WHAT WE CAN LEARN FROM A DISHONEST MANAGER

25th Sunday in Ordinary Time

            A certain oil company—which will remain nameless—came up with an irritating new strategy.  If the customer failed to see and check a tiny box on the statement, it meant that the customer, ah, “gave permission” to the company to change your no-fee gas credit card to a bankcard version with an annual fee.  When I noticed that this was happening to us, I called the eight hundred number and got a representative.  I explained what I wanted, just the gas credit card with no fee.  No luck.  I then asked for a supervisor.  He wasn’t interested in providing me with the kind of card I wanted, and made it nearly impossible for me to cancel my account.  But cancel the account I did.  I cancelled because I couldn’t receive the kind of card I wanted.  They lost a long-time customer.  A manager somewhere in that oil company dropped the ball.

            Well, in Jesus’ little story, the manager in question has regularly been dropping the ball.  He has been squandering his master’s property.  Instead of watching his master’s accounts on the computer spreadsheets, our little manager is playing video games and visiting all sorts of interesting Web sites.  In other words, he doesn’t have his eye on the ball.  He’s not keeping track of his master’s accounts.  Accordingly, he’s losing money for his master.  Eventually, any good boss is going to notice that his money is disappearing due to his manager’s lack of attention.  And this happens to the manager in Jesus’ story.  He’s caught not keeping his eye on the ball.  His boss is aware that his manager is not in the game; he’s not taking care of business.  So, the boss calls in his manager for a performance review.  The manager is confronted with the books, clearly showing that the manager is not managing.  Now he’s getting the boot, the pink slip.  He’s being shown the door.  He’s done.

            We listen to the parable, and we begin to understand.  We are to see ourselves somewhere in this story.  If it is about a manager, someone who works for another, is it about us?  So it seems.  After all, we work for God, don’t we?  Yes!  We’re disciples of Jesus Christ.  Aren’t we supposed to be taking care of matters important to the kingdom of God, things like loving neighbors and working for justice in our world?  We are.  We’re the ones who are to bring into action the values of God’s kingdom.  We hear this parable and it sounds like a performance review.  Whenever I hear the phrase “performance review,” it makes my blood pressure rise and my heart pound.  What if we are found to be dropping the ball?  What if we’re squandering our Master’s spiritual and moral capital?  When you think of it, don’t we all have a “performance review” when God’s kingdom comes in all its fullness at the end of history?

            So, what does the incompetent manager in Jesus’ story do?  He runs through his options.  Do blue-collar work?  Not strong enough.  Hold up a sign on a street corner, saying, “Will work for food”?  Too embarrassing!  To humiliating!  Then, suddenly, the manager finds the motivation to “get in the game.”  He calls up his boss’s debtors and arranges to see them.  “What do you owe?” he asks one.  “Nine hundred gallons of olive oil,” the first debtor says.  “Okay,” says the canned manager, “go to your computer, make up a bill that looks like my boss’s, but make your debt half of the actual amount.”  Next stop like the first.  “What do you owe my boss?”  “One thousand bushels of wheat.”  “Here’s what I want you to do.  Go to your computer and print out a bill that looks just like my boss’s, but cut your debt to eight hundred bushels.”  What is he doing?  Facing starvation and the prospect of living on the streets, the manager is going about making friends with his boss’s debtors by inviting them to reduce their bills.  Doing this, his boss’s debtors will be indebted to him.  What’s more, since these debtors were the ones who actually altered their statements, our little crook will be in a position to blackmail them, if need be!  Talk about a golden parachute!  What do you think of this guy?  The little crook!  And here’s what Jesus has to say about him.  “Good thinking!”  That’s what he says in effect as he ends his parable.  About the manager taking action, Jesus says, “Good thinking!”

            I can just hear someone leaving church today and saying over lunch, “I just heard the preacher say that Jesus says it’s okay to be a cheating crook.”  Is that what I’m saying?  Is that what Jesus says?  Does Jesus want his disciples to be dishonest?  A Mafia Godfather—as the story goes—finds out that his bookkeeper has stolen ten million bucks from him.  The bookkeeper is deaf.  It was the reason he got the job in the first place, since it was assumed that a deaf bookkeeper would not be able to hear anything that he’d ever have to testify about in court.  When the Godfather goes to shakedown the bookkeeper about his missing ten million bucks, he brings along his attorney, who knows sign language.  The Godfather asks the bookkeeper, “Where is the ten million bucks you embezzled from me?”  The attorney, using sign language, asks the bookkeeper where the ten million bucks is hidden.  The bookkeeper signs back, “I don’t know what you are talking about.”  The attorney tells the Godfather, “He says he doesn’t know what you’re talking about.”  The Godfather pulls out a gun, puts it to the bookkeeper’s temple, cocks it, and says, “Ask him again!”  The attorney signs, “He’ll kill you for sure if you don’t tell him!”  The bookkeeper signs back, “Okay!  You win!  The money is in a brown briefcase, buried behind the shed in my cousin Enzo’s backyard in Queens!”  The Godfather asks his attorney, “Well, what’d he say?”  The attorney replies, “He says you don’t have the guts to pull the trigger.”  Is this the kind of action Jesus applauds?  Does Jesus want his disciples to act dishonestly?

