The Fourteenth Sunday after Pentecost - September 21, 2025

St. Pauls - Proper 20 - September 21, 2025

I think I can safely say that no parable of Jesus’s baffles me as thoroughly as the parable of the shrewd or dishonest manager.  I’ve wrestled with it for bears, and still have no idea what to make of it. Apparently I’m not alone; people have struggled to make sense of this particular story from Luke's Gospel for centuries, not least because it raises the oddest and thorniest of questions: why does the rich man commend his manager for dishonesty?  Why does Jesus offer his followers such an unsavory character as a role model?  In what sense are the children of light supposed to take a cue from the shrewdness of a self-interested scoundrel? Why is the parable followed by so many convoluted platitudes and glosses?  Are we missing something, or does this story in fact contradict everything Jesus stands for in the rest of the Gospels?

I wish I had definitive answers to these questions, but I don’t.  What follows is a possibility..… focusing on just one word.  I’m not wholly satisfied with this, but maybe that’s the ultimate point of Jesus’s parables — to enter in and keep wrestling.

The word I am focusing on is the word Squander….  spend extravagantly or foolishly…Nobody wants to be known as a squanderer but that is exactly what this parable calls us to become. We are to become squanderers of the riches entrusted to us. I know that does not make much sense given the advice most of us have grown up with but that is how parables work. They take the status quo and challenge us to see and live in a new and different way.

That is the challenge set before the rich man in today’s parable. He entrusted to another man the care of his riches. This other man was a manager, a caretaker, a steward for the rich man. Everyday he chose what he would do with those riches; how he would care for and use them, where and with whom he would invest them. Everyday he chose to squander those riches. He scattered, spread, and poured out the riches entrusted to him. That was not what the rich man expected or wanted. That’s just not what you do with your riches. One day the rich man had had enough. Charges were brought against the manager. What is this I hear of you? Give me an accounting, he demanded.

Like the rich man we know better. We’ve been counseled to make wise investments. We are to save for a rainy day, to not let that money burn a hole in our pocket, and to not spend it all in one place. We should consider the risk versus the potential return. We weigh the costs and benefits when deciding how to use our riches. Whether our riches are monetary or non-monetary the last thing we want to do is squander them or, even worse, have someone else squander them.

The truth is that every one of us has been entrusted with riches. Money is probably the first one we think of but it is not the only one. Our time, presence, and relationships are riches all of us have. Faith and the Church are riches. Ideas, skills and talents are riches. Love, mercy, compassion, and, forgiveness are among our riches. Who and how much will we love? When and under what conditions do we offer mercy and forgiveness? On whom and how will we spend our money and our time? Everyday we decide how we will use our riches, what we will do with them, who will receive them and from whom they will be withheld.

The rich man in us wants to protect and grow our riches. That is what we have been taught. There is nothing necessarily wrong with this but there is a danger. The danger is that our riches become ends in themselves, power to be wielded and idols to be worshipped, rather than the means to restore life, create new possibilities, and reconcile relationships.

The rich man protects and withholds but the manager squanders. Even when he has been caught and is in trouble he continues to squander. He calls in the master’s debtors and begins to forgive debts. How much do you owe my master? he asks. And then he instructs them to reduce the amount. He offers release and freedom from an obligation that could never be repaid. He gives them the opportunity for a new life. He reconciles them and the rich man with a new relationship. That sounds an awful lot like what God is doing in the world. That looks an awful lot like Jesus in the gospel stories.

Even after charges have been brought, an accounting demanded, and he about to be fired the manager’s actions never changed. It is the rich man who changes. He now praises the manager. The rich man aligns himself with and approves of the squanderer and of the squandering. From the beginning of this parable to its end the manager is a squanderer. The manager does this not because of who the debtors are but because of who he is. Our God is the ultimate squanderer.

Let’s think about our baptism. At your baptism you saw the actions or were the recipient of our squandering God. Every baptism is a sacrament of squandering. The holy water of God’s life, love, and presence was poured over your head and into your life. Mercy and forgiveness will flow. You were and continue to be made a new person in Christ. God will do this without concern for what you have done or left undone, regardless of what you believe or understand, and irrespective of what you do or do not deserve. That is how squandering works. That is just who God is and what God does.

While the ritual of baptism will take place only once in our life, God’s squandering of the baptismal waters happens everyday for the rest of our lives. God is always scattering and spreading, squandering, all that God is and all that God has into the lives of of all of us created in God’s image. That never ends. Every day God squanders the riches of his life on us. We are called to do the same, to become squanderers. We squander in order to be like God.

I think of the poet Rumi’s lines, Out beyond ideas of right-doing and wrong-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.

So out beyond right-doing and wrong-doing, what do we find? At least one thing we find is grace. In fact, it astonishes me that when the manager creates a plan to save himself, he uses grace. When the owner responds to the manager, what does he do? He demonstrates grace. There is even grace shown to us in our desire to keep reading the parable through a judgmental lens. Keep trying that, Jesus seems to say with a laugh. See where it takes you. 

And so here we are….  The rich man is not straightforwardly God, and the manager is not straightforwardly us.  But perhaps the story offers us glimpses of the squandering divine.  Where there is forgiveness, there is God.  Where there is unburdening, where there is liberation, where there is crazy, radical generosity — there is God.  And where God is?  Well, that's where we should seek to live and be as well.  

As I said earlier, people have have a hard time making sense of what lesson we are to take from this tale. But what if it’s not a lesson, but a snapshot? I imagine that God is the one who is rich in love, and Christ is the ridiculously generous manager, and he is indeed squandering God’s love, forgiving God’s debtors, and losing capital for the sake of relationships. Jesus says you can’t serve two masters, and he himself chooses love over profit.

What if God is perfectly happy to be ripped off, and praises those who squander divine love? What if being unable to serve two masters (or purposes) applies to God, too—and God chooses forgiveness over getting what is owed to God? What if God prefers relationships over profit, and love over deserving? What if God finds it satisfying when we forgive debts, even—especially— debts that (we suppose) are owed to God? What if we were to emulate Jesus and convince people that they are not so ding dang indebted to God, but really just beloved? What if in fact God does not want people’s business, but their friendship?

SO…..Squander love on God, your neighbor, your enemies, and yourself. Squander forgiveness and reconciliation on those who have hurt and betrayed you. Squander your prayers for everyone everywhere. Squander compassion on the poor, the sick, the oppressed. Squander your money on those in need and those who work for justice, peace, and human dignity. Squander your life and riches on our country and the world. Hold nothing back. You cannot serve God and wealth. Go live a life well squandered. After all that’s what Jesus did.

And Jesus went around

to everyone who thought they owed God something,

and asked, What do you think you owe?

And they would count it up.

And he would say, Erase it.

And God said, “That’s my boy.”