With this lens, let’s begin with the context that the manager in this story would have found himself in. Losing his position as a steward and becoming a day laborer means he had fallen from the class of valued a into the ranks of the expendable poor. With only his physical strength to offer, the former steward would stand little chance against seasoned peasants or the surplus sons of village craftsmen who had long been part of the laboring class. Used to regular meals, he will also struggle with an inconsistent food supply and bouts of hunger. As his strength fades, he will eventually be reduced to begging and, like countless others, die from malnutrition and illness. His dismissal from his job as a steward isn’t a result of refusing honest work; it’s effectively a death sentence (see William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed, p. 347).
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This is Part 2 of The Parable of the Dishonest Manager
(Read this series from its beginning here.)
So the manager comes up with a creative solution:
“The rich man expects that the steward will take his honest graft, but he does not care as long as the steward does his job, produces the expected profits, and keeps the peasants under control. The steward always has to balance his greed against its consequences. He will do well, but he cannot become conspicuous in his consumption. One possible meaning of the verb diaskorpizōn, translated as “wasting,” is “scattering,” or “dispersing”. . .Thus the steward may have indulged in forms of status display and conspicuous consumption inappropriate to his social standing. If he had been accumulating too much and spending it in ways that caused a stir, he could have set himself up for his fall. To engage in this behavior is to dishonor his patron by taking advantage of his position and competing with the master rather than acknowledging his own subservient and dependent position.” (William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed, p. 361)
So what the manager decides to do is adjust the debts of those indebted to his patron and subtractwhatever amount was accounted for his own graft, the manager’s profit. The manager is using what Herzog refers to as the weapons of the weak: Peasant resistance and revolt could also take everyday forms such as dissimulation, false compliance, looting, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage and more. Because one class is virtually powerless, they have to find ways of resisting their oppressors that don’t subject them to the dangers of open revolt. This is what we see happening in our reading this week: The manager is exposing the system and betraying the graft built into the system.
“He reduces the contracts held by the debtors. Assuming a Jewish setting, the reductions represent the difference between the ostensible value of the contract and the hidden interest contained in it. The hidden interest on oil is 50 percent because oil is a commodity susceptible to adulteration and therefore less secure. The interest rate on wheat is lower (20 percent) because the commodity is easier to assess.” (William R. Herzog II, Parables as Subversive Speech: Jesus as Pedagogue of the Oppressed, p. 366)
The indebted merchants, next, begin to talk among themselves. We’ll pick up there in Part 3.
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