Jesus Offers Some Great Financial Advice

Jan Luyken etching of the Parable of the Penitent Steward
in Luke 16 (Wikipedia)

Money is the most successful story ever invented and told by human beings because it
is the only story everyone believes…. Not everyone believes in God, not everybody believes in human rights, not everybody believes in nationalism, but everybody believes in money.”

- Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari

Jesus mentions money in nearly half of his parables, and many of his so-called “hard sayings” are about wealth, as in “Don’t store up possessions here on earth,” “Don’t worry about tomorrow,” and “Sell what you have and give it to the poor.”

Are Jesus’s words about money naive and impractical, or can we trust his advice on how to use money as wisely as possible?

In the gospel of Luke’s puzzling parable of the “unjust steward” Jesus commends a shady estate manager, not for how he mishandled his master’s money, but for the shrewd way he used “unrighteousness mammon” to secure his future when he was fired from his job.

Before the manager turns over the records of his dealings, he immediately approaches those indebted to his boss and gains their favor by writing off substantial amounts of their debt. In this way he gains their friendship and the assurance that when he’s without an income that they will come to his aid. The manager could have gone about embezzling some extra funds for himself, but chooses to offer others some much appreciated debt forgiveness instead.

It is significant that the amounts forgiven likely correspond to the hidden interest in many contracts in Jesus’s day, hidden to avoid the appearance of charging usury as forbidden by the Torah. So the steward is choosing to act more justly as well as managing wealth in a way that benefits others.

Jesus describes that as a smart move, and notes that “people of this world” are often shrewder than “people of the light” when it comes to financial management. In an earlier passage Luke records Jesus giving similar advice, “Sell your possessions and give to the poor. Provide wealth for yourself that will never be depleted, an account in heaven that never be exhausted, where no thief can steal and no moths destroy.”

In other words, like the shrewd manager in the parable, we are urged to manage God’s wealth in ways that benefit our fellow human beings and thus gain the kind of wealth that truly matters and is forever secure. People, after all, are priceless and enduring, while the material things we gain with money deteriorate and lose value over time.

A couple in a former community we lived were obvious hoarders. Their house, their overgrown back yard and even their vehicles were packed full of stored possessions, all of which were once brand new and had been marketed with the promise of great pleasure and pride for their owners. Over the years their possessions became a pathetic collection of landfill, a useless eyesore.

By contrast, a decades-old Readers Digest article, “Wealth Beyond Diamonds,” tells the story of a newly engaged couple who are about to purchase a diamond when they learn a close friend was having to drop out of college because they could no longer afford their tuition. The couple decides to forego the diamond and invest in their friend’s education instead.

The gratitude the couple experienced and the benefit they felt as a result of their friend’s success led them to help countless other worthy students throughout their adult lives. In their retirement they celebrated the achievements of all of the people with whom they had become good friends, resulting in their experiencing a wealth far beyond diamonds.

An elementary age child at our church’s Vacation Bible School years ago made a similar choice. The   VBS offering that summer was to purchase a young cow through Heifer International for some needy family abroad. The young student became so excited about raising the money that he contributed all of the savings he’d accumulated in his piggy bank. All of it.

This child was neither motivated by guilt nor manipulated into this level of generosity, but saw this as a great investment opportunity, visualizing a needy family being blessed and enriched in a way that resulted in sheer joy and pleasure for giver and receiver alike. Besides, he knew that as a part of a caring family and church family, he would never be in want for having generously shared with others in need. He trusted that good people, God’s people, would always look out for each other.

But what about saving for our future retirement?

Here I am deeply conflicted, but several decades ago, with the help of our Everence financial advisor, we were able to transfer most of our modest retirement savings into Calvert Community Investment Notes. These are dedicated to causes like agricultural development, alternative- energy projects and micro-lending opportunities for worthy entrepreneurs, rather than invested in a profit-based Wall Street economy. While such investments only earn enough interest to keep up with inflation, the satisfaction of having God’s money work in ways that are truly life giving has given us great joy.

In the final judgement, when nations of people everywhere are called to account for their stewardship, none of us wants to hear words like, “You’re fired.” What we hope for are the words, “Come, you blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: for I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me drink; I was a stranger and you took me in; I was naked and you clothed me; I was sick and you visited me; I was in prison and you came to me.”

We may never feel deserving of this kind of commendation or this level of unimaginable joy. But all of us stewards need to repent of any mismanagement of God’s wealth for personal gain and begin to live in a radically different way from that of our mammon-driven North American culture.

"Here’s the lesson: Use your worldly resources to benefit others and make friends. Then, when your possessions are gone, they will welcome you to an eternal home” Luke 16:9 (NLT).