Eversley, 1866. NINTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY.
Luke xvi. 8. "And the Lord commended the unjust steward, because he had
done wisely."
None of our Lord's parables has been as difficult to explain as this one.
Learned and pious men have confessed freely, in all ages, that there is
much in the parable which they cannot understand; and I am bound to
confess the same. The puzzle is, plainly, why our Lord should SEEM to
bid us to copy the conduct of a bad man and a cheat. For this is the
usual interpretation. The steward has been cheating his master already.
When he is found out and about to be dismissed, he cheats his master
still further, by telling his debtors to cheat, and so wins favour with
them.
But does our Lord bid us copy a cheat? I cannot believe that; and the
text I should have said ought to give us a very different notion. We
read that the lord--that is, the steward's master--commended the unjust
steward. What? Commended him for cheating him a second time, and
teaching his debtors to cheat him? He must have been a man of a strange
character--very unlike any man whom we know, or, at all events, any man
whom we should wish to know--to have done that. But it is said--he
commended him for having acted wisely. Now that word "wisely" may merely
mean prudently, sensibly, and with common sense. But if the master
thought that to cheat, or to teach others to cheat, was acting either
wisely or prudently, then he was a very foolish and short-sighted man,
and altogether mistaken. For be sure and certain, and settle it in your
minds, that neither falsehood or dishonesty is ever either wise or
prudent, but short-sighted, foolish, certain to punish itself. Such
teaching is totally contrary to our Lord's own teaching. Agree with
thine adversary quickly, He says, while thou art in the way with him,
lest he deliver thee to the Judge. If thou hast done wrong, right it
again as soon as possible; for your sin will surely find you out, and
avenge itself. Give the devil his due, says the good old proverb. Pay
him at once and be done with him: but never think to escape out of his
clutches, as too many wretched and foolish sinners do, by running up a
fresh score with him, and trying to hide old sins by new ones. Be sure
that if the steward cheated his master a second time, the master was
foolish and mistaken, and as it were a partner in the steward's sin by
commending him. But if so; why does our Lord mention it? What had our
Lord to do, what have we to do, with the opinion of so foolish a man?
It seems to me that the only reason for our Lord's using the words of the
text, must be, that the master was right, not wrong, in commending the
steward. But it seems to me, also, that the master could be right only,
if the steward was right also--if the steward had done the right and just
thing at last, and, instead of cheating his master a second time, had
done his best to make restitution for his own sins.
But how could that be? We know nothing of what these debtors were. All
we know is that one believed that he owed the Lord a hundred measures of
oil; and another believed that he owed him a hundred measures of wheat;
and that the steward told one to put down in his bill eighty, and the
other fifty. Now suppose that the steward had been cheating and
oppressing these men, as was common enough in those days with stewards,
and has been common enough since; suppose that he had been charging them
more than they really owed, and, it may be, putting the surplus into his
own pocket, and so wasting his master's goods--that the one really owed
only eighty measures of oil, and the other really owed only fifty of
wheat; what could be more simple, or more truly wise either, when he was
found out, than to do this--to go round to the debtors and confess: I
have been overcharging you; you do not owe what I have demanded of you;
take your bill and write four-score, for that is what you really owe?
This is but a guess on my part. But all other explanations are only
guesses likewise, because we do not know how business was transacted in
those days and in that country. We do not know whether these debtors
were tenants, paying rent in kind, or traders to whom goods had been
advanced, or what they were. We do not know whether the steward was
agent of the estate, or house steward, or what he was. But this we do
know--that to mend one act of villainy by committing a fresh one, is not
wisdom, but foolishness; and we may be sure that our Lord would never
have held up the unjust steward as an example to us, or quoted his
master's opinion of him, if all he did was to commit fraud on fraud, and
make bad worse, thereby risking his own more utter ruin. And this view
of the parable surely agrees with our Lord's own lesson, which He draws
from it. "And I say unto you, Make to yourselves friends of the mammon
of righteousness." But what does that mean? Wise men have been puzzled
by that text as much as by the parable; but surely our Lord Himself
explains it in the verses which follow: "He that is faithful in that
which is least, is faithful also in much; and he that is unjust in that
which is least, is unjust also in much." He that is FAITHFUL. The
unjust steward was commended for acting wisely. Now, it seems the way to
act wisely is to act faithfully--that is honestly. Our Lord bids us copy
the unjust steward, and make ourselves friends of the mammon of
unrighteousness. Now, it seems, He tells us that the way to make friends
of men by money transactions is to deal faithfully and honestly by them.
This then was perhaps why the Lord commended the unjust steward, because
he had been converted in time, and seen his true interest; and for once
at least in his life become just. He had found out that after all,
honesty is the best policy; as God grant all of us may find out if any of
us have not found it out already. Honesty is the best policy.
Faithfulness, as our Lord calls it, is the true wisdom. And in that, as
our Lord says, the children of this world are wiser in their generation
than the children of light. The children of this world, the plain
worldly men of business, find that to conduct their business they must be
faithful, diligent, punctual, accurate, cautious, business-like. They
must have practical common sense, which is itself a kind of honesty.
They must be men of their word, just and true in their dealings, or
sooner or later, they will fail. Their schemes, their money, their
credit, their character, will fail them, and they will be overwhelmed by
ruin.
