The Parable of the Unjust Steward

I once heard a priest say from the pulpit that she was glad there are three readings every Sunday because it meant she didn’t have to preach on the scary passages. I promised myself in that moment never to shrink away from a hard passage of Scripture. The parable we’ll be looking at today, the Parable of the Unjust Steward, is so strange that the Roman Emperor Julian the Apostate used it to justify his claim that Christianity was an immoral religion (Bailey (2008) 333)!* So it’s definitely worth a closer look.

Text

The text is found at the start of Luke 16. The only thing separating it from the parable(s) of the prodigal son and his elder brother is a statement that notes a shift in audience:

[16.1] And he said to the disciples: “There was a certain rich man who had a steward, and he was accused of wasting his resources. [2] He called him and said to him: ‘What is this I hear about you? Hand over your accounts book, for you can no longer manage my household!’ [3] The the steward said to himself, ‘What will I do now that my master has taken my management job from me? I am not strong enough for manual labour and I am ashamed to beg. [4] I have realized what I can do, so that, when I am dismissed as steward, others will welcome me into their homes.’ [5] And so he summoned each one of his master’s debtors and said to the first: ‘How much do you owe my master?’ [6] And he said, ‘One hundred vats of olive oil.’ And he said to him: ‘Take your account, sit down, and quickly write “fifty.”’ [7] Then he said to another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ And he said: ‘One hundred containers of grain.’ And he said to him, ‘Take your account and write “eighty.”’ [8] And the master commended the unjust steward for acting shrewdly.

For the children of this age are more shrewd than the sons of the light with respect to their own generation. [9] And I say to you: Make friends for yourselves from unjust wealth, so that, when it is gone, they may welcome you into eternal dwellings. [10] Whoever is faithful in a little is also faithful in much. [11] So then, if you have not been faithful when it comes to unjust wealth, who will trust you with true wealth? [12] And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is yours? [13] No household slave can serve two masters: for either you will hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to one and despise the other: You cannot serve God and wealth.

Experience

My initial reaction to reading this is of a fall from grace — from the heights of the three wonderful parables of the lost and found to this strange story that commends fraud and ends in a circuitous discussion of faithfulness and wealth. It definitely feels like we’re missing some important context to make this make sense. And I’m curious what might connect this parable to what preceded it in Luke’s narrative.

Encounter

Luke tells us we’ve shifted narrative context. Jesus is no longer addressing his detractors but his followers. This change in audience seems important in light of the parable’s apparently subversive message. (Though we later find out that the Pharisees had been listening in.)

In the story itself, we meet the master of a significant estate, his manager or steward, who stands accused of mismanaging his affairs, and we have a group of debtors in the wider community. I want to keep all three in my sights as I continue the study.

Explore

Here are the questions that have emerged for further study:

• How do we define the boundaries of the passage and how does it connect to Luke’s broader narrative?
• Are there any details in the story that might shed light on it?
• What exactly is Jesus saying here?

Literary Context

At first, this parable seems disconnected to what has preceded it, both in audience and theme. Yet several scholars point out a number of similarities between it and the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Capon; Nuectherlein Proper 20C; Bailey (2008) 323; Levine and Witherington 436). Both stories:

• refer to wasteful behaviour (using skorpizo to describe it)
• are about a scoundrel in a bad state
• include a moment of truth followed by scheming
• end with a high status person showing compassion on the lower status person.

In light of these strong similarities, we may not actually have a trio of parables in Luke 15, but rather two doublets: the near identical Sheep and Coin, followed by a second doublet of the Prodigal Son (told in public) and the Unjust Steward (told in private) (Landy & May, quoted in Nuechterlein Proper 20C). It’s an interesting thought.

The story itself clearly ends at verse 8a, with the master commending the steward (Capon; Levine & Witherington 441). But it has a ‘long tail’, with 8b-13 containing enough similar language and themes to seem relevant to our study.

The Master

The first character we encounter is a man simply described as being rich; later we find out he is a ‘lord,’ who owns a large estate. While he’s not the main character, the master’s actions begin and end the story, meaning we shouldn’t ignore him. The types of debts owed to him suggest a large agricultural concern here, and the may be rents-in-kind (Bailey (2008) 335). He has heard rumours that his steward has been squandering his resources. This obviously puts him in a financial deficit, but it also puts him at a reputational deficit in the community, since he is seen as not able to control his employees (Nuetchterlein Proper 20C; Bailey (2008) 335). And so he summarily dismisses him. But when he finds out that the steward has curried favour with the debtors by dramatically reducing their debts, he — very strangely to our minds — commends him for his shrewd (phronimos: sensible, prudent, showing presence of mind) conduct.

