At some point this afternoon, Charlie Kirk will be laid to rest. I hope I am wrong, but given the preliminary line up of speakers including:

President Trump,

Vice President Vance,

White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles,

Secretary of State Marco Rubio,

Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.,

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth,

Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard,

Donald Trump Jr.,

Tucker Carlson,

and Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller

- something tells me that his funeral is going to feel more like a political rally than a somber memorial for one whose life was taken far too soon.

I know Kirk was a political figure with close ties to the White House. And it was as shocking as it was deplorable that he was assassinated in an act of political violence while engaging in open dialogue on a college campus. I don’t want to diminish any of that and I think we should all grieve it. Violence begets violence and political violence is not only anathema to the work of democracy, it endangers us all. It must be decried, disavowed, and neutralized at every turn.

But I don’t anticipate that we’re going to see that kind of restraint and wisdom on display this afternoon. I fear that Charlie Kirk’s funeral will be used to deepen the divide that led to this violence rather than heal it, weaponize our grief rather than assuage it, and inflame the overwhelming amount of tension that exists in our country right now, rather than calm it.

And if you are paying attention, than I know you are frightened too.

It is tempting to feel hopeless right now, like it doesn’t matter what we do… like we’ve officially reached the tipping point where things are so bad that they can only get worse.

It is easy to feel voiceless right now in a world where the truth is obscured by algorithms that silo us away from the fullness of reality into spaces where facts are clipped and curated to spark outrage, vindicate those we agree with, and reinforce our worst suspicions about people on the “other side.”

And it is easy to feel powerless right now, like we are caught up in a system that is rigged against us…because we are.

But that does not mean we are without recourse. And believe it or not, if you are sitting here this morning longing for things to change, longing for some way to break out of this cycle of violence and recrimination that is tearing our society apart, wishing to God that someone would stand up and say, “enough!” and then show us a better way, than this strange parable about a dishonest manager could not have come at a better time.

I know that on it’s surface, this appears to be another parable about money, and it is. We could read it straight up and talk today about the hold wealth has over our souls. But the beauty of Jesus’ parables is their depth and breadth when it comes to possible interpretations. And you may have noticed that Jesus has this funny way of mixing metaphors when it comes to economics and ethics. We can go either direction with this parable because he is always going multiple directions at once. He conflates money and morality all the time, and if you stop to think about it, so do we.

We speak of anger and division in the same breath.

We understand grief as loss.

What is vengeance but a form of pay back?

You can owe someone money as surely as you can owe them an apology.

You can inflate an ego or a stock, carry a debt of gratitude or call in an actual loan.

We speak of settling accounts and getting even, of forgiveness and reconciliation, whether we’re talking about running a business or running our lives.

Which is to say we are constantly calculating…in our heads, our hearts, our speech…calculating what we deserve and what we owe, what will put us ahead or leave us behind. Calculating what is just and what is prudent, what is fair and what is right.

Which brings me to the Parable of the Dishonest Manager, a man who cooked the books so badly, he burned himself in the process. A man who clearly wasn’t fair, right, just, or prudent, and yet Jesus says we can learn a thing or two from him anyway. But to understand him, we must first place him in context. So I’d like to give you all a little historical and economic back ground here at the outset, and then we’ll uncover the pearl of even deeper wisdom I believe this parable holds for us today.

Ok? Great. Well, the first thing you need to remember in order to understand this parable is that the people of Israel were laboring under Roman occupation when Jesus told this story. The Romans depended on the labor of poor farmers and fisherman in regions like the Galilee where Jesus lived to produce grain, oil, wine, wool, meat, and fish to feed and clothe the empire. And the Romans heavily taxed the movement of these goods and any profits the laborers made in order to run and protect the empire.

I know it’s hard to imagine a world where the tax burden falls heaviest on the working class in order to prop up a huge bureaucracy and military that is ostensibly there to protect you but can also be turned on you at any moment…but for the sake of the story, do your best.

For many laborers, however, the taxes eventually became so high that they couldn’t make ends meet, at which point wealthy people in the south began to make deals with these poor farmers. The rich agreed to pay the back taxes on the farms and handle all the tariffs required to get their products to market in exchange for the deed to their land. They then allowed the farmers to lease the land back as tenants until they could pay them back.

Unfortunately, as time passed an ever increasing portion of their income went to cover the interest on their debt as well as the rent which went up right along with the tariffs and taxes as the rich passed along those costs to the poor. This left less and less for a farmer to live on which in turn forced him to borrow even more money from the rich leading to immense income disparity. Again, so hard to imagine, but please try.

Within one or two generations a hard working family would find themselves more indentured than indebted, and finally, for all intents and purposes utterly enslaved, having run up a debt they could never repay no matter how long or hard they worked. It was a system that made the rich richer and the poor poorer until the divide between the two was as deep and wide as the fear, the anger, and the simmering resentment they held for each other.

It’s no surprise then that wealthy landowners, rather than show up to collect from their tenants directly, sent in middle men like the manager in today’s parable.  And just so we are clear, if you think the laborers resented the land owner, they probably hated his collection agent even more.

Unfortunately, for this particular landowner, his agent has been squandering the rich man’s property, so he has no choice but to step in. He let’s the manager know that he is coming up to inspect the books and this sends the manager into a panic. Realizing that his employer is about to fire him, he devises a very clever and entirely dishonest ploy to win his way into the hearts and homes of those he has been callously collaborating against.

He abruptly switches sides, does a complete end run around his employer, and doubles down on squandering the rich man’s wealth. Before the landowner arrives, he calls the farmers together, asks each one what he owes, and then tells them that all that their debts have been reduced from completely insurmountable to something that could possibly be repaid in a lifetime.

