Homily, September 21, 2025, Rev. Holly Cardone

The Shrewd Manager

September 21, 2025

Sometimes the Gospel gives us a story that feels like a riddle. This is one of them. The parable of the dishonest—or shrewd—manager has built-in contradictions. We can’t avoid them. We can’t dismiss them. We can’t pretend they aren’t there.

This parable follows right after the story we call the Prodigal Son—which really should be called the Prodigal Father. Because in that story the father lavishes love, grace, forgiveness, and connection on both sons—the one who ran off and wasted his inheritance and the one who stayed home and kept all the rules. God loves. Period.

And now we turn the page and hear about a different kind of father figure: a rich man who has a manager. The manager has been accused of squandering the master’s property. He’s about to be fired. His life as he knows it is over. “What will I do? I’m not strong enough to dig, and I’m too ashamed to beg.” He hatches a plan. He calls in the debtors. One owes a hundred jugs of olive oil. “Quick, sit down, make it fifty.” Another owes a hundred containers of wheat. “Make it eighty.”

This is serious debt. How would these peasants ever pay it back? Maybe they’d been making minimum payments. Maybe they lived under crushing interest, forbidden by Israelite law but common under Roman rule. The manager lowers the bills, indebting the debtors to himself. Now, when he’s out on the street, maybe they’ll welcome him in.

And here’s the shock: the rich man commends him. “Well done. Shrewd move.”

Why praise a crook? Scholars suggest maybe the master is relieved. At least now he’ll get something back. The debts are more manageable. It’s a brilliant compromise. Others see it as pure self-interest: the manager secures his future.

But Jesus tells us plainly: “The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the children of light.” “Children of the light” was a phrase used by the Essenes, the sect who wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls. They had broken away from the Jerusalem temple because it was corrupt, too rich, not pious enough. They lived simply, bathed daily, prayed together, and waited for the Messiah. They called themselves the Sons of Light.

Jesus seems to be saying: don’t isolate yourself from the world, thinking you’re too holy to get your hands dirty. Sometimes shrewdness, cleverness, pragmatism—even street smarts—are necessary for survival. “The children of this age are more shrewd…than the children of light.”

It’s not praise for dishonesty. It’s recognition of bold, decisive action. The manager saw his crisis clearly and acted with urgency. Jesus says: what if the children of light acted with the same urgency, the same boldness, the same imagination—but for the sake of the Kingdom?

Verse 9 says: “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth, so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” The Greek word here isn’t “houses” but skēnas, tents. Tents of the nomad, the pilgrim, the refugee. Not the permanent stone houses the manager was hoping for, but the fragile, temporary shelters of those on the move. Maybe Jesus is pointing to a different kind of security—not wealth stored up, but companionship in the wilderness, community on the journey.

Some hear echoes of the Jubilee year in this parable—that great biblical vision when, every fifty years, debts were forgiven, slaves freed, and land returned. The manager cancels debts, not out of compassion but desperation. Still, debt relief is debt relief. Even a crook can act in a way that mirrors God’s dream for justice.

Robert Farrar Capon, Episcopal priest, author and chef, in his book Parables of Grace, puts forward the idea that maybe Jesus himself is the dishonest manager. Maybe Jesus is the crook. Like the manager, Jesus throws away respectability, squanders the world’s expectations, and uses the currency of grace in reckless, extravagant ways. Like the manager, Jesus secures a future for us—not by playing it safe, but by risking everything. Maybe discipleship means following a Messiah who looks like a rule-breaker, who cancels debts, who gets in trouble with the authorities, and who dies like a criminal.

Capon also says this parable is about death. The manager’s old life is over. He can’t go back. Just like the prodigal son feeding pigs realized his old life was dead to him, so too the manager realizes he’s at the end. Something has to give. In that death, something new is born.

That’s the Gospel pattern: death and resurrection. Old life gone, new life ahead. The dishonest manager stumbles into it. Jesus embodies it. And we are called to live it.

So what does this mean for us, sitting here in our own messy lives?

It means God’s Kingdom is not about playing it safe. It’s about shrewdness, imagination, bold action. Not dishonesty, but urgency. How are we embodying our faith every day? Be realistic about justice. Be Zen about all we have. Don’t cling to wealth as if it will last forever. Be merciful and generous in our giving.

It means sometimes God’s grace shows up in unlikely people—even in the crooked manager who cuts corners. Even in us, when we make decisions out of desperation. God can still use it.

And it means we follow a Messiah who himself looked like a criminal, who was accused of blasphemy, who hung on a cross. And yet, through that scandal, God gave us life.

The parable of the dishonest manager doesn’t resolve neatly. Maybe that’s the point. It leaves us unsettled. But it also leaves us with this truth: the Kingdom of God requires the same urgency, boldness, and imagination that the world pours into survival and profit.

The question is: will we, the children of light, live with that same kind of shrewdness—not for money, but for mercy? Not for survival, but for grace? Not for homes of stone, but for the eternal tents God provides along the way?

In the end, it is God who cancels our debts, God who welcomes us home, and God who gives us a future we could never secure for ourselves. Amen.