Luke 16: Parable of the Dishonest Steward

This is one of the most difficult parables of Jesus. Different commentaries go in different directions on it. Bible translation editors struggle to label the steward. Is he shrewd (NIV) or is he dishonest (NRSV)?

Let me lay out a few observations first about the parable:

1. This guy is no good. The struggle that many preachers, commentators and translations editors have is that a bad man here is being praised. The first charge against him is interesting. The NIV uses "wasted" and the NRSV uses "squandered". If you do a little word study you'll find it is an interesting word. It is used for enemies that are routed (scattered) as well as the "lost sheep" if Israel who are scattered. It is also use in Matthew 25 in the parable of the talents where the master is described and describes himself as a hard man who reaps where he has not "scattered". The most important instance, however, is Luke 15 in the parable of the lost sons. This is the word that describes what that lost son did with his father's inheritance, describing the kind of living by which he lost it.

Free Will and Determinism debate

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God's Wrath

A Chimes protest on re-working "In Christ Alone" at Mars Hill Church in GR

The notion of God’s wrath has become unintelligible to our contemporary culture. Willimon in one of the sermons on the CTS CEP archive summarizes Harold Bloom’s assessment of American Religion that “God loves us and is just dying to get close to us.” Christian Smith calls it moralistic, therapeutic deism. God has a cosmic therapist/butler. This is striking because if you do a survey of ancient religious belief the assumption of God’s rather and the need of its satisfaction is near universal. Even in MesoAmerican recent archeological discoveries sees human sacrifice as an attempt to keep the wrath of the gods from destroying their civilizations. Many of us read the Old Testament in horror. “I just can’t buy a god who kills people, orders genocide, etc.”

Keller on Covenant

Tim Keller's sermon from Sept 9 07 had an amazing comparison between consumer relationships and God's covenantal relationship with us. The sermon repeats a number of things on this subject that he covers in other places but I hadn't heard him compare these two things in this way before. I thought it was stunning.

Modern society orders everything around the experiencing individual self and its happiness and fulfilment. Everything is a means to this end. "I will be what I should be as long as and to the degree that you should be, and if you're not, I'm out!" In a covenant two people say "I will be what I should be whether or not you are being what you should be."

Keller of course references the Genesis 15 story with Abraham, the halved animals and the fire pot. It is also interesting to read God's self-naming to Moses at the burning bush in these terms: "I will be who I will be".