Shrewd, Dude!

The internet. Ten years ago, I had never heard of it. Now I can’t imagine what it would be like to live without it. Back in the dark ages it used to be cool to come home from work and find a letter or postcard in my mailbox. But today, I get lots of mail and the mailbox is my computer. I don’t have to drive to the mall to shop—I can log into amazon.com and select books until my debit card cries for mercy! I even find myself using the reference room at the library less and less because many of the same tools are available to me just by turning on my iBook. I can save money on my phone bill by instant messaging my friends who are away at college. To show you how far this computer thing has come, I don’t even have a thermometer outside my window anymore—my computer is in constant contact with the National Weather Service and constantly displays the up-to-date weather conditions in my menu bar.

As much as I love technology, I have to be honest with you. It’s amazing to me that any of it works. You gotta hand it to the people who write the computer code that make all these neat programs. I don’t have the aptitude for that kind of job, but I wish I did sometimes—a good code writer makes around $70,000 a year. That’s not to say that they have it easy. They’re highly skilled, and have to put in a lot of twelve, sixteen-hour days staring at a monitor.

I just read a story about a shrewd programmer in San Francisco who had his fill of the grind. So he outsourced his job to a guy in India. He e-mails India the instructions in the morning; India e-mails him the code back in the evening. So this programmer has cut his day down from sixteen hours to around two. He just needs to check the Indian’s code and communicate with his boss. He’s happy—he pulls $70,000 a year for working ten hours a week; the guy that actually does the work is happy because he gets a $10,000 cut, which is about eighteen times what the average per capita income is in India. Is this an example of a good work ethic? No. But you got to admit, we all get a kick out of stories where someone who pulls one over on the boss.

It wasn’t any different in Jesus’ day. Slaves outnumbered free men in the Roman Empire and a lot of jokes and yarns revolved around the theme of the ignorant boss getting his comeuppance by a peon. Even Jesus was known to tell a funny story now and then:

Jesus told his disciples: "There was a rich man whose manager was accused of wasting his possessions. So he called him in and asked him, 'What is this I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you cannot be manager any longer.'

"The manager said to himself, 'What shall I do now? My master is taking away my job. I'm not strong enough to dig, and I'm ashamed to beg—I know what I'll do so that, when I lose my job here, people will welcome me into their houses.'

"So he called in each one of his master's debtors. He asked the first, 'How much do you owe my master?'

" 'Eight hundred gallons of olive oil,' he replied.

"The manager told him, 'Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it four hundred.'

"Then he asked the second, 'And how much do you owe?'

" 'A thousand bushels of wheat,' he replied.

"He told him, 'Take your bill and make it eight hundred.'

"The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light.” (Luke 16: 1 –8)

The parable of the dishonest manager. People say this is the most confusing parable of all. In fact, Saint Augustine dismissed it entirely saying, “I can’t believe this story came from the lips of our Lord.” Why do people have such a hard time with this parable? It may become apparent if I retell the story in a contemporary setting, with my apoligies.

There’s this guy that’s so rich he doesn’t even have to manage his own affairs. What he doesn’t know is that while he’s away in North Carolina golfing, the flunky he hired as his operations manager is just blowing his money. He’s buying new furniture for his office, he’s taking lots of business lunches and trips, and he’s driving around an expense new company car. That night when the rich guy is relaxing in the clubhouse, one of his friends from up north clues him in to what’s going on back at home. The rich guy whips out his cell phone and reads the manager the riot act. He tells him he’s gonna catch the first flight out on Monday and he’s going to personally audit the books.

This is bad news for the flunky. He can’t imagine having to actually work for a living in a factory. So he thinks, well, maybe I can make a good impression of some of the clients and maybe one of them will hire me. So he goes to the clients and rewrites their contracts—let’s ‘em off the hook at just 50 cents on the dollar. He’s a pretty popular guy all the sudden. And there are a lot less overdue accounts.

His boss comes back into town and checks the books. Everything looks good. And he’s like, oh, my mistake, I thought the company was making more than we are. Forget I said anything. And he gives the flunky a day off with pay. All that’s missing in this parable is a drummer hitting a rimshot.