What’s going on here? On the practical level of the parable, answers could be found on both sides of his deficit. Financially, it could be that he saw the wisdom of reducing the debts as a way of ensuring he recoups at least some of what is owed to him. This was a common tactic in the early Roman Empire (Levine & Witherington 440). And reputationally, the debt-forgiveness portrays him as generous and caring (Nuechterlein Proper 20C). Bailey adds that, by making the debtors complicit in his fraud, the steward also makes accepting it advantageous to the master: “either he accuses them of defrauding him or he can remain quiet and accept the goodwill that would come from the reduction” (Bailey (2008) 340). On this reading, the master sees that the steward’s ‘unjust’ actions have in fact solved his problem for him: the reputational win and promise of getting some of what is owed is more than worth what he’d lose financially (Nuectherlein Proper 20C; Bailey (2008) 339).

This ties into a more theological reading. What the master learns and commends is that forgiveness — both figurative (of sins) and literal (of debts) — is the answer: This apparently unjust act actually creates justice. And so, seeing this, he readily forgives and commends the steward (Just 614; Bailey (2008) 334; Capon).

In this way, focusing on the master’s response instead of the steward’s actions goes a long way to resolving the problematic nature of the parable (Just 614; Nuechterlein Proper 20C).

The Steward

The biggest question in this parable is whether the steward is a hero or a villain (Capon). Neither answer is satisfactory, which is why the focus on the master is so helpful. At any rate, this steward finds himself accused and rather than argue (which Bailey points out would be expected), he immediately jumps into problem-solving mode (Bailey (2008) 336). Leaving his present employment in disgrace would make getting another position impossible, and he’s ill-suited for manual labour or begging. He decides that his best option is to make friends among the master’s associates by reducing their debts before word of his firing gets out. This way, they will see him as a good friend and be inclined to receive him, either as a guest or as a steward of their own interests (Bailey (2008) 337; Nuechterlein Proper 20C). And as we’ve seen, he creates a win-win-win situation (Levine & Witheringon 442): He gains friends in a time of need, they get reduced debts, and his master gets to look generous. If we think of faithfulness as living into the healthy, reciprocal relationships that are the definition of God’s peace, his ‘unjust’ actions have actually been faithful and peace-making. In this way, he’s reminiscent of other shrewd, trickster figures in the biblical tradition, such as Abraham, Jacob, Esther, and Naomi (Levine & Witherington 444).

The Debtors

The debtors are collectively an interesting character. They are likely tenant farmers, though these could still be significant concerns, as suggested by the vast quantities they owe (Levine & Witherington 439; Bailey (2008) 339). They allow themselves to become complicit in the steward’s fraud (Bailey (2008) 340). But, if our emerging interpretation is correct, they are even more central to the story, in that their positive disposition towards the master is understood to be of even greater worth to him than money written off.

Towards an Interpretation

So what are we to make of all this? It seems the best course to focus on the master, just as the merciful father stood at the heart of the parallel Parable of the Wasteful Son and his Dutiful Brother. He’s introduced as a wealthy man, which immediately puts us in the mind of the proper and just disposition of wealth (Levine & Witherington 436). In this parable, he transforms from an apparently hard businessman counting every penny into someone who delights in forgiveness of debts and the goodwill and community this creates (Nuechterlein Proper 20C).

This interpretation means that far from being an outlier, this parable is strongly connected to the rest of the Gospel message:

As Doublet of The Prodigal Son: This repeats the Prodigal’s message of mercy and joy, but goes into greater detail about forgiveness as the mechanism of the restoration of relationships. While it wasn’t the focus of that story, the merciful father had to forgive his sons’ many offenses; doing so is worth it to him for the joy of communion with them. Here, the steward’s forgiveness of debts brings joy to the master for the same reason. He too ‘dies to self’ by swallowing the debts. In a typically Lukan way, the literal and practical is in view just as much as the ‘spiritual’: you cannot forgive sins if you do not also forgive financial debts, just as you cannot bless the ‘poor in spirit’ and those ‘hungry for righteousness’ without also blessing the poor and hungry (Nuechterlein Proper 20C).