            Not on your life!  No way!  Jesus is not applauding dishonesty and cheating.  After all, it was Jesus himself who said, “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 dishonest wealth, who will entrust you with the true riches?”  So let’s be clear about what Jesus is not approving.  He does not give his approval of the kind of cheating exhibited in his parable.  It isn’t dishonesty that Jesus applauds.  Did you hear that?  It isn’t dishonesty that Jesus applauds.

            Then what?  Jesus is saying that, in a time of crisis, the dishonest manager came up with an action plan.  Jesus doesn’t say the plan itself was commendable—for it was not!  Jesus’ point is found in story where the dishonest manager stops doing nothing and starts doing something.  Having a plan is what Jesus approves of.  Listen:  The rabbis tell a story about a man who was caught stealing and was ordered by the king to be hanged.  On the way to the gallows he said to the governor that he knew a wonderful secret and it would be a pity to allow it to die with him and he would like to disclose it to the king.  He would put a seed of pomegranate in the ground and through the secret taught to him by his father he would make it grow and bear fruit overnight.  The thief was brought before the king and on the morrow the king, accompanied by the high officers of state, came to the place where the thief was waiting for them.  There the thief dug a hole and said, “This seed must only be put in the ground by a man who has never stolen or taken anything which did not belong to him.  I being a thief cannot do it.”  So he turned to a high official who, frightened, said that in his younger days he had retained something which did not belong to him.  The treasurer said that dealing with such large sums, he might have entered too much or too little and even the king owned that he had kept a necklace of his father’s.  The thief then said, “You are all mighty and powerful and want nothing and yet you cannot plant the seed, whilst I who have stolen a little because I was starving am to be hanged.”  The king, pleased with the ruse of the thief, pardoned him.  Now that’s a man with a plan!  He took action in order to survive.  That’s what the dishonest manager in Jesus’ story did.  Taking action is what gets Jesus’ approval.  Jesus does not approve of the dishonest manager’s plan itself, let’s be clear about that.  What Jesus congratulates is that the dishonest manager, when faced with his dismissal, comes up with a plan to survive.  What Jesus points out as a needed quality in his disciples is the insight that, when faced with a crucial need, one must urgently take action.

            That’s what we’re supposed to do!  Jesus wants his disciples to be as urgent about the things of God’s kingdom as the manager was about surviving.  Jesus wants us to be “in the game.”  He wants each one of us to have an action plan.  Think of the zeal within those people who annoy you with their telemarketing calls.  They won’t take no for an answer!  They won’t stop calling.  I hate what they do, but I do love their zeal.  And they have a plan to reach their goal of earning a living.  Do you have a plan for how you will live in this world under the reign of God?  Do you plan to love neighbors with some concrete actions?  But you may say, “Dick, I can’t do great things.”  Fred Craddock has an answer for that.  He says, “Most of us will not this week christen a ship, write a book, end a war, appoint a cabinet, dine with the queen, convert a nation, or be burned at the stake.  More likely,” Craddock adds, “More likely the week will present no more than a chance to give a cup of water, write a note, visit a nursing home, vote for a county commissioner, teach a Sunday school class, share a meal, tell a child a story, go to choir practice, and feed the neighbor’s cat.”  And what was it Jesus said?  He said, “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much.”  So you begin to see yourself as the one who helps make the world better.  You’re the one who accepts the one who is different.  Who knows?  Maybe someone will notice and it will start a movement.  You’re the one who writes a note to someone who lives alone or who is going through a bad time.  Maybe no one will notice, but it is nevertheless an important act, because you have been faithful with the gift of God’s love of which you are the steward.  You’re the one who gives a ride to church to someone who no longer drives.  Even if no one notices, your action is in keeping with the values of God’s kingdom.  You see what’s happening?  You’re starting to think of yourself as someone with a plan, a plan to work in harmony with God’s will, a plan to love neighbors.  That’s what Jesus wants us to do.