|
|
April 19th, 2002
Received by H.R.
Cuenca, Ecuador.
My dear brother:
When people preach religion, precepts for living together, what
you should do or what you should leave alone, naturally they are
confronted on 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 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.
In 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 of 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 litres, each. Therefore, he owed 22,000
litres 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 consider owning 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 interest 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 interest.
But in reality, nobody cared about this norm, and everybody charged
an interest rate even above the effective norm in the Roman Empire,
that is to say, an interest rate 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, one who even
caused him damage? Well, because in fact he did not cause him damage,
but rather simply reduced 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 controversial. 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 modern admonition, don’t you think? 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 comment.
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 criticism.
The allusion of the parable is not to 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, or “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 criticism. But of that, we will speak on another
occasion.
God bless you,
Your brother in the spirit,
Judas
|
|
