Sermon Audio

Of all the parables of Jesus, this one has to be the most fun for theologians; at least, from what I’ve read before, many have spent so much effort explaining this parable, and the explanations are widely divided. Much of the explanations are always an attempt to explain who the characters in the parable are supposed to represent. Most everyone agrees that the master is supposed to represent the Father, but they quickly diverge from there. Some would suggest that the manager is supposed to represent the Son and that the debtors are supposed to represent mankind which Christ saved. “Then why,” some ask, “did the manager only cancel part of the debtors’ debts? Christ paid the price for our sin in full, there should be nothing left!” This second group offers the idea that the manager is the believer and the debtors are unbelievers. “Then why,” some ask, “was master angry at a believer? If we believe in a loving God of grace and mercy, He wouldn’t be angry at believers, but forgive them.” And the suppositions go on and on and on from there; back and forth bickering over why one character could represent this person and not the next, and so on and so forth, ad nauseam.

What’s important to note about parables is that they are most often anecdotal. This is true for parables told across all tellers—Jesus wasn’t the only parable teller. At best, the characters and animals in parables tend to be deficient facsimiles of people in reality. These characters exhibit a trait or characteristic found in a real person or group of people or the angels or Satan, etc., but their representation ends after that one trait. In some cases, a character in the parables may exhibit one or a few traits on par with a real-world counterpart, but have others that are completely contrary to whom they are supposed to represent. So, it may be well to say, with today’s parable for instance, that the master is like the Father, but he does not perfectly represent the Father, etc. However, regardless of all of that, the parables themselves are told to give a point; what’s going on in the parable is more important than who the characters are supposed to represent.

So, what attempt can we make to explain the parable? Fortunately, we don’t need a doctorate in theology to get to an explanation. Jesus provides it for us:

He who is faithful in what is least is faithful also in much; and he who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much. Therefore if you have not been faithful in the unrighteous mammon, who will commit to your trust the true riches? And if you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own? No servant can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or else he will be loyal to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and mammon.

True-to-form, Jesus’ explanation tells us that the point of the parable is more important than who the master, the steward, and the debtors are.

As you recall from the parable, the manager canceled the debts of people who owed his master money. The debts were not his to cancel, nor were the debtors in debt to him, though he certainly acted shrewdly in place of his master, probably allowing him to continue to conduct business with his debtors. However, as the parable begins, we learn that the steward was wasting his master’s goods. This is why Jesus makes the comment in verse 12 about being trustworthy with someone else’s property. The manager was NOT trustworthy with his master’s property. If an employee does not handle sales or cash flow properly, he’s going to be fired. If someone cannot be trusted in such a small position as a sale’s associate, he will not be trustworthy in a higher position. “[H]e who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.” Our justice system does not reward crooks with their own plot of land, but sends them to prison. “[I]f you have not been faithful in what is another man’s, who will give you what is your own?”

So, let us attempt to make some character representations, based on Jesus’ explanation of the parable. As stated before, the master is like the Father, but he does not perfectly represent the Father. Likewise, Christians are like the manager who stewards God’s property, and like the manager, no Christian is a good stewards of God’s property. All that you own, or claim to own, is not really yours. Simply taking a look back to the creation helps to understand this. We are told in Genesis 2:15, “Then the LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it.” God had created the garden and put Adam in it to manage it; what He had created was His by way of being its creator—Adam was, simply put, the manager.

Of course, you know what happens after that. Adam was told that he was free to eat of any tree in the garden, except for the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Then, he was given a helper suited for him, and God expected that Adam would teach her what He had said and care for her, too. Except that the serpent was more cunning than any beast in the field, and he questioned the woman about what God had said. Having never heard what He had said, the woman was easily deceived by the serpent. “He didn’t really say that,” the serpent essentially told her. “On the contrary, God knows you’ll be just like Him if you eat, and He doesn’t want any competition. Take, eat, and be merry; you won’t die.” That she did, and gave some to Adam, who was with her.

I like to wonder if the wheels of doubt were beginning to turn in Adam’s head as he listened to the serpent. “I know what God told me, and I don’t want to die for eating this.” So, he watches his wife. She picks some fruit, takes a bite, chews, and swallows, then offers some to him. He watches her, and she doesn’t die. “Maybe He was lying to me and the serpent is correct. I will be like God and not die. That kind of power is appealing to me. I want more than this little bit that He’s given me. The woman didn’t drop dead.” Adam wasn’t deceived, St. Paul tells us (cf. 1 Timothy 2:14), so he simply chose to disobey God, reasoning out for himself that he knew better than his creator. He eats. (cf. Genesis 2:18—3:6)

Greed and lust for power slithered in, and Adam and the woman wanted to be like God and own everything. Adam lived for 930 years and died. For eating the forbidden fruit, Adam was sentenced to death. And his children inherit this from him, some dying from “old age,” though few as old as he, some from disease, and some by the hand of another. The curse for disobeying God and doubting Him was to die, one way or another: “The wages of sin is death.” (Romans 6:23a) Adam was given stewardship over all creation—he could have had perfect dominion over it all, and his children sharing in that with him—but he wanted more and died because of it, being cut off from the tree of life that was in the midst of the garden, and his children share in that with him.