The people are thrilled. Finally their cries for justice have been heard. Finally someone has done something to shrink the divide between the haves and the have nots.

The landowner and his manger are now celebrated as the most generous and wonderful men in all the land. The all powerful villain they thought was out to exploit them is hailed as a hero when he arrives and his former lackey is their new best friend.

There’s just one problem; the landowner knows nothing about this. Imagine his surprise then, when he comes to town and all of his tenants are happy to see him.  They are greeting him with cheers and accolades, blessing and thanks. Now imagine his chagrin when he opens the account books and sees just what his manager has done.

Well, now the master is in a bind. He can either go outside and tell his adoring tenants that it has all been a grievous mistake and they are still in debt up to their eyeballs, or he can suck it up, take the loss, and accept their praise. 

The landowner wisely takes the high road and commends his manager publicly for acting so shrewdly. How he felt about him privately was another matter, and had I been that steward I wouldn’t have turned my back on the boss for a second (I’m indebted to Sarah Dylan Breuer for this reading).

But what’s really striking, is that Jesus commends him too. Not for being wise or honest. Not for being repentant or finally doing the right thing even if it was for selfish reasons, but for being shrewd.

“for the children of this age,” said Jesus,

“are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light.”

Jesus commends the manager for being shrewd and invites those of us with ears to hear to be shrewd as well. You see, Jesus is employing a rhetorical device in this parable - the old “how much more so” - argument (1).

He is saying, “look at this selfish, dishonest, incompetent guy who is caught in the middle between a powerful landowner and his powerless laborers, caught between the exploiter and the exploited, with no good options. If this guy could figure out a way to circumvent disaster and bring everyone together, how much more so should we as children of the light be able to do the same?

How much more so, indeed! Friends, now is the time to be shrewd! Forgive me if this is a stretch, but the rise of Christian nationalism, authoritarianism, and division got a huge boost in the of wake of Charlie Kirk’s death. That isn’t good for any of us on any side. So I think it is time to get creative like the manager. Now is the time to be faithful with what little power we have and use it in a way no one expects. Now is the time to squander what everyone else is hoarding in this moment…. not money, but grace.

I think most of us feel like we are caught in the middle right now. There is all this heated rhetoric being thrown around about people on the radical left and the radical right, but I still believe most Americans are somewhere in the middle, just like this manager.

Most of us, whether we lean right or left or shoot straight down the middle, just want to live and let live. Most of us are up to the task of going about our business peacefully in a pluralist society that values freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and freedom of religion. We are not out to get each other or force our views on each other and we grieve when we see anyone come to harm, no matter what side they are on.

But we are all being manipulated right now.

Just like that landowner was exploiting his tenants economically, the people of this country are being exploited emotionally for both profit and power. Outrage sells and outrage consolidates people on one side or the other, which means that those who are profiting and consolidating power have every reason to stoke our anger rather than try to calm us down.

Think about the land owner for a moment. He had no reason to change the corrupt system he was part of in spite of all the harm it was doing, because he was benefitting from it, and the longer it went on the more benefit he received. And the poor who were being exploited by that system had no recourse but to suffer.

But you know who had more power than he realized? The guy in the middle! It was the manager who actually had the power to break the cycle of exploitation and division by doing the last thing anyone expected.

And you know what he did?

He called in the people who hated him.

He looked them in the eye and he listened to their story of woe.

And then he took out his pen and rewrote the narrative.

How much do you owe? Make it half that, he said.

The man in the middle took it upon himself to forgive debts that weren’t his to forgive; debts he had no business forgiving. He offered grace no one had asked for or imagined they deserved. He set to work reconciling the accounts between the landowner and his tenants without even asking for permission and in so doing reconciled them in the process.

Friends, the funeral this afternoon could and should be used as a call for repentance and reconciliation, but I don’t think our current leadership has any interest in healing the rift between left and right in this country. I fear they will use it as one more opportunity to exploit people’s fear and grief in a naked attempt to consolidate power and control. And given the power of social media and the narratives everyone is caught up in, it looks like more and more people are going to suffer as a result.

But we are not without recourse. If the dishonest manager could figure out a way to interrupt a system based on exploitation and division by doing the last thing anyone expected, how much more so can we do an end run around the hate coming from on high and simmering down below and reach out to one another with love right here in the middle?

I think it’s time to get off the internet and touch grass. It’s time to call in the people who hate us or at least who we’ve come to believe hate us. Time to look each other in the eye and listen. Time to rewrite the narrative so we can be welcome in each other’s homes again. Time to admit how much we owe. Time to account for where we have caused harm. Time to forgive. Time to show grace. Time to love.

When faced with the gratitude of his tenants, the landowner stood down. He was too shocked by the goodwill his manager had generated to do otherwise. We cannot control what the leaders of our current administration will say this afternoon, but we can control how we react.

Let’s be shrewd. Let’s not do what they expect.

They don’t have the power to divide us further if we refuse to comply.

They don’t have the power to make us hate each other unless we give it to them.

We have the power, right here in the middle, to respond in a different way.

Now is the time to squander goodness and grace for the sake of us all. Amen.

Footnote 1. The "how much more so" device in a parable, also known as kal vahomer (Hebrew for "light and heavy") or argumentum a fortiori (Latin for "argument from the stronger reason"), is a form of logical reasoning. It makes a point by comparing a less significant situation to a more significant one, arguing that if something is true in the lesser case, it is "how much more so" true in the greater case.