Luke 16: 1-13
Offered to the Rockport Presbyterian Church on Sunday, September 21, 2025
by Mel Prestamo, Elder PCUSA
This parable in Luke is a difficult one to understand – especially if we run Luke’s text all together as the lectionary does. If we look at this reading today as one single unit it is most difficult to get a grip on what Jesus is saying in this one parable. So, let’s break this down.
First, let’s take a look at what precedes today’s lectionary. It is the very famous parable of the Prodigal Father. I often refer to Luke fifteen as a Bible within the Bible. You can look at Luke fifteen as a microcosm of the Bible itself. Consider this, you have an idyllic circumstance of the younger son living at home with the Father in a lap of luxury and comfort. Somewhat akin to the circumstances of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Then the younger son opts to leave the loving embrace of the Father to go it on his own. Sound familiar? Once out in the world – without the protection of the Father, he sinks into debt and a malaise which finds that he has sunk so low in the muck of his life that he can no longer look up to see the grace of the Father. Then after a long time of squandering his life and resources, he finally does looks up to see that the love of God and the love he had experienced in his Father’s house are the only true goals in his life. Then, he realizes that his salvation from the depth and degradation that he has created in this life is in returning to the loving embrace of his Father. It parallels Israel’s journey as we understand it through our Scriptures, does it not? And perhaps, it is beginning to sound like some of our own personal life journeys? I know it does mine.
Then in the prodigal parable, the Father lavishly showers love and forgiveness over the penitent son and welcomes him back into the Father’s house. But – and this is a very big BUT – there is still a debt to be paid. That is where the happy ending of the parable collides with the reality of what our sin costs. The older brother in Luke fifteen refuses to welcome back his wayward younger sibling. He refuses to forgive. He refuses to share his inheritance.
That is where the parable of the Prodigal Father ends.
Now remember who it is Jesus is telling this parable to. It is the Scribes, Pharisees, Elders of the Temple and the Chief Priests who disapproved of Jesus sitting with and teaching the tax collectors and sinners who had been drawn to him. So, it is on the heels of this teaching and the lesson that his audience of religious and political leaders were rejecting that Jesus turns to his own disciples and begins today’s lesson.
In essence, Jesus is turning to his disciples and saying look at these scoundrels. Look at how successful they are in what they do and how they go about their business in this life. Look at how dedicated they are in procuring their earthly wealth and building up their positions in this life and how they succeed in accumulating wealth and friends in this world. Oh, if only you all were as proficient in storing up riches in the next life as they are in accumulating wealth in this life. Let’s see how Jesus goes about teaching this lesson.
The first thing to understand is that Jesus is using a grouping of characters who are the choicest set of rouges you will ever see in a Gospel story. It is clear that Jesus is comparing these rouges in this parable to the leaders who had rejected and refused his teachings. They were clearly represented by the older brother in Jesus’ parable. They, too, refuse to celebrate in the Father’s joy at the return of his lost children. I think Jesus may be accusing them of refusing to enter the Father’s house, as well.
So now in today’s lectionary, Jesus begins by taking at this unusual set of rogues and weaving them into a new parable. But first, who are they?
First there is the steward. This steward was a slave who had been put in charge of his master’s estate. The master in this case may have been an absentee landlord. The slave was appointed to manage and oversee the various parts of the estate that were rented out to other small farmers and the like who used and developed the resources on the estate. We can assume this by way of the reports that the master received that the steward had been dishonest and made a career of embezzlement.
Then we have the actual debtors who owed the rents that needed to be paid to the steward on behalf of the master. How are they rogues? Well, when the steward realizes that he has been ratted out and caught in his duplicity that he must come up with a plan to ensure his future comforts. So, he reaches out to the various debtors to his master, and he concocts a scheme to defraud the master of the true amounts owed to him. He, along with the debtors adjust the books so to speak as to the true amounts and weights due as payments for their rents so that they would only pay a portion of their true debt.
Why does the steward to this. First, it is to cause the debtors to be grateful to him so that if and when he is turned out of his master’s house, he would have people indebted to him and willing to welcome him into their homes. Second, and an even more devious part of his scheme, it would mean involving them in his crime so that if it came to it, he would be able to blackmail them into providing the future comforts he would be looking for.
Now the master. He himself was a rogue of sorts, as well. Instead of being outraged at the steward’s actions to defraud him yet again; instead, he applauds him showing admiration for his shrewdness. For someone to appreciate such blackness of heart, one’s own heart must be equally as black.
So in this parable of rogues, thievery, and the blackness of hearts, what positive lesson is Jesus trying to impart to his disciples.
