The parable of the shrewd manager

A significant key into today’s parable of the “shrewd or dishonest manager,” is to remember that Jesus is still at the dinner party in company of sinners.
Jesus is there sitting alongside and dipping his hands in the same bowl of food with the unwashed sinners, tax collectors and prostitutes. The company Jesus insists on keeping is, if we recall, deeply offensive to the good and worthy people of the day - the Pharisees and scribes.
Remember too that Jesus chose to tell three stories designed to correct the displeasure (or worse) of the Pharisees. Those three stories are commonly referred to as the parables of the “lost sheep, the lost coin, and the lost (or prodigal) son(s).
However, if we are to gain a clearer understanding of today’s gospel story, I think it is more helpful if we choose to see the three stories, not as parables of: “the Lost Sheep, the Lost Coin and the Two Lost Sons (or the Prodigal Son)” but as stories about “the restored sheep, the recovered coin and the returned son(s).”
The reason is that, these are not, at their heart, stories about rejection. They are stories focused on celebrations. Celebration of the restoration of the sheep gone astray; celebration of the recovery of a missing coin; and celebration of the return of outcast son(s).
What is more, they are stories which hint that God restores, recovers and welcomes us, not at a distance, but at a level of intimacy that we can all understand - that of a shared meal, even while we are yet sinners. Eating together at a table suggests that we wish life for one another. It paints a compelling picture that we are one family. We welcome one another, with open hearts, no matter where that other comes from, or what 'disregard' polite society visits upon them. It depicts that we are insistent that the love God holds out to us commands the embrace, not rejection, of sinners and outcasts.

It's a command that we have learnt to say with confidence in the Lord prayer: "...forgive us our sins even as we forgive those who sin against us..."
Forgiveness, as we are well aware, is often a most difficult and challenging thing to embrace. Why, when, how and on what conditions may we 'let go' of our just demands on the sinner against us or in our midst?

Of course, the conundrum or difficult set of questions around forgiveness, is what sits at the heart of the 'discussion' (if we can call it that), which Jesus has been having with the pharisees and scribes who were offended by the fact that Jesus is keeping company with unrepentant sinners.

Jesus brings that discussion to a head in today's gospel parable about the shrewd manager.

Here was a manager in serious and deep trouble. He was about to be sacked as a fraudulent manager. As we all know, it's a serious thing to be labelled a fraud. The manager knew this. He was conscious that his dismissal meant that his current life, as he knew it, with all of its privileges would be closed off to him.
So what does he do?
Well, he does a strange thing!
He decides to live up to the reputation with which he is now saddled.
What is more, this time, he does with a brazen aplomb!
Stranger still, he's commended for his sheer alacrity in doing so.

However, our concern is not to marvel at the strange turn of event, bizarre though it seems. Rather, we are to try to understand what the manager has done well.

Is it the fact that he commits his fraud so openly?

Is it in his effontry to bribe the debtors and to old them beholden to him in the future?

Neither of these two explanations hold up to close scrutiny.

What does hold much water in the economy of God, however, is the manager's audacious decision to forgive debts, while he still could.

He saw forgiveness as a means, the only means, by which he could anchor himself to as good a life as he currently lived.

How strange, but true, it is, that forgiveness is like a stone that causes a widening ripple when we throw it into the pool of life around us.
Forgiveness removes barriers to the life God has on offer for us, our friends and our enemies.

This, we can dare to believe, is what earns the manager a commendation in today's gospel.

And it is the refusal of the pharisees and scribes to yield to this command - to forgive even while we are yet sinners - that earns them the telling off summed up in today's parable.

Yes, the manager was a fraud!
But he chose to be a worthy kind of fraud.
He was determined to be a fraud who would forgive the debts of others.
He chose to be more than the self-aggrandizer his fraudulent reputation suggested. His predicament had made him to be fully aware of what it meant to forgive another.
He had grasped that forgiveness involves and demands a scandal of unworthiness - at least of pitching your tents with the unworthy - even sharing a table with them.

Ruby Murray's contributions to the life our Parish, her long unstinting and devoted service to God in this place, that we celebrate today, echo that appreciation/understanding of giving ourselves and all the resources and talents that we have been given.
We should not care if others deserve it or, more importantly, that others decry our efforts and fellowship with and his many unworthy companions.

©️The Rev'd Dr Olúbùnmi Fágbèmí (Sunday Trinity 14, 2019)