Sermon Text: Luke 16:1-13
Date: September 21, 2025
Event: Proper 20, Year C
Luke 16:1-13 (EHV)
Jesus also said to his disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager who was accused of wasting his possessions. 2The rich man called him in and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give an account of your management, because you can no longer be manager.’
3“The manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, since my master is taking away the management position from me? I am not strong enough to dig. I am ashamed to beg. 4I know what I will do, so that when I am removed from my position as manager, people will receive me into their houses.’
5“He called each one of his master’s debtors to him. He asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6He said, ‘Six hundred gallons of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and write three hundred.’ 7Then he said to another, ‘How much do you owe?’ And he said, ‘Six hundred bushels of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and write four hundred and eighty.’
8“The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the children of the light. 9I tell you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon so that when it runs out, they will welcome you into the eternal dwellings. 10The person who is faithful with very little is also faithful with much. And the person who is unrighteous with very little is also unrighteous with much. 11So if you have not been faithful with unrighteous mammon who will entrust you with what is really valuable? 12If you have not been faithful with what belongs to someone else, who will give you something to be your own? 13No servant can serve two masters. Indeed, either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and mammon.”
Be Shrewd with God’s Gifts
“Shrewd” is perhaps not a word we use often in everyday conversations, but it is a good word. To be shrewd is to be carefully discerning, able to measure a situation accurately and act appropriately, or at least in the best interest of your primary concerns. We might describe such a trait as being level-headed, able to read a room, discerning, and able to weigh the pros and cons of each individual action in a given situation.
It’s a trait that Jesus urged his disciples (and us who follow them) to have as he sent them out in their initial missionary efforts during his earthly ministry. At that time he noted and urged them, “Look, I am sending you out as sheep among wolves. So be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” (Matthew 10:16). Going into the world with the gospel, going into an environment that would likely be set against them, would require them to be wise and discerning, shrewd to their surroundings while at the same time innocent of wrongdoing.
This morning, we have “shrewd” applied to someone who is a bit of a scoundrel. Jesus uses that word to describe the manager in his parable. If you’re feeling a bit confused by Jesus’ parable this morning, I think it’s with good reason. This is, at first blush, one of the most difficult of all of his parables to reconcile and understand the point. It’s the only parable where the “bad guy” in the story is held up as someone, in part, to emulate. Usually, it’s the downtrodden person who is abused by others but perseveres, or someone who understands the true value of what they have, or someone simply enjoying the pure, loving comfort of God’s care. But this morning, we have in front of us a lazy, deceptive cheat from whom Jesus seems to indicate we can learn a thing or two.
We should probably retrace the story here so that we’re all on the same page. Jesus introduces us to a manager who has been found negligent in his duties and is being fired. He has a very limited amount of time to do what he can to provide a “soft landing” for himself. So with that limited amount of time and access to the books, what does he do? He gets into the good graces of all of his boss’s debtors so that, perhaps, they will offer him a position moving forward. “Take your bill, sit down quickly, and write three hundred.” … “Take your bill and write four hundred and eighty.” He can then say, “Hey, remember that time I cut your amount owed by a third or half? Can you do something for me now?”
To be very clear, nothing about this is moral or ethical. And, I would question whether this would actually secure him a position with another employer moving forward when they saw firsthand his lack of scruples. But he did the best, the most, with what he had access to at the time, with the hope that it would provide a future for him. “Shrewd” is generally a positive term (although its long-standing connection to this parable in English translations of the Bible perhaps does cast a negative shade on it). Still, this manager is shrewd not because he did the right thing, but because he surveyed the available options before him and made the most of the opportunity to prepare as good a future as possible.
What are we, dear Christians, to make of this parable our Savior taught? Let me be as clear as I can be to start: Jesus’ point is not that you should cheat your employer out of what he or she is owed to try to make a better life for yourself. Nothing about this manager’s actions before or after he is relieved of his duties is commendable. Jesus, instead, would have us focus on his resourcefulness. For the children of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the children of the light. I tell you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon so that when it runs out, they will welcome you into the eternal dwellings.
Mammon is an Aramaic term for wealth and property. It’s a largely neutral term on its own, but Jesus describes it as unrighteous mammon for its use in this lesson. There is no sense of this being an eternal treasure or spiritual blessings. Jesus’ focus is very much on the physical wealth and treasure that we have in this life. Much like the steward was shrewd in his use of his limited access to the boss’s books, so we too should be shrewd in how we use our limited-time resources.
