Dove Sermons

Sermon Based on Luke 16:1-13

What we just read is not a comforting parable. It resists easy answers. Many preachers over the centuries have admitted that it is among the hardest of Jesus’ teachings to understand, much less to proclaim. At its center is a dishonest manager who has squandered his master’s resources, who manipulates the books to save himself, and who somehow, by the end of the story, is praised as shrewd. Jesus seems to lift him up as an example, at least in some way, for his disciples.

Why would Jesus do that? Why would Luke preserve such a story? And why does the church keep reading it if it only leaves us scratching our heads?

Part of the challenge is that we come to the text with certain assumptions about how stories should work. We expect the villain to get punished and the righteous to be rewarded. We want to know who the “good guy” is so we can learn from their example. But here, the line between good and bad blurs. The dishonest manager is both condemned and commended. The master is both the victim of fraud and a complicit figure in an exploitative system. The debtors are either innocent peasants finally given relief, or willing participants in a shady deal. Nobody comes out clean.

And maybe that is exactly the point.

Squandering and Reversals

The parable falls immediately after the story of the prodigal son, and the language of “squandering” connects them. The younger son squandered his inheritance in reckless living. Now the manager is accused of squandering his master’s property. In both cases, someone entrusted with resources fails. Yet the outcomes differ. The prodigal returns home in repentance, welcomed by his father. The manager does not repent. He schemes. He calculates. He leverages the situation for his own survival.

Still, both parables are about reversal. In Luke’s Gospel, reversals are central: the mighty brought low, the hungry filled, the rich sent away empty. The dishonest manager creates a reversal by cutting debts and forging new relationships. He shifts the balance, at least temporarily, away from the master’s wealth and toward the debtors’ relief.

To Whom Is the Manager Responsible?

One way into the parable is to ask: to whom is the manager accountable? On the surface, he is responsible to the master, the rich man who employed him. That’s the assumption that gives the story its shock value. If he is wasting the master’s property, he is betraying the one he serves. That is dishonesty. That is theft.

But what if the system itself is corrupt? Scholars remind us that in the world of Roman-occupied Galilee, wealthy landowners and rulers functioned like loan sharks. Interest rates hidden in contracts stripped peasants of their land. The manager’s job was to enforce this system, to collect payments, to keep wealth flowing upward. If that’s the case, then perhaps the dishonesty is not simply between master and manager, but between the entire system and the people crushed by it.

When the manager cuts debts, he is not merely committing fraud against his boss. He is undoing, in part, the exploitation built into the system. He is reducing the burden on those who owed more than they could ever repay. He may have been canceling the interest that never should have been charged in the first place.

If so, then the question of responsibility shifts. To whom does he owe loyalty — the master who profits, or the neighbors who suffer?

Shrewdness in Crisis

Whatever we think of his ethics, we cannot deny his pragmatism. Once fired, he knows his options are limited. He cannot dig. He will not beg. He needs a future, and he needs it fast. So he turns to the only resource left: relationships. He lowers debts, betting that gratitude will buy him welcome later.

This is the moment the master praises. Not the squandering. Not the dishonesty. But the recognition of crisis, the creativity of response, the willingness to act decisively to secure survival. The word Luke uses phronimos, which means shrewd, prudent, wise.

Jesus then adds the sting: “The children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.” In other words, the people of the world often show more practical wisdom in navigating reality than the people of faith do.

That hurts. Because it is true. Too often, Christians withdraw from complexity. We want clean choices. We want to stay untainted by the messiness of politics, economics, or culture. Yet Jesus seems to say: learn from the shrewdness around you. Not to imitate dishonesty, but to imitate urgency. To recognize the moment. To act decisively with what you have.

Negotiation in a Broken World

Many of us would prefer that discipleship meant a clear line between good and evil, right and wrong. But most of life does not work that way. Most of life requires negotiation within broken systems. People in the ancient world knew this. People in our world know this too.

When interest rates trap families in endless cycles of debt, when housing is priced beyond reach, when wages are stagnant but costs climb — where does faithfulness look like? It might not be a pure solution. It might look like navigating compromises, weighing priorities, seizing opportunities to bend systems toward mercy, however imperfectly.

This is not accommodation to injustice, nor is it total resistance. It is the wisdom of finding a way through. Perhaps that is what Jesus admires.

Wealth, Faithfulness, and Masters

The sayings that follow the parable hammer the theme home. Be faithful with little, and you can be trusted with much. Be faithful with dishonest wealth, and you might be trusted with true riches. You cannot serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and Wealth.

These lines remind us that money is never neutral. Wealth demands allegiance. Systems of profit will shape our loyalties if we let them. That is why Jesus personifies Wealth, turning it into an idol, a rival god. The danger is not only greed, but worship — placing ultimate trust in money, letting it dictate our values and our relationships.

The parable of the dishonest manager sits uneasily inside this teaching. The manager uses wealth — unjust, compromised wealth — to create relationships. He uses Wealth to build community, to secure welcome. Jesus seems to suggest that if even unrighteous wealth can be used for something good, how much more should the children of light use what they have for God’s purposes.

But the conclusion is clear: wealth cannot be your master. If you serve money, you will inevitably exploit people. If you serve God, you will use money to bless people. One or the other.

The Slave Question

Some interpreters point out that the language of master and manager echoes the realities of slavery in the Roman world. If the manager was enslaved, his predicament is even harsher. Accused of dishonesty, he cannot defend himself. His word carries no weight. He cannot testify in court. His labor and life are not his own.

Read this way, the parable highlights the precariousness of the enslaved. Caught in systems of power that assume their guilt, they survived through cunning. Sometimes deception was a means of survival. Jesus’ sympathy, then, is not for the master but for the vulnerable one navigating impossible choices.

That reading resonates with the long history of enslaved people who used trickery, theft, or small acts of subversion simply to live another day. To hear this parable through their lens is to recognize that survival itself can be a form of wisdom in an unjust world.

Crisis and Recognition

Theologian C. H. Dodd once observed that Luke himself seems unsure what to do with this parable, tacking on multiple interpretations at the end. But maybe that is not a weakness. Maybe that is the strength. The parable refuses to settle into one meaning because life rarely does.

What stands out is the crisis. The manager realizes his status is gone. He cannot cling to old security. He must act. And he acts by reaching down, by depending on those beneath him in status, by trusting that hospitality will be his salvation.

Luke loves to tell stories of reversal like this. The wounded man on the road must depend on a Samaritan. The prodigal son must depend on hired hands. The rich man in Hades must beg Lazarus for mercy. In each case, the one with status is brought low and must find life through those they once overlooked.

The dishonest manager fits the same pattern. His salvation lies not with the master above him but with the neighbors around him.

What Does This Mean for Us?

So what do we do with all this? What does it mean to preach this parable today?

First, it means we should be honest about the systems we inhabit. Our economy, like that of the first century, is not neutral. It favors the wealthy. It burdens the poor. It demands loyalty. And we are not outside of it. We are managers within it, stewards of resources, caught between loyalty to the master of profit and the call of the kingdom.

Second, it means that faithfulness is not found in purity or withdrawal, but in how we navigate the mess. Jesus does not praise dishonesty, but he does praise urgency and creativity. He does not tell us to imitate fraud, but to imitate prudence — to use what we have, even compromised wealth, to build relationships, to practice mercy, to create communities of welcome.

Third, it means we must choose our master. The parable will not let us avoid that decision. We cannot serve both God and Wealth. Either money will dictate our values, or God will. Either we will use people to love money, or we will use money to love people. One or the other.

The Hard Saying

This is not a tidy parable. It will not let us walk away with a clear hero to imitate. But maybe that is a gift. Because life is not tidy either. We face moral dilemmas, messy systems, conflicting loyalties. We cannot wait for perfect clarity before acting. We must act in faith, in crisis, with what we have.

The dishonest manager knew his situation, saw the urgency, and acted decisively. Can we do the same, not for self-preservation, but for the sake of God’s kingdom? Can we recognize the crisis of our time — the crisis of inequality, of debt, of creation groaning under the weight of consumption — and act with creativity to use what we have for mercy, for justice, for love?

Conclusion

This parable leaves us unsettled, and that may be its truest word. It shakes us out of complacency. It forces us to wrestle with loyalty, wealth, and the ways we use what has been entrusted to us.

At the end of the day, the question is not whether we are comfortable with this parable. The question is whether we are willing to learn from it — to be as shrewd in our discipleship as the children of this age are in their pursuits, and to remember that our ultimate allegiance belongs not to Wealth, but to God.

Because you can only serve one master. And the choice you make will shape not only your wealth, but your soul.

Sermon by: Rev. Dave Wasson