Managing Injustice

Climate change and actions to mitigate its effects are often a subjects in the news and can be controversial topics. In Canada and around the world we are recognizing the crisis of our poor stewardship of this planet. I read that in Alberta there is something called the Climate Narrative Project – an initiative aimed at creating a new narrative around climate change in the province. By engaging in storytelling and community dialogue, the project aims to shift the conversation around climate change from one of apathy and denial to one of action and hope.

Jeremiah is a good text for today considering the current climate discussion and proposals for action as he seems the most relevant prophet of the Old Testament to our ecological crisis. He unambiguously clarified that a disaster such as the extraordinary drought in chapter 14 is not natural – rather it is an unnatural catastrophe. It is a direct consequence of the people’s moral failure and unrighteousness. Today we more and more frequently face weather-related catastrophes such as hurricanes, fires, floods, or droughts. Do we recognize the roots of these in our unnatural lifestyle and environmental irresponsibility?

Jeremiah knew that there was no hope for escaping from the collapse – very much like our situation. He was a man under no illusion, though he suffered together with his community. He unveiled and condemned consumerism when he spoke against idolatry in our text today. Jeremiah put his finger on the problem of prosperity when he cried: “The harvest is past, the summer is ended, and we are not saved”. Even if there was a good harvest with fruits – even if the work had been done – salvation had not yet been achieved. Prosperity itself cannot save the people.

Wealth is not neutral. But sometimes it seems that wealth is the only value we espouse. The paradigm of indefinite growth at all costs has led us to this cliff-edge, with more frequent disastrous extremes of weather hitting many parts of the planet. And this is how I see a strong connection between Jeremiah and the parable Jesus tells in Luke’s gospel this morning. A story about faithfulness with dishonest wealth – about who we are called to serve – about crafty generosity, which liberates from hardship – faithfulness to the God who values God’s people, creatures and planet.

It seems odd, I know, but hopefully you can follow my meandering train of thought…

It’s usually called The Parable of the Dishonest, or The Parable of the Unjust, Manager. Unjust is closer to the text than dishonest but both are misleading. In the Greek, the manager is called “the manager of injustice” – the manager of unfairness or wrongdoing – perhaps not the one who acts unfairly, but the one who seeks proper use of wealth in a system of injustice.

Look also, at how the manager is described in what is often thought to be the original ending of the parable at verse eight. Here the manager is said to have acted shrewdly, which means he was astute, intelligent, clever and canny. Perhaps we should think of it as The Parable of the Shrewd Manager.

In the Galilee of Jesus’ day, there were many large estates in the rolling hill country above the lake, as well as south of Nazareth in the beautiful Jezreel valley. A steward or manager for the absentee landowner usually ran these estates. The rich man in the story is that property owner, who has put an administrator – a steward – in charge of overseeing the productivity of his holdings and collecting the various rents and other dues from those who farmed it. Such rents were often calculated and collected “in kind” – a certain number of chickens, bushels of grain, rounds of cheese, or vats of oil from the anticipated harvest. The “bills” would also include a commission paid to the steward – his salary for managerial services provided.

A straightforward reading of this tale might go like this…

The manager of a wealthy man’s estate is about to get fired for some reason that isn’t disclosed – laziness, disorganization, or maybe even corruption. The owner summons the manager, tells him to prepare one final report to be handed in at his exit interview, and that would then be that. Too lazy and weak for manual labor, too proud to beg, this man must think fast.

He calls in several of the boss’s clients and cuts their debt-loads in half. When in startled amazement they ask why, the manager winks at them and says, “Don’t ask, but just remember I did you a favour once?” In those times, relationships between patrons and clients were the key to success. An intricate web of relationships was developed as one provided a service or responded to a request for help. In this story, the manager’s dismissal means the loss of his most important patron, so he acts quickly and decisively to bind himself to others by acting in their interests.

The manager reduces the amounts people owe to the rich owner, shifting his position from representative of the wealthy, to align himself instead with people who, in gratitude and a sense of indebtedness, will provide him hospitality in the future. The manager is said to be shrewd because he has protected himself from impending ruin, endeared himself to the tenants and made it difficult for the landowner to dispute the new arrangements without riling up the tenants and doing even more damage to the estate.

When the boss gets wind of these shenanigans, he is not angry! He approves. He claps the manager on the shoulder and says in essence, “You’ve done well for yourself!” This rich man could recognize a fellow wheeler-and-dealer when he saw one, and he liked what he saw! Anyone this shrewd, anyone this clever at working the angles, was just maybe someone worth hanging onto after all.

