Confessing Evangelical

John H Friday 22nd June, AD 2007

The parable of the unjust steward (Luke 16:1-18) is one of the most “difficult” of Jesus’ parables. Is Jesus really holding out this dishonest steward as an example of how we should behave as Christians? No wonder some (such as Julian the Apostate) have argued that this parable demonstrates the moral inferiority of Jesus’ teachings. Just what is going on here?

I’ve just started reading Kenneth Bailey’s exegesis of the parables recorded by Luke, “Poet & Peasant” (in a single volume together with Bailey’s follow-up, “Through Peasant Eyes”). Bailey, a PCUSA minister and theologian, spent over forty years living in the middle east, and his work on the parables draws on his intimate knowledge of middle-eastern peasant life and culture. I’ve found Bailey’s exegesis of this parable illuminating, even definitive, and this post aims to sum up the key elements of Bailey’s argument.

The key to Bailey’s argument is the mercy shown by the master. As Bailey observes:

[T]he steward discovers at this point [i.e. at the beginning of the parable] something else about his master that is supremely significant. He is fired but not jailed … he is not even scolded. The master, under the circumstances, has been unusually merciful toward him.

Nevertheless, the steward is in a desperate situation, bad enough even to consider becoming a farm labourer or beggar (v.3), both unthinkable for someone of his social standing. He needs to find a new position, but given the circumstances of his dismissal “he needs to create a situation that will change this devastating public image”:

It is our understanding of the parable that the steward’s plan is to risk everything on the quality of the mercy he has already experienced from his master. If he fails, he will certainly go to jail. If he succeeds, he will be a hero in the community.

He has to act quickly, which is why he wastes no time on pleasantries with the debtors (tenant farmers who had agreed to pay the landowner a fixed portion of the crop at harvest time). He needs to act before news of his dismissal spreads.

It is crucial to note that the tenants believe the steward to be acting with the landowner’s authority. They are not complicit in the steward’s fraud: that would be ruinous for them once the landowner discovered what had happened. The master and tenants are all assumed to be “upright citizens of the local community”.

And so the plot proceeds, and the steward delivers the (ahem) “adjusted” accounts up to his master:

The master looks at them and reflects on his alternatives. The master knows full well that in the local village there has already started a great round of celebration in praise of him, the master, as the most noble and generous man that ever rented land in their district.

The master therefore has two alternatives:

He can go back the debtors and explain that it was all a mistake, that the steward had been dismissed, and thus his actions were null and void. But if the master does this now, the villagers’ joy will turn to anger, and he will be cursed for his stinginess.

Second, he can keep silent, accept the praise that is even now being showered on him, and allow the clever steward to ride high on the wave of popular enthusiasm.

The steward, of course, has gambled on the master going for the second option:

In a backhanded way, the actions of the steward are a compliment to the master. The steward knew the master was generous and merciful. He risked everything on this aspect of his master’s nature. He won. Because the master was indeed generous and merciful, he chose to pay the full price for his steward’s salvation.

The lesson for us is clear. Like the steward with his master, our evil acts have left us facing the judgment of God, “caught in the crisis of the coming of the kingdom”. Our only option is to “entrust everything to the unfailing mercy of [our] generous master”:

This clever rascal was wise enough to place his total trust in the quality of mercy experienced at the beginning of the story. That trust was vindicated. Disciples need the same kind of wisdom.

That then brings us to the final words of this parable, in verse 8b. Bailey argues on the basis of the parable’s literary structure that verse 8b forms part of the original parable as told by Jesus, and interprets it as follows:

It provides the necessary corrective to the approval of the unjust steward. He is praised for his wisdom in knowing where his salvation lay, not for his dishonesty.

In other words, we are to emulate the steward’s wisdom in risking everything on the mercy of our heavenly master; not the dishonesty that got him into that predicament in the first place.

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