As Doublet of the Unforgiving Servant: As Capon notes, this forgiveness-focused reading makes this into an “upside-down” version of Matthew’s Parable of the Unforgiving Servant (18.23-35). We’ll look at this parable in greater detail later in the series, but for today’s purposes, it’s enough to remind ourselves that it features a master who forgave the debts of a servant, who then refused to forgive the debts owed to him. There forgiveness was expected to flow from the top-down: In what I’ve elsewhere called “God’s pay-it-forward economy,” we demonstrate that we are forgiven by forgiving others. Today’s parable is the flip-side of that: the forgiveness the steward shows is taken up by the master. As blogger Sarah Dylan Breuer powerfully sums this up:

FORGIVE. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason you want, or for no reason at all…. It boils down to the same thing: deluded or sane, selfish and/or unselfish, there is no bad reason to forgive. Extending the kind of grace God shows us in every possible arena — financial and moral — can only put us more deeply in touch with God’s grace. (Quoted in Nuechterlein Proper 20C)

The Sermon on the Mount and Plain: All this places this parable firmly in line the ethic of the Sermon on the Mount (or Plain here in Luke). As much as the characters in this parable do shocking things, they are actually living out Jesus’ teachings (Just 615): Forgiving debts most obviously, but also coming to withhold judgment, turning the other cheek and walking the extra mile, and choosing relationships over profit.

The Unjust Steward as Christ Figure? Capon also introduces an intriguing idea that presents the unjust steward as a Christ figure. Like Christ, he experiences a kind of death (being fired) and raises others by his death (forgiving their debts). And, in what is for Capon a critical theme in all of these parables, neither the steward nor Christ ‘wins’ through respectability or playing by the rules, and both operate by rejecting bookkeeping (Capon). If these associations are intentional, it could help explain the apocalyptic imagery scattered throughout this text, from the sudden rendering of accounts, to the use of words like “eternal” (i.e,. “of the Age to Come”) and “sons of the light” in the concluding discourse. As Nuechterlein concludes:

At some point, God comes to us for an accounting of our stewardship, like the master to the Unjust Steward, and we are found wanting. We may not be fired; God is more gracious and forgiving than the master in the parable. But when we find ourselves on the outs, do we wise up like the Unjust Steward and find that the key to going on with our lives can be found in the forgiving of debts…, in the rebuilding of relationships with fellow debtors? Even the master in the parable can see the wisdom in that. Can the children of light? (Proper 20C)

Challenge

Subversion of First-Century Expectations

The fact that this text was used by Christianity’s opponents in the ancient world to prove the new religion’s immorality is enough to show that this is a strange and subversive story in any age. Its main character is commended for defrauding his master and that’s always going to be a tough sell.

Contemporary Challenge

In the twenty-first century, it’s been common to read the New Testament through an anti-imperial lens. Brian McLaren brought such a perspective to this text in Everything Must Change (2007):

Seen in terms of the imperial narrative, the story is transformed from an ethically difficult text to a politically dynamic one. The steward in the story “switches sides.” He stops working for the wealthy landowner and starts working for the oppressed poor. (p. 97, quoted by Nuechterlein Proper 20C)

Such a lens may also help explain the line in the discussion section about the use of “unjust wealth.” Jesus doesn’t use a normal word for money or riches, but “Mammon,” a loaded term that carries a sense of worship and idolatry. If money is going to be thrown around in unjust ways, it suggests, use your power for the sake of the poor, oppressed, and indebted, and not for the rich who profiteer from injustice. This represents an immense challenge in our present context, in which the decks are stacked so significantly towards massive multinational corporations and the wealthy few behind them.

Expand

The interpretation of the text that has emerged in this study helps us to grow in faith and love by focusing on forgiveness (of literal as well as moral debts) as the key to building the new life of God’s Kingdom. Just as the merciful father just wanted his two beloved sons together under his roof, so does the master in this parable come to realize that forgiveness created a win-win-win for all parties, including himself. We are likewise called to use mercy and not wealth as our main social currency, since wealth is a merciless and hungry god always demanding sacrifices (Nuechterlein Proper 20C). This transition does require a ‘death to self’, as we set aside our ‘right’ to recompense, but as Capon would point out, Luke’s message throughout all these parables is that God’s kingdom is for the dead, together with “the last, the least, the lost, [and] the little” (Capon). Like the merciful father and master, we are called to set aside our own selfish interests for the sake of gathering in and welcoming those who are likewise dead, lost, and least by this world’s standards.

Summary & Conclusions

This challenging parable is actually a complement to the Parable of the Wasteful (Prodigal) Son. Facing his firing, a man goes out and employs the currency of grace to put himself in good standing in the community. But this seemingly unjust act makes his boss look good, creating a situation in which everyone wins and relationships are built up and restored. Doing the wrong thing can be the right thing if it brings people together and welcomes the lost and least. The discussion at the end of the parable reinforces this message, reminding us that the pursuit of profit is a god that demands total devotion and is completely at odds with God’s economy of grace. We’re left with a question: Do we choose to be on the side of graceless score-keeping, or the side of grace?

 

* For full references, please see the series bibliography.