Lessons From The Sandbox–Luke 16–Dishonest Steward

Two children were playing in the sandbox the other day.  The older of the two stuck up his thumb and his forefinger and said, “Bang, you’re dead.”  How should a Christian child react in such a situation?  Option 1: “Bang, you’re dead!”  “This is stupid.  I don’t want to play with you or your stupid game.  I’m going to take my toys and go home.”  This option doesn’t seem helpful, at least, it misses the point of recess, what play time is all about.  Option 2: “Bang, you’re dead!” “Uhhhhh, ahhhhh, gurgle, gurgle, expiration.”  This is an appropriate response to the dreaded thumb and forefinger, but it’s certainly not much of a game.  What are you supposed to do for the next thirty minutes of recess?  Option 3: “Bang, you’re dead!”  “Uhhhh, ahhhh, gurgle, gurgle, expiration . . . ooooooooooo (in a ghostly voice).  Now we have a game!  This brief lesson in playground ethics is fundamental in understanding how we are to live together in Christian community. 

You would think that there is an offensive lineman living in my home for the amount of milk we go through in a week.  Apparently, with the success of the milk jug project a few months ago, the same holds true for many of your households as well.  What do you do with a milk jug after you’re finished with it?  Option 1: You can throw it in the trash and wait for it to biodegrade over thousands of years in someone else’s backyard.  This is the “Bang, you’re dead—I don’t want to play anymore option.”  It’s called blocking—rejecting.  You are done with the milk jug.  You are done with the game.  The relationship between you and the milk jug is over.  Option 2 is called “Accepting.”  With this option, after you drink the last few sips from the carton you place it on your shelf so that it can forever be a beautiful, empty, dusty milk jug.  This is the “Bang, you’re dead—Uhhh, ahhh, gurgle, gurle, expiration,” option.  It’s appropriate not to throw the jug away, but putting it on the self to collect dusk seems to miss the point.  Option 3—recycling.  Taking something old and used and giving it new identity and purpose.  It’s the “Bang, you’re dead—ooooooooo,” model.  It’s called “Overaccepting.”  This old, used milk jug now has a new purpose and a new life, so to speak.

One day there was a concert pianist who was performing selected Chopin pieces to an exclusive audience who paid lumps of money for their seat.  During the concert a child somewhere in the first few rows began making a scene.  The parents were saying, “Shhh, child.  Sit down!”  The child leapt out of her seat and started toward the stage.  The concert pianist had a choice to make.  His first thought was to stop playing, scold the child, and send her back to her irresponsible parents.  Then he thought, “Why don’t I just give her the piano.  I wouldn’t mind going back to the hotel for a nightcap.  Instead, he got up from his seat, gave the child permission to play, and while she played, he stood behind her, placed his hands outside of hers and began improvising with the child’s spur-of-the-moment composition.  He could have blocked, rejecting the child as a nuisance.  He could have simply accepted what the child was doing and given her the piano, angering those who were there to hear beautiful music.  Instead, he overaccepted the situation, allowed the child to sit and play, and improvised a melody to fit what her small hands were banging out.  As Christians we are to overaccept so that the story of God continues.

There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property.  So the rich man summoned his manager and said, “What is it I hear about you?  Give me an accounting of your management because you cannot be my manager any longer.”  Then the manager said to himself, “What should I do?”  If the manager were inclined to block, he might say, “You can’t fire me.  I quit,” throw his TI-82 on the ground, and storm out of the room.  If the manager were inclined to accept his fate he would go, collect his master’s debts and be on his way.  But that’s not how the story goes.  He goes to the first of his master’s debtors and says, “How much do you owe my master?  One hundred jugs of oil?  Quickly change that to 50.”  He goes to the second and says, “How much do you owe my master?  One hundred containers of wheat?  Quickly change that to eighty.”  He brings this back to his master and he is commended.

This parable is troubling, at least, if we’re thinking about worldly economy.  Economy is oikonomia—that is to say, it’s Greek for “household management.”  Economics means putting your house in order, but what if you’ve lost your home, lost your job, lost your shirt in a cutthroat economy?  Look closely at what the manager says to himself, “I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.”  Isn’t that an interesting phrase?  It’s obviously important because it’s repeated at the end of the story: welcome me into their homes.  In other words, when my economics is up the creek, it may be time to invest in somebody else’s.  When my household is bankrupt, it may be time to think about other people’s households.  It’s time to change economies.[1]

What is happening in this story is a transformation of economies.  Worldly economics, or mammon as it is called, survives off of scarcity—the philosophy that there isn’t enough to go around.  The other economy at work in this story is best described as manna—that which God provides, which is a philosophy of abundance.  This story is about two economies coming to blows and the shrewd manager is caught in the middle.  When mammon has him dismissed, he trades it for manna.  As Sam Wells puts it, “He realizes the friends are more important than the money or even the job.  He moves from mammon to manna, from an economy of scarcity and perpetual anxiety to an economy of abundance and limitless grace.”[2]  What’s happening here, by overaccepting his circumstances he is changing the rules of the game.  He no longer needs to live off the debt of other.  He has found friendship.  Listen to the words of the parable—“And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of mammon so that when it is gone (not if), when it fails you, they may be welcome you into the eternal homes.”

When your economy, your life is unraveling, you can block, you can live according to option 1—you have the right to go home and take your toys with you.  You also can live according to option 2 and simply watch as the world around falls to pieces.  Or you can overaccept, and pick up the unraveled pieces and weave them together into a new and beautiful tapestry, which contains fragments and the legacy of years gone by, but it is a new creation for those who are here now and who will be here in the future.  Our goal as Christians is to overaccept, to live according to option three, to keep the story of God going.

The people were saying, “Bang, you’re dead,” and Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane had to make a choice.  He could have said, “This game is stupid.  I don’t want to play anymore.  I don’t want to die.  I want to be king of Israel so that the mammon which makes the world go round will be our guide.”  If Jesus had gone for option number two, simply accepting his fate, he would be dead today.  But Jesus lives according to the third option, not mammon, but manna, accepting his fate on the cross, and oooooooo rising from the dead.  Instead of rejecting mammon, he transformed it into manna.  Instead of rejecting death, he defeated it and turned it into life. 

Sure, when the world is unraveling, you can take your toys and go home.  Sure, you can accept that the world is unraveling and let it be.  Or, you can take the broken pieces and make something beautiful and new.  It’s what Jesus does.  May we do the same.  Amen.


[1] Sam Wells, Speaking the Truth: Preaching in a Pluralistic Culture (Abingdon Press, Nashville, 2008), 169.

[2] Ibid., 170.