In the often-cut-throat world of business this kind of unsavory story is not uncommon. What is uncommon about this story is what Jesus says about it. You expect Jesus to say something like, “I tell you, cheats such as this will one day find themselves in a place of much weeping and gnashing of teeth!”

But he does not say this at all. Instead, Jesus finishes this little vignette of corruption, takes a breath, and then says to the disciples, “You see! There’s something to that approach. Folks like this are far shrewder at dealing with this world than you children of light are!”

Clearly, it’s not that theft, cheating, swindling, or dishonesty is a good thing. If we remember that this is a manager of injustice and if we understand the “dishonest wealth” to be wealth of injustice, then we can see the manager’s actions more clearly and his commendation as shrewd – insightful, sound and wise – makes more sense to us.

The underlying assumption is of an economy of scarcity, where the quantity of wealth available is fixed – some can have more only if others have less. Any excessive accumulation of wealth in the hands of one – such as the property owner in our story today, or the few countries that enjoy most of the world’s wealth – any such excess is evidence of injustice that must be redressed by some redistribution of resources. By reducing the amount owed by the debtors in the parable, the manager is doing justice – doing his job as a manager of injustice that no longer aims at perpetuating or adding to inequities but instead reflects the new economy that Jesus has been preaching since the very beginning.

Jesus is not praising dishonesty in the manager. He is not commending the fact that the man is a bad steward, but rather he is speaking well of the shrewdness – the forethought of the manager in both looking after himself and seeking justice for others. The steward is commended for being wise enough to use the very fruits of injustice to forge new relationships of abundance and a new economy of justice.

We are all stewards or managers of what God has put into our hands. Jesus challenges his disciples – challenges us – to manage wealth – our abundance – in the direction of justice.

What is it about the shrewd manager’s attitude that Jesus finds useful for the children of light – for us? It’s this: he gave thought to the future, and it shaped his actions in the present. His desperate desire to see his future materialize helped him to conclude that it would be worth it to take the risks he did. If we have a strong vision of the future that we hope includes the potential for joy, that vision of the future should influence us greatly in the present moment.

With that in mind – with that vision of hope in that face of danger – another direction we might take the interpretation of this story comes full circle to Jeremiah’s prophecy that we are not yet saved – that prosperity and wealth are not the answer. We can see the story as it relates to our awareness of climate crisis and recent local and global efforts to shake up our personal and corporate actions to sustain life on the planet into the future…

Imagine that the estate is the earth, the landowner is God, and the manager is humanity.

Charges have been brought that the steward – humanity – is squandering the rich person’s – God’s – property – the earth. Humanity is charged with wasting God’s creation, and we are asked to account for our stewardship – our care – of the earth. We can hear echoes of our current situation in this interpretation. We have too long been careless with the natural environment, wildlife, forests, oceans, and one another.

Moreover, the rich man says that the person cannot be his manager any longer – the position is terminated – can humanity survive its wasteful stewardship of the earth’s resources? What will we do?

The steward in the story asks the same question and decides to act. He does so quickly and decisively to solve his dilemma. As we contemplate the increasingly polluted earth, air, and water from which we have taken much and prospered greatly, we must ask how we must act to save our place in creation.

The emphasis in the story is on the steward’s action and on the landowner’s praise of that action. The manager wasted no time wringing his hands but set about doing something. He did not wallow in guilt or denial. He acted. How are we acting in the face of increasing threats to our environment – in this moment of climate crisis?

We are often encouraged to “think globally and act locally.” This is a variant of the truth that everything begins with our own action, our own affairs, and our own lifestyle. Consider the precept later in the reading for today: Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much. The best approach to responsible and effective management in a larger context is responsible and effective management in our own behaviour. Remember when Greta Thunberg, a teenager in Europe, took a personal stand to draw attention to climate concerns, influencing global action? We know we must make radical decisions about how we live in the created order, or we will indeed have nothing – we will be stewards no longer.

There is no time to lose and no room for half measures or for dual allegiances. Faithfulness in little or large things requires boldness, risk taking, leaving behind one way of operating and understanding the world in favour of another. The issue in today's parable has nothing to do with the manager's honesty or dishonesty – rather the issue is, just how shrewd, clever, and committed are we, the children of light, when it comes to our faith and the planet God has entrusted to our care? Amen