Pentecost 15C 2025

THE REV. E. WAYNE ROLLINS

At first glance today’s Gospel lesson leads to a fairly simple conclusion. Actually, that holds for second, third, and probably more glances. The conclusion? Today would have been a great day to be on vacation. 

As Luke tells it, Jesus gives us a confusing and difficult parable. While some have said that Jesus told parables so that he could get out of town before the authorities realized he was talking about them, today’s words continue to have us ask, “what in the world are you talking about?” 

There’s a dishonest manager whose actions catch up with him. He takes a few final steps to make sure he still has some friends around when he needs them by directing them to reduce their debt to his master. Then, his master praises him, even though his own future assets might be diminished. 

To top it off, Jesus commends the manager's actions as though to sign-off on how the world works. He calls the manager “shrewd” while urging his own followers to imitate the manager’s wisdom. It calls to mind words of a former mentor, who cynically said after considering current events, “never let ethics get in the way of expediency.” 

There is no doubt that the manager in today’s parable is a trickster. But then, that same word has been used to describe Jacob, whom God renamed Israel. The manager might be more aptly described as a scoundrel. If that’s the case, why would Jesus hold him up as an example worth emulating? 

Sure, the possibility exists that the amounts written off at the manager’s suggestion were his commission, and he’s letting go of what he would have gotten now for what he hopes might be a better payoff in the future when he runs out of money. But that doesn’t answer the larger question posed in the parable. 

Is Jesus asking us to be scoundrels? If so, then we need to dig a little deeper to discover the wealth, and the identity of the master implied in this parable. 

Okay, we’re in church, so it’s not a big leap to imagine God as the intended master. It’s also not a stretch to consider that all that lives around us belongs to God. We call how we use and care for all that “stewardship,” especially when referring to tangible things. 
But what about intangible things like love, forgiveness, and grace? 

These three things are, after all, the property of our Master, given to us to manage not as we see fit, but in the name of our God. They exist as part of God’s own being, and are made known by how we distribute, or manage them in the name of the risen Christ. The identity that we claim, that claims us, Child of God, follower of Jesus Christ, Christian, is rightfully ours not just because we try to love, struggle to forgive, and often act gracefully.

These identifiers are ours because when we love, forgive, and are graceful, God is present with us. This goes beyond the ongoing work of redemption, far surpasses our understanding of justification. It is the ongoing process of incarnation itself, that act of God that we celebrate late in December, but is not limited to one day each year and certainly not confined to the body of a newborn infant.

These gifts of love, forgiveness and grace are given to us not as commission for work well done, and not so that we have something to offer back in repayment. They are ours to give away to others that in some ways might seem at least scandalous to some, making us, in some way, scoundrels in their eyes.

But it is not their eyes that matter. It is the heart of God, in whose name we continue the work of managing the distribution of the wealth of love, grace, and forgiveness offered to all. Some may see the gift as an easy way out—you know, go straight to eternity, and show your get out of hell free card. That’s known as cheap grace, something Bonhoeffer readers will understand.

We all stand in need of these things at some point, something I learned one afternoon while attending a Eucharist at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. I had wandered into the place after walking all the way up Powell Street, unaware that those who knew how things worked jumped on the trolley at the bottom of the hill. I looked to my left as I stopped to catch my breath, and saw the cathedral a couple of blocks away.

I saw a sign stating the time for the daily Eucharist, and spent a bit of time and money in the gift shop as I waited for it to begin. There were about a hundred of us there on a sunny Thursday in a side chapel a bit larger than this place. I listened and participated in the liturgy. Then a voice said to me as I rose to approach the altar for communion, "Here we are, the perfumed and the unwashed, all in need of grace and forgiveness."

It's when we recognize our own need for those things that we find we have what we need to offer them to others. And it is in the recognition of our need, and the offering to meet the needs of others, that we discover and remember that we are loved by the same Love that calls all life into being and joins us in it in some cosmic community that promises to last forever.
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So, yes, perhaps it is that we are called to be scoundrels—scoundrels of love, scoundrels of forgiveness, scoundrels of grace. Because when we manage them well, and offer them as freely as we receive them, we find ourselves in a greater company of faithful scoundrels in what will be our eternal home.