And so it is with all his images and parables. It is astonishing how much “world” we find in Jesus’ parables and similitudes. Here is the world of rulers and politicians, businesspeople and great landowners, just as we also find the world of housewives and poor day laborers, fisherfolk and farmers. One must simply read the text against the grain. It is necessary to probe the sentences to see what realities they contain in order to see, behind the text, the narrator Jesus, deeply participant and carefully observant.
Here we have a story about a rich man’s banquet (Luke 14:16-24), and there one about how a poor woman looks for a lost coin (Luke 15:8-10). Here we read how a great mustard bush grows out of a little mustard seed (Mark 4:30-32) and how a small amount of sourdough leavens a huge quantity of dough (Matt 13:33). Here is a description of how a victim of assault lies in his blood, and a priest and a Levite pass by and simply look away (Luke 10:30-35). Here a terrorist prepares for his attack (GThom 98), and there a manager who has been fired for good cause secures his living for coming years with a clever trick (Luke 16:1-7).
The Corrupt Manager
The parable in Luke 16:1-7 is especially revealing because it shows that the early church already had problems with Jesus’ parable material. A whole series of commentaries has been attached to the parable (Luke 16:8-13), all of them relating to the keyword “mammon.” Their purpose is to explain the parable, protect it against misunderstandings, and draw the right conclusions from it. But Jesus does not “protect” his challenging language. He uses daring images for the reign of God. And he tells stories that do not sound at all pious. For example, this one about the corrupt manager:
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.” (Luke 16:1–7)
A pious story? No, this is a story of a crime. It tells of a double betrayal. It takes place in the Palestine of the time. There, in Jesus’ time, the rich land in the valleys belonged to the “state” or a few very rich owners of large estates. Most of the latter lived elsewhere—in Antioch, Alexandria, or Rome—and had managers to take care of their property.
The manager in Luke 16 embezzles the goods entrusted to him. He manages the money right into his own pocket. The owner apparently has no way of inspecting the books. He is exploited by his manager by every dishonest art in the book. But then, one day, someone fingers the manager. Who, the story does not say. The manager is then given a date by which he must lay all his accounts on the table.
The manager knows that he cannot conceal his embezzlement. He also knows that he is going to lose his position and has no chance of finding another. His future looks ruined.
Therefore he undertakes a new betrayal, and now more audaciously than before: he calls in his master’s various debtors and has them rewrite their bills in their own favor and against the interests of his employer. In this way he lays obligations on people who will support him later. He creates “the right of hospitality” for himself. Obligations of this sort played an extraordinary role in antiquity. There was no such thing as insurance, and there was no social welfare system like ours. Obviously, the deceitful manager has the debtors come to him one at a time; there must not be any witnesses to such business. The amounts are extraordinarily high: a hundred jugs of oil are about 3,600 liters, the yield of some 145 olive trees. The quantity of wheat is similarly high.
How does the story end? We might ask instead: how would it end today? Probably on a high moral note. For example: the second embezzlement is also discovered, the crook loses everything and goes to prison. Moraclass="underline" crime does not pay! At any rate, that is how the story was told in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In recent decades, however, it would probably have been given a social touch, criticized the unscrupulous nature of the exploitative landowner, described the behavior of the manager and the indebted tenants as a bitterly necessary defense, and so made a story of social heroes out of the crime tale. In that case also the story would have turned out to be highly moral.
But what is so baffling is that Jesus’ story does not end morally at all—neither according to bourgeois or antibourgeois morality. We can see how little the story was aimed at moral teaching in Jesus’ mind by the fact that he does not even tell the end. That remains open; it is not interesting.
Apparently this story of a swindler is about something else entirely. The first commentary added to the tale is still aware of this: Jesus praises the criminal manager—“the Lord” is obviously Jesus and not the injured landowner—but what he applauds is not his crime but the consistency and initiative with which he rescues his own existence.
In his own terms the manager acted very consistently. He had no illusions. He considered his opportunities quite soberly. He used his mind. He engaged his whole imagination and, after calculating everything, he proceeded quickly and as efficiently as possible.
That—Jesus wants to tell his listeners—is just how you must act in the face of the reign of God. It is offered to you, now, today. But it will only come to you if you engage your mind, your imagination, your passion, your whole existence. By far the best explanation of the parable is given in the last of the commentaries: “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 16:13).
That is: those who want to live in the reign of God can only have God as their master. Only God may they serve—with their whole will, all their strength, their whole lives. If they have other masters besides God they are divided, pulled here and there, have no drive. Then they do not really engage, they risk nothing, they do things only halfway. Then their lives lack all inner strength and all the brilliance that belongs to the reign of God.
The swindling manager did nothing halfway. He went all the way. He risked everything and invested everything. For that, and only for that, Jesus admires him and says: if only my disciples—on their own terms—would act as sensibly as this manager!
So Jesus in his parables not only depicts the world of the good and respectable but also that of the shady and the hypocritical, the swindlers and the tricksters. He does not depict a holy and intact world. Not even the world of children is polished up. In the parable of the “children playing” Jesus tells how a group of children cannot agree what to play. There are a bunch of spoilsports who are not happy with any suggestion. They don’t want to play wedding, but they don’t want to play funeral either. Nothing pleases them. There is a loud argument, and in the end no game is played at all. The spoilsports have succeeded. Those who wanted to play say to them: “We played the flute for you, and you did not dance; we wailed, and you did not mourn” (Matt 11:17). The following commentary is then given: they didn’t like John the Baptizer with his asceticism and preaching of repentance. Then came Jesus. He ate and drank with the sinners, but they didn’t want him either and called him “a glutton and a drunkard!” (Matt 11:18-19). The parable of the children at play shows how closely Jesus observed everything. He knew that children already practice the bigger quarrels of adults. And he must have had painful experience of the disunity in the people of God, the rivalries among the various groups in Israel and the strife over his own person.