Luke 16: 1-13

If you’re sitting there scratching your head after reading this parable, often called the Parable of the Unjust Steward, take heart. Commentators are all over the map in their interpretations, but they agree about one thing: it’s confusing, and maybe the most difficult of all of Jesus’ parables.

A landowner learns his manager has been dishonest. The manager fears he’s about to be fired, so he decides to do some quick dealing. He goes to a few of the owner’s clients and settles their debts at much lower rates. Collecting about half as much as they owe, the manager figures that the clients will be grateful and treat him well in the future. The owner finds out about this strategy, and this is where it gets strange.

The owner commends the manager for acting “shrewdly” as the NRSV puts it; in other translations, “cleverly.” One of the challenges of this parable is figuring out whose side we’re supposed to be on. And another challenge is that the parable is followed by four sayings offered as interpretations that sound as though Luke had a handful of random and inscrutable sayings of Jesus and decided to tack them on here. “Just put them here; no one knows what this parable means anyway.”

Some background: In Roman-occupied Galilee in the first century, rich landlords were like loan-sharks. They charged exorbitant interest rates, and when the peasants couldn’t pay up, they’d lose the family farm. Which was the landlord’s plan – to increase and consolidate his holdings. The whole enterprise violated biblical law. Both the rich man and his manager were exploiting desperate peasants.

Jesus’ hearers would know that typical debt contracts hid exorbitant interest rates from illiterate peasants. The manager was probably extracting his own cut of the profits, as well, and on top of that, Rome would take a share. When he reduced the payments, the manager may simply have forgiven his own cut of the interest.

But that doesn’t tell us whose side we’re supposed to be on or why Jesus is telling his disciples this story. One thing for certain, the rich man is not the good guy here. In Luke and elsewhere, Jesus makes it very clear: No one can serve God and wealth – other translations use the word “Mammon,” a personification of wealth that makes it more obvious that wealth really can take the place of God in people’s lives. In the Luke’s context, if you were rich, it meant you exploited others to get that way. Today, we might reasonably say that just being rich isn’t bad; it’s exploitation that’s bad.

We can look at our own economy and see exploitation in the wide gap between what CEO’s and workers earn. But billionaires aside, isn’t it incredibly easy for all of us to ignore the way our economic system exploits people, especially if we’re benefitting from it? It’s easy to enjoy cheap goods and ignore the actual cost of the manufacturing process on the workers. U.S.-made goods cost more because we have minimum wage laws and protections for workers’ health and safety. Places like Bangladesh or Guatemala that don’t have these protections, which puts the costs of industrial accidents or chronic work-related ailments on the worker, instead of passing them on to the consumers. It’s equally easy to ignore the way that the earnings of plantation owners increased the bottom line of the entire economy of our country, especially the banks. Wealth grew because of slave labor. Inheritances grew; for white people, that is. It’s easy to ignore the way systemic racism worked through the GI Bill and redlining neighborhoods to build the white middle class after World War II, leaving African Americans behind yet again. This is not ancient history: to this day, African Americans have less wealth to pass on to future generations.

So why commend the manager? Some commentators suggest that by using his position to reduce other people’s debts, the manager understands that he needs to gain them as friends and assure himself a place at their tables. Perhaps Jesus himself doesn’t commend the manager’s practices, but rather the manager’s insight into the connection between resources and relationships.

It is so easy to distance ourselves from the realities of our economic system, to ignore the fact that it’s human beings who are harvesting, creating, and building our goods and services, and to ignore the fact that they, like everyone else, need housing, healthcare, food, and basic safety. Maybe the connection between resources and relationships is what Jesus had in mind. In any event, perhaps it’s a good week to explore what compassionate capitalism might look like.

© Joanne Whitt 2025 all rights reserved.

Resources:
Christine Pohl, Profit and Loss, August 29, 2002, The Christian Century, https://www.christiancentury.org/article/profit-and-loss.
David Lose, https://www.davidlose.net/2013/11/luke-16-1-13/
David Lose, https://www.workingpreacher.org/dear-working-preacher/money-relationships-and-jesus-most-confusing-parable
Barbara Rossing, “Commentary on Luke 16:1-13,” September 18, 2016, http://www.workingpreacher.org/preaching.aspx?commentary_id=2982.
Seth Bogner, “Why More Companies Should Practice Compassionate Capitalism (And How To Do It Effectively),” February 28, 2023, Forbes, https://www.forbes.com/councils/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/02/28/why-more-companies-should-practice-compassionate-capitalism-and-how-to-do-it-effectively/