I preached this message at Mount View Presbyterian Church in Omaha, NE, on September 21, 2025. It was 11 days after Charlie Kirk was assassinated, so I opened my message with a bit of testimony about that and my own experience ministering on a college campus.
Good morning! The Lord be with you.
Before I get into my message this morning, I want to say a few words about Charlie Kirk, his ministry, and how the events of September 10 impacted me. My second ministry position was a call to be the campus minister at Northern Illinois University in DeKalb, just west of the Chicago suburbs back in the early 1990s. We would set up a table weekly in the student center to pass out literature and just be available to talk to students and other campus personnel who would walk by. Many student groups would do this, not just the religious groups.
The campus was home to the largest Gay-Lesbian Student Union (as it was known at the time) as well. They would have weekly (or so it seemed) articles in the student newspaper that were often hostile toward certain aspects of Christianity. Some of these articles seemed to focus on the widely publicized actions of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, a group that would often show up at funerals of gay people or military people holding signs that promoted violence towards those populations. You may remember that, so I won’t repeat the verbiage on the signs here.
As a pastor, I felt it was important that someone take the opportunity to promote a more positive view of Christianity to the group on campus, one that focused on the love of Christ and a respect for human dignity, regardless of what my personal feeling on the subject were. I walked across the street from our campus house to the student center where that group had their office (church groups were forbidden from having offices there) and said, “Hey, I want to talk. Not all Christians are the way you portray them.” That led to me getting invited to several panel discussions in which I was able to present a conservative Christian view focused on the love of Jesus and his acceptance of people where they’re at. I received some positive feedback from those encounters and felt like I had done a little bit, at least, to tone down the rhetoric.
When Charlie Kirk came on the scene 13 years ago, I realized he was doing nearly the same thing I had been doing, except he had a more charismatic approach that appealed to the masses. I was excited that such a ministry had risen up and had great success in sharing the gospel on college campuses everywhere. Assassinating Charlie Kirk is meant to strike fear in the hearts of Christians everywhere, especially those who proclaim the gospel in the public space. But most Christians I know and have interacted with will say that their faith in God overcomes whatever fear they may be feeling right now. I’m in that camp as well.
One of my favorite verses is Proverbs 3:25–26:
25 Have no fear of sudden disaster
or of the ruin that overtakes the wicked,
26 for the Lord will be at your side
and will keep your foot from being snared.[1]
I want to assure you that I am not afraid to continue proclaiming the gospel of Christ to you to the best of my ability. While it may be unlikely anyone would target me or the church here, we can’t assume it wouldn’t ever happen either. I would encourage you to be careful and stay watchful. I believe God is and has been doing something mighty to bring revival to our nation, so when God sends revival opportunities our way, let’s not hesitate to take advantage of those.
Thank you for bearing with me while I shared my heart there. If any of you need to talk through your feelings about these recent events, I want to make myself available. Now let’s dive into this morning’s gospel passage.
Our passage may seem rather odd to our sensibilities when we look at how the merchant’s account manager discounted some bills to earn some favors on his way out the door. However, we have some obvious clues from the biblical context and some not so obvious clues from the cultural context of the story that can help us make sense of what’s going on here.
First, the biblical context: This story immediately follows the Parable of the Lost (or Prodigal) Son. Even though Luke 15 has three parables about “lost” items or people, there is a verbal connection to what we might call the “lost” accounts receivable manager. The word for “squandered” (διασκορπίζω diaskorpizō[2]) used to describe the actions of the Prodigal Son is used to describe the manager’s action (“wasting” in the NIV) in chapter 16. But the parable of the shrewd manager ends quite differently. We know that the manager was accused of “squandering” the owner’s possessions, but Luke doesn’t tell us the specifics. In other words, at first glance, it would seem Jesus (or Luke) is comparing the Prodigal Son to the shrewd manager.
