Stumbling Into Reconciliation By Accident

Luke 16: 1-13 contains what is perhaps the most enigmatic parable in the gospels--the parable of the fraudulent manager.  What is surprising about the story is that the protagonist is a local manager of a large estate who has been caught defrauding his boss.  The local manager recognizes that after being terminated by his boss, he is going to need to rely on the goodwill of the locals, who all owe money to the boss.  So the manager negotiates a favorable settlement on all the debtor's accounts in order to gain their goodwill.  The master, rather than being infuriated at the local manager, applauds him for acting shrewdly.

This parable is an indictment about Israel's perception of its own holiness; particularly the arrogance of the religious leaders, and is a call to humility.  It is, by extension, an indictment about our own culture's perception of its holiness, and particularly the arrogance of religious leaders today, and a call to humility in the Church.  Notice that all of the characters in the story think of nothing but their own self interest; the local manager, the boss, and the locals who all owe the boss money.  This is a theme that runs through the parables of Jesus.  Jesus was calling on Israel, and particularly the religious leaders who had a very high opinion of themselves, to be humble.  Jesus is making the same message to the Church today.

The parable also suggests that when reconciliation occurs, it occurs despite our narcissism.  That is, we don't set aside our sinful nature and then bring about reconciliation with one another.  We remain narcissists, stumbling from one crisis to the next, and yet somehow, in spite of our narcissism, reconciliation happens.  In the parable, there is reconciliation between the boss and the local debtors, the boss and the manager, and the manager and the local debtors, all due to nothing but the actions of the manager that were brought about by his attempts to obviate the results of his own fraudulent conduct.  We don't become holy and then start doing good.  We strive to be holy but remain sinful and yet are somehow able to do good in spite of our sin.

Subversion of the Banquet

Ancient Israel, just like most ancient Middle Eastern cultures, had specified roles that people were expected to play.  These roles were fixed.  There was no social mobility.  If you were born a peasant, you were expected to conform to society's expectations about peasantry.  If you were born a women, you were expected to conform to society's expectations about gender roles.  Honor, in ancient Israel, was not based upon success and moving up the figurative ladder, but instead in accepting one's role and place in the system.  Similarly, shame was found in a failure to conform to your expected place.

This system of honor and shame was played out in the place that one sat in a banquet.  If you were at the bottom of the figurative social ladder, you sat in the lowest place.  If you were at the top, you sat in the highest place.

Jesus' advice for disciples in ancient Israel was to subvert this system by sitting in the lowest place.  In so doing, Jesus was calling his disciples to mirror what God was accomplishing in Jesus.  God, in Jesus, intentionally took upon Himself the form of a servant, the one in ancient Israel at the lowest rung of the social ladder.  In so doing, God, the King of the kings of the earth, revealed both the idiocy and violence inherent in the system itself.  Jesus called on the disciples not to merely act ethically in the system, but to subvert the system and reveal that it was the product of our sin.

Contemporary Western culture has abandoned the notion of stratified social roles.  Western culture recognizes the inherent rights of the individual to move up (or down) on the social ladder.  Honor, in Western culture, is in being at the top of the ladder, and shame is being at the bottom of the ladder.

Jesus' advice to disciples today is the same as ancient Israel.  The system may have changed from one of stratified roles to roles of relative mobility, but the system itself is the product of our sin.  Too often in the Church we think that the role of the disciple is to merely act ethically and with virtue in the system (i.e. to move up the ladder through hard work and virtue rather than fraud and deceit).  God, in Jesus, is calling us to do something more interesting than that.  We are called to subvert the system itself and reveal its idiocy and violence by intentionally taking upon ourselves the form of a servant.  Rather than falling all over ourselves trying to be at the highest seat in the banquet hall, we should be falling all over ourselves to be the servant of one another, taking the lowest place.  In doing so, we model and mirror what God accomplished in Jesus, who took upon Himself the form of a servant.