The Act of Squandering

DAILY BYTE

In telling the story of the Dishonest Manager, Jesus used an interesting word to describe how the landowner’s assets were mismanaged. Jesus used the word ‘dieskorpisen’ which means to squander, to scatter, to waste.

What makes this word usage so fascinating is that it is the exact same word used in the much-loved parable just before this one – The Prodigal Son – who we are told also ‘dieskorpisen’ his inheritance and his life. He squandered it and that’s how he became lost.

The point is that both the Prodigal Son and the Dishonest Manager are portrayed as wasting life when they really had it good. There is a sense of failure in both stories, of messing up, of not fully appreciating and meaningfully engaging with the true potential of their lives.

They ‘dieskorpisen’ – they squandered - and in so doing they wasted themselves. And perhaps most importantly, within the context of both stories, they wasted by losing out on people ... on relationships.

The Prodigal Son did not properly appreciate his father, and he only noticed that loss when his life hit rock bottom. In the same way, it was only when the Dishonest Manager got into trouble that he realised he had been wasting more than his master’s money, but that he had developed no relational network to save him.

There was no response of ‘oh well, I will just move in with mom for a while,’ or ‘I am sure one of my mates will put me up.’ Nothing like that at all. His sneaky plans to save himself revolved around the realisation that he was all he had left.

This parable questions and challenges us all in this regard: Be careful that you do not waste what is truly good in life! Nothing, it seems, is as important in life as others – people, neighbours, friends, family – and if we live in a way that wastes that then we ourselves will be wasted. We will be truly ‘dieskorpisen.’

This story reminds us that in God’s value system there is no commodity worth more than community. We know that all three lost and found parables in Luke 15, and this one in Luke 16 come directly after people grumble at Jesus for doing what? Well, for eating with sinners and in so doing for valuing the undervalued.

This story questions each of us in this regard. Does the way you live properly reflect God’s value system? Or are you wasting yourself because you are founded more upon money, success, appearance or whatever?

That’s a good question.

PRAY AS YOU GO
Holy God, I ask that you would help me not to squander what is truly valuable in my life. Help me to live in a way that is founded upon what you value. Amen

FOCUS READING

LUKE 16 : 1-8a NRSV

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;