In addition to this biblical context, scholars have described some of the cultural context around being a merchant.[3] First, the cultural expectation of any merchant was that they not rise above or try to escape their existing social or “in-group” status. That meant dealing honestly and fairly with their customer and not engaging in price gouging on sales or usury on credit transactions. However, it was almost always a seller’s market, so many merchants were looked upon about the same way the Jews looked upon tax collectors. One nonbiblical writer of the biblical era put it this way: “A merchant can hardly keep from wrongdoing, nor is a tradesman innocent of sin.”[4] The temptation for the merchant (and really for any entrepreneur) was to make as much as they could without pricing their customers out of the market.
When we come to the discounts the manager offered to the merchant’s clients, then, one of two things (or perhaps both) may be happening. The first possibility is the manager has marked up the sale/trade price so he can take his own cut for his pay (something the merchant would not have quibbled about) when he collects on the debt, much like the tax collectors did when collecting taxes. But since he knows he’s on his way out, he discounts his cut of the take and takes the hit, knowing that he’ll score points with (and perhaps get hired by) one of the clients receiving the discount.
The second thing that happens here, whether it is the manager’s markup or a portion of the merchant’s own markup or profit, is that this discount makes the merchant look good in the eyes of the clients and the people. He looks like he’s NOT one of those greedy merchants that likes a high markup. In other words, he’s viewed as trying to maintain his social status and not using greed to get ahead. This is likely why Jesus says the manager is behaving shrewdly. He essentially puts the merchant in the position of making him look like the greedy one if he punishes the account manager further for his little trick or reneges on the discount.
We have one more bit of biblical context to bring in here to wrap this up. We didn’t read the verses immediately following the passage printed in the bulletin, but it may represent the ultimate motive for Jesus telling all of the “lost” parables from Luke 15 and the Parable of the Shrewd Manager in chapter 16:
“The Pharisees, who loved money, heard all this [that is, the four parables from chapters 15 and 16] and were sneering at Jesus. 15 He said to them, ‘You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts. What people value highly is detestable in God’s sight.’”[5]
In other words, these two closing verses to the section suggest that the Pharisees themselves, just like the prodigal son and just like the shrewd manager, were “squandering” their responsibility to proclaim God’s truth and were only interested in getting ahead socially and financially. They were hypocrites, and they were upset with Jesus about calling out their hypocrisy.
The contrast between the Parable of the Lost Son and the Parable of the Shrewd Manager should be highlighted here, especially in light of Jesus’s statement in vs. 9 about “us[ing] worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.”[6] The Prodigal partied his inheritance away; nothing he did with the inheritance helped him build a network of potential success. Not only was the Prodigal a “lost” son, but a foolish son as well, especially when contrasted against the Shrewd Manager. The Shrewd Manager knew he had one last shot to make at least one good connection for a possible job after he finished settling accounts for his soon-to-be ex-boss. He didn’t burn any bridges. He made every discount count. He used money to serve him; he wasn’t serving the money.
You and I may not be wealthy in the eyes of the world. But the ultimate question that comes from the conclusion of our passage this morning is, “How are we using what we have, whether it’s material things or talents, to make a difference for Christ? To “win friends and influence people” as the Dale Carnegie’s training puts it? God calls us to serve him first and foremost regardless of our wealth. Blessings to you as you go forth from here this morning to carry his hope to a lost world. Amen.
Scott Stocking
My views are my own unless otherwise cited.
[1] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[2] Swanson, James. 1997. In Dictionary of Biblical Languages with Semantic Domains: Greek (New Testament), electronic ed. Oak Harbor: Logos Research Systems, Inc.
[3] See, for example Malina, Bruce J. The New Testament World: Insights from Cultural Anthropology. Revised Edition. Louisville, KY: Westminster/John Knox Press, 1993, esp. pp. 99–107. See also by the same author/publisher Windows on the World of Jesus: Time Travel to Ancient Judea, pp. 103–111.
[4] Sirach 26:29. The Holy Bible: New Revised Standard Version. 1989. Nashville: Thomas Nelson Publishers.
[5] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
[6] The New International Version. 2011. Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan.
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