It’s difficult to discern because of the way that Luke retells this parable especially when you consider Jesus is directing the lesson directly to his disciples. Why is Jesus using a story with such a set of rogues to teach his disciples some positive life lesson. The difficulty arises in part because there are four different lessons in this parable. Let’s look at them.
First in verse eight there is the lesson that the children of this world are wiser in their generation than the children of the light. What is Jesus saying?
In holding up these rogues as examples, Jesus is saying that they are shrewder and more adept in taking advantage of the riches available to them in this world than his followers are in building up riches in heaven. I will paraphrase Bible scholar William Barclay’s comments this way, “…if Christians were as eager and ingenious in their attempts to attain a righteous relationship with God as those with more worldly concerns are in their attempts to build up earthly wealth then we all would be much better persons. If only we would give as much attention to the things concerning our souls as we do the things of business, we would be much better human beings.”
Barclay’s comments help to open this parable up a bit for us to see where Jesus is going.
Next in verse nine, we learn that material possessions should be used to cement the friendships where the real and permanent value of life lies. This happens all the time in real life, does it not? We make contracts and agreements with people around us that build relationships that become strong bonds that help us as we navigate this world and its perils. Jesus is extending this principal into the eternal world that is to come.
This can be done in two ways.
First, it could be done in such a way as it affects our eternal lives and souls. The Rabbis of Jesus’ time had a saying, “The rich help the poor in this world, but the poor help the rich in the world to come.” It was a Jewish belief that charity given to the poor would stand to a person’s credit in the world to come. The ancient Jews believed in a Book kept by God that detailed the good and evil things we do in our lives, and they believed that when the rich helped the poor it added credits to their ledger. Now, we as Christians know this not to be the case. We know that we cannot by our own actions earn our way into the Kingdom. We believe that only the sacrificial blood of the Christ is able to wash us clean of our inequities. But nonetheless that was the thinking at the time.
Second and more to the point, our wealth can be used to affect and change the things in this world. In other words, our wealth can be used to make the lives of the less fortunate in this world easier. Barclay puts it this way, “Possessions are not in themselves a sin, but they are a great responsibility, and those who use them to help friends and neighbors in need have gone a great distance to discharge that responsibility.” The point being, it is not evil to be wealthy if we understand what the purpose of our wealth is and how we should use that wealth.
Now to verses ten and eleven. These lessons are – that how we fulfill small tasks in this world is the best proof of our fitness or unfitness in fulfilling bigger tasks. That is true in how we promote people in jobs in this world – that is, we promote someone to a more difficult job position once they have proven they are capable of success at easier tasks. But Jesus extends this principle to life eternal. Let’s paraphrase Jesus’ words.
Upon this earth we are charged with caring for things over which we are only stewards – God’s garden, God’s creation. When we die, we cannot take any of this with us. They are only on loan to us. We are only stewards. However, if we are good stewards over God’s creation in this life then we will be given what is really important – a life eternal with the Father in the Father’s house. In other words, what we are given in heaven depends on how we use and care for – how we steward – the things of this world.
The final lesson comes to us in verse thirteen. It is the one we are probably most familiar with. No slave can serve two masters. How does the King James version put it? “You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Now understanding this is helped when we realize that back in the day a slave was the possession of their master, exclusively. A slave had no spare time of their own. Every moment of their lives belonged to the master. They had no time that was their own. Every moment of every day belonged to the master. Now that is different from today where many of us have secondary part-time jobs. We try to find ways to augment our incomes using our off hours filling them with outside work. Not so with the slaves of Jesus’ time and more importantly it is not true of our relationship with God. Once we choose to serve God every moment of our time and every atom of our energy belongs to God. We are God’s, exclusively. We belong totally to God or not at all.
So, let’s start drawing some conclusions from today’s lessons.
First, if you come into this place and profess a faith in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Master, you belong to God, exclusively. And if you belong to God exclusively you cannot put the things of this world – its wealth and resources – above God. You cannot exclusively belong to God while dedicating yourself first to accumulating riches in this world. You must first dedicate your life to building up a righteous relationship with God so that you will have a place in eternity in God’s house.
You are called to be good stewards of the gifts and talents that God has bestowed upon you, yes. But you must realize that you cannot take the things of this world with you into the next. Also, you are called to be a Good Steward of the tasks appointed to you in this life so that you can prove you are worthy of greater things in the next. You are called to be as shrewd in using the resources gifted to you by God to build up a righteous relationship with God as non-believers are in using the wealth they accumulate in this world to build up their comforts here. What does that mean? Simply this, we must use our gifts and talents to make this world a better, softer, and easier existence for those in need around us. That would be the work of a good steward who belongs exclusively to his master, God. That is how we go about completing the tasks in this life that will build a righteous relationship with God that assures us a place in God’s house for all of eternity.
This is how you can know to whom you belong.
