16 Jesus told this story to his disciples: “There was a certain rich man who had a manager handling his affairs. One day a report came that the manager was wasting his employer’s money. ² So the employer called him in and said, ‘What’s this I hear about you? Get your report in order, because you are going to be fired.’

³ “The manager thought to himself, ‘Now what? My boss has fired me. I don’t have the strength to dig ditches, and I’m too proud to beg. ⁴ Ah, I know how to ensure that I’ll have plenty of friends who will give me a home when I am fired.’

⁵ “So he invited each person who owed money to his employer to come and discuss the situation. He asked the first one, ‘How much do you owe him?’ ⁶ The man replied, ‘I owe him 800 gallons of olive oil.’ So the manager told him, ‘Take the bill and quickly change it to 400 gallons.’

⁷ “‘And how much do you owe my employer?’ he asked the next man. ‘I owe him 1,000 bushels of wheat,’ was the reply. ‘Here,’ the manager said, ‘take the bill and change it to 800 bushels.’

⁸ “The rich man had to admire the dishonest rascal for being so shrewd. And it is true that the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with the world around them than are the children of the light. ⁹ Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.

¹⁰ “If you are faithful in little things, you will be faithful in large ones. But if you are dishonest in little things, you won’t be honest with greater responsibilities. ¹¹ And if you are untrustworthy about worldly wealth, who will trust you with the true riches of heaven? ¹² And if you are not faithful with other people’s things, why should you be trusted with things of your own?

¹³ “No one can serve two masters. For you will hate one and love the other; you will be devoted to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and be enslaved to money.”

Luke 16:1-13

Dear God, of course, I’ve talked about this parable with you before. It has never set well with me. The idea that Jesus would encourage deception and theft is confusing. It’s still hard for me to connect the dots, so I’m going to skip to what Luke records as the lesson from this parable in verse 9:

⁹ Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home.

Even this lesson is a little weird considering the lives the disciples would later live. Perhaps Jesus was looking forward to their persecution and knowing they would need allies.

As a fundraiser for a nonprofit, I can sometimes struggle with my motivations for being kind to people. Am I truly interested in them, or am I manipulating them so they will give the nonprofit where I work money? I have found that if I do not lean into the friendship and truly caring about them then I cannot live with myself. I have to care. I have to keep the donations separate from the compassion I feel. A friend died suddenly a week ago today. He and his wife happen to be large donors at the nonprofit where I work, but that didn’t drive my friendship with him. I also knew him through Rotary, and we enjoyed having lunch together. At the first of our long lunches, after about an hour he looked at me and said, “So, what can I do for you?” He was so used to being taken to lunch by a nonprofit for an “ask” that he was waiting for the pitch. I responded, “Nothing. I just wanted to have lunch.” We developed a wonderful friendship from there. We would spend hours and hours at lunch. Never less than two. Sometimes three to four hours. Such a wonderful man. I will truly miss him. I know I’m going to thing sometime soon, “I need to call ______ for lunch,” and then I’ll remember I can’t. Those will be sad moments. But with his death, my conscience is clear because I know I loved him and cared for him regardless of the donations he made to our nonprofit.

Father, I really don’t know to what extent I am supposed to be shrewd. I’m just not wired up this way. And I don’t know how to reconcile this parable of Jesus’s with my life. I really don’t. So, if there is something I’m supposed to be learning from this, Holy Spirit, please speak to me and teach me. Jesus, explain this to me. If I’m missing something in my life that you want me to incorporate, I certainly want to incorporate it. I just want to worship you and represent you to the world as best as I can. Help me to do that.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen