wiping out all our debts forever, by his holy precious blood!

So; make friends for yourself with all the stuff you call “MINE!” on. Live lavishly on God’s mercy, trusting only that when we rely on him to clean up all our messes and to cover all our debts, then we are truly living large off Jesus and his love.

These are Econo-Men and Women Jesus is seeking for his Kingdom—who know no treasure but him, no joy but that which comes from seeing him, face to face, no justification but that which comes from his forgiveness of our sins and grants Peace, surpassing all understanding, guarding our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus. Amen.