But our goal is not to get ourselves a cushy position after our current one falls through. Jesus is clear that this shrewdness needs to have a much bigger, longer-lasting perspective: I tell you, make friends for yourselves with unrighteous mammon so that when it runs out, they will welcome you into the eternal dwellings. Jesus is not suggesting that we buy friends, or even in the more extreme case, buy our way into eternal life. No, rather, Jesus is pointing us toward the reality that our use of the temporary things in this life can have an impact on eternity. And what is the only thing that can make eternal life better than it otherwise could be? Well, if there are more people to enjoy God’s eternal home with us. Jesus says that others will welcome us to eternal life who we have, in some way, affected their ability to be there.
Here again, we need to understand Jesus’ words in the broader context of Scripture at large. How does one get into eternal life? It’s not a life well lived, money well spent, or a focus on personal piety and meditation. No, the way to enter eternal life is exactly what we heard Jesus say it was a few weeks ago; the way to enter eternal life is through the narrow door of Jesus himself.
Jesus enables us to come into these eternal dwellings because he paid for our sins. Everything that would have naturally barred the way for us to be brought into eternal life, Jesus undid by his life, death, and resurrection in our place. Jesus was perfectly shrewd—as we needed him to be—and did everything we needed him to do during his limited time here among us. He lived a perfect life, offered that perfect life as the payment for our sins, and assured us of his victory by his resurrection from the dead.
All of that paved the way. All of that is done, and no amount of earthly wealth can have any factor into that. No money can buy the forgiveness of sins, and it doesn’t need to. That is already acquired, permanently secured in the blood of Jesus shed for each of us, shed for everyone.
How can we shrewdly use our temporary resources in the service of eternity? Not in buying it, but in sharing it. God’s Word is the way God brings faith to others, so the more we can do to connect people with God’s Word, to use our resources to share this message of undeserved but freely given love and forgiveness, then we are applying these resources as God intends them to be used, as Jesus here directs us in our Gospel this morning.
When we support home and world mission efforts through our church body, that mammon does work to bring God’s Word to people that we’ve never met. When we, as a congregation, pay our paltry $262/year to have our website be available online, and more than 15,000 people a month are connecting with us to read our confessions of faith or sermons, mammon becomes outreach for eternal life. When we give thank offerings to God that are directed at the work of our congregation at large, ensuring that we have lights on, climate controls, internet for live streaming, a copier to print matierals, evangelism materials to be sent out into the community, and a pastor to be in the pulplit, that mammon becomes a gospel, eternal light shining in dark, temporary world. When we take the time out of our day to invite someone to church with us, or to share what we believe about Jesus as Savior, or even to show kindness to someone as a possible precursor to sharing the love of God with them, that mammon (of sorts) is doing this eternal work.
All of this sets the stage for having only one master—not ourselves, not our bank account balances, but our God. We can’t be devoted to both God and money, so we do well to put God at the top and see our financial resources for what they truly are—temporary blessings from God given to be used to his glory. When we understand proper priorities and the place that mammon has in our lives, everything else starts to line up. These are my temporary blessings used to serve God, and I can do that in many ways: I can take care of the family and other responsbilities that God has given to me; I can help those who are less fortunate than me and need a helping hand; I can use them to have some fun and enjoy the time I have here as part of a peaceful life. But the best way I can use those resources, the most shrewd way to do so, is to use the temporary to acquire something eternal, to use the perishable to acquire the imperishable.
When we use the temporary resources we have—our money, skills, time, and energy—in service to sharing the love of Jesus, we’re doing exactly that. This $20 bill will not endure past this life; I won’t take this to heaven with me. But what if this $20 was spent on a few Bibles that were put into people’s hands and allowed them to learn the love of Jesus, that temporary money, by the work of the Holy Spirit through his Word, turns into eternal treasure as more souls are brought into the kingdom.
So, my brothers and sisters, how can we be shrewd when surveying what is before us? First of all, see the limited time in front of us. We’ve been stressing in our midweek Bible class on the End Times that Jesus’ return could come at any time—even today!—so we want to be prepared. One way that we prepare is by sharing Jesus’ forgiveness with others.
So, today, sit down and consider how you might be more shrewd with the gifts God has given you than you have been. Do you have more financial resources that could be dedicated to sending this gospel message more forcefully into our communities and our world? Do you have more time to devote to sharing this word with those you know or volunteering to assist in the work of our congregation? Could more of your energy be devoted to prayer for the good of God’s kingdom, that it would continue to come to us and come to many others as well? What do you have right now that will not journey with you to eternal life that could be used to see others join us around our Savior forever?
And in the end, remember the proper motivation for all of this: not shame, or guilt, or a sense of obligation. Rather, we are motivated by joy and thanksgiving to God. This is one of the ways that we show our gratitude to God for saving us from our sins—from hell itself—and bringing us to his side. These are the ways we thank him for treating us like that lost sheep and lost coin from the parables we heard last week. These are the ways we thank God for his eternal love, which means eternal life for us.
My dear friends, be shrewd as God enables you to be. Thanks be to God! Amen.
