Let’s re-tell and interpret the story of the so-called dishonest manager from the perspective of reputation and honor. A master hears from some gossip or snitch that his manager has been misappropriating funds. Without even checking up on the allegations, he realizes that his honor and status in the community are threatened by the public perception that he cannot control his employees, so he resolves to save face by immediately dismissing the employee.
The high-ranking manager faces a crisis. Being a manager is the only thing that he knows how to do, but the fact that he now has a reputation for dishonoring his master means that he will not be able to secure employment anywhere else in estate management. He tries to get himself out of trouble by restoring his master's honor and salvaging his reputation as a good, loyal employee. He forgives a portion of the amount owed by his master's debtors. People would assume that the manager was acting on the master's orders, so these gestures would make the master look generous and charitable in the eyes of society. The prestige and honor gained by such benefaction would far outweigh the monetary loss to the master.
The master hears what the manager has done and praises him for his actions since his honor has been restored. Moreover, the manager is now in a position either to keep his position with this master or to secure one elsewhere, since his reputation for loyalty and good service has been recovered. [Thanks to David Landry, University of St. Thomas Ben May, University of Minnesota-Duluth Medical School for this remarkable line of interpretation.]
In this interpretation, then, Jesus’ everyday story is focuses on something all the people back then would know about, since the honor code that was the foundation of their entire social system. What we didn’t get to hear are the two verses which immediately follow today’s reading, so I’m going to read them to you now:
When the Pharisees who really loved money heard what Jesus said, they made fun of him. But Jesus told them: You are always making yourselves look good, but God sees what is in your heart. The things that most people think are important are worthless as far as God is concerned.
The thing to catch here is that Jesus knew he was being overheard and was really aiming his story about the dishonest manager and his comments about being shrewd at the Pharisees. Maybe the disciples felt the hair on the back of their necks standing up, for Jesus’ teaching at this point amounted to an indictment of the religious leaders for failure to honor God as God really was. You are always making yourselves look good, but God sees what is in your heart.
Just as the manager in the story was not properly handling the rich man’s estate, and thus brought dishonor upon the landowner when the word got around, so the Pharisees were mismanaging the religion that was supposed to honor God by being a sign of what God was really like.
The point is that God’s people are to seek God’s glory and honor, or, in a word that we might more easily understand, we are to restore and rebuild God’s reputation when it’s been harmed. God’s reputation is referred to in the Bible as the glory of God. What the Pharisees and other religious leaders mistakenly thought was that the glory of God was their piety, strutted out for all to see, even as today we might say of someone with whom we probably wouldn’t want to spend too much time, because they make us nervous, "he or she is so religious."
The disciples and the poor outcasts who tagged along with Jesus knew only too well the offensive hypocrisy of those so-called men of God, who paraded their righteous religion before the world, but in fact, ripped off widows and the poor peasants who lived in virtual slavery working the farms of wealthy absentee landlords. And thus they hurt God’s reputation.
And so it has been throughout history. Anyone who turns a back on the poor or preaches hate and judgment, no matter how religious their language may be, is not representing God, but evil. Long ago the Micah cried to people: God has shown what is good. For what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.
Today Osama Bin Laden claims to represent the will of God on earth—but the God he claims is not the God we find in the prophets or in Christ. But what kind of God are we representing? Our challenge in building up God’s reputation is that we bear the burden of a history in which God’s people of all races and religions have harmed God’s reputation by becoming, in the name of God, initiators of bloody crusades and inquisitions and holy wars, and supported slavery and merciless witch-hunts and persecutions of every kind. We can do better than that!
Everywhere the gospels make clear that Jesus’ mission among the people was to rebuild God’s reputation for mercy. Like the shrewd manager in his story, Jesus was arranging the forgiveness of our debt to God. The time has come for the Son of Man to be given his glory, Jesus said. In St. John’s gospel the cross on which our Lord suffered and died is presented as the most powerful display of God’s reality as possible—God’s reputation and Christ’s coming together on Good Friday and Easter in an almost inexpressible outpouring of divine mercy. For the glory of God is mercy. And the glory of the Church is to celebrate and live God’s mercy and rebuild the reputation of God among people so beat up by life that they are tempted to believe not in God, but in violence, vengeance and hate as the answer to the world’s perceived evils.
We need to be cleverer than evil. David Tiede, President of Luther seminary says, "Just think what could happen if people were as clever in pursuing the justice and mercy of the kingdom as they are in looking out for themselves!" Commentary on Luke, page 283 Thus, Jesus teaches us today to become as shrewd as PR executives and lobbyists in finding ways to get the world to embrace the mercy of God and so recover God’s good reputation.
What kind of reputation are we giving God? Christ fulfilled the prophet’s cry for mercy, and so renewed the good reputation of God. Let us, his body in the world now, make every effort to do the same. "You servants of the Lord, bless the Lord. Blessed be his name forever! From east to west, praised be the name of the Lord our God!" Amen.