But that retelling illustrates why people sometimes have a hard time with this parable? The main character is a slacker and a crook. And he comes out on top! The question that people have struggled with down through church history has been what in the world is the point of the story? Because it can almost seem as if Jesus is saying get ahead by being dishonest.

Of course that’s not consistent with what we know of Jesus’ character and his other teachings in the Bible. I think the real key is in verse eight: The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. The point he’s trying to get across is that worldly people are keener and more creative about accumulating wealth that than God’s people are about building His kingdom. The flunky was in a bad situation, but he turned it around and assured himself a good future. What are we doing as followers of Christ to influence our present situations towards the kind of future that God intends?

I kept stumbling over the word shrewd, so I looked it up in the dictionary to make sure I had a precise definition. Here’s what I found: Characterized by keen awareness, sharp intelligence, and often a sense of the practical. Those aren’t bad qualities to possess! Jesus continues on:

I tell you, use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings "Whoever can be trusted with very little can also be trusted with much, and whoever is dishonest with very little will also be dishonest with much. So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? And if you have not been trustworthy with someone else's property, who will give you property of your own? (Luke 16: 9 – 12)

When we sit down as a family to dinner, someone prays the blessing. Usually it’s my son. Sometimes we forget to pray all together, sometimes the prayer is heartfelt, sometimes an outside observer would assume that our prayer is just some kind of minor superstition that we observe out of habit. But there’s a real point to saying grace, even if it gets glossed over sometimes in our rush to diminish our hunger—everything that we have is a gift from God. There have been other religions that believed they had to placate the Gods to insure that they would have what they need, but the God as revealed in the Gospels provides for me even when I’m unaware of my needs. I’m very much the beneficiary of God’s property.

How am I managing it? What am I doing with my paycheck, and my skills, and my possessions, and my influence? Am I a flunkie, reckless and wasteful with my boss’ stuff? Or am I being trustworthy as evidenced by how I use everything I’ve been given to serve the people around me, and to bit-by-bit refashion the world into something a little more like God intended.

"No servant can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and Money." (Luke 16: 13)

When I was first married I had to work a bunch of part-time jobs to pay rent. Sometimes both bosses would want me to work on the same day at the same time. I’d have to choose between the two. Let me tell ya, it’s not easy trying to keep two different bosses happy. It’s so much better to just have one commitment.

It’s not just our work schedule that we have to prioritize. Everyday we have to decide if we’re going to be more devoted to the Creator or created things. Because it’s going to make a difference in the kind of people we are. In turn, it’s going to make a difference in the kind of world we live in.

Henri Nouwen was a Catholic Priest who left a teaching career at Harvard to work at a community where people with developmental disabilities live with assistants. Here are his musings on where we should invest our energy:

“Our lives as we live them seem like lives that anticipate questions that never will be asked. It seems as if we are getting ourselves ready for the question ‘How much did you earn during your lifetime?’ or ‘How many friends did you make?’ or ‘How much progress did you make in your career?’ or ‘How much influence did you have on people?’ or ‘How many conversions did you make?’

“Were any of these to be the question Christ will ask when he comes again in glory, many of us could approach the judgment day with great confidence. But nobody is going to hear any of these questions. The question we all are going to face is the question we are least prepared for. It is: ‘What have you done for the least of mine?’ As long as there are strangers; hungry, naked, and sick people; prisoners, refugees, and slaves; people who are handicapped physically, mentally, or emotionally; people without work, a home, or a piece of land, there will be that haunting question from the throne of judgment: ‘What have you done for the least of mine?’”

In just a few short years, the internet went from a novelty item to a necessity. You’d better believe that if I had the gift of foresight I would have invested my money in amazon.com or Yahoo. Christ told a weird story to a group of religious people to give them insight into where to invest their lives. And the story still speaks to us today.

The future isn’t in stuff. It’s in God’s Kingdom. And we’re being trustworthy when we use the things God blesses us with to provide for those less fortunate than ourselves.