Faithfulness in a World of Control

Continuing to wrestle with Luke 16

Yesterday, I resisted adding these verses to the reading of the parable of the dishonest manager. They certainly are not completely disconnected.

And yet, part of what is perplexing about the parable is that it’s followed up by these verses. It really can be confounding.

If you haven’t been faithful with someone else’s property, who will give you your own?

Isn’t that exactly what we just heard about the manager - he was dishonest with someone else’s property? And yet Jesus holds him up as an example of timely action?

Maybe this is where we have to be careful not to flatten everything into one simple takeaway. Jesus is not offering a single moral point. He is pressing on multiple layers at once.

In the parable, the focus is on urgency and awareness. The manager sees what is coming and acts. In these verses, the focus shifts to faithfulness. What we do with what has been entrusted to us matters. How we handle what is not ultimately ours reveals something about us.

The manager understood, at least in that moment, that what he had access to was not his. It was passing through his hands. He acted accordingly, even if imperfectly. Jesus now presses that truth further. If everything we have is, in some sense, “someone else’s property,” then the question is not just whether we act, but how we act.

Maybe if it were you or me, we would try to negotiate with the owner. We would work to convince him that it’s best to get what he could from his debtors by reducing the load, rather than just doing it without his permission.

In the end, faithfulness is not simply about avoiding wrongdoing. It is about aligning our lives with what is true. That what we have is not ultimately ours to secure, protect, or build identity around. The Kingdom is not characterized by economic principles, one way or another. It is characterized by sacrifice and generosity, the wide dispersion of grace.

Jesus makes this clear - No one can serve two masters. You cannot serve both God and wealth. The issue is not just behavior. It is allegiance and attentiveness toward what we trust and organize our lives around. What is it that we look to for security and meaning?

Can we admit that it is possible to admire the Kingdom, to speak well of it, and still be ordered by something else entirely?

This tension is not theoretical. It shows up in what we do with what has been given to us. Especially for those of us who live in the privilege afforded to some within capitalism, we must deeply consider these things.

—

And then there’s the last verse (18). We know that this is certainly within Jesus’ teaching - Matthew deals with it to much more extent. This verse just seems totally out of place in this midst of this chapter about money and faithfulness. But maybe it isn’t. In that time, marriage was not just relational, but deeply tied to social and economic realities. Divorce could be used casually, even advantageously, especially by those with power. So perhaps Jesus is naming something consistent. Just as wealth is not ours to serve or manipulate, relationships are not ours to reshape for our own convenience. What has been entrusted is not disposable. In that sense, this verse is not a detour, but another example of the same deeper issue running throughout the chapter: whether we will live faithfully with what is not ultimately ours.

Luke 16:10-18

“Whoever is faithful with little is also faithful with much, and the one who is dishonest with little is also dishonest with much. If you haven’t been faithful with worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches? If you haven’t been faithful with someone else’s property, who will give you your own? No household servant can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be loyal to the one and have contempt for the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.”

The Pharisees, who were money-lovers, heard all this and sneered at Jesus. He said to them, “You are the ones who justify yourselves before other people, but God knows your hearts. What is highly valued by people is deeply offensive to God. Until John, there was only the Law and the Prophets. Since then, the good news of God’s kingdom is preached, and everyone is urged to enter it. It’s easier for heaven and earth to pass away than for the smallest stroke of a pen in the Law to drop out. Any man who divorces his wife and marries another commits adultery, and a man who marries a woman divorced from her husband commits adultery.

Prayer

God,

You remind us that what we have is not ours to keep. And yet we too often build our lives around it. So show us where our trust really is. Help us identify where we are holding too tightly and where we are being shaped more by what we have than by who you are.

Teach us to be faithful with what has been given. And help us to actually care enough to make action, not just in small ways, but in how we order our whole lives.

Form in us a deeper trust in you than in anything we can accumulate or control.

By your Spirit & in Christ,
Amen.