Forgiving it all
Ordinary Sunday 25, 23 September, 2007
Robert Whalley, Senior Chaplain, RMIT University
Luke 16:1-13
We don't know much about the man in the Gospel for this morning, the onsite manager for the absentee landlord. In fact this parable has been bothering bible readers and scholars for almost 2,000 years. People have cut it apart, connected it up with the story of the prodigal son and the all forgiving father, which precedes it, or link it with the story of Lazarus and the rich man, which follows on, for you can look at it from a variety of ways and viewpoints but it remains a bit of a puzzle. What did Jesus mean? And it is this ambiguity and inconvenience which point to the fact that it is likely straight from the mouth of Jesus.
So earlier this week I prayed over the text, looked at several commentaries and came across one online exegesis that opened the story of the unjust steward in a new way. So I want to quote at length and borrow very heavily here from Sarah Dylan Breuer and her blog (sarahlaughed.net) for her take on this. I've edited a bit here, but she writes most of the following and this is her take on the story:
A very, very rich man lives in a big city with a lifestyle of luxury from the income of the estate he owns in the countryside, run by a manager, where all of the work of planting and harvesting is done by tenant farmers, peasants. The harvest is never quite enough to pay the rent plus what the peasant families need, so the peasants are slipping further and further into debt, working harder and harder to pay what can't be paid. The immediate face of this system is that of the steward.
But things change. The landowner fires the steward because of rumors that the steward is squandering the landowner's resources. So the steward is no longer authorized to do anything at all in the master's name. He's in a dangerous place, The farmers aren't about to take him in either, given that up until now he's taken exorbitant rents, run the first century equivalent of the company store, and generally dealt unjustly with the farmers. That's why he's called "the steward of unrighteousness".
But what he does is something extraordinarily clever. He gathers all of the farmers who owe him money, and he declares that their debts have been reduced from something very large, to something that maybe could be repaid, all with a few strokes of the (forger's) pen. The steward doesn't tell the farmers that he was fired any more than he tells them that the landowner didn't authorize any of this generosity. But the result is that the farmers believe the landowner is more generous than just about anyone else in his position would be. The landowner is now a hero in the farmers' eyes — and, by extension, so is the steward.
So when the landowner comes for his customary visit to pick up the wealth the steward has collected for him, he gets a surprise that is both exhilarating and challenging: The streets for miles before he reaches the estate are lined by cheering farmers. They're shouting his name, telling him he's a hero. Then he finds out (probably when he arrives at the estate house) what the steward has done in telling the farmers that the landowner forgave their debts. Now he has a choice to make.
Breuer goes on to say that the landowner can go outside to the assembled crowd — the people shouting blessings upon him and all his family — and tell them that it was all a terrible mistake, that the steward's generosity was an act of crookedness, unrighteousness, won't hold water legally. But the cheering will turn to boos. Alternatively, the landowner can go outside and take in the cheering of the crowd. He can take credit for the steward's actions, but he'll have to take the steward back. Mistreat the steward, and the crowd might turn on him. Either way, the steward goes from victim to victor, scab to hero. When he retires, if the landowner won't take him in, the farmers gladly will.
So what the steward does is clearly dishonest, yet Jesus uses this as an example for us. What does the steward do that is somehow right? and the short answer is this — The steward forgives. The steward forgives debts. He forgives things that he had no right to forgive. He forgives for all the wrong reasons, for personal gain, to compensate for past misconduct, for the wrong reasons, and that might be the moral of this story: Simply FORGIVE. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive it for any reason you want, or for no reason at all. Remember that Luke gives us the version of the "Lord's Prayer" which includes "forgive us our sins as we forgive our debtors": As Breuer says, the arrival of the kingdom of God is no occasion for score-keeping of any kind, whether monetary or moral. Simply forgive!
We don't have to do it out of love for the other person, if we're not there yet. We could forgive the other person because of what we pray in Jesus' name every Sunday morning, or we could forgive because we think it will improve our odds of winning the lottery. The point is that there is no bad reason to forgive. Extending the kind of grace God shows us in every possible arena—extending both financially and morally—can only put us more deeply in touch with God's grace.
That's Sarah Dylan Breuer's take on it and I think it's a good take. After all, Jesus says that the measure you put out is the measure you receive, We are coworkers in the harvest, arbiters of forgiveness and blessing based on how much we give and how much we give up. So to live out the message of forgiveness and renewal is to participate in the life of God in the way of Jesus. No matter where we start from. It is to begin to fully understand God's word in our own voice, in our own breath which is certainly the breath of God. For in forgiving others we allow them the chance to be born anew: we assent and assist in the birth of God in our daily world. And we allow the possibilities of the mystery and forgiveness and renewal of God's life to begin once again. It is a chance too good to miss!
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