Life is Messy

DAILY BYTE

Jesus told a parable and it went a little like this:

A very rich man lived in a big city (like Jerusalem) with a luxurious lifestyle made possible by the income generated from property he owned in the countryside. The rich man hired a manager to attend to his property while he partied away in Jerusalem. Most of the labour was done by peasants who might originally have owned this land but then lost it because of debt.

However, this rich man decided to fire his manager because of rumours he was embezzling. Now the manager was left in the lurch because he knew he wasn’t capable of any other work and up to this point he had been an ally of the landowner and thus complicit in an unjust system. The point is that his working history would hardly have endeared him to his community.

So what does he do? Well, something extraordinary clever, something sneaky and dishonest. He gathers together all those who owe the landowner money, and tells them their debt have been reduced from the rough equivalent of a ‘heck of a lot’ to something that is well within their ability to repay.

Now these debtors think that the manager is still acting with his boss’s authority. They believe the landowner is more generous that just about anyone else in his position would be. The landowner becomes a hero in the people’s eyes, and by association the manager also. People love the bringer of good news!

The landowner stops by the area for his customary visit to pick up the wealth his manager has collected on his behalf, and receives a surprise that is both exhilarating and challenging: For miles around his praises are being sung, he is greeted with affection rather than resentment, people are slapping his back and genuinely laughing at all his jokes. Somehow his reputation has instantly morphed from being a greedy, bloodsucking landlord to an all round good guy.

When he finds out the reason for his sudden popularity, he recognizes that he is now in somewhat of a pickle. He has a hard choice to make. He can go outside to the assembled crowd – the people who are calling God’s blessings upon him – and tell them it was all a terrible mistake, that the steward’s generosity was actually an act of crookedness and thus won’t hold water legally. But of course then the people’s goodwill would rapidly turn to bitterness, their cheers would turn to jeers … and who would to be the landowner then?

Alternatively, the landowner could just relax and take in the acclaim of the crowd. He could take credit for the manager’s actions and continue to enjoy being Mr. Popularity, but (and here’s the tricky part), and if he wants to keep the crowd’s favour, he cannot really be seen to now mistreat the manager. He can no longer fire him with impunity knowing the people care about the manager’s fate.

This is the bind the manager has put the landowner in. We don’t know what landowner does, whether he carries through his threat of firing the manager, but we do know the last thing he does is praise his manager for acting so shrewdly. And the difficulty the church has always had with this parable is that Jesus seemingly shares in this endorsement.

So this story Jesus told us is tricky, uncertain and difficult to tie up, but that is precisely because it mirrors life back to us. It mirrors US back to ourselves, because, well, truth to be told that is how we are. Like it or not, most of us can find huge parts of ourselves in characters like the dishonest manager – we have a little too much self-concern, or dishonesty, or loneliness.

This parable reminds us that life can be very messy indeed for it reflects that truth back to us. And funnily enough, it is exactly in the amoral messiness and grey-hued uncertainty of this parable that we find its message reaching us, finding us.

PRAY AS YOU GO

Gracious God, I confess to you those parts of me that are both messy and deceitful. May your forgiveness wash through me and through the course of every day bring me more and more fully into your wholeness and healing. Amen.