everything is informed by everything else

not everything written in the bible actually happened.

sometimes we forget that.

sometimes we think that everything Jesus said was true.

we forget that Jesus was acknowledged as a rabbi,

and that rabbi means master teacher.

Jesus was such a good teacher- in particular, such a good storyteller- that sometimes we find ourselves reading the stories Jesus told and dissecting them as faithfully recounted historical events, not illustrations told by a teacher to drive home the central idea of a lesson. and because Jesus told so many stories, many of which having similar characters or symbols, we sometimes mistakenly default to some presuppositions about the symbols and characters in this story based on similar ones in that one.

in many of Jesus parables (described by my someone in my childhood as 'earthy stories with heavenly meaning') socioeconomic roles are fleshed out as context and example of a lesson about the kingdom of God. in stories about workers and masters, the 'master' is usually God and the workers are usually people who are seeking to live lives glorifying to God. the stories often push back against the social and religious mores of the culture and the day because the lessons themselves are timeless and are meant to have meaning and significance both within the culture Jesus was immersed in and without it.

however, there is one story that G. W. H. Lampe calls 'the most difficult of all parables' with 'no interpretation (being) wholly satisfactory.' it is the one about the shrewd manager.

but what do we do with this one? if it fits the template, then the master who commends the manager for justifying the means with the end is God and the manager is any charlatan evangelist who can lie and embezzle in good conscience because the good news of the gospel of Jesus Christ is being shared... and if it doesn't fit the template, then we have to find some way of figuring out what it means and why it is in the bible. this one is tough sledding- even illustrious, credentialed scholars like dr lampe confess.

maybe it would serve us to look at something easier first.

when we, as children, are learning to read and are given a sentence with an unfamiliar word in it, how do we discern its meaning? by context clues, right? in order to pull the meaning of a single unfamiliar word out of a sentence, we look at the words that surround it, gaining a picture of the broader idea first, and then look at the role of this term within that broader idea. context establishes meaning.

in order to ascertain the suitability of a house, we look at the surrounding community, recognizing that together all these houses make a neighbourhood, and that it is pointless to consider the house or determine its value in a vacuum.

speaking of houses, think of it this way: for us to jump into luke 16 without considering the story so far, in particular the direction of the larger talk that Jesus is delivering at the time (of which this particular parable is only one part about 2/3 of the way in) is like popping in scene 2 of episode 3 of disc 4 of season 5 of 'House' and trying to figure out what's going on. i mean, we'll pick up some basic plot, but are in danger of missing the significance of many things in the overall story arc. everything is informed by everything else.

so when we look closely at this story told by Christ, taking into consideration the larger message of God as communicated through the life, death and resurrection of Christ, not simply his teachings, what meaning does it hold for us now?

(to be continued)