The rich man finds out that the manager has been squandering his property. This would be like discovering that you gave your money to Bernie Madoff, thinking it was in good hands, but, then you discover, he destroyed your assets through a massive Ponzi scheme. Today, you go to prison for doing things like that. In Jesus’ day and time, you get thrown out on the street.

Before we go any further, let’s take a moment to consider the characters in the parable and who they represent. Let’s begin with the rich man or the master. Per the usual, we can assume that the master refers to God. But in this parable, God plays an interesting role. It is clear from the story that the master owns lots of farm land and that he has a sharecropping system in place.

The people who live on the land must work the fields and are expected to pay from the yield of their crops. Clearly he owns an olive grove and expects a certain amount of olive oil from those fields to come to market. The same is true with his fields of wheat. But even though God owns everything, God is not engaged in the day-to-day operations of his land. In a sense, God is an absentee landlord.

I actually love this image because it’s true to life. God owns everything in this world, but is not physically present to manage what God owns. You don’t see God walking around barking out orders saying, “Do this! Don’t do that! Treat my world with respect.” No, God has entrusted the management of this land to other people. God has entrusted the management of this world to us.

What this means is that we are the managers of this world and, like in the parable, one day God is going to call us to an accounting of how we used the resources God entrusted to our care. If we misuse those resources, we will find ourselves in trouble with God. However, if we use them wisely, then God will reward us. Or at least, you would think that’s how the parable should go, but it doesn’t go that way.

This particular manager is unscrupulous. He is reckless with his master’s resources and, as a result, this manager is facing a life of poverty because he’s about to be fired. So the manager acts very quickly and he starts calling in all of the debt owed to his master. One hundred jugs of olive oil here, one hundred containers of wheat there. And the manager tells the men, “Look, give me 50 jugs of oil and we’ll consider your debt to be paid. Give men 80 containers of wheat and we’ll call it even.”

So on the day of reckoning, when the master calls in the manager in order to take an accounting of everything that had been lost, the manager presents the rich man with some of the assets he recently collected from his master’s debtors. This move was both unexpected and greatly pleasing to the rich man. The parable says that, “His master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly.”

So this manager is backed into a corner and he comes up with some quick thinking as a way of trying to fix the situation. You would think that the master would say to the manager, “You’re a liar and a cheat and, although I appreciate the effort, we’re done here.” But that’s not what happens. God’s like, “That’s some pretty clever maneuvering. Good job! I wasn’t expecting that from you.”

But that’s not even where it ends. Jesus continues praising the dishonest manager for his tactics. Jesus draws a distinction between the people who follow him and the people who don’t. Jesus calls the people who follow him the children of light and the people who don’t the children of this age. Jesus says that the people who follow him, the children of light, need to be shrewder like the dishonest manager, the children of this age.

Then Jesus says something that is absolutely bonkers. He tells his disciples that they should, “…make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes…” In other words, you need to be shrewd. You need to use clever tactics like the one employed by the dishonest manger to further the cause of the kingdom.

Jesus is so serious about this that he says, “If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?” If this is confusing to you, let me explain what he means because what he’s saying through this parable rather remarkable—Jesus is saying that it’s okay for his followers to use wealth made by dishonest means to further the goals of the kingdom. Indeed, Jesus is implying that if the disciples are not like the manager and utilizing dishonest honest wealth for the benefit of creating the kingdom, then the kingdom will never happen.

To explore this idea, I want to talk about one of the greatest philanthropists to ever walk the earth—Andrew Carnegie, the steel magnate. To give you a sense of just how generous Carnegie was, he donated money to build some 3,000 public libraries around the world. He created the Carnegie Institute of Technology, which today is known as Carnegie Melon University.

He donated millions of dollars to other academic institutions around the world, including being a large benefactor of the Tuskegee Institute, the school created by Booker T. Washington. He financed the building of some 7,000 church organs. He contributed $1.5 million in 1903 for the erection of the Peace Palace at The Hague, a building which houses the International Court of Justice. Carnegie also established large pension funds for his former steel employees.

By the time of his death, Carnegie had given away $350 million, which in today’s money would be the equivalent of more than $80 billion. He was famous for writing this quote, “The amassing of wealth is one of the worse species of idolatry. No idol more debasing than the worship of money… the man who dies thus rich dies disgraced.” He believed the rich should use their wealth to help enrich society and even expressed sympathy for the ideas of progressive taxation and an estate tax.

But this same man, who is so well known for doing so much good in the world got that money through dishonest means. Carnegie was not born into money. His father was a handloom weaver in Scotland and, when they fell on hard times, the family borrowed money to move to America. They eventually ended up working in a Scottish owned cotton mill in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. Carnegie worked as a bobbin boy, changing spools of thread for 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. His starting wage was $1.20 per week.

Eventually, Carnegie became a telegram messenger boy, which eventually enabled him to become a telegraph operator by the age of 18. Carnegie’s boss, Thomas Scott, was so impressed with Carnegie’s talents that he offered him a job with the railroad and, by the age of 24, he made Carnegie the superintendent of the Western Division of the Pennsylvania Railroad. However, even more important than the job, Thomas Scott had insider trading information that he shared with Carnegie that allowed Carnegie to make his first investments.

