Dishonesty Made Good

Friday, November 17, 2006 -- Week of Proper 27 (Hugh of Lincoln)

"Morning Reflections" is a brief thought about the scripture readings from the Daily Office of Morning and Evening Prayer according to the practice found in the Book of Common Prayer of the Episcopal Church.

Morning Prayer begins on p. 80 of the Book of Common Prayer.
Evening Prayer begins on p. 117
An online resource for praying the Daily Office is found at www.missionstclare.com
Another form of the office from Phyllis Tickle's "Divine Hours" is available on our partner web site www.ExploreFaith.org at this location -- http://explorefaith.org/prayer/fixed/index.html

Discussion Blog: To comment on today's reflection or readings, go to http://lowellsblog.blogspot.com, find today's reading, click "comment" at the bottom of the reading, and post your thoughts.

Today's Readings for the Daily Office (p. 993)
Psalm 88 (morning) // 91, 92 (evening)
Joel 2:28 - 3:8
James 1:16-27
Luke 16:1-19

I went back to look at a sermon I did about this parable in 2004. I did a bit of studying to try to make some sense of this strange tale of a master (usually we project the image of God on these master figures), his dishonest manager, and the debtors (merchants). Jesus pictures the corrupt business practices common in the Roman Empire. (the sermon is at http://www.stpaulsfay.org//lg91904.html)

Short version. The master is one of the elite absentee landowners who owned most of the wealth in the Empire. These elites worked through middle-men retainers, their managers -- people who could write and keep accounts. They traded with merchant suppliers (debtors in this story).

Because interest and usury is prohibited in the Bible (you don't hear many sermons about that anymore), there was a workaround for the customary interest rates -- 25% interest for borrowing money; 50% on goods that could spoil or be tampered with. The workaround involved recording one price in the books which included the interest. So if I am an olive oil producer and agree to sell 50 jugs of oil for $10,000, without a word the manager would write 100 jugs of oil for $10,000, smile and have me sign it, burying the interest in the final figure. Then I would pass the manager a substantial gold coin as his bit of "honest graft" for brokering the deal. Managers and merchant suppliers hated each other.

So it's not unusual for merchant/debtors to accuse a manager of dishonesty. This was a dishonest system. When this master accepts the accusations, he has effectively condemned the manager to a slow, painful death. Forced out, he would have to resort to physical labor among the peasants he has been manipulating all these years. A softie with a desk job, he truly is not "strong enough to dig" and no one will welcome him into their homes.

So he gets shrewd. He brings the merchants in, and on each of their accounts marks through the hidden interest. The merchants are delighted and praise the master. When the master sees what has happened, he too thinks shrewdly. This is a creative manager indeed. And now those merchants are in his debt. The master would have made a good profit anyway on the original sales price. And in the future, this shrewd manager will be able to squeeze these merchants even tighter. "An the master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly."

Here is William Herzog's commentary: "The parable began with the usual social scripts: owners distrust managers; peasants hate managers; managers cheat both tenants and owners. But by means of his outrageous actions, the manager manages to reverse all these scripts so that, at the close of the parable, peasants are praising the master, the master commends the manager, and the manager has relieved the burden on the peasants and kept his job."

Out of this sad story of wrong-doing, came something that looks almost like a piece of the kingdom of heaven, because the master had wiped off the debts and relieved the burdens of the debtors. "Thy kingdom come, thy will be done, on earth as it is in heaven. Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors." It is a glimpse of another order -- one in which forgiveness of debt would be more than a petition in a prayer. A sorry and predictable tale of woe becomes a scene of rejoicing.

Lowell
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The Rev. Lowell Grisham
St. Paul's Episcopal Church
Fayetteville, AR