Destituent Power in the Parable of the Dishonest Manager

by: Arend Lee Jessurun

I’d always found Jesus’ Parable of the Dishonest Manager perplexing. Most commentaries I’ve come across do a heavy deal of apologetics and explaining-away in order to make sense of why Jesus invented a Robin Hood–esque protagonist praised for cheating his old boss. It’s not a story that neatly accords with the evangelical theology I’ve inherited.

In the summer after my sophomore year of college, I participated in a six-week urban ministry internship organized by an evangelical para-church college ministry. My peers and I were assigned to work at various faith-based non-profits in Los Angeles. Each week we had a Bible study on a passage which demonstrated God’s preferential option for the poor. One week, my teammates and I huddled in the pantry of a neighborhood community center in Pasadena to study this parable. The story goes:

​There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ 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. I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 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.’ 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. (Luke 16:1-8, NRSV)

My peers and I pressed questions about why Jesus would make an exemplar out of this dishonest manager, and our team leader struggled to provide us a clear moral of the story. Jesus goes on to teach:

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. 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. If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? (Luke 16:9-14, NRSV)

I never got a satisfactory understanding out of that Bible study, only a frustrated sense that there were deeper truths yet unknown to me.

Years later, I was having a conversation with my sponsor in a recovery program. I told them how I had realized I had this problem with letting go of money, for fear that I might need that money later in an emergency. They said to me, “Well, you can go the route of capitalism and hoarding wealth, or you can go the route of making interdependent friendships and trusting that those people will help you if you’re ever in dire need.” And then it clicked. This parable didn’t make sense in those days because I was reading it through the lens of capitalism and neoliberalism, and this parable is illegible through that lens.

Many commentators take this parable to mean that Jesus is simply demonstrating that “children of this age” know how to get a return on their investment; he’s not endorsing eat-the-rich tactics. (This is what I like to call, with my tongue in my cheek, libertarian theology rather than liberation theology.) But Jesus could have just as easily told a story about a goody-two-shoes who rendered gifts and favors for a worldly return.
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Some commentators, in their cognitive dissonance, take a different approach and jump to defend the manager’s integrity before his former master, assuming the manager merely gave up his share of the income when giving debtors a discount. They say Jesus would not endorse such mutiny that steals from our masters. This should come as no surprise, since Christendom has long given itself over to rich and powerful masters, becoming a constituent of the State.

In the U.S., Christianity is enmeshed with neoliberalism. At its best, neoliberalism may have a value for social justice, but neoliberalism’s value for law-and-order and private property makes it difficult to reconcile those values with Jesus’ values in this passage. All this enmeshment happens despite our constitutional separation of Church and State, for constituted law cannot prevent this. In the words of St. Paul, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” (2 Corinthians 3:5, NRSV) Ammon Hennacy, Catholic Worker and Christian anarchist, put it this way, “Oh judge! Your damn laws! The good people don’t need them, and the bad people don’t obey them.”

To understand this parable’s message beyond a simple call to charitable giving, we must, like the dishonest manager, become destitute. We must let go of our constituent power and betray that which affords us privilege.

The manager, upon being fired from his position, at first considers whether to look for more work or become a beggar. But there’s yet another option, which he discovers by opting out of the dualistic thought-patterns of constituency. If he were to choose either of the two paths offered him, he would become a now under-represented constituent, a laborer or beggar. But in becoming destitute, he discovers the freedom to become a destituent.

Now that he is no longer giving his power over to a master, he uses what remains of his privilege to pardon the debts of his former employer’s clients. He understands that money is a social construct, propped up by constituent belief in it, and he no longer puts such undue faith in its value. Instead, he now enters a new social contract, a new economy, that of mutual aid. He trusts in this new economy to sustain him, saying, “when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.”

Some detractors may still say the manager’s dishonesty is morally reprehensible, that he was unfaithful another’s belongings. To them I say, it may be tempting at first to think that “what belongs to another” is a reference to the master’s inventory, but if we say so and if we say the manager was unfaithful with money, that would not serve Jesus’ point of being faithful with money to procure a lasting reward. True to form, Jesus is presenting a teaching that reveals something about the interpreter if they will reflect upon themself.

A deeper consideration reveals to the student of the passage that all things belong to God, and therefore, these belongings are common to all, for Jesus teaches in the previous chapter, “You are always with me, and all that is mine is yours.” (Luke 15:31, NSRV) We are merely stewards of these things, and soon they are passed on to another person, as St. Asterius of Amasea teaches in his sermon on this parable.1 “And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another,” that is, being free with what God freely gives to everyone, “who will give you what is your own?” or perhaps, how can you hope to get by on your own?

“Blessed are you who are poor,” Jesus says, “for yours is the kingdom of God,” (Luke 6:20, NRSV) not a kingdom of powers reigning over constituents, but of destituents and their collective power in an equitable society wherein the only higher power is God.

Notes:

1. ​ Asterius of Amasea: Sermons (1904) pp. 45-71. Sermon 2: The Unjust Steward

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Arend Lee Jessurun

Arend Lee Jessurun (AIR•end lee JESS•ur•un) is a nonbinary singer-songwriter and music producer/engineer from Los Angeles, CA. For more, follow Arend on Instagram @arendleejessurun, on Twitter @arendjessurun, or visit www.arendleejessurun.com.