It is possible to learn something useful from a negative example, which is why we should stop trying to redeem the dishonest manager. Because he features in a parable told by Jesus, we instinctively want him to be a morally upstanding fellow. He’s not, but can’t we still learn something from him?
When the dishonest manager tells his master’s debtors to quickly reduce their bill of debt, he isn’t telling them to eliminate his own commission in some kind of sacrificial act. He is quite literally manipulating his master’s debtors so that he will earn favor with them. And he is cheating his master because he is in a desperate situation. Knowing his own limitations and with no options, he tries to make the most out of a moment of crisis.[1] If he is already going to lose his job, he might as well build a safety net by befriending his master’s debtors, even if it means doing so dishonestly.
And in a confounding move, his master commends his actions. So, the second thing we must get into our heads is that the manager’s master—the rich man—is not supposed to be like God. If this parable is nothing more than an injunction to shrewdness for its own sake, then we’ve missed the point. And it’s certainly not an approval of dishonesty.
So, let’s stop trying to make the dishonest manager into an honest one. Only then can we feel the heat of Jesus’s real point. Jesus knew that the best way for humans to be taught by God was to put things into their own terms, especially when those terms bring us up short.
Jesus sets up a comparison between the children of this age and the children of light—or, in other words, between those whose lives and senses are directed only to the things of this world and those who are seeking the kingdom of God. Jesus knows that he must use worldly examples to shift our minds and hearts into the paradigm of the kingdom of God. He must speak our language to nudge us out of our laziness and complacency.
If the children of this age are cunning, resourceful, and shrewd with the wealth of this world, then why shouldn’t God’s children by adoption be even more resourceful with what God has given them for the sake of the kingdom of heaven? That should bring us up short. If the children of this age can brilliantly turn lemons into lemonade, then why can’t the children of God exercise their own ingenuity to further the proclamation of the Gospel? Are we listening now? Jesus’s parable is a biting indictment of our own failure of creativity and motivation for the sake of the Gospel.
But Jesus’s words are never a mere indictment. They are always intended to move us from compunction to change, from a sense of impossibility to possibility. His words disturb our inertia and awaken our senses to the infinite possibilities available through the power of God. Our Lord’s words take us back to the beginning of creation, when from nothing, God created everything. There is only anything because God in pure generosity wills it to be. We exist only because God exists. And this is the meaning of the resurrection, that from death and nothingness new life springs.
It is also possible to make the most out of a bad situation, like the dishonest manager. We are told that the Church is in crisis. Buildings must be maintained and bills paid, while the pews are far too empty. Some Christians promulgate messages of hate, prompting people to flee the Church to preserve their moral integrity. How do those who are left in the Church redeem the message? Rather than going down on their knees in prayer and then rolling up their sleeves and getting to work, too often the faithful slash their budgets and put padlocks on their endowments. They give less time to the Church and more time to everything else. They twiddle their thumbs while spinning narratives of despair. They live out of fear rather than out of creativity. But contrary to popular opinion, the present-day Church is not dying. It is simply suffering from a lack of gumption and resourcefulness because the situation seems so dire.
Meanwhile, outside the Church, people are getting to work. They may be anxious all the time, but they’re still getting to work. In a busy world, people are ingeniously carving out time in their schedules for earthly things. They are investing their energy and money in fallible people to whom they entrust their security and flourishing. They are tweaking the numbers on their 401(k)s and preparing with great resourcefulness for their futures. They are bending over backwards to get their ducks in a row so their kids can be accepted into the best schools and colleges.
Why is it, then, that those who still have hope in the future of the Church fail to be as motivated for the sake of the Gospel as they are in their earthly lives? Why do we check our shrewdness at the door of the church? Why do we struggle with seeing infinite possibilities in situations of ecclesial crisis? Why does our anxiety in the Church prompt us to inertia, while outside the Church, it moves us to action?
Perhaps in pondering these questions we should once again remember that the dishonest manager is not a good guy. And if he’s not a good guy, then Jesus is not telling us to view the dishonest manager as a moral role model. He’s urging us to reclaim resourcefulness and creativity for the sake of the Gospel. We can still learn something from a bad example.
If the children of this age are shrewd, the Church should be even more so. But the Church’s shrewdness is quite different from the shrewdness of the children of this age. The children of this age measure everything in quantities and numbers. They strategize and predict, and what you see is what you get. But the children of light are called to a different, more excellent way. In the kingdom of God, faith the size of a mustard seed can move mountains, and what has grown old can be made new. Nothing is irredeemable. Money is not for hoarding but for investing in possibilities, because giving is more important than saving, and trust is more important than skepticism. Faithfulness lies in our ability to make much of the small things in life.
Our modern crisis in the Church is not a crisis of possibility; it is a crisis of hope. When we are driven to despair, we can be certain that we are serving wealth and earthly things rather than God. And we can’t serve two masters, for we will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other.
To serve wealth means seeing the world as ill-equipped for our own flourishing and for the flourishing of the Gospel. But when we serve God, we see through the eyes of abundance, which Jesus showed us how to do. He fed the multitudes from scant resources. He healed those who could not be cured by anyone else. He demonstrated that death has no power over life.
And although the dishonest manager is not a good guy, we can always learn from a bad example. If he, relying on the world of wealth, could be resourceful in a time of crisis, how much more can we, who rely on God, be resourceful for the Gospel’s sake? The dishonest manager knows something that we often struggle to see. All is not lost when we are up against a crisis, and so he redeems the situation through his shrewdness. But we, as children of the light, have it far better than he does. When we’re up against a crisis of seeming scarcity, we know that any shrewdness we can rely on comes not from ourselves but from God. And our hope lies in the power of a God in whose infinite creativity we’re called to participate.
At Good Shepherd, we know quite a lot about being industrious for the sake of the Gospel. In a time of crisis, this parish hunkered down in prayer, and fueled by God’s endless generosity, parishioners rolled up their sleeves and got to work. They unlocked the padlocks on the meager endowment. They dug deep into their pockets to find what God had given them to use for the building of his kingdom on earth. And while others from outside looked on and counted down the days until closure, they were ultimately humbled when God gave the growth. This parish didn’t do business on the world’s terms; it did business on God’s terms. And that’s the best way of doing business.
Before us this day and always are two possibilities: we can serve wealth with its anxious narrative of scarcity, or we can serve the living God, who brings everything out of nothing and life out of death. And because no slave can serve two masters, we must choose. But if we choose the living Lord, the God of love, we will no longer be slaves. We will be adopted children of God, and the living Lord who calls us not servants but friends will show us that when we are at the valley of the shadow of death, he will bring us safely to the other side.
Sermon by Father Kyle Babin
The Fifteenth Sunday after Pentecost
September 21, 2025
[1] In his commentary on Luke’s Gospel, Luke Timothy Johnson describes the dishonest manager’s predicament as a “crisis.” See The Gospel of Luke, Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 1991, p. 245.