And that is just what too often the children of light forget. The
children of light have a higher light, a deeper teaching from God, than
the children of the world. They have a great insight into what ought to
be; they see that mankind might be far wiser, happier, better, holier
than they are; they have noble and lofty hopes for the future; they
desire the welfare and the holiness of mankind. But they are too apt to
want practical common sense. And so they are laughed at (and deservedly)
as dreamers, as fanatics, as foolish unpractical people, who are wasting
their talents on impossible fancies. Often while their minds are full of
really useful and noble schemes, they neglect their business, their
families, their common duties, till they cause misery to those around
them, and shame to themselves. Often, too, they are tempted to be
actually dishonest, to fancy that the means sanctify the end; that it is
lawful to do evil that good may come; and so, in order to carry out some
fine scheme of theirs, to say false things, or do mean or cruel things,
not for their own interest, but, as they fancy, for the cause of God: as
if God, and God's cause, could ever be helped by the devil and his works.
And so they cast a scandal on religion, and give the enemies of the Lord
reason to blaspheme. So it was, it seems, in our Lord's time--so it has
been too often since. The children of light--those who ought to be of
most use to their own generation--are sometimes of least use to it,
through their own weaknesses and follies. They will not remember that he
that is not faithful in that which is least, in the every-day concerns of
life, is not likely to be faithful in that which is greatest; that if
they will not be faithful in the unrighteous mammon--that is, if they
cannot resist the temptations to meanness and unfairness which come with
all money transactions, God will not commit to them the true riches--the
power of making their fellow creatures wiser, happier, better. If they
will not be faithful in that which is another man's--in plain English, if
they will not pay their debts honestly, who will give them that which is
their own--the inspiration of God's indwelling Spirit? Would to God all
high religious professors would recollect that, and be just and honest,
before they pretend to higher graces and counsels of perfection.
This lesson, then, I think our Lord means to teach us. I do not say it
is the only lesson in the parable; God forbid. But I think that our
Lord's own words show us that this IS one lesson. That, however pious we
are, however enlightened we are, however useful we wish to be; in one
word, however much we are, or fancy ourselves to be, children of light,
our first duty as Christian men is the duty which lies nearest us--that
of which it is written: "If a man know not how to rule his own house,
how shall he take care of the Church of God?" And again, "If any provide
not for his own and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied
the faith, and is worse than an infidel." Our first duty, I say, as
Christian men, is to be just and honest in money matters and every-day
business; and over and above that, to be generous and liberal therein.
Not merely to pay--which the very publicans in our Lord's time did--but
to give, generously, liberally; lending, if we can afford it, as our Lord
bids us, hoping for nothing again; and remembering that he who giveth to
the poor lendeth to the Lord, and whatsoever he layeth out, it shall be
repaid him again.
Yes, my friends, we must all needs take our Lord's advice--make to
yourselves friends of the mammon of unrighteousness, that when ye fail,
they may receive you into everlasting habitations. WHEN YE FAIL--
literally, when you are eclipsed, as the sun is eclipsed. That must
happen to all of us, to the best, the wisest, the most famous. Each must
be eclipsed, and passed in the race of life, and forgotten for some
younger man. Each in turn must fail. One may fail in money--the mammon
for which he toiled may take to itself wings and fly away; or he may fail
in his plans, noble plans, and useful though they seemed; and he may
find, as he grows old, that the world has not gone HIS way, but quite
another one; or he may fail in health, and be cut down and crippled, and
laid by in the midst of his work. And even if he escapes all these
disasters, he must needs fail at last, by mere old age, when the days
come "when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them;" when the sun and
the light are darkened, and the clouds return after the rain, when the
strong men bow themselves, and those who look out of the windows are
dark; and he shall rise up at the voice of a bird, and fears shall be in
the way, and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail:
because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the
streets. Think for yourselves. What would you wish your end to be--
lonely, unhappy, without the love, the respect, the care of your fellow-
men; or surrounded by friends who comfort your failing body and soul on
earth, and receive you at last into everlasting habitations?
Make friends, make friends against that day, whether or not you make them
out of the mammon of unrighteousness. If you have been unrighteous,
bring friends back to you, as the steward did, by being just and fair, by
confessing your faults freely, by doing your best to atone for them. And
if you have no share in the mammon of unrighteousness, still make
friends. Make them by truth and justice, make them by generosity and
usefulness. To ease every burden, and let the oppressed go free, to feed
the hungry, clothe the naked, and what the very poorest can do--comfort
the mourner; to nurse the sick, to visit the fatherless and widows in
their affliction, and so keep ourselves unspotted from the selfishness of
the world--This is that true Religion, acceptable in the sight of God the
Father--and happy he who has so served God. Happy for him, when he
begins to fail, to see round him attached hearts, and grateful faces,
hands ready to tend him, as he has tended others. And happier still to
remember that on the other side of the dark river of death are other
grateful faces, other loving hearts, ready to welcome him into
everlasting habitations--and among them, and above them all, one whose
form is as the Son of Man, full of all humanity Himself, and loving and
rewarding all humanity in His creatures, saying, "Inasmuch as ye did it
to one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto Me."