After the Civil War, those investments would allow Carnegie to become an early investor in the Columbia Oil Company, whose wells were yielding over $1,000,000 in cash dividends per year. Carnegie would use that money to invest in the steel industry. From his time in the railroads, Carnegie knew that steel was going to be a huge commodity. But Carnegie didn’t just invest in steel. He created the industry from the ground up.

Carnegie developed every stage of the steel making process. From the extraction of the ore to the refinement into steel to the delivery of the product to market. Carnegie built dozens of factories and employed thousands of people. The laborers who worked for Carnegie Steel were expected to work 12 hours a day, seven days a week. Carnegie was relentless in asking his employees to work longer hours, which resulted in numerous accidents.

The working conditions in Carnegie’s mills were so dangerous that 20 percent of deaths among men in Pittsburgh during the 1880s were due to steelwork accidents. Every time someone died in his factory, Carnegie showed very little remorse. For example, when a machine exploded, killing several of his workers, he was more concerned by the loss of production than by the loss of life. Despite these tough working conditions, his employees faced a 30 percent pay reduction in 1892.

These working conditions led to the Homestead Strike, where the workers demanded better working conditions and higher pay. Carnegie brought in hired muscle to break up the strike, which ended with 10 people losing their lives. By preventing his workers from unionizing, Carnegie set back the workers rights movement by decades. But people dying in Carnegie’s factories, isn’t the worst of it.

Carnegie and 50 of his wealthy friends created the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club. They bought land in and around the town of South Fork, Pennsylvania so they could use it as their own retreat for hunting and fishing. On the land was a dam that was originally built in 1838 by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as part of a canal system. Unfortunately, the dam needed to be repaired, which was brought to the attention of the club.

They could have easily afforded to fix the dam, but the men shrugged off the warnings. On May 31^st, 1889, the dam gave way, sending millions of gallons of water downstream. Eventually, the torrent made its way to Johnstown where it leveled the town and killed 2,209 people. The men who were part of the club, including Carnegie, were never held accountable. They used their considerable influence to disconnect themselves from the investigation and quietly dissolved the club. It was not long after this that Carnegie began his philanthropic efforts in earnest.

I tell you this story because, as much good as Carnegie’s money did for our society and for the world, that money is not clean money. It was made by dishonest means, on backs of laborers who were hurt, maimed, killed and underpaid to support his steel empire. Does the fact that he gave that money away to benefit society make it okay? Does that compensate for the sins of how he made the money in the first place? One could argue he was only truly inspired to give his money away as a means of atoning for his responsibility in causing the deaths of so many innocent people. Would Jesus praise Carnegie for furthering the kingdom in the same way he praised the dishonest manager?

To answer these questions, I think we have to understand the deeper question that this parable poses—is there such a thing as honest wealth? Can anyone claim that their money is truly free from the stain of sin? Think about it for a minute, every dollar you’ve earned in your lifetime comes from another source and you have no idea where that money has been.

For example, let’s say your company sells water for $1 a bottle. When a person purchases that bottle of water, you don’t know where that dollar came from. What if that dollar came from the sale of illicit drugs? What if it came from selling illegal weapons or to pay for sex? If you think that’s unlikely, a 2009 Dartmouth University study determined that 90% of US currency contains trace amounts of cocaine.

What this means is that when a person pays for the bottle of water which, in turn, pays a portion of your salary, your living is paid for by dishonest money. The same is true for me. My salary comes from donations that you all provide to the church. Although, I know you all are above board in your personal lives, it is estimated that as much as five percent of the national GDP is money that was recirculated through criminal money laundering operations. That money finds its way into our pensions, annuities and 401ks. No matter how ethical you are, there’s no way to escape it—money is dirty.

This leads to the larger point of this parable: since there is no such thing as honest money, Jesus is trying to help us to understand that money is a means to an end and nothing else. Money only becomes useful when you can use it to create God’s kingdom. What this means is that, on some level, all Christians are like Andrew Carnegie, using dishonest wealth to change the world for the better.

I know this might sound kind of odd, but remember how Jesus spent his time. In my last sermon, we talked about how he was judged harshly for hanging out with tax collectors and prostitutes. However, imagine if one of those prostitutes contributed money to his cause. That money would have been earned through dishonest means. There is this idea in Christianity that the church is only for good, honest, kind, decent people. Hence the belief that the money given to the church is somehow as pure as the people who occupy the pews.

Through this parable, Jesus is saying that’s nonsense. We are all sinners and we all contribute to a corrupt system that can be used to foster good or evil in the world. Jesus is telling us that we need to do everything in our power make sure our money is being used for good, to create God’s kingdom. Those of you who donate to this community that is what we are trying to do with your money. There are still so many people who are struggling right now in this economy and you have been providing relief.

The community relief fund continues to provide assistance to people in our area who are in danger of being evicted from their homes, losing their cars, losing their jobs. We have fed people who are hungry. We’ve paid medical bills, power bills, water bills, even tuition bills. You all are keeping the kingdom alive through your efforts. So even though our money is dirty, our efforts to build God’s kingdom cleanses our money. Let’s just hope that on the day we sit before God to give an accounting of our actions, we’ve done enough to truly make a difference. Amen. (perhaps rename Spiritual Money Laundering)