I don’t think there could be a better scripture to come up in the lectionary this week than the one we got, given our current debates about student loan forgiveness. If you haven’t yet read the scripture, you might want to click the link above to check it out. We catch up with Jesus in the middle of a section of the gospel where he is teaching the disciples in an area where they are being overheard by the pharisees. Jesus tells them a story about a first century hedge fund manager.
I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.
Jesus introduces us to a man who is managing the wealth of a “rich man.” The rich man has loaned money to several folks, and our money manager is called out for “squandering his property.” The passage doesn’t explain what the money manager was doing to squander this property, but we are told that the rich man is mad and is firing the money manager. The manager is understandably freaked out at the prospect of losing his job, and decides on a plan to make some quick financial decisions with his employer’s wealth while he has the chance that will put him in good favor with all the rich man’s debtors. He thinks that if he cuts them all a deal on the debt, they will take care of him when he is unemployed. The manager speaks to each of the rich man’s debtors and drops their debt by as much as 50%. Seems like a good way to make friends to me.
The rich man finds out what his money manager has been up to, and he has a very unexpected response. The rich man is pretty pleased with the manager. He tells him he has dealt shrewdly with his money. Obviously this is not what the reader would expect the rich man to say, but Jesus’s stories rarely meet the expectation of the readers then or now. Jesus is once again trying to shift the narrative of how we understand our connection to wealth and money.
This story comes directly in between the story about the “prodigal son” running off and blowing his inheritance and being welcomed home with a party and the story of the rich man going to hell for not sharing with the poor man on his porch, so it is in good company with its commentary. Jesus knows that the reader would think that the money manager should be using the wealth to make more wealth. That is what money managers or for. Instead we get Luke’s gospel’s traditional reversal of fortune. The rich man is happy that the wealth is being given away to make others happy. The rich man even refers to this wealth as “dishonest wealth.”
So, why is this wealth dishonest, and why should the manager give it away? To Jesus, there is no such thing as “honest wealth.” All wealth is dishonest that can be amassed in this world, so therefore the best way to deal with it is to give it away. The next story after this concerns a rich man going to hell for keeping his wealth, and a little later in the gospel Jesus tells a man that he must give away all he has to follow him. When taken together, I think the reasoning becomes pretty clear. Jesus expects all things to be shared in common by his followers, and in such a group none would be wealthy, and yet all would have what they need.
Jesus caps off the parable by saying, “I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes.” In other words, give it all away and you are welcomed in. Wealth is a thing that God has and shares with us all. Wealth is not a thing that we should have. We will just squander it.
The passage ends with the famous “You can not serve God and wealth,” which people often give a handwave to by saying something along the lines of “What does serving wealth really mean? We can have wealth but still be focused on God, and that will be just fine.” When read in context with the rest of the passage, it is much more clear what it means to serve wealth. The money manager in the story is the one who Jesus is referring to as serving wealth. He was working to use wealth to make more wealth. You know, Capitalism. That is serving wealth in the eyes of Jesus, and it is not ok. When the money manager gives that wealth away, then he gets community and an eternal home. He is serving God. We must serve God and not wealth.
Soooooo, at the very, very least we should not complain when some of the debts of people who couldn’t afford to go to college on their own, but wanted a better life are forgiven. First, this amounts to a terrifying regressive tax on poor people who simply want an education in a system that works overtime to keep them poor, and Second, It’s God’s money anyway. Let it go.