...faithful in all things...

“1 Then Jesus said to the disciples, ‘There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. 2 So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ 3 Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7 Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ 8 And his 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 are the children of light. 9 And 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.

10 ‘Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own’” Luke 16:1-12?

Look, this story makes complete sense to Jesus’ first hearers! In their world, a story about a landowner and his steward, or manager, was almost certainly a story about God and Israel. You see, the nation of Israel, as a nation, is going to find that God’s purpose is moving ahead in a new direction, as always intended; but if they have been faithless to that overall intention, as Jesus is constantly warning that they have been, then they cannot presume that they will be God’s “steward” for ever and ever.

So what are they to do? “You must figure out”, Jesus is saying, “how to make friends wherever you can — because you’re going to need them.”

You see, Jews weren’t supposed to charge interest at all, but many did, and the steward discovered a way of making friends while putting his master in a position where he couldn’t charge him for dishonesty without admitting that he himself had been engaging in illegal practices.

So when Jesus finishes with His parable, He turns to some very serious warnings — and we need to take these warnings very, very seriously. Jesus concludes saying: 10 “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own.”

Jesus is saying that we all better “Question your priorities. Question how you treat people poorer than you. And question how you are going to listen to these questions, and answer them truthfully?” So imagine that you take Jesus with you to your bank, and you both sit down in a private room with your manager, with Jesus sitting beside you. When you get the full bank statements from last year, you talk through them with Jesus. Are there points you’re tempted to gloss over, or bits you wish had been deleted in advance of Jesus seeing them? After all, Jesus is seeing everything you did with your money in the past year. He is looking at your statements.

So now you understand what Jesus was saying at the end about you being faithful — in everything! Today, take stock of what changes you need to make in your life, especially in the little things. Pray: “Lord Jesus, make me faithful in little things and great things, so that I may be faithful to Your gift to me also.”

Lord Jesus Christ, Son of the Living God,

have mercy on me a sinner.