...Even today. You are just like your father, Adam. What you hear and read in Genesis 1 through 5 is no parable. Adam doesn’t merely represent you—you are Adam. You have Adam living in you, exhibiting the same lust for power and greed that consumed him in the garden. It consumes you, too. The Father gives you everything that you have, and you think you are owed more. You think you can provide for yourself better than He does. If you could, you would go to the garden, pick that fruit, and eat of it expecting to be like God. Yet, when you are told that you carry in your flesh to result of Adam’s eating, that you disobey God and sin against Him, you are offended, but still, there is an end to your days on this earth. “The wages of sin is death.” You still have no access to the tree of life in the midst of the garden.

God gives you everything that you have, and you think you are owed more. In that thinking, you show yourself to be a poor steward of those things which He has given you. In fact, you tend to abuse the privilege of being a steward of what He gives you—not only do you take His gifts for granted, but you use them for unjust purposes, in ways and for things He did not intend. “[H]e who is unjust in what is least is unjust also in much.” You sin, and you think you deserve more from God? He would completely justified is forsaking you, leaving you to your own insufficient and self-defeating devices.

Instead of forsaking you, though, He shows you grace and mercy. For God loved the world, filled with the likes of you greedy and power hungry lot, that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. (cf. John 3:16) In comes the Second Adam, Jesus Christ, who is the perfect steward of God’s gifts. He, being God, did not consider being equal with God as something to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking on the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men, and He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross. (cf. Philippians 2:6-8) Jesus was the perfect Adam, the perfect steward of the gifts of God, yet He died anyway, on the cross. Jesus was forsaken by the Father, left to die alone, so that you would be with Him forever. He was perfectly faithful in what is least, “Therefore God has highly exalted him and bestowed on him the name that is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” (Philippians 2:9-11)

Jesus’ death was not His alone, though. Jesus Christ died for you. “The wages of sin is death,” and Jesus paid the price in full. That is to say that Christians are like the debtors in the parable, too, owing the Master everything that they have, and unlike the unjust steward, Jesus doesn’t merely take your bill for 100 units and tell you to write 50 or 80, but He Himself pays the 100 units for you, leaving you a bill of 0. For your 100 units of debt you deserve death, but Jesus died in your place—He was fully and completely dead for you, nailed to the cross, pierced and run through—and He gives you a bill covered with His life-blood for your eternal life. This is the precious gift of God for you: “The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 6:23b) That is to say that Jesus’ death for sin is your death to sin. Now, the cross of Jesus is your tree of life.

What’s more, Jesus is the perfect steward of this gift for you. He freely and generously gives you the free gift of forgiveness and life and salvation, without any merit or worthiness in you. The gift is yours and Jesus Christ, your Savior, is the steward of this gift, giving it to you abundantly, just as His merciful and gracious Father desires.

To this point can be repeated what was said on Wednesday evening as we read Luther’s Exhortation to Confession in the Large Catechism. Confession has two parts, we are taught. “First, that we confess our sins, and second, that we receive absolution, that is, forgiveness, from the pastor as from God Himself, not doubting, but firmly believing that by it our sins are forgiven before God in heaven.” For this reason, Luther calls confession a great comfort, because the focus of confession is not on your part, the confession of your sins, which the Father certainly gives to you, but on the His part, the forgiveness of your sins. In absolution, you are given, again and again, the actual and real forgiveness of your sins from God, spoken to you and into you by His called and sent mouthpiece, your pastor, but you are pointed back to the cross of Jesus, your tree of life, pointing out to you the truth of what you already have, what you have always had, and to Jesus who stewards this possession for you: forgiveness and life and salvation.

This gift is yours by way of Baptism. Baptism “works forgiveness of sins, rescues from death and the devil, and gives eternal salvation to all who believe this, as the words and promises of God declare.” This same Baptism indicates that your old Adam “should by daily contrition and repentance be drowned and die with all sins and evil desires, and that a new man should daily emerge and arise to live before God in righteousness and purity forever.” This is a daily dying and rising that is yours by way of your Baptism into Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection. Daily, you receive absolution because you are baptized, because you have been joined to Jesus Christ, who is the faithful and just steward of the most precious gift you are given, and He gives it to you freely and overflowingly: the forgiveness of all of your sins.