Crime and Punishment

I think Alfred Hitchcock must have liked Luke. Likewise, I’m sure Luke would have been a big fan of Hitchcock’s films, many of which had surprised endings in which the expected ending was somehow turned upside down, leaving us to wonder what just happened. And so it is with Luke 16:1-13. We’re convinced that the dishonest manager is finished, but is he? 

Most of us have had jobs that conformed to specific job descriptions that “rolled-up” to specific performance standards to which the employee was held accountable accountable. (With the advent of Human Resources, employee evaluations became more objectively measured and less given to whim and subjectivity.)  If our performance exceeded expectations, we were rewarded accordingly; likewise, if our performance fell short of expectations, we might have been subjected to either remediation, probation or dismissal. Now the “dishonest manager,” as Jesus has already named him, is an “employee at will” and could be fired without so much as an opportunity to speak, much less redeem himself. The rich man was completely in his right to fire him for squandering his property. 

So, here’s Luke’s surprise ending: instead of being punished and used as a model for bad behavior, the unjust manager was given credit for being shrewd because by ingratiating himself to his employer’s debtors and discounting what was owed, without any authorization, his employer looked upon him favorably or at least in a new light. Instead of being thrown in jail, he was given credit for using his resources to provide for his future as he was forced to leave his job. 

I don’t think we would regard the manager as a model citizen but he was able to secure his future by leveraging new friendships of those who were at one time in his debt. The dishonest manager was not respectable because he defied the law. Couldn’t the same be said of Jesus? He broke all the laws and was executed.  

Jesus refused to yield to the love of power and lived the power of love by defying the hypocrisy of those who sat in judgment. He reached out with compassion to the “crooks” and “sinners” in us all, who might otherwise never feel worthy of meeting the expectations of a “harsh judge.” Laws can be said to be "black and white," but the "spirit of the law" as it was originally intended is a much different "shade."  

Are there those we dismiss or overlook as if they have no value? How about those whose lifestyle is different from ours…do we dismiss them as having nothing worth contributing? Are they either too young, too old, too impaired to add any value to our lives and to our community? Looking for the good in people is impossible if we treat them as having no redemptive value.   

“If you judge people, you have no time to love them.” (Saint Theresa of Calcutta)