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If you’ve been a voyeur to American politics the past decade, you will have no doubt heard the accusation of grifting blaring out from both sides of the political spectrum towards each other. Grifting is basically gaining people’s trust by dishonest means in order to get money or property from them. There’s a bit of a diminutive insult in calling someone a grifter. For example, Conrad Black was convicted of fraud for embezzling money from a company he was working for. Though what he did would fit the definition of grifting, he should rather be called an “embezzler” than a grifter. What he did was big-time and white collar. Grifting, on the other hand, is something usually small change done by someone who’s sleazy. It’s like rolling into town and pretending to be a world class pie chef and going to the PTA and after convincing them you will make world class pies for a fundraiser but you need cash up front for the ingredients and then absconding with that cash.
Grifting is apparently commonplace among the rich and famous. Celebrities do it quite often when they use their identity as a celebrity, their “brand”, to gain people’s trust to do things like run for public office when they know nothing about how the government works or even what it is to be a public servant. They do it just to further their “brand”. Or, like the actress G. P. back in the “90’s when she used her celebrity identity to assume the role of a health and wellness influencer while having no credentials in nutrition or mental health. She started by selling juice blends for the use of cleansing the body not orally but from the bottom up. She claimed particular blends could help particular health conditions and emotional states when administered that way. She gives relationship advice too. On the political stage, we’ve seen people go to a foreign country and use your identity as the son or sons of an American president to get business deals. But here at home we should be really concerned when celebrities use their “pretend identity” as a celebrity to get elected to public office and then use that political and economic power to crash the stock market hoping that investors would instead buy their brand of Bitcoin. Just saying.
Looking here Jesus’ Parable of the Shrewd Manager. I would like to suggest that there is some grifting going on here but surprisingly, it’s not the shrewd manager who is doing it. He’s an embezzler like Conrad Black and a skilled one; quite wily. He’s a cut above a simple grifter. I think the Grifters here aren’t even in the Parable but are rather the people the character of the shrewd manager represents. It’s the Pharisees and Scribes from a chapter back who found it completely distasteful that Jesus kept company and even ate with tax collectors and “sinners”. They were hypocrites like actors in the Greek theatre. They were very good at putting on a mask and playing the role of devout religious authorities. They knew the Scriptures, the law of Moses, the traditions, the traditional and authoritative teachings of the Rabbi’s going back to the 400’s BC. There in the midst of Roman domination, they seemed to be keeping the faith by being as un-Roman as possible which they did by very publicly keeping the dress and dietary codes of the Law of Moses.
These Pharisees (the Conservatives) along with two other groups, the Sadducees (the Liberals) and the Herodians (the royal Billionaires) were very politically savvy when it came to placating the Romans (a faux-democracy led by an Authoritarian). If you were a devoted member of one of these Jewish sects (Parties), you would grow wealthy and powerful under Roman rule. The Romans let you thrive as long as you kept rebellion against them at bay and gave them a cut on whatever grift it was you had going. Rome by and large sent their most inept civil servants to govern in Judea and they were largely absent. Rome held power over Judea primarily by military occupation and tax collectors who were Jews themselves but were seen as traitors. The Roman military in turn kept order through bullying and extortion. They weren’t known for mulching the public flowerbeds of Jerusalem or anywhere else.
Back to the Pharisees, their reason for being legalistic was that they were expecting God at any moment to send the Messiah to deliver them from Roman occupation and to establish the Kingdom of God once and for all forever and ever amen. They believed that in the Kingdom of God the Law or Moses would be kept without exception. If a Jew wants to be in God’s Kingdom when the Messiah comes, then they must live as faithful to the Law of Moses as possible in the present. They also believed the Messiah’s coming could possibly be hastened if more and more Jews were keeping the Law so they were pretty good at making or rather coercing conversions.
The problem with the Pharisees was that they weren’t known for mercy. They were actors, hypocrites (remember that sermon). They were known for policing Law-observance and placing outrageous fines on those they caught violating them. They didn’t really care about the real physical needs of widows and orphans, or refugees, or the poor in general. They knew how to create loopholes in the Law where the Law required compassion and generosity from them. They knew little about how to grant forgiveness to people who were weighed down in shame and guilt. They weren’t very good at loving God with all their mind, soul, heart, and strength and their neighbour as themselves. They were just good at keeping up appearances and penalizing those who didn’t.
In the Parable Jesus has the Landowner surprisingly commend the Manager for his shrewdness even though the manager had cheated him. It was because when the Manager reduced the debts held by the tenants, even though it was for selfish motives, he was showing mercy, attending to the real needs of the tenants. Like the Manager, the Pharisees were using their religious authority to grow wealthy by taxing the sins of others and in turn not using that wealth to help the poor among them. They didn’t practice mercy. Do you remember the story of the widow who came to the Temple and put her last two copper coins in the alms box? That was all she had. The Pharisees should have rather been looking out for her needs, but here she was not knowing where her next meal was coming from because she believed that you don’t come to Temple (church) empty-handed. Like TV preachers, J.O. for one, they had no qualms with getting very wealthy by grifting on the spiritual needs of even the poorest among them.
It was apparent that the god the Pharisees really served was one called Mammon or what we would call Wealth. Jesus warned his disciples that they cannot serve both God and wealth for they will inevitably love and be devoted to one over the other and their primary affection will likely be for mammon because that’s the way people are. If we, Jesus’ disciples, choose to serve Wealth, we will likely get wealthy, but we’ll lose the Kingdom.
Jesus will later tell his disciples in Chapter 22 after they have shared the Lord’s Supper and had a surprising argument about who is the greatest among. Jesus said: “I confer upon you a Kingdom, just as my Father conferred one on me, so that you may eat and drink at my table and sit on thrones” (Lk 22:29). His disciples will be tempted by Satan with political power and with wealth. They must avoid those temptations and the King will be manifest in their midst.
The Kingdom of God is about community, people bearing one another up in the love of Jesus Christ. The end of chapter four of the Book of Acts gives a staggering image of what this community of the Kingdom of God looks like: “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. With great power the apostles continued to testify to the resurrection of the Lord Jesus, and much grace was upon them all. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles' feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”
This passage from Acts describes beautifully what Jesus meant when he told his disciples to use their worldly wealth to make friends for themselves so that these friends may welcome them into the eternal dwellings. Sharing what wealth we have with others according to need is Jesus’ rule for the handling of wealth in his kingdom. This is what he was speaking of when he told his disciples “whoever is faithful with a little will be faithful with a lot”. After all, the wealth that we have really is not our own.
We, our very selves, belong to Jesus Christ. He has bought us with his own blood. We are his beloved slaves and everything we have is his own wealth which he has entrusted to us. If we are not faithful in sharing the worldly wealth that is at our disposal, how can we expect God to entrust us with the true riches of his kingdom which are the peace of Christ and joy in his Spirit, knowing of God’s love, and genuine Christian community. I may be stepping out on a limb and sawing behind me, but Jesus seems to indicate here that in the Kingdom of God there is a direct correlation between generously sharing wealth and truly receiving the riches and richness of the Kingdom of God in community.
To conclude, learning mercy by showing mercy is the first step into the kingdom. Those who know this basic lesson pertaining to mercy and who strive to live accordingly will learn that the love of wealth threatens our God-given community. If we are not faithful in our stewardship of the worldly wealth entrusted to us by sharing it according to need even to the point of exhausting it, (after all, Jesus gave his life) how can we expect the Triune God of grace to entrust us with the true wealth of the Kingdom of God, which is his very self embodied in Christian community? Amen.
