Have I Got a Deal for You

Rev. Kevin Ireland, September 21, 2025

1 Luke 16:1-13

Our gospel lesson this morning is a continuation of Jesus’ response to those grumbling
about the company he is keeping, hanging out with “known sinners” and eating with tax
collectors. Jesus begins with three parables about lost things, a sheep, a coin, and a son.
The last two parables are both about rich men. I’ve gotta tell you, it’s a lot more fun
preaching about finding little lost lambs than it is to talk about money. But, if we just tell
the first three parables and skip the next two, we ignore the opportunity to confront the
value we place on our own money and the role that it plays in our lives. So, let’s hear the
words of Jesus as recounted in the gospel of Luke, chapter 16, verse 1-13. The Greek is
translated into English this way. Listen to God’s word for you.

Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges
were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So, he summoned him
and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your
management because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ Then the manager said to
himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not
strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. I have decided what to do so that, when I
am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his
master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He
answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and
make it fifty.’ Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred
containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ And his master
commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly, for the children of
this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.
And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is
gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes. Whoever is faithful in a very little is
faithful also in much, and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. If
then, you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true
riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you
what is your own? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and
love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and
wealth.” This is the word of our Lord. Thanks be to God.

Author and theologian Brian MacLaren describes this passage as one of the most
important and liberating of Jesus’ parables. But in order to understand what Jesus is driving
at; it is necessary to know how things worked back in the day in ancient Israel. Imagine that
you are a farmer in the Galilee in Northern Israel. On this side of the room, you all are olive
producers. The groves of trees have been in your family for years. They’ve endured fire and
flood, always growing back stronger than before. Your grove has been passed down from
generation to generation, and your trees produce some of the richest, plumpest, most
sumptuous olives in all of Israel. On this side, we have our wheat farmers. You plant your
crops in the rainy winter months and meticulously harvest by hand in the early summer,
using sickles, gathering the stocks, threshing the grain, winnowing wheat from chaff, and
milling the grain into the flour used for Rome’s daily bread. Like your neighbor the olive
farmers, your family has owned this land for generations, surviving droughts, floods, and
locusts. It’s a good life, but not an easy one, as any farmer would tell you today. It would be
a lot easier without the ever-increasing taxes of your Roman oppressors. Not only do you
put food on Rome’s table, but the taxes also imposed on their sale support the garrisons of
Centurions charged with keeping the Pax Romana, Rome’s peace. Unfortunately, I have
some bad news for you both. Your farms and businesses are underwater. There’s no way
that you will be able to meet your tax obligations. Remember all those unpaid taxes from
last year’s harvest? The tax collectors are coming, and balances must be paid. But have I
got a deal for you. My wealthy friends down south in Judea have offered to settle your debt
in exchange for your land. Don’t worry, you can stay and farm, only now a portion of the
harvest will go to your new absentee landlord. We’ll take care of everything. I’ll come up
from Judea to your farm in the Galilee to collect the olive oil and grains for my master. This
was a common arrangement with Galilean farmers in Jesus’ time. Not unlike our own time,
the rich got richer at the expense of the less fortunate and less powerful. The steward in the
parable has presumably been participating in this system to his own benefit, but when he
is called to account by his master, he realizes three things: he’s too weak to engage in
manual labor, he’s too proud to ask for help, and his position is as tenuous as the farmers
indebted to his master. So, he tells the olive farmers, have I got a deal for you. Take your
bill. Cut it in half and we’ll call it even. And he goes to the wheat farmers and says, have I
got a deal for you. You owe one hundred bushels, let’s make it 80. Sounds like a good deal
for everyone, right? Well, except for the wealthy master.

In Jesus’ parable the master praises him for acting shrewdly, which in Greek can also mean
wise, sensible, or discreet. Now, it’s important to know that God is not the master in this
story, and the master is not saying, “well done for cheating me,” but rather, “You were
clever, and resourceful.” He’s not praising the steward for being unjust. He is commending
him for his shrewdness, his resourcefulness, and perhaps his discretion. John Calvin
summarizes this interpretation saying, that “Christ does not approve of the fraud, but of
the cunning.” The steward “was not commended because he had cheated his master, but
because he had shrewdly provided for himself.” Calvin then applies it: if people use
ingenuity for earthly survival, how much more should Christians use their gifts wisely for
God’s service. Jesus calls his disciples to use “unrighteous wealth” in a way that builds
eternal relationships, investing in generosity, mercy, and justice, by any means necessary.
Just as the steward used money to secure a future, disciples are to use money faithfully to
serve God’s purposes. In his Church Dogmatics, Karl Barth notes that the steward’s
shrewdness highlights our own human freedom to act decisively, even in morally
compromised ways. According to Barth, Jesus uses the example to encourage his disciples
toward decisive faithfulness, to act with urgency and foresight for the kingdom, not
hesitancy or apathy. Jesus continues to encourage us to do the same.

Midwest farm incomes have plunged in the past year, due to a sharp reversal in commodity
crop prices, looming tariffs, less government support, and high borrowing and labor costs.
And our farmers’ economic pain is spreading from the fields to Main Street. Last year,
Reuters reported that farmers are facing the worst economic situation in over a decade,
and small cities are at risk of becoming ghost towns. Small town churches continue to
close as well. Our denomination has been discussing and discerning how ministries and
missions can continue even as buildings are closed or repurposed. Last week Grace
hosted the Trustees for the Presbytery of Southern Kansas, the stewards of our presbytery
resources. This is challenging work, Spirit led work. Work that requires cunning and
creativity. And it’s a great example of what Jesus is praising about the crafty manager.
Pastor and preaching professor, Ron Allen describes this parable as “a call to imaginative,
risk-taking use of wealth in ways that foster community and reveal God’s purposes.” This is
how we are called to be faithful with our resources, not to squander or to cheat, but to
employ them in the service of God’s kingdom even in the midst of change and chaos.
Jesus concludes this parable with a simple but piercing truth: No one can serve two
masters. You cannot serve God and wealth. The question is do you own your money or
does your money own you. It doesn’t just mean, “don’t be greedy.” It’s about loyalty, about
trust, about where our hearts rest. If we let money become our master, then it will shape
our choices, our priorities, even our sense of identity. We begin to measure worth by bank
accounts instead of relationships, by investments instead of integrity. We forget who we
were created to be. But when God is our master, everything else finds its place. Money
becomes a tool, not a tyrant. Wealth becomes an opportunity for generosity, not a weapon
for control. Our value is no longer tied to possessions but to the One who claims us as
beloved children. Serving God over wealth also frees us from scarcity thinking. We no
longer say, “we don’t have enough to make a difference,” because we trust the God who
multiplied loaves and fishes, the God who promises that faithfulness in little things leads
to abundance in much. We become a people who use our resources with creativity,
courage, and hope, investing not just in buildings or budgets but in the lives of others, in
relationships of mercy and justice that echo into eternity.

This week Grace is doing just that with our partnership with our brothers and sisters in
Christ at East Heights Methodist and Family Promise, helping families experiencing
homelessness find stability and a path toward permanent housing. And there’s still time to
donate food or help volunteer with set-up and break down. If you’d like to participate,
please contact Kimberley McDarty. So Jesus has a deal for you: to stop living like we are
bound by the debt collectors of this world, to stop living like problems like homelessness
are too big to solve, to stop living like our small towns and churches are slowly dying, and
start living like we are already free in Christ, to start living into the abundant life that is
offered, and to start living as builders of God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven. The
question is not whether we have enough, it’s whether we will trust God enough to use what
we’ve been given for the sake of the kingdom. That’s the deal Jesus is offering you.