My dear brother:
When people preach religion, precepts for living together, what you should do or what you should leave, naturally they
are confronted in many occasions with practical questions on “real life.” This also happened in the case of Jesus.
One day, when in the course of a sermon the topic of righteousness was addressed, the Master told a parable, which
today constitutes a big problem for people. This parable is considered the most difficult to understand or interpret in the
New Testament, contained in chapter 16 of the Gospel according to Luke.
Jesus said:
“Once there was a rich man whose agent was reported to him to be mismanaging his property. So he
summoned him and said, ‘What’s this that I hear about you? Give me an account of your stewardship —
you’re not fit to manage my household any longer.’”
So far, we do not know whether this accusation is justified or false, but it is clear that the manager really fears for his
work.
“At this the agent said to himself, ‘What am I going to do now that my employer is taking away the
management from me? I am not strong enough to dig and I can’t sink to begging. Ah, I know what I’ll do so
that when I lose my position people will welcome me into their homes!’”
Here it is worthwhile explaining that the owners of the large landed properties did not use to live on their estates in the
country, but in the big cities, often even outside Palestine. From time to time, they visited their large landed estates in
order to check how they were run.
On the Palestinian countryside, an awful poverty reigned. Many deprived people leased land parcels to cultivate them,
but instead of getting out of their poverty, their debts increased steadily, and in extreme cases, as a last recourse, they
sold themselves as slaves to their landowners for an agreed upon period of time. In other cases, their debts were
transferred to their children, and they had to work the lands of the rich people, without hope of ever being able to
overcome their dependence.
“So he sent for each one of his master’s debtors. ‘How much do you owe my master?’ he said to the first.
‘A hundred barrels of oil,’ he replied. ‘Here,’ replied the agent, ‘take your bill, sit down, hurry up and write in
fifty.’
Then he said to another, ‘And what’s the size of your debt?’ ‘A thousand bushels of wheat,’ he replied. ‘Take your
bill,’ said the agent, ‘and write in eight hundred.’”
And here, let us take a look on what is happening at that instant: Two debtors, who have no possibility for paying their
debts in money, had agreed upon paying the value in kind. That was something very common in that time. But let us
investigate the amount of debt:
The first one said: “A hundred barrels of oil,” olive oil, of course. And of course, he did not say barrels, but “bath,” a
Hebrew measure corresponding to more or less 40 liters, or 10 gallons, each. Therefore, the poor man owed his
landowner the quantity of 1000 gallons of olive oil, corresponding to the annual crop of between 100 and 200 mature
trees. An enormous quantity!
The second man said: “A thousand bushels of wheat.” He used the word “a hundred kor,” indicating a measure of
between 6 at 7 bushel or 220 liters, each. Therefore, he owed 22.000 liters or 650 bushels of wheat, perhaps ten metric
tons, or in that time, the annual crop of between 10 and 15 hectares. He certainly could not even count with a parcel of
such dimensions for cultivating.
In both cases, the weight of the debt squashed the poor peasant.
But why does the manager reduce the debt from 100 to 50 barrels of oil and from 100 to 80 kor of wheat?
And now comes the key point of the story. The Mosaic Law prohibited Jews to charge interests for their loans, at least in
those cases where the loan-taker was also a Jew. That norm is very clearly established in the Old Testament, and for that
reason it was also prohibited for Christians, in the Middle Ages, to charge interests.
But in reality, nobody cared about this norm, and everybody charged an interest even above the effective norm in the
Roman Empire, that is to say, an interest of above 20%.
For wheat, because of its more stable price, the amount of interest was fixed at 25%. For olive oil, with a price that
fluctuated widely, they used to recharge an interest of up to 100%, fatal for an agrarian society, where the maximum
interest should not go beyond 5%. And those amounts are exactly what the administrator reduced.
The peasants and merchants, who listened to Jesus’ speech, understood very well what he was speaking of.
And Jesus continued:
“Now the master praised this rascally agent because he had been so careful for his own future. For the
children of this world are considerably more shrewd in dealing with their contemporaries than the children of
light.”
This is a seemingly enigmatic sentence. It is commonly not understood by people. How can the owner praise an unjust
steward, who even caused him damage? Well, because in fact he did not cause him damage, but rather simply reduce
the amount of usury prohibited by the law. Therefore, he made friends with the poor people, with whom he would have
to live together in the future, and his master could not sue him. Such cunning caused the landowner’s admiration.
Here it is worthwhile to indicate another detail: The Greek text does not speak literally of an unjust steward, but of
“oikonomoV thV adikiaV,” that is, of the “administrator of unrighteousness.” And this would be a much more
appropriate translation, although the traditional translation of the text is also formally correct.
Now, who are the children of light? It is the denomination, which the Essenes had given themselves. They lived,
generally, in closed and isolated communities, without much contact with their neighbors, without sharing their
spirituality, without benefiting others, and without being able to expect anything in turn from their neighbors.
“Now my advice to you is to use ‘money’, tainted as it is, to make yourselves friends, so that when it comes to
an end, they may welcome you into the homes of eternity.”
This sentence is also very polemic. What does he mean with it? Exactly what the administrator had done: To reduce
debts, to alleviate the life of the poor. Not to charge in excess, and if they have done it, to return the money charged in
excess. This is a quite up to date admonition, don’t you think so? Jesus did not speak of “homes,” but of huts, the
miserable huts, where the poor lived. Because wealth does not last forever, and when this happens, the poor
will welcome them in their homes, which do last. Because, as you know well, the adjective which is commonly translated as
“eternal,” in fact, does not mean this, but “durable,” “which persists for an epoch.”
In later times, some church officials judged the Master’s words inappropriate, and they tried to change them. There are
still manuscripts, where we can see that the verb had been manipulated in this passage, so that it would say: “so that
when you come to your end, they may welcome you into the homes of eternity,” shifting the social criticism (which
could have been used against the feudal church) to the afterlife.
And Jesus said:
“The man who is faithful in the little things will be faithful in the big things, and the man who cheats in the
little things will cheat in the big things too. So that if you are not fit to be trusted to deal with the wicked
wealth of this world, who will trust you with the true riches? And if you are not trustworthy with someone
else’s property, who will give you property of your own? No servant can serve two masters. He is bound to
hate one and love the other, or give his loyalty to one and despise the other. You cannot serve God and the
power of money at the same time.”
This needs no comments.
So you see, my dear brother, is not so difficult to interpret this parable. It teaches us not to take advantage of our
neighbors, to charge what is just, to return the unjustly earned money, simply to live a righteous life in harmony with
God’s Laws.
The problem with the interpretation of this parable arises, when one wants to give it forcefully a highly religious
meaning, and it simply does not have such a meaning. It is pure social critics. The owner of the parable is not God, etc.
And people in that time understood it exactly as I have explained it to you.
Perhaps you have wondered why the Padgett messages do not dedicate one single word to this parable: It is because it
has nothing to do with Jesus’ central teaching, Divine Love and soul transformation. It is not a parable of the category of
“the leaven in the batch of dough,” or the “mustard seed,” etc. It is a teaching about living together, on “natural love,” if
you want to put it this way.
We have come to the end of our exposition. It is time to say goodbye.
I hope this message may serve to clarify a difficult passage in the Bible. In the same chapter of Luke, there is another
example of Jesus’ social critic. But of that, we will speak on another occasion.
God bless you,
Your brother in the spirit,
Judas
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