One of the most confusing parables that Jesus told is The Parable of the Unjust Steward, found in Luke 16:1-13. In verses 8 and 9, Jesus appears to compliment a wasteful, apparently unscrupulous manager, and suggests that we be like him and use dishonest mammon (wealth or material goods) to make friends so that we can get to Heaven.
The steward’s job was not to farm the land, but to contract with tenant farmers to farm his employer’s vast fields and orchards, oversee their work, and give the landowner his share of the produce at the end of the growing season. The parable tells us that the landowner discovered that his steward was being wasteful in managing his farm.
The Greek word for “wasteful” used here in Luke 16 is the same word used in Luke 15 for the behavior of the prodigal son. The prodigal son wasted his father’s property by spending it on riotous living. The steward may have done the same or wasted it by not adequately overseeing the work of the tenants. For his dissolute living and self-absorbed squandering of his master’s property, the steward was fired and commanded to get his books in order and surrender them to the owner.
The soon to be unemployed steward realized no one would hire him as a manager because of his sloppy work. He had spent many years in slothful living, so he was in no shape to be hired as a field hand.
Like the prodigal son came to himself when he was starving to death in the pigpen (Luke 15:17), the steward realized fiscal disaster was at hand and he had no one to turn to for help. To his credit, he came up with a desperate plan. He called in all the tenants one at a time and had them rewrite the contracts they had made with him.
The olive grove tenant’s obligation was reduced from 100 jars of olive oil to 50, the wheat tenant’s obligation was reduced from 100 bushels to 80, and so on with each remaining tenant. Surprisingly, when the owner found out about the reduction in the contracts, instead of being outraged and accusing the steward of wrongdoing, he complimented the steward for his shrewdness. How could this be? Obviously, the steward had done nothing illegal. So, what did he do?
In Jesus’ day in the Middle East, everything was done by bartering. The steward knew how much the owner required annually from each of his enterprises. He knew his employer expected 50 jars of olive oil from his olive trees, so he drove his best bargain with prospective tenants and found one willing to provide 100 jars at the harvest. The difference was his to keep for himself.
From the wheat fields, the steward knew the owner required 80 bushels of wheat, but the best contract he could negotiate with a tenant was for 100, giving the steward 20 bushels at harvest time. It was like buying a car today. The salesperson knows how much a car costs the dealership, but the buyer does not. The salesperson tries to get the best price he can from the buyer, and the higher the price, the more the salesperson’s profit from the sale.
What the steward did was to write the new agreements with the tenants for the exact amount the owner required, thus sacrificing his own profit margin, which he would not receive anyway because he was being fired. This greatly profited the tenants, who could never be taken advantage of again by another steward because they now knew the owner’s required share. The favor ingratiated the tenants to the steward. In the future, they would hire him to take care of their business dealings, keeping him from starving to death.
The point that Jesus is trying to make is that if we are poor and wasteful stewards of the life God has given us, destruction will come our way, both in this life and for eternity. It is time to wake up to our dilemma, repent from living for our own pleasures, and give ourselves to God’s Messiah to live for Him.
If our lives are centered around money, wealth, material comforts, pride, or position, we are headed for destruction. Money is a tool to be used, not an end for which to live.
If we wake up to our pending destruction and give ourselves to God, we shall build eternal homes for ourselves with Jesus.
Dr. Dan Darby is a retired United Methodist pastor.
