A Rogue in the System

DAILY BYTE

So to sum up what we have learnt from the parable of the Dishonest Manager so far: Firstly, the parable begins by giving us strange comfort in affirming that life can be messy, and that even if we find ourselves a little confused and beat up, God can somehow make sense of it all. Secondly, we are then emphatically challenged not to waste our lives, but rather to found ourselves upon what God most values in life.

The third message of this parable is the hinge upon which everything else hangs: it is to forgive. Forgive it all. Forgive it now. Forgive for any reason you want, or for no reason at all.

The Dishonest Manager was a rogue who had no authorisation to go around cancelling or cutting people’s debts, even though the system that denied him this authority was corrupt and unjust. The powers that be would have seen his behaviour as outrageous (although the peasants who suffered under the system would have applauded him).

It was quite simply outrageous behaviour to forgive those debts. But Luke’s Gospel has been telling us that Jesus’ behaviour was similarly outrageous. Remember, how I told you that the three parables of being lost in Luke 15, and this final one in Luke 16, were told by Jesus in response to his opponents (who similarly represented the official line), and who constantly told him he had no right to go about welcoming sinners and declaring God’s forgiveness to them.

So really, Jesus was a rogue in their system, because he taught that religion had no right to push out ‘others’, those people who didn’t quite fit into their rigid rules of right and wrong. Jesus taught that nothing was more valuable that relationships ... that all people matter! Jesus taught that God builds his kingdom upon the completely thin ice of his grace – it is reckless mercy and utterly undeserved forgiveness.

And Jesus asks us to buy into this message in such a way that we begin doing it ourselves, even if our motives are somewhat messy and selfish. Really, it all boils down to the same thing: deluded or sane, selfish or unselfish, there is no bad reason to forgive.

Extending to others the kind of grace God shows us can only put us more deeply in touch with that grace.

Did you notice how just like the parable of the Prodigal Son, there is no proper ending to this story? In the Prodigal Son, the father makes an offer of grace to his older son at a party, and we are left hanging wondering what his response will be. In the same way, in this parable, the landowner commends the manager for his shrewdness but we are left wondering what his fate is.

Perhaps, Jesus left it like that because he wanted us to fill in the ending for ourselves – to live out the ending through the making of good choices. We are challenged to remember that as much as we may squander, as much as we can be selfishly absorbed, as much as we may be confused or hurt and left at rock-bottom by life’s murky unfairness, well, God CAN ALWAYS find us.

Always.

PRAYER AND READING

Pray the following prayer, based upon Psalm 113.

Let us praise the name of the Lord, for God is wonderful! Yesterday, today and forever! The Lord our God has done marvellous things and we are more bless then we could ever imagine. For all the amazing gifts we have been given, we praise the name of the Lord! Amen!