Disarming Mammon
don't be shrewd
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. 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. 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? No slave can serve two masters, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other or be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and wealth.” - Luke 16:1–13 (NRSVue)
Jesus tells stories.
Throughout the gospel accounts, we hear Jesus telling stories. Parables are what the church calls them. These parables (stories) are used to show us what the kingdom of God is really like.
See, the kingdom of God is such a radical shift from the empires of this world that we can’t just straight up comprehend its explanation. We need stories to give us glimpses of new ways to imagine culture and society, indeed the very way we live out being human.
These parables are often cryptic, leaving us to scratch our heads and debate their meaning for thousands of years. But the kingdom of God is mysterious to us because we can’t imagine such a new way of living.
In the story commonly called the parable of the dishonest manager, Jesus tells us about a rich man who had a manager of his possessions and money. This manager was abusing his position, probably gathering wealth for himself by siphoning off of the rich man’s financial resources.
Well, the rich man heard about this and demanded both an accounting of the resources under his manager and a termination of the manager as the caretaker of the rich man’s possessions.
The manager was fired, and worried about a job. What was he going to do? He couldn’t beg for alms (he was too proud for that), and he wasn’t fit to be a day laborer. He had grown accustomed to a certain lifestyle, luxuries, privilege. How was he now going to survive without all the rich man’s wealth at his disposal?
The (ex)manager comes up with a shrewd plan: he calls in each one of the rich man’s debtors and has them reduce their debt by changing the written agreement. This is a plan for the (ex)manager to earn some goodwill from these people once the rich man has the (ex)manager thrown out. He’s got a few favors banked, so he will have places to stay and food to eat.
When we read these parables, our immediate reaction is to try to figure out who we are in the story. We want to understand what the story means for us, so we give the characters assignments correlating to us and God.
So, who are we?
Are we the unjust manager?
Are we the rich man?
Are we the debtors?
We aren’t in this story.
This parable isn’t about us. It’s not about how we should be shrewd with opportunities and money. It’s not even about how we shouldn’t be like the unjust manager. This isn’t a story about us.
This is a story for us.
We may not find ourselves in the cast of characters, but this story was told to us by Jesus for a reason.
Jesus’ point in this parable is that this is the way the world uses Mammon, wealth, money. Mammon refers to the idea of wealth and money that rules society. So, Jesus paints us a picture of the methods and means that wealth is used.
First, there is a rich man. He has accumulated money and possessions and land for himself. He is rich.
Second, there is the manager. While he was set to manage the possessions and wealth of the rich man, he was using them as if they were his own. He abused his position for his own gain.
Then there are the debtors. They had to borrow from the wealth of the rich man and were probably paying back with interest what they couldn’t afford.
So the manager uses Mammon to secure for himself continued luxury, status, and privilege. He abuses wealth for his own gain.
This is how Mammon works.
We get comfortable with our luxuries, and seek not only to continue them, but to gather more and more. We abuse positions of power, shrewdly use Mammon for self-gain, and in doing so put people in need into crushing debts they cannot pay, whether that be directly or through chaining people to a cost of living that forces a low-paying job just to survive.
The truth of this story is that the manager probably added to the debts so he could keep extra for himself. The unjust manager was just that: unjust. He is not the exemplar of the story.
But Jesus seems to say that we are to be like the “children of this age” and learn to be shrewd with money, doesn’t he?
Look at Luke 16.8-9
“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. 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.”
This sure sounds like learning from the unjust managers of the world so that we can use Mammon wisely.
But Jesus ends the passage with a gut punch.
“You cannot serve God and wealth (Mammon).”
I mean, there it is. Plain as day. There’s no getting around it. You can’t be devoted to, in service to, enslaved to money and serve God.
So—the solution is so obvious—I’ll reach back into my evangelical days for the answer: it’s about the heart. It’s not about what wealth I have; it’s about my attachment to it. As long as I love God more and keep money in its proper perspective, I can retain that upward mobility and wealth accumulation.
I’m going to shoot straight with you.
No.
It’s not about keeping money in perspective compared to God. It’s not about giving and tithing to the church out of the first ten percent of your paycheck. This isn’t about balancing Mammon and God.
This story is about the kingdom of God and our need to radically reimagine life according to the values and practices of the kingdom.
You can’t be devoted to money and be devoted to God.
When Jesus says, “Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth,” he’s not suggesting we redeem money and use it to develop friends in the same tax bracket.
Jesus is telling us, the children of the light, that only through doing friendship with fellow humans can we dismantle the system of Mammon through wealth redistribution and mutual aid.
I’m going to geek out for a moment, but please stay with me.
The word for “make friends” in Greek could be translated “do friendship.” It carries the idea not of pure social relations, but of an active praxis of relationships. It’s being a friend in deed, not just word. It’s about doing things that good friends do. This isn’t buying friendships for the sake of evangelizing or networking and connecting with businesspeople. This is raw on the ground practice of caring for eachother.
It’s paying someone’s rent.
It’s covering medical bills.
It’s buying groceries.
It’s giving them money to pay for bills.
It’s taking them out to dinner and clothes shopping.
It’s giving them money because you have an excess.
Jesus is telling us that if we have money, it’s time to use it to dismantle the power structure of Mammon.
This isn’t faceless donation. This isn’t giving some spare money to the person asking on the street corner. This isn’t detached giving. This is knee-deep in the shit with people caring about them as if they were your own and committing to not accumulating wealth at their) or anyone’s) expense.
This is the vision of the kingdom of God. A world where no one needs, where everyone has, and no one has too much. It’s a vision of a world where we are free of Mammon because we love each other more than we love our own security or ego. This is the world as we know it turned upside down.
So, what of Jesus’ words about being faithful with a little means you can be entrusted with more? Isn’t that suggesting that if we are wise with our money and keep God about it in our hearts that we will get more?
Again, no.
Jesus isn’t talking about being faithful with money. Jesus is saying if you have a little wealth and you remain faithful to God’s vision of economy, if you remain faithful to being devoted to God, if you remain faithful to Christ and love, then if you receive more money, you are going to stay just as faithful and redistribute that wealth through mutual aid and resources just like you did with the little you had before.
It doesn’t mean managing money well. It means remaining loyal to God while letting go of Mammon.
The children of this age, the people who model their financial lives after the unjust manager and Mammon, are shrewd with their money. They make choices that get them ahead in class and on the upward mobility ladder. They gain more wealth. Their shrewdness pays off.
But we aren’t children of this age. We are children of the light. We aren’t supposed to be shrewd with our money. We are supposed to be extravagant because money doesn’t have a hold of us. It is not our master. We are not devoted to Mammon. Yes, money passes through our hands. Yes, we need to be able to live, but we don’t accumulate wealth at the expense of others. Money is not “ours” to possess—because then it will possess us. Money is a made-up tool used by society to ascribe value to objects and resources. If it ever becomes something more, something that ascribes worth to people, it has become our master.
We aren’t called to balance our money with our love of God. No, we are called to betray Mammon and dismantle it with the economy of God, an economy of mutual aid, shared life, and solidarity. We aren’t called to be shrewd. We are called to be rebellious.
This isn’t about feeling guilty about your home, your paycheck, or car, your food. This isn’t about what you have done with your wealth in the past. This is about loosening our grip on money, escaping the grip of Mammon, and becoming freedom workers in God’s economy. This is about community building and mutual care.
This is the practical side of being the bread and wine in the world. We are called to break for the world, and when we break, we break the chains of capitalism and Mammon that bind us all.
As we choose devotion to God, to love, we will watch Mammon wither into the nothing it always was, finding ourselves at last in the economy of God, where friendship is the only currency and no one is left out.
I am in the process of becoming a community chaplin with The Order of St. Hildegard. This program is designed to help form people into spiritual leaders that lead from the margins and serve the margins. It’s for the people who don’t quite fit with the traditional church because of trauma, disability, or identity. If you, as my community, would like to help me fulfill the financial obligation this chaplaincy program has, you can give at the link below. Thank you for the myriad ways you support me.