The Eighteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 22

God Commends Jerks (and other deeper moral quandaries)
Luke 16:1-13 

Over the last few days I have read multiple commentaries and online sermon resources pertaining to today’s Gospel. Everyone of them agrees. This is the worst of all of Jesus’ parables. And probably the most difficult to preach on.

It is often called the parable of the dishonest steward. Although in the translation we heard, he is called a manager rather than a steward. Some people, trying to put a more positive spin on it, call it the parable of the shrewd or clever steward.

Writing about this parable in his Interpretation commentary on Luke Fred Craddock writes: “Many Christians have been offended by this parable… some find it a bit disturbing that Jesus would find anything commendable in a person who has acted dishonestly. Why that should prove offensive is not fully clear, for everyone is a mixed bag of the commendable and the less commendable.” He’s right, of course, all of us are a mixture of the commendable and the less commendable.

But I sympathize with the people who are offended by this parable, even if “offended” is a pretty strong word. I think I probably find it easier to believe that God will forgive a profound sinner, an adulterer or the proverbial axe murderer… I find it easier to swallow that God would forgive a profound sinner than that God would commend a dishonest, self-serving jerk.

Which got me thinking about jerks.

 One on-line comment directed me to a book on the Parables of Grace by Robert Farrar Capon. He was a pretty well-known Episcopal priest and author. His was a name I grew up with because my mother had his book, “The Supper of the Lamb.” It’s an interwoven series of theological musings and recipes. I still turn to it for my Cuban bread recipe. He died September 5. So I’ve recently been reading glowing tributes. But he was a jerk. At least the one time I met him.

The first parish I served in Houston was part of a group of parish who brought in relatively high profile speakers each year for their Lenten programs. The speakers would give presentations at each parish in turn. As a junior member of the clergy staff, it often fell to me to provide taxi service, driving the speaker from one parish to another. The minute Capon got in my car, without asking, he lit up. He started smoking! And then his presentation to our family-oriented Lenten supper was full of gratuitous profanity—the only purpose apparently to make him appear hip. He was a self-centered jerk. But I trust he feasts now in the presence of God at the heavenly banquet.

God most likely does commend jerks. Which is a good thing for all of us. God commends jerks. Not because even most jerks also have some good or commendable qualities. And I don’t think God only commends jerks when they do commendable things, even though that seems to be the implication of today’s parable. God commends jerks because God loves them.

My personal problem with this parable is a little different. I can get past God commending a dishonest jerk. I get stuck somewhere else.

Many commentators writing about this parable note what it was the steward actually did: He forgave others’ debts. (Forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors.) And he built relationships. These are what we call kingdom work. He is doing the work of God’s kingdom. But his means and his motives stunk. His means were dishonest and his motives self-serving.

So is Jesus saying: The end justifies the means??? Is Jesus saying: As long as you’re doing kingdom work it doesn’t matter how or why you are doing it? That’s not the moral world I want to live in. That’s not the moral landscape I personally accept… one where the end, even if the end is kingdom work, always justifies the means.

Parables are meant to stir us up, to unsettle us and help us see things in a new way. They are meant to provoke us to explore our perceptions. So this is where I end up with this parable this year:

1) God probably does commend jerks.

 2) I cannot automatically assume that my own “moral landscape” is the same as God’s. What I think of as good ethical behavior may not be the same as God’s perspective. I can’t presume to project my morals or ethics onto God, no matter how “good” I think they may be. It is hard for me to accept, as this parable seems to teach, that the ends justify the means. But I have to accept my personal confusion and discomfort that this parable provokes in me. And that confusion and discomfort challenges me to consider that my moral landscape and